Jack Milligan, MSc

They’ve only waited 120Ma.
A new glimpse into theropod diversity from Early Cretaceous Australia: megaraptorids, an unenlagiine, and for the first time, carcharodontosaurians.

Read it here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Artwork by Jonathan Metzger.

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From the field to the lab! Peter Rhynard, one of our 2024 field interns, volunteered over the winter break in the Paleo Prep Lab at the Cincinnati Museum Center, where he worked on fossils he helped excavate in the field!

The current state of the #pachyrhinosaurus skull that I helped collect in September. Preparation is going amazingly so far and I’ve found numerous fossils surrounding it including an ulna, quadrate, ischium and teeth. Not to mention vertebrae and ribs. #fossilfriday

Side view of the brown tooth showing nice serrations on the rear edge

Front view of the brown tooth showing the split in the serrations halfway down the tooth

Happy #ToothyTuesday from this pathological Daspletosaurus tooth from the 75 million year old sediments of the Judith River Formation.

This specimen has split carinae (the serrated edge) on the front side in an upside down "Y" pattern. Relatively uncommon, and a treat to find in the field. 🦖 🧪

‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Goes for the Jugular: “There’s a Little Bit of Everything That’s Scary” Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey reveal how the latest film in the blockbuster series brings new terror thanks to experiments gone awry.

www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...

Continuing this fossil weirdness thread!

Thyreosaurus, Plourdosteus, Congruus, Megalotragus...

A new book explores the evolutionary romance between plants and animals Riley Black’s new book, When the Earth was Green, uses the latest research to envision the ancient worlds of our favorite prehistoric animals.

“Paleontology is often framed as stories of colonization and conquest — life colonized land, dinosaurs dominated the Mesozoic Era. Black rejects this framework, instead twining tales of communities into an ‘evolutionary romance.’”

I promised to tell the backstory of the world's biggest #trilobite, so here's our 1998 discovery & excavation of the holotype of Isotelus rex. Length as recovered ~68 cm; original length ~72 cm. U. Ordovician, nr Churchill, MB 🇨🇦 Now on display in the @manitobamuseum.bsky.social #TrilobiteTuesday

Headline: "Did Giant Ice-Age Beast Carve These Vast Caves in South America?"
Me: "Yes."
Wrote about these megafauna-made mega-tunnels of in my book 'The Evolution Underground' (2017, Pegasus Books), pleased to see them still getting the attention they richly deserve.
🧪🦥🪨⚒️ #ichnology

Taphonomic history of a dinosaur skeleton from the upper Cretaceous Frenchman Formation, Canada: insights from ancient rhizoetchings and invertebrate bioerosion trace fossils Bioerosion trace fossils are biogenic structures that record evidence of behaviour in hard substrates, including bone. While bioerosion trace fossils on bones produced by animals have been well doc...

Taphonomic history of a dinosaur skeleton from the upper Cretaceous Frenchman Formation, Canada: insights from ancient rhizoetchings and invertebrate bioerosion trace fossils: Ichnos: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

¡Gracias por compartir estas fotos!

First pictures from Walking With Dinosaurs (2025)!!!

When the Earth Was Green Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024 A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on EarthFossils plants...

I've got a new book coming out next month - all about how prehistoric plants changed the world - and I'd love for it to bloom wildly when it comes out.

Pre-orders make a massive difference, so please consider ordering a physical, ebook, or audio copy, and asking for it from your favorite library 🌱

Taphonomic history of a dinosaur skeleton from the upper Cretaceous Frenchman Formation, Canada: insights from ancient rhizoetchings and invertebrate bioerosion trace fossils Bioerosion trace fossils are biogenic structures that record evidence of behaviour in hard substrates, including bone. While bioerosion trace fossils on bones produced by animals have been well doc...

I’m having a pretty awesome #TraceFossilTuesday, as my research @usask.bsky.social and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum on ancient plant and invertebrate bioerosion trace fossils on a Triceratops skeleton from Saskatchewan has been published in Ichnos!

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Just in time for the year's end: an updated geochronology chart from the ICS:

stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/Chr...

The last new dinosaur of 2024? Pang et al. 2024 A New Species of Ankylosaurian Dinosaur——Tianzhenosaurus chengi sp. nov., from the Late Cretaceous of Tianzhen County, Shanxi Province, China cnki.net/KCMS/detail/...

