Derek den Ouden, Paleosoricidologist

And then there were none: Australia’s only shrew declared extinct The tally of Australian mammals extinct since 1788 is now 39 species – far more than for any other country

As I argue in #PlatypusMatters, Australia has the world's best mammals, but is sadly the worst place on Earth to be a mammal, with the planet's worst #extinction rate.
The Christmas Island shrew is now the latest species to be officially declared extinct.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Colorful, abstracted mural of a cityscape surrounds the exhibit entrance. A hanging sign says Welcome to Senegal and to Dakar...gateway to Africa (Ministry of Tourism)

Large exhibit space with cutout camel resting alongside water jugs and a realistic date palm replica. Immediate area is tan, walls and ceiling are sky blue.

Africa-shaped panel with header "Art and Society." Replica bellows in a corner with cases of metal artifacts.

Suggestion of street scene with storefronts and life-sized cutouts of people. A realistic baobab tree behind them.

Some photos from my last walk through the Field's Africa hall, which closed forever last week to make way for a new version. 🧵

wrench and screwdriver

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Corner display with a verdant mural of dinosaurs and other creatures in a swamp, over four cases with small fossils.

View of right side of mural, with resting T. rex in the center.

View of left side of the mural, with Pachycephalosaurus among some cypress

Big T. rex skeleton on platform, mural visible in the far distance

At long last, Beth Zaiken’s spectacular He’ll Creek mural is permanently installed in the Sue gallery!

Museum display with a long-snouted, toothy skull in front of a mural of an awkward, dog-like creature.

So this AMNH Andrewsarchus display from the 60s is sick as hell, allowing for the outdated reconstruction and all that.

Sloth World, 2025 (Part 1) — Tetrapod Zoology Like me, you are no doubt a big fan of sloths...

Sloth World, Part 1! There are a LOT of sloths, let's look at some recent developments... tetzoo.com/blog/2025/10... #mammals #fossils #xenarthrans

Galeamopus 🦕

That’s about the extent of my photography knowledge as well, but I have a Canon Powershot Sx50 and it’s been fantastic for bird photography (recent greater roadrunner picture as proof)

The Skeleton Crew is taking a break from their hiatus to STREAM TOMORROW, Tuesday, October 7th (9 pm to 12 am EDT) to raise awareness of two very important fundraisers in the world of paleontology!
Want more details? Check the latest post on our channel page on YouTube!

Manouria morla. A new tortoise from Early Miocene Czechia. Link to paper below

New in @science.org, meet Acronichthys maccagnoi, a new species from Late Creatacous Canada that changes what we know about the origins and evolution of one of the most successful fish groups on Earth.

Hannah Cornish and Alice Holloway holding up a black drape behind UCL Grant Museum’s male gorilla skeleton ‘Hugo’ for some quick photos. They are smiling but their arms are screaming.

If you ever wondered how to photograph a gorilla skeleton without a studio …

Dorsal view of the skull of Notoryctes typhlops, showing elevated and rugose nasals. From Digimorph.

Head on view of Notoryctes, showing the large keratinized pad which is supported by their rugose nasal bones.

Notogaulus minor, one of many mylagaulid rodents which preserve nasal bosses which likely supported a similar pad to the one seen in Notoryctes (and to a lesser extent other head lift digging fossorial rodents like zokors (Myospalax spp.). From Korth (2013).

They mention it somewhat offhand, but a keratinized pad (similar to the one seen in Notoryctes) would make much more sense for a fossorial animal. Similar bosses are also seen in lots of mylagaulids, and this is what has been suggested for those animals as well.

The structure the authors interpret as a horn base is labeled “nab, nasal boss” in this figure. Also included their discussion of the feature from the paper and supp. I don’t think a horn base is the most parsimonious interpretation for this structure.

Flat, graphic poster of a Whooping Crane standing in the negative space of many Sandhill Cranes. The poster reads "The Great Midwest Crane Fest - Nov. 15-16, 2025 Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Poster I made for the Great Midwest Crane Fest!

