@blochlab.bsky.social
Jonathan Bloch’s laboratory of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
There are six stubby bones with very similar shapes laid in a row of descending size with a very large one at one side and a very tiny one at the other
Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got so big.
Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/scie...
Study: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Natural History Museum Denmark
We are hiring. The Natural History Museum Denmark seeks a Tenure-track Assistant Professor and Curator in Vertebrate Paleontology.
Duties are collection-based research, curation of collections, teaching and public engagement.
Deadline: 18 May 2025. View full job posting: bit.ly/3XPIQcg
two people are standing outside wearing traditional university graduation robes, one in black and the other in dark blue
a person sits in front of a large cabinet pulling out shallow drawers full of small boxes of fossils
Congrats! 👏👏👏 So proud of our graduating @ufl.edu students and grateful they did their grad work with our faculty!
Dr. Lazaro Viñola-López, advised by Jon Bloch, received his doctoral degree through the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Dept of Biology
👉 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...
The early mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs upwards of 150 million years ago were likely covered in dark and dusky greyish-brown fur, according to a quantitative reconstruction of Mesozoic mammal coloration in Science, hinting at their shrouded and nocturnal nature. scim.ag/41sKMZ9
14.03.2025 17:30 — 👍 84 🔁 10 💬 2 📌 0
Join our team teaching Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Calgary! We are hiring two positions to start in the Fall teaching in our new integrated curriculum.
14.03.2025 19:50 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 1
an illustration of a fuzzy mammal clinging to the side of a tree in the forest with a similar looking animal in the distance on another tree. they both look somewhat like squirrels but with small ears and pointed faces, and are covered in reddish fur with white feet and undersides
scientific photo of a small mammal skeleton with a long tail laid out to show its body plan and flanked by insets of several views of specific long bones and the partial skull
A new study of the most complete skeleton of a species of small mammal that inhabited western North America in the early Paleocene, Mixodectes pungens, has answered many questions about the enigmatic critter.
Story:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/a-62...
Study: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our new study published today on a remarkably complete skeleton of Mixodectes from the early Paleocene of New Mexico! @purgatoriidae.bsky.social @abqtom.bsky.social @crowelljw.bsky.social @marytsilcox.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excited to share our new paper on the most complete mixodectid fossil ever discovered! Phylogenetic results support Mixodectes as most closely related to primatomorphans (primates and colugos) among mammals.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
For our latest "Welcome to #Florida" podcast episode, we talked to Dr. Jonathan Bloch of UF about one of the most significant archaeological sites in the state -- which was originally found by a 5-year-old girl. Dig in! www.buzzsprout.com/1169570/epis...
04.03.2025 14:31 — 👍 19 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Check out our children’s book on paleontology and life in the Eocene! This work stems from our NSF funded research on mammalian response to the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum in the Wind River and Bighorn basins of Wyoming.
digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/165/
Four people are standing around a table covered in small boxes with different types of what look like fossils while surrounded by shelves storing many more boxes and trays of fossils
an artfully arranged set of fossil teeth on a white background with a section of the front of a horse-like jaw ahead of two rows of very long molar teeth laid out like two wings
three different dark fossil teeth on a white surface, two of which are long and curved and one is shorter like a molar
Fossil collectors in Florida have discovered an ancient sinkhole, now at the bottom of a river, which holds the remains of animals rarely seen in the state, including a type of giant armadillo, giant ground sloths, and an odd-looking tapir.
Full story:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/unde...
two older men are holding fossils and cards of some kind that are slightly blurry to read while standing for a portrait in a scientific fossil lab of some kind
two very tiny jaw fossils are set next to a certificate of flight and a badge for UF Space Plants Lab
a very rounded snail shell is sitting on a mirrored shelf with two certificates of flight and a badge for UF Space Plants Lab propped up behind it
Fossils in space! 🚀 Friend of the Museum Rob Ferl, director of @ufastraeus.bsky.social, recently went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and took a few of our fossils with him—a snail, horse and early ancestor of modern primates. There's more:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/flor...
a person holding a metal measuring tool sits in front of table covered in bird specimens and a wall of book shelves behind her
Welcome Glaucia Del-Rio, our new curator of ornithology! 👏👏👏 🦜🗺️ Along with her curator duties, she wants to establish a collection of cell cultures, both as a scientific resource and as insurance against extinction.
