AshPoust

putting this up in my room like a movie poster

Tyrannosaur attacking an Edmontosaurus in a forestry landscape. Image by paleoartist Jenn Hall.

New paper alert 🦖
A new study co-authored by our Curator of Paleontology, John Scannella, documents a tyrannosaur tooth embedded in an Edmontosaurus skull, rare evidence of an ancient attack.
📸 by Jenn Hall
Read more: peerj.com/articles/207...
#Paleontology #Fossils #NewResearch

Figure 2: Three-dimensional model rendering from CT data for MOR 1627. (A) Left lateral view of entire skull with close-up (D) of the embedded tooth. (B) Dorsal view of entire skull with close-up (E) of the embedded tooth. (C) Anterior view of entire skull with close-up (F) of the embedded tooth. Dashed lines indicate the specimen midline. (Wyenberg-Henzler & Scannella, 2026)

New behavioral #paleontology paper out today about tyrannosaur predation! The authors (Wyenberg-Henzler & Scannella) contend that the find is "consistent with a bite inflicted during an attempt to control the struggling Edmontosaurus or deliver a killing blow followed by carcass consumption". Nice!

Three people hiking across a brown rocky landscape with some snow on the ground.

Three people working on digging pits and taking rock samples from a small cliff in a brown-green rocky landscape.

Part of a curved ammonite shell belonging to the genus Diplomoceras.

#OTD exactly two years ago I was in the field on Seymour Island, Antarctica. 15/2/24 was a gruelling 12-hour field day, hiking to and sampling this scenic outcrop containing the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary & mass extinction. Feat. obligatory bits of paperclip-shaped ammonite.

Cliffs with cool erosion features, paleontologist for scale

Two people on a ridge with ocean and blue skies behind them

Hand for scale and a shell hash layer

Looking down a steep slope to a beach and ocean

Taught this morning and then got to do some fieldwork and boy howdy did I hit the weather and location jackpot! While we didn’t find the marine mammals we were hoping for, the invertebrates and geology were so spectacular as to more than make up for it!

Archie the Mammoth's Champion Profile | Glow Big Red 2026 Help Archie the Mammoth's champion efforts for Glow Big Red 2026

Our museum is part of the University's fund-drive: pardon the NPR-style interruption, but consider donating if you want to support public science.

Wonderful donors are matching gifts, so it's a great chance to help us keep connecting the public with natural history.

go.unl.edu/unsmglowbigred

Archie the Mammoth's Champion Profile | Glow Big Red 2026 Help Archie the Mammoth's champion efforts for Glow Big Red 2026

Our museum is part of the University's fund-drive: pardon the NPR-style interruption, but consider donating if you want to support public science.

Wonderful donors are matching gifts, so it's a great chance to help us keep connecting the public with natural history.

go.unl.edu/unsmglowbigred

When I see things like this, it makes me question the value of everything else in their collection that I *don't* know enough to critique.

Not everyone in the Jurassic Period was a giant.

This tiny jaw of teeth was collected from the Mygatt-Moore dinosaur bonebed. It belonged to no dino, but instead to a small, lizard-like animal called a rhynchocephalian. Today, this group is represented by the Tuataras of New Zealand.

#FossilFriday

Tusked walruses (Carnivora: Odobenidae) from the Miocene–Pliocene Purisima Formation of Santa Cruz, California (U.S.A.): a new species of the toothless walrus Valenictus and the oldest records of Odob... Currently limited to cold climates near the Arctic circle, living walruses are the sole survivors of a previously much more diverse clade that occupied coastal waters throughout the northern hemisp...

Published these specimens in 2024 with @ashpoust.bsky.social, @tetrameryx.bsky.social and Morgan Churchill in JVP. Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Two fossil walrus bones in a scientific diagram from a published article. On the left is a partial femur, light gray in color, still embedded in a slab of shelly sandstone. On the right is a dark black ankle bone (astragalus) in two views.

#fossilfriday Walrus bones from Santa Cruz, California. A partial femur and astragalus (ankle bone) of the early Pliocene (4-5 myo) 'toothless' walrus Valenictus sheperdi from the Purisima Formation. Specimens donated by Dave Landes and Wayne Thompson to Santa Cruz NHM and UCMP. 🐬🦖

See you all at Darwin Day next week on our beautiful @sandiegostate.bsky.social campus, featuring Dr. Jim McGuire's keynote lecture on "Darwin, Wallace, and my Own Studies on the Magical Island of Sulawesi, Indonesia"! Deets in the flyer - but please DM me if you have any questions.

