Dr. Brendan Anderson

Reposting for #FossilFriday, #MolluscMonday, #PaleoSky and all the rest of it 🏺🦑🧪

A photograph of a fossil mammal with spiky fur and a long face.

The Mesozoic mammal Sinodelphys, discovered in China and photographed at the Carnegie Museum, for #FossilFriday. Originally described as a marsupial but now thought to be an early placenta mammal, in my considered opinion this is clearly a creachure. 🧪⚒️

Back to bryozoans for this #FossilFriday with a sample of free-living (lunulite) cheilostomes from the Chalk of Rügen, Germany. Spot the crinoid interloper.

Image of Shax from Star Trek Lower Decks with the words "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

We all know Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Well we have corollary:

The public comment period ends tomorrow Dec 12! Here are some talking points.
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

@geoshanz.bsky.social @fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social @phaneritic.bsky.social @sierraclub.org @nrdc.org @roguenoaa.altgov.info @resistancerangers.altgov.info @oceanconservancy.org @nature.org

Alberta Legislature passes bill invoking Charter override for 4th time | CBC News Alberta's governing United Conservatives stayed up into the early pre-dawn hours of Wednesday morning to pass a bill that marks the fourth time in under two months they have used the Charter's notwith...

How questionable must your agenda be to have to invoke the notwithstanding clause four times in two months when passing laws? Trans kids in Alberta are under attack www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

And of course, if you find yourself in the rest of Canada, be ready to welcome forcibly displaced Albertans in your local communities. They’ll need your support, more than ever before.

Overnight, past 2 a.m., the Alberta United Conservative Party passed Bill 9, a bill to **strip away the right to life of trans youth** in order to impose on them a gender-affirming care ban.

We’re assisting to the beginning of a humanitarian crisis, in Canada, in real time.

A University Gave Guest Speakers a List of Banned Words. Was It Just Complying With State Law? A speaker dropped out of an event after Weber State University sent her a list of “prohibited words.” Now the university says it’s reviewing its guidance on the law.

www.chronicle.com/article/a-un...

A 30-year-old sea level rise projection has basically come true » Yale Climate Connections Even without today’s advanced modeling tools, scientists made a ‘remarkably’ accurate estimate.

A 30-year-old sea level rise projection has basically come true yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/12/a-30... #geology #earthscience

In addition to MEDIA-OPOLY, Paramount is going around Warner Bros., we should be concerned. Why?

Larry Ellison went to Trump after Netflix announced their intent in buying Warner Bros.

But how did Paramount get $118 Billion in CASH? Jared Kushner, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

📹: morningbrew/TT

I couldn't get into the faculty governance weeds nearly as much as I wanted to, but I came away feeling like that's a HUGE story that people outside higher ed don't understand at all.

Ding ding ding. (Maybe you’ll believe someone not me.)

GOOSEFISH

This picture has been making the rounds again, and is being misidentified again.

This is a GOOSEFISH.

This is NOT a tasselled wobbegong shark.

It’s a great pic. I get why people are very excited about it. But it’s as easy to give it the right name as the wrong one.

fullfact.org/online/tasse...

Folks might not know a lot of people are getting *very* upset that the materials they request are not available in the libraries/archives they're requesting from.

We're getting lots here at the Library of Virginia: requests of documents likely surfaced by large language models that *do not exist*.

It’s as if Anne Frank was describing the state sanctioned terror in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana
December, 2025

it’s not just AI slop: they’re breaking shit constantly now

since the latest update, random things will crash Explorer and my taskbar will restart, Discord kept freezing until I turned off notifications, and trying to scroll in Chrome with some games alt-tabbed is a glitchy mess

Impacts of an industrial deep-sea mining trial on macrofaunal biodiversity - Nature Ecology & Evolution A species-level dataset of sediment-dwelling macrofauna, sampled 2 years before and 2 months after a test of a commercial deep-sea mining machine, reveals losses of macrofaunal density and species ric...

An important advance in our understanding of potential impacts of deep sea mining, and the need for pre/nonimpact data over multiple seasons, including species-level taxonomic work
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And now we know that the volume of #Arctic sea ice also dropped to a record low in October (zacklabe.com/archive-2025/).

It's been a historic fall in the #Arctic, which is already a season of rapid climate change. Not good.

#fossilfriday It's an excellent photo of @ashpoust.bsky.social but I think I've seen it before...

HHS changed the name of transgender health leader on her official portrait Admiral Rachel Levine was the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to serve in the federal government. Her official portrait at HHS headquarters has been altered.

Admiral Rachel Levine was the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate to serve in the federal government. Her official portrait at HHS headquarters has been altered. n.pr/48HypvT

Image of museum website saying "help save PRI and the Museum of the Earth! $3,601,226 of the $4 million goal raised, 10% to go!

Visit www.priweb.org/mortgage-cam... to help!

Happy #fossilfriday everyone,

Enjoy a feel good story about one of the Museum of the Earth's high school supporters!

Thanks to big giving Tuesday support, PRI is now within ~400,000 of its end of year goal of ~4 million for the mortgage+ops. We can #SavePRI !🧪⚒️🦣🐚

www.localsyr.com/news/local-n...

Your listening age is 21

Top artists 1. Hozier 2. Florence + the Machine 3. Lucy Dacus 4. Chappell Roan 5. Flogging Molly

Spotify says am baby.
Proceed to judge me.

But almost all my listening on my 2 hr commute this year has been on patreon (the magnus archives and others by @rustyquill.com, @palaeoafterdark.bsky.social, and @adamconover.net) and @worldsbeyondnumber.bsky.social. on a different podcast service

A stylized digital drawing of an oviraptor holding a rainbow coloured egg.

The same drawing of a stylized oviraptor in nine different pride flag coloured variants.

A photo of the oviraptor drawings as paper stickers.

Proud Oviraptor c:

Image of the Museum of the Earth saying "Thanks to you we have raised over $156,000 so far today!" Share your stories and what inspires you to give. Help us keep giving Tuesday going! The bottom says www.priweb.org/support

Sharing an update because PRI shared on other socials - over $150,000 was donated this giving Tuesday bringing PRI even closer to their goal. Im very hopeful that PRI is likely to weather this crisis and create a path forward continuing its research and educational mission! Thanks all who helped!

Shark scientists want their research to help save threatened species, but don’t know how. Our new paper can help. Sharks are some of the most threatened animals on Earth, and accordingly many scientists who study sharks want their research to be useful for conservation. However, most scientific training does n…

ICYMI, we have a new paper out offering advice to shark scientists who want to perform policy-relevant research but don't understand the basics of science-based policymaking.

Here's the press release/ lay summary. The open access paper is linked within.
🧪🦑🌍🦈

Save the Museum of the Earth and PRI – Secure Its Future! In these challenging times, places like the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) stand as beacons of hope, fostering understanding of the natural world and inspiring action for a sustainable fut...

Today I’m joining the #GivingTuesday challenge to save the Museum of the Earth. As a Board of Trustee emeritus member, I see first-hand the Museum's impact on educating our community and the world about climate change, biodiversity, and our home planet. Please donate at priweb.org/support.

Frog knocked at Toad’s door. “Toad, wake up,” he cried. “Come out and see how wonderful the winter is!”

“I will not,” said Toad. “I am in my warm bed.”