Nanuqsaurus viewed from below while walking under the northern lights and it is snowing lightly

I am really fond of this piece showing Nanuqsaurus walking under the northern lights in a cold winter day during the Late Cretaceous! Even if I did this illustration a while back I think it is the best one to wish everyone:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

#paleoart #sciart #dinosaurs

Turtle skull on display

Turtle shell piece on display

Turtle skull being excavated

Turtle shell piece being excavated

Christmas came early this year! The Royal Saskatchewan Museum put two turtle fossils I found and excavated on display! A nearly complete skull of an unidentified Baenid, and a right xiphiplastron of a large Axestemys.
#TurtleTuesday
#Paleontology

Illustration by me (Anthony J.Martin) from my book 'The Evolution Underground' (2017, Pegasus Books); shows a blue sky with cumulus clouds and a gray prop-plane with the registration number NR16020 on its tail, and in the foreground is the cross-section of a beach revealing crustacean burrows, which are labeled left to right as in the figure caption below: FIGURE 39. Decapod burrows from shallow marine to land (left to right): Carolina ghost shrimp (CM = Callichirus major), sand fiddler crab (UP = Uca pugilator), Atlantic ghost crab (OQ = Ocypode quadrata), and coconut crab (BL = Birgus latro); scale = 1 meter (3.3 feet). (Note: The coconut crab lives on Pacific islands, whereas the other species are in the southeastern U.S.)

In celebration of #Crustmas & the amazing burrowing powers of crustaceans, here's a figure I made for my book 'The Evolution Underground' (2017, Pegasus Books), featuring burrows made by a variety of crustaceans. Figure key in the alt-text.
(P.S. The plane's registration number is an Easter egg.) 🧪🦀

A paleontological smorgasbord for #FossilFriday @usask.bsky.social
Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Mosasaurus, and Rhamphorhynchus.

Wyenberg-Henzler TCA, Fowler DW, Currie PJ, Sullivan C. The category-modifier system: a hierarchical classification scheme for vertebrate tooth marks. Paleobiology. Published online 2024:1-19. doi:10.1017/pab.2024.43

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A photograph of Apex in profile. The dinosaur’s fossilzed skeleton is dark grayish in color. It has a small head, a long spiked tail, and large plates covering its back.

Apex is now on view! Thought to be the largest & one of the most complete Stegosaurus specimens ever found, Apex will be studied by Museum scientists. All resulting 3D digital models, including new CT scans taken at the Museum, will be made available for researchers.

A long and low skull of a fossil mammal, an herbivore called Telmatherium, on a museum collection bench

Brontotheres are often described as being rhino-like, because of forms with big horns like Megacerops, but not all brontotheres were so conspicuously ornamented. This skull belongs to Telmatherium, a relatively small brontothere that lived in western North America about 44 million years ago. 🧪

The skeleton of the prehistoric crocodile Brachychampsa in a museum, with osteoderms in place on its back.

Brachychampsa was a shell-busting croc. While the teeth at the front of this 75-66 million-year-old croc’s jaw are pointed, those towards the back are bulbous and suited to cracking shelled prey like freshwater clams and small turtles. This skeleton’s based on Brachychampsa from southern Utah. 🧪

A coal-colored rock shaped like an inflated three-toed track. It has some leafy impressions across its surface and a dusting of dirt

This three-toed swollen track has an extention off the heel

Three swollen three-toed tracks in a display together

These slightly bloated-looking footprints come from a variety of mid-Cretaceous dinosaurs (hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, and theropods). They’re found in coal mines in Carbon Co, Utah. #FossilFriday

First #FossilFriday on the new app! Please enjoy this Chasmosaurus belli from Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta.

Individual, ontogenetic, and phylogenetic variation in the dentition of hadrosaurids (Iguanodontia: Ornithischia) Phylogenetic analyses of Hadrosauroidea are generally well-resolved, but finer resolution within Hadrosauromorpha remains contentious. This lack of resolution is due in part to the inability of dis...

Glad to see our latest work on hadrosaur teeth is out today!

Gill Gallimore, David Evans, and I did a deep dive into whether hadrosaur teeth are as useful as they seem in phylogenetics. A thread [1/14]
dx.doi.org/10.1080/1477...

Life sized Patagotitan sauropod statue standing behind a metal sign spelling “Trelew”

¡Hoy es el día de la paleontología en Argentina! I visited Trelew in Patagonia back in April to study turtle fossils. However, I couldn’t resist checking out the #Patagotitan just outside the town. Patagotitan is considered one of, if not the largest non-avian #dinosaur that we know of!

Reconcilable differences: Using retrospective photogrammetry to bridge the divide between analogue and digital site data collected during long-term excavation projects Over the last 30 years, high-resolution site documentation has rapidly developed, with analogue drawings and film photography being replaced with high-precision digital recordings. Today, most archaeo...

Although focused on archaeological excavations, this is also the future of paleontological excavations.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310741

Feliz de estar aquí :)