James Lamsdell, PhD

Turns out they're transferring all research corp employees to the university. This apparently has nothing to do with federal funding.

Meet Palaeocampa anthrax, a newly discovered Carboniferous lobopodian, and 150 year old mystery fossil!

Palaeocampa is an exceptional lobopodian - it lived in rivers and lakes, bristled with thousands of poisonous spines, and more. 🧵

Open access: nature.com/articles/s42...

Waiting for a surprise webinar (we were told about it an hour ago) on "the future of the research corporation" to start which is called "Meeting with supervisors" on zoom.

Hey folks sizing up academic jobs, one thing I'd like you to know:

-Faculty at PUIs spend more time on research than most people realize.
-Faculty at R1s spend more time on teaching than most people realize.

I think the biggest difference between these jobs is the career stage of your mentees.

A picture of a plant that is likely a dandelion relative that looks just like a nirnroot from Oblivion.

*nirnroot noises*

A screenshot from the news with the headline "Sheetz to offer free hot dogs for 'National Hot Dog Day' later this week.

Having just finished reading Day of the Triffids I can recognize a potential society-ending event when I see it.

A picture of a plant that is likely a dandelion relative that looks just like a nirnroot from Oblivion.

*nirnroot noises*

Junior Professor Chair at MNHN Paris :
Integrative Taxonomy for Describing Biological Diversity

odyssee.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/procedures/r...

filesender.renater.fr?s=download&t...

Fellow educators: Please join me in co-signing!

Good start to the university replacing our phonelines with Zoom phones, I've already had a medical provider leave me a voicemail clearly intended for someone else disclosing patient information.

A photograph of a specimen of Eurypterus with its headshield popped up and the ventral plates open underneath. This specimen shows how the animals shed their exoskeleton.

A photograph of a fossil of a young Eurypterus next to the spiny leg of a much larger individual, showing just how much these animals grew over the course of their lifespan. The specimen is held in the American Museum of Natural History.

A wonderful side view of the back end of a Dolichopterus. This shows just how three-dimensional these animals, which are normally found as flattened specimens, truly were. The tail spine is also slightly curved. Specimen held in the Peabody Museum of Natural History.

A photograph of a specimen of Strobilopterus showing the head shield with little pale spirals on it. These spirals are microconchids, small worm tubes that attached to the surface of the exoskeleton. It is unclear whether these grew on the animal in life or attached to the shed exoskeleton, although it is considered more likely that they attached directly to the eurypterids as the exoskeleton would have likely been buried relatively rapidly after moulting. I always find it exciting to find examples of encrusting organisms on eurypterid exoskeletons, as there is not much evidence of such relationships from the fossil record. Specimen held in the Field Museum of Natural History.

Some neat fossils for mental health purposes on #FossilFriday⚒️🧪

Just a collection of some of my favourite eurypterid fossils I've encountered visiting museums across the US. Museums are critical sources of information and build important connections with our history and the natural world.

An understanding of the historical literature has been critical to my work, and my eurypterid monograph would have been impossible without access to the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Losing it would be devastating. Ignorance of the past doesn't help you generate novel ideas, it's just ignorance.

I always thought toilets looked more like rudists - is this just convergence?

A view of chicory, the most beautiful shade of blue flower.

A wonderful orange mushroom growing out of moss. It would probably liquids your liver or something so I am only 30% tempted to eat it.

A view of a pathway through trees with dark trunks and vibrant green leaves.

Some excellent mushrooms growing out of the side of a tree. These ones will probably kill you or something too. 50% desire to eat.

Glad I'm forcing myself to go for morning runs even if I never want to do it at the time.

Just a horseshoe crab doing its thing. Its thing is heading back to the water after a volunteer rescued it from being stuck on its back and left behind by the tide. 😅 I love the scraping noise they make as they move along the sand.

#invertebrates 🦀 🌿

Giant Eagle is playing Evanescence.

An acrylic painting of a tuxedo cat under a blanket.

Finished my first multi-session piece of art for @bigfacecats.bsky.social

As historian David McCullough expressed in a 2003 interview: “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”

A view of a horseshoe crab fossil in dark brown rock. The tail is clearly preserved but the body and head are less clear.

The same fossil photographed under a blue laser. The tail is now a bright yellow, and the body and head stand out more clearly from the rock.

The Silurian horseshoe crab Ciurcalimulus for #FossilFriday and #InternationalHorseshoeCrabDay. Described this week in @royalsocietypublishing.org, the specimen's preservation making interpretation of the fossil challenging, although illuminating it with a blue laser reveals additional details. 🧪⚒️

Fossil of the Jurassic horseshoe crab Mesolimulus and its trackway

#FossilFriday #InternationalHorseshoeCrabDay Jurassic horseshoe crab Mesolimulus and tracks (Kouphichnium) @amnh.org

Two horseshoe crabs mating on the beach at sunrise. My photo last year's mating season

Happy International Horseshoe Crab Day!
iucn.org/news/species...

I'd definitely be interested in seeing what the trace fossils can tell us about the actual distribution of these things!

This is the last paper for a while, promise.

(For everyone who's requested a physical copy of the last one, I'm working on sifting through all the requests! There were just many more than I was expecting.)

An image of the fossil horseshoe crab under different lightings. The fossil is rounded but the most clearly visible part is the long tail.

A phylogeny showing the position of Ciurcalimulus between Lunataspis and all other horseshoe crabs.

Another new horseshoe crab, this time the first known Silurian species, filling a 63 million year gap in the horseshoe crab fossil record.

This specimen was actually found by Sam Ciurca 50 years ago - another example of the importance of museum collections! ⚒️🧪

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

A slab of orange sandstone marked with Jurassic spider tracks

Finding fossils depends as much on light and time of day as search image. I’ve walked over this Jurassic sandstone sidewalk slab multiple times over 14 years but only today saw the spider tracks, those clusters of three dots. 🧪

Eurypterid book is here!

A 450-million-year-old horseshoe crab fossil from Michigan preserves the oldest known ovaries! Despite its shovel shaped head, its reproductive anatomy mirrors modern crabs—showing evolutionary mosaicism in action.

Read now: geosociety.co/4jH0h6P
#Geology #Paleontology #GSAPubs

There's also a new interesting creature from the Kokomo that will be coming out next week - stay tuned!

When picking what was to go on the cover, I knew I did not want to use Eurypterus, and decided to go for the most striking eurypterid image I had. I think this does the job nicely.

AI will never notice that your inat photo is a never before seen species, one awaiting formal description or an important range expansion or invasive. Connecting observers with experts was a key strength of inaturalist- gen AI LLMs DO NOT THINK or judge and cannot replace taxonomists. We will leave