More about Glaucia + her work:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/glau...
two fossil skulls of some kind of mammals with elongated snouts, large eye sockets, and thick molars shown side by side from below
a very heavy triangular shark tooth in dark grey with a crack as if it's a fossil
the outline of Florida and its counties with several down the center into Tampa colored in bright orange
Museum Resource 🦣 Florida Vertebrate Fossils
Florida has the richest fossil record of vertebrate animals of the eastern United States. Our paleontologists have highlighted a number of species & dig sites to tell the story of early Florida fossil exploration:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vert...
a scan of a frog shown from the top with all of its tiny bones showing and some soft tissue in its abdomen in purple
four views of a thick lizard specimen with rows of angular scales on its body shown in golden and each view showing either bones, circulatory, nervous system or digestive oranges in bright colors
the skeleton and some scales of a large almond shaped fish are scanned in dark blue with some fin spines highlighted in rainbow of colors
Museum Resource 🩻 Digital Imaging Gallery
Our Digital Imaging Division produces two- and three-dimensional data from museum collections. Many are available on Sketchfab & Morphosource. Explore some of the specimens our digitization team has been working on:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/digital-lab/...
a person with a silver beard and glasses is holding a large blue toned print of a butterfly while standing in a corridor lined with many shallow wooden drawers in ceiling-high cabinets
Welcome Vaughn Shirey, our newest curator of butterflies and moths! 🎉 👏👏👏🦋 Working in our McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, @vmshirey.bsky.social will help study and digitize our moth and butterfly collections.
About his career & research:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/vaug...
ICYMI: we extended the deadline to January 23!
We are hiring a 2-year postdoc @floridamuseum.bsky.social to help study the impact of climate change on mammalian functional diversity across the PETM. Email Jon Bloch/Arthur Porto with any questions.
Apply here: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
Hello bsky! We are hiring two Postdocs
@floridamuseum.bsky.social !
1) Paleo + AI (NSF-funded, with
@blochlab.bsky.social ): explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
2) AI for Biology (open-ended): explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
Deadline Jan 15th. Please, RT! See also www.biovisionlab.com
Our new paper announcing a freely available database of 3D scans of primate skeletal material--a major effort led by Sergio Almécija & his team at the American Museum of Natural History.
🧪 🏺 #paleosky #anatomy #primates #anthropology #morphology #zoology #paleoanthropology #openscience
Job Alert: We are hiring a 2-year postdoc @floridamuseum.bsky.social to help study the impact of climate change on mammalian functional diversity across the PETM. Email Jon Bloch or Arthur Porto with any questions. @nsvitek.bsky.social
Apply here: explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
a group of people are wearing a variety of formal university graduation caps and gowns
Congrats! 👏👏👏 We had several students graduating from the University of Florida today! We are so proud of their hard work and determination, and grateful they choose to do their graduate work with our faculty here at the Florida Museum.
13.12.2024 22:52 — 👍 20 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
headshot of a woman with blond hair and very blue eyes wearing a vibrant blue dress in a shady setting
Megan Ennes, our curator of museum education, has been named a research fellow by the National Academy of Sciences through the Gulf Research Program. The Early-Career Research Fellowships program supports emerging scientific leaders. More:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/nati...
From the Field ✈️ Julian Narvaez presented current work at the North American Paleontological Convention and connected with peers, and continued outreach:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...
🌱 Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers here at the Florida Museum.
a group of over a dozen people in outdoors clothing are posing together on a rocky crest with a lake and rocky mountain behind them against a clear blue sky
From the field ✈️ Liz Hurtado participated in the SPATIAL Short Course 2024, with lectures, labs, group projects and activities to network with peers.
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/nhdept/from-...
🐦⬛ Travel funding supports professional development of student researchers here at the Florida Museum.
This is figure 2, which shows feeding evidence inferred from bite marks and synchrotron-scanned bromalites from Krasiejów, Lisowice and Sołtyków.
A paper in Nature reports on the use of fossilized samples of faeces and vomit to reconstruct the rise of the dinosaurs to become the dominant players in Earth’s ancient ecosystems. https://go.nature.com/412c4af 🧪
27.11.2024 20:09 — 👍 80 🔁 19 💬 3 📌 8
Figure showing diverse datasets analysed with SPROUT, including a skink skeleton, aardvark skull, human heart, concrete block, and foraminifera.
New paper! For all of you working with 3d scans (e.g. micro-CT, MRI), check out SPROUT, a rapid open-source tool for generating segmented and parcellated data, meaning your scans are separated into the individual elements without any manual labelling or training. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
24.11.2024 13:09 — 👍 213 🔁 92 💬 10 📌 6
Team Limelight Rainforest! 🌳 Robert Guralnick, our curator of bioinformatics, is a member of an international team that won first place and $5 million in the five-year @xprize.bsky.social Rainforest competition.
Read + watch:
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/flor...
An #Equus-Dominated Middle Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) Vertebrate Fauna from Northcentral #Florida, USA 🐎
Richard C. Hulbert, Jr., Rachel E. Narducci, Robert W. Sinibaldi, Joseph R. Branin
www.mdpi.com/2813-6284/2/...
fossil specimen of a very thick and short leg bone with a narrow parallel bone joined with heavy rounded heads on the ends
Exploring Museum Collections 🦵 Tibia and fibula
This was one of the largest species of giant ground sloth known from North America, with large individuals weighing as much as 3 tons.
Featured fossil
Species: Eremotherium eomigrans
Specimen: # UF 206880
www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-vert...
