Benjamin Gill

The Crinoid hat video is up on my channel!
youtu.be/ZdPTYamnqQA

Astrogeology and Astrochemistry: Apollo Samples From 1972 Reveal Exotic Sulfur Hidden In The Moon’s Mantle - Astrobiology When astronauts returned from NASA’s final Apollo Moon mission in 1972, some of the samples they collected were sealed and carefully stored away

Astrogeology and Astrochemistry: Apollo Samples From 1972 Reveal Exotic Sulfur Hidden In The Moon’s Mantle
astrobiology.com/2025/10/astr... #astrobiology #astrochemistry #Artemis #astrogeology

I'm part of an online truck form were members will rely parts across the country to get them to you... I think we should set something similar here.

Last week I was co-leading a field trip in Utah, to check out some fluvial and eolian rocks. It was exhausting but fun and forced me to think more carefully than before about complex bedforms. This is a 3D model of one of the many stunning exposures of the Navajo Sandstone near Escalante 🧪⚒️

Chemical characterization of C31 sterols from sponges and Neoproterozoic fossil sterane counterparts | PNAS Putative metazoan body fossils from the Precambrian are curiously lacking morphological characteristics that link them unambiguously to extant anim...

New co-author paper out today in @pnas.org led by the fantastic Dr. Lubna Shawar!

Lubna breathes new life into the sponge sterol hypothesis with her meticulous organic geochemistry, and the ID of two new sponge-derived C31 Steranes in ~600 Myr rocks. Check it out! 🧪⚒️

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Slide with text “Support Society Journals: Society-based journals help build and advocate for our scientific communities” showing the logos for non profit publishers ASM, ACS, ASBMB. microbiology society, Science, and ISME. Underneath “for-profit journals do not” showing logos for Nature, Elsevier, Frontiers, CellPress, and MDPI.

A reminder to please support non-profit publishers.

It’s good for science and scientists.

It’s a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.

It requires resisting peer pressure to submit to Nature journals.

Thanks @bacteriality.bsky.social for this helpful slide for microbiology journals.

‘Completely shattered.’ Changes to NSF’s graduate student fellowship spur outcry The announcement comes months later than usual, leaving many would-be applicants stranded

Today was a hard day for Ph.D. students who found out that they can no longer apply for NSF's prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program. "Devastating“ was how one student described it to me. #GradSchool #NSFGRFP

www.science.org/content/arti...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

For those anxiously awaiting it: the NSF GRFP solicitation is out, with a November 14 deadline for Geoscience applicants: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Two-billion-year transitional oxygenation of the Earth’s surface - Nature A 2.5-billion-year record of oxygen isotopes in sedimentary sulfate reveals the transitional oxygenation of the Earth’s surface and provides constraints on the dynamic, lengthy co-oxygenation of Earth...

Wang, H., Li, C., Peng, Y. et al. Two-billion-year transitional oxygenation of the Earth’s surface. #stableisotopes Nature 645, 665–671 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Everyone writing about Perseverance today should be asking how many of the scientists and engineers who were involved in this discovery no longer work for NASA bc of Trump.

Technical Specialist at University of Exeter Apply for the Technical Specialist job on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for professional services positions in higher education.

We’re looking for a stable isotope geochemist to run our IRMS lab here in beautiful Cornwall! Interested or know someone who might be? Please reach out!

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOO041/t...

Gotta love silicates that congruently weather.

Paleozoic fossil brachiopod sabotages the stony steps of my office building #FossilFriday

Sedimentary Geology: Rocks, Environments and Stratigraphy An undergraduate-level textbook that covers the fundamentals of sedimentology, depositional environments and stratigraphy.  We provide a modest amount of text that focuses on essential concepts …

Sed geology text

geo.libretexts.org/Courses/SUNY...

A pika sits on a mossy rock.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

More dead fish this morning #Chesapeake #Anoxia

I can hook you up if you still need it.

I think that @bedform.org‬, @geologyjohnson.bsky.social‬, and @felinecannon.bsky.social‬ thoughts basically have it.

The geologic history of marine dissolved organic carbon from iron oxides - Nature A direct proxy for past dissolved organic carbon signatures using co-precipitated organic carbon in iron ooids enables reconstruction of marine dissolved organic carbon signals dating back to the Pala...

🚨 Paper alert! 🚨 After >1 year in review and six (6!) reviewers, I'm thrilled that this paper is finally out! Here, we provide the first data-based record of marine dissolved organic carbon in the geologic past.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I haven't had the opportunity to dive into this, but at quick glance this looks like a great resource –– especially for those teaching at the intersection of climate science and geoscience

If I wanted to spend a bunch of time building cool things only to see it burned down, I would have applied for a federal grant or helped build up a federal lab or sample depository.

Ditto.Simply the worst way to start the day.

Same! I had my wife take me to the ER the first time.

Solidarity. I've been getting them for the past 10 years and I freaked out the first time I got one (I had no idea what was happening). They still suck, but I at least know what to expect.

I was about to ask if that was the same area.

2 bits of data from new Economist/YouGov poll.....

13% support for cutting research funding to universities. 24% among Republicans. Polling on this continues to be catastrophic for the Rs, suggests Dems should be learning far harder into standing up for science and our universities. 1/

...and I've used it for running, biking, and swimming.

Don't know if you are willing to upgrade to a smart watch, but I had a Garmin Forerunner for more than a year and half and its heart rate monitor works well. Battery life is still consistently long. It came recommended by an ultrarunner friend of mine.

We’re drafting the bracket next week, so get those nominations in!

Voting starts September 1st

NSF Division of Earth Sciences Informational Webinar

Join us on August 18 for the next webinar.
www.nsf.gov/events/nsf-d...