Chris Manias

Latest articles from Global Intellectual History Browse the latest articles and research from Global Intellectual History

Other articles are here, and Stefanos' response to everything is coming soon: www.tandfonline.com/action/showA...

Recently wrote some thoughts on Stefanos Geroulanos' Invention of Prehistory (2024) as part of a special comment issue - and also more widely thinking about the history of human origins research (and my own path through it): www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....

Tom Bones: Sir Tom Jones chuffed after museum mammoth named after him More than 18,000 visitors to the National Museum Cardiff voted to name the mammoth "Tom Bones".

It's quite unusual www.bbc.com/news/article...

A couple of years ago would have said definitely postdoc (as postdoc positions were much scarcer than funded PhDs, creating a major bottleneck)

But given that A&H PhD funding has now been utterly devastated, it seems pretty much equal now. So whatever works best for the project really...

Those labels have also been there for quite a long time - I have a series of photos of student field-trips pondering them going back to 2022!

Ugh - really sorry to hear that Susie!

A permanent post in my department. Closing date Dec 14th 2025, interviews in March. Please spread #histsci

Morus, Macsen or Tom Bones - a hard choice! 🦣

by W. L. Shen. A new pterosaur from Xinjiang.

Retro-Chinese palaeoart

Dsungaripterus weii, from one of the first reports on Chinese pterosaurs, by Yang Zhongjian, aka the "Father of Chinese Vertebrate Paleontology" from 1964. You can find the panel mounting of the associated skeleton in the Beijing Palaeozoological Museum. Art by W. L. Shen.

An outdoor scene with a steam locomotive in the foreground, and a rusty railway wagon behind it. Blue skys and skyscrapers in the background

A front on outdoor image of a steam locomotive

A side on outdoor view of a grey train

A black railway carriage in a shed, with the Kenya Railway sign on the side

Afternoon trip to the Nairobi Railway Museum - lots of good trains!

YouTube video by BBC Archive 1962: What Was Britain Like Before the Apocalypse? | Monitor: The Lonely Shore | BBC Archive

And today I learned that in 1962 the BBC let Jaquetta Hawkes imagine the archaeology of apocalyptic Britain. As a short film 👀10/10 Will weird your day youtu.be/c8yEIe69M4k?...

A large statue of a knobbly bipedal dinosaur, standing in a museum garden, with many trees and bushes around

Impressive guy guarding National Museums Kenya

Time to nominate yourself or an artist you worked with for this excellent award!

Palaeontology and pancakes at Uncle Bill's Pancake House in Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A. 😃🥞🦕 @uclpress.bsky.social @chrismanias.bsky.social #Booksky

Yeah, there aren't many (or should I say any?!) grant schemes for 1-person non-ECR research in Arts & Humanities, apart from BA or Leverhulme fellowships. Also possibly Wellcome CDA?

UKRI schemes meanwhile are now overwhelmingly set up as collaborative

Ugh! Luckily King's still supports 12 month RF applications, with replacement for the whole period

Yes, currently have a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (so 1 year teaching replacement plus some expenses)

No success with AHRC though, and I only know one person who won an award under the new schemes....

I don't think it's possible! The finances in the last AHRC app I put together were only workable because we put the PI and Co-I (someone else and me) on very low fractional buyouts. This allowed budgeting for 2 full-time postdocs, but without much room for anything else.

black and white photo. Close-up of a model glyptodon head. it has quite the facial expression

A very good morning from this unimpressed glyptodon model - which was to be one of twelve real scale sculptures in Ciutadella Park, Barcelona.

Only a mammoth was completed before the project ended in 1910

(All the models are here:
mdc.csuc.cat/digital/coll...)

A promotional image for an edited collection called "Lands of the Lost: A Field Guide to Dinosaur Parks Physical, Fictional, and for the Future." The collection editors Dr. Victor Monnin & Dr. Alison Laurence are putting out a call for contributions. Abstracts are due January 10, 2026 to dinoparkfieldguide@gmail.com. Find the full call at: https://tinyurl.com/dinoparks The background image is of the outdated-but-adored Iguanodon models at Crystal Palace Park.

A call for 🦕🦖🦣 contributors! With Victor Monnin, I'm editing a collection about extinct animal parks—it's a field guide, of sorts, that turns a critical eye on places real, imagined, and yet to be. Find the full CFP for LANDS OF THE LOST here: tinyurl.com/dinoparks #PaleoSky #HistSci #EnvHist #STS

Illustrations of models of - Mammoth, woolly rhino, Megaloceros, Dinoceras, Mastodon, Sivatherium, Dinotherium, Anoplotherium, Ancitherium and Megalosaurus

Illustrations of models of : Iguanodon, Hylaeosaurus, Brontosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus, Archaeopteryx, Mastodonsaurus and Nicrosaurus

The series has been reconstructed here, from catalogues and surviving examples in natural history collections, with the possible sources of artistic inspiration

Lots of mammals, and the reptiles are an interesting mix of Crystal Palace-esque creatures and more typical late-19C reconstructions:

A coloured photograph showing a model Dinoceras from five different angles. The creature is grey and elephant-like in body, but its head is truly extraordinary and almost indescribable. It is a bit like a rhino in form, but has two large down-facing sabre-teeth, four horns on its nose, flappy ears and two giant protuberances on its forehead, looking a bit like Mickey Mouse ears, but more upright. It is standing on a wooden stand, and has quizzical look, as if it querying why it is being observed.

Cool new article investigating two paper mâché models from the Pfalzmuseum für Naturkunde, revealing a series of prehistoric animal reconstructions made in the 1890s: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Just look at the Dinoceras!!!!

(thanks to @hydrarchos.bsky.social for sending this over)

A literary Iguanodon at the Earth Sciences Library. Do any other libraries have dinosaurs or other antediluvian creatures carved into the furniture?

A photograph of a scene in a library - a wooden desk, with carved ammonites and a very uncomfortable looking wooden chair are in the foreground. A microscope and book are on the desk. In the background is a bookshelf with a large number of old books, a card index cabinet, and a wallchart with a picture of a Pareiasaurus skull. There is also a white plaster bust of Friedrich August von Quenstedt behind the desk.

There is Quenstedt's magnificent desk with ammonite carvings in the Tübingen palaeontological collections:

sound on

Mystery creature found in 'forbidden cloud forest' of Peru is new species of marsupial The newly described mouse opossum was discovered at a surprisingly high altitude in the Andes.

👀

Double page spread from an Argentinian magazine from 1912. Shows models of prehistoric animals, including a Toxodon, Macrauchenia, Mylodon, Megatherium, Mastodon, Glyptodon and sabre-toothed cap. The central image is an illustration of all the creatures standing in a landscape.

A sadly never-realized Pleistocene animal park in La Plata, Argentina. Article from from Fray Mocho (9 August 1912)

The animals were designed by Josef Pallenberg, who also did the dinosaur sculptures at Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg

(more info in this article: doi.org/10.31048/185... )

#FossilFriday

The Netherlands will return Dubois collection to Indonesia The Netherlands plans to transfer more than 28,000 fossils from the Dubois collection to Indonesia, following a request by Indonesian authorities. Today, Gouke Moes, Minister of Education, Culture and...

The news in English: www.government.nl/latest/news/....

Breaking news: Netherlands to return the Dubois collection of fossils to Indonesia

Great thread on the Field Museum's mid-90s palaeontology galleries, which look amazingly bonkers