In the frontspiece of a book, sadly I forget which:

Interviewer: Who is your favourite contemporary author?

Author: Shakespeare

Interviewer: No; contemporary author

Author: Shakespeare, always Shakespeare

A lot of people cannot just start a paid newsletter or become freelancers to sustain their careers. The sports, metro, and international desks did work that requires *team* resources, like legal checks, documents, access to archives, and long-term beat experience.

A graph showing T. rex popularity far exceeding other dinosaurs. Text describes: "In an online poll T. rex was streets ahead."

All other dinosaurs are streets behind.

T. rex has been cool cool cool since at least 2005 when this graphic was published.
#sixseasonsandamovie #community 🦕

I'm too old for such simple attempts at frightening me - boo to you! 👻

Thanks for sharing - I agree with the title at least! Were you able to get the full paper? Not something I can access at the moment...

2016 ➡️ 2026

Museum displays aren’t something we usually think about, but the supports beneath fossils and artifacts are essential. 10 years ago, this mount was created for this ~5400 yr old steppe bison skull by Restoration and Reproduction Specialist, Gisli. Read on to learn how he created it 👇

Mixed media artwork of a Columbia’s mammoth fossil overlayed by a highway map of Lincoln county Nebraska.

The Columbian mammoth fossil I worked from for this painting was found in Lincoln county, Nebraska (the map depicted). I was inspired by the state’s Highway Paleontology Program.

Lincoln County Mammoth, Acrylic & charcoal on paper, 12”x12”

#mammoth #Pleistocene #megafauna #fossil 🦣 🐡 #paleoart

Good luck! Its a cool exhibition.

Digital model of the fossilized partial skull of an extinct bird, along with a map of Antarctica showing where the fossil was found.

New vegaviids Vegavis geitononesos and Vegavis notopothousa (the latter based on the skull described last year): www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/18... 🪶🧪 (📷Irazoqui et al.)

It’s cold enough for walruses in New Jersey this week! But it wouldn't be the first time! During the Late Pleistocene (over 30,000 years ago) the area that is now New Jersey had walruses! We still dredge their fossils along the coast today.

Imagine driving down the Miracle Mile in 1967 and seeing this in your rearview mirror...

Fear not, it's just sculptor Howard Ball in a VW towing one of his fiberglass mammoths to be installed at the La Brea Tar Pits.

On top of this being egregious lies, I actually think there *are* landscapes that need protection on aesthetic grounds - and this is actually going to make that harder in the long run.

Ooh, I like these. They look like real animals, while still being the weirdos they were.

Illustration titled "Mastodon Giganteus" from 1852, showing detailed black-and-white drawings of several fossilized mastodon bones. The bones, labeled Fig. 1 to Fig. 6, include long limb bones and joint fragments with rough textures and surface irregularities. Each bone is displayed with anatomical accuracy, highlighting their size and structure. The top of the page states "Plate XXV" with a scale indicating one inch to a foot. The illustration provides a scientific view of the extinct North American mastodon's skeletal features for study.

🦣 The Mastodon giganteus of North America /.
Boston: J. Wilson, 1852..

[Source]

Just finished updating my review on the evolution and fossil record of the eared seals (Otariidae) given the new paper that came out on the early Pleistocene Otaria josefinae from Peru 😅 #blog #paleo #paleontology 🦖🐬🧪 Read it here:

Concept rendering of La Brea Tar Pits courtesy of WEISS/MANFREDI.

Concept rendering of La Brea Tar Pits courtesy of WEISS/MANFREDI.

ICYMI 🦣 We're proud to announce the creation of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research, which will be the scientific and research backbone of the reimagined La Brea #TarPits, bringing Ice Age research and the museum into the future! Learn more: go.nhm.org/reimagine

🦖 Big news about a ‘little’ tyrant: new research finds that Nanotyrannus wasn’t a baby T. rex after all!

Through examining the throat bone of the Nanotyrannus, researchers found that while smaller, the species was a fully grown and distinct predator during its time.

A large dinosaur bone, the maxilla of a Tyrannosaurus rex, lies on a blue cloth. The teeth point toward the camera and are quite large to say the least. Other museum collections sit in the background.

A classic.
Our cast of one of the largest Tyrannosaurus rex know, UCMP 118742.
As large as this is, it's merely the maxilla. The teeth are 15 cm (6 in) long, and that's just the exposed part!

#FossilFriday 🧪🦕
@ucmpberkeley.bsky.social
@unsmmorrillhall.bsky.social