@madelainewalker.bsky.social
💀 biological anthropology PhD candidate 🍄 natural history enthusiast 🎨 making arty things 🦍 studying life history & ecology of Early Miocene apes
Two sketches revealing views of a long, low skullcap with immense brow ridges. The sketch is of the first fossil Neanderthal recognized.
The original Neanderthal was first presented to the scientific world #OnThisDay in 1857, at a meeting in Bonn, Germany. Considered at the time to belong to Homo sapiens, it would be another 6 years before the fossils were called Homo neanderthalensis. 🏺 🧪
04.02.2025 13:02 — 👍 40 🔁 11 💬 1 📌 2
A bright, stylized illustration of the following animals: • Simbakubwa: an African hyaenodont - neither a lion nor a hyena, a separate carnivore-like mammal. • Ekembo: An early ape known from Eastern Africa. • Gompotherium: An extinct elephant cousin that most likely originated in Africa. • Toxodontid: A rhinoceros-like hooved mammal that lived in South America from the Miocene all the way until the end of the last ice age. • Dorcatherium: An extinct cousin of modern mouse deer found throughout Europe, Eastern Africa, and the Sivalik Hills. • Proailurus: Possibly the world's first cat! • Bothriogenys: A type of anthracothere (hippo-like hooved animal) from Africa. • Anthracothere: Hippo-like hooved mammals with narrow, pig-like faces. • Chalicothere: A big, strange, clawed ungulate that was likely related to horses and had long arms like apes.
Meet some Miocene mammals 🍃
These familiar-ish guys all lived during the Miocene epoch, which lasted from 23 to 5.3 million years ago.
This was a period of warming climates, geological change, and the emergence of lots of animal groups still around today.
Sometimes it is easier to ID #Africa weavers by their nests rather than their field marks.
Vitelline & Lesser Masked Weaver
Thanks to all your amazing enthusiasm I got to write about this most spikeliciously cute li'l guy 😄
Learnt that some of this crablet's brethren take rides on sea piglets!
🧪🌿 #inverts #NatureWriting
Colorful, stylized illustration of different pleistocene fauna, including a mammoth, giant beaver, wholly rhino, and a glyptodon.
An illustration of the Ekembo skull found by Mary Leakey.
Colorful, stylized illustration of Tully Monsters, which lived about 300 million years ago and found only in the Mazon Creek beds in Illinois.
Colorful, stylized illustration of a pangolin, an endangered mammal found in Africa and Asia.
I missed #portfolioday but wanted to move some doodles here!
Lots of bones and animals and midwesty things 🦣🦇💀
Links: madelainerosewalker.squarespace.com/links
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Hi! I'm Madelaine, a bio anthropology phd candidate, doodler, and writer with big midwest energy.
Setting up shop here because the future is looking real weird!