Black and white photo of old timey museum hall with real mounted Megaloceros skeleton and mostly sculpted meg jaws, Uintatherium, and Hadrosaurus.

Tyler Greenfield (why isn't he on here?) recently posted that the Field once had a reconstructed set of O. megalodon jaws that predate the famous AMNH version by over a decade. Sure enough, here they are in the OG Field Columbian Museum fossil hall:

incertaesedisblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/t...

Two fossil mammoth skeletons.

A couple of fossil mammoth skeletons seen at The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, #SouthDakota. The site was found by chance by a heavy equipment operator preparing a site for construction. #FossilFriday

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

“Fish” can refer to a single individual, or multiple individuals from the same species.

“Fishes” refers to multiple species.

🐠 Fish
🐠🐠🐠 Fish
🐠🐟🐡 Fishes

A carnival-like exhibit entrance with a dinosaur skull, coelacanth model, and pantodont skeleton in cases under freak show-style banners labeling them as "Mesozoic terror" and "the fish that wouldn't die'

I was asked yesterday to post a walkthrough of Life Over Time, the shortest-lived and generally weirdest iteration of the Field Museum’s fossil halls. If you visited between 1994 and 2004, this is the version you saw. I’ve got some time, so let’s do this.

Terrible photograph of a red curtain covering part of a white wall. The word "Sex" is written over the door in black.

I have a picture of the curtain! Nothing from inside, though. I visited in summer 2001.

Ranidae: Rana temporaria, a generic brown frog from Denmark.

Dicroglossidae: Limnonectes paramacrodon, a generic brown frog from Borneo.

Mantellidae: Aglyptodactylus madagascariensis, a generic brown frog from Madagascar.

Pyxicephalidae: Amieitia tenuoplicata, a generic brown frog from Tanzania.

Four generic frogs? No! These are members of four different FAMILIES from Europe, Borneo, Madagascar, and East Africa, convergently evolved on the generic brown frog morphotype! 🧪🐸

Would absolutely love to get a better view of what appears to be Barylambda winning a boxing match for some reason

Big, rhino-like mammal models at life-size. There's a big, standing one, a big one lying down, and a little baby lying down.

Museum display with giant ground sloth rearing to full height against a suggestion of a tree. Smaller sloth and glyptodont skeletons are in glass to its left and right. Charles Knight mural is behind them.

That grey blob in the previous photo is the biggest of the three life-sized brontothere models, which anchored the mid-Cenozoic North America section. A parallel display featured the giant sloth Megatherium and friends from South America.

So many facets of palaeontology are weird and cute and interesting, we need more communicators popularising their work and wonders of natural history.

View descending a ramp into a yellow museum hall with Triceratops, Daspletosaurus, and Apatosaurus skeletons.

Background: Life Over Time was the predecessor to the current Field Museum fossil exhibit, Evolving Planet. It was open from 1994 to 2004. EP was built on the bones of LOT, and the overall footprint and a few big displays (walk through coal forest, certain mounted skeletons) remain in place.

the fun part about making your own models is that you get to play around with them heheh

Millions of years ago, California had a familiar yet alien landscape from what it sees today. This painting highlights the animals that may have passed through Death Valley long ago.

This painting features as a 4ft mural hung in the Copper Canyon Visitor Center in southern Cali.

a small brown dinosaur with a very fluffy round body and a long skinny tail with a tuft at the end jumping off a broken off ginkgo branch, splinters of wood fly through the air behind it.

Happy #FossilFriday! Here's a little goober I haven't shared here yet: a Tianyulong jumping of a broken branch of Yimaia capituliformis (a relative of ginkgo). This is based on an unpublished specimen which did the rounds online a few years ago. #paleoart #paleobotany #paleontology #dinosaur

Cast skeleton of a big theropod dinosaur in a circular room with lots of windows.

A certain Acrocanthosaurus in a certain humid, southeastern locale was placed in an atrium with outdoor airflow, despite the protestations of conservators. Less than 20 years later, it had to be taken off display because of pyrite disease.