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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows

@mosasaurologist.bsky.social

2.9K followers 360 following 4K posts

Glutton for paleontology fieldwork punishment. Discovering new ancient sea life all over Western Kansas. Curator. Also home to random rescue Golden Retriever pics and the occasional dinosaur.

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 41m

Yay polish those notes

two men are standing next to each other and one of them says " shiny aye shiny "

ALT: two men are standing next to each other and one of them says " shiny aye shiny "

media.tenor.com

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2h

Phil is giving my blocklist a workout tonight. Way to go Phil!

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2h

Bob is a great guy. I’ve gotten 7an calls on a Saturday from him spitballing ideas on bird evolution. Hope he’s doing ok still

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3h

I mean, rabbits eat their own turds,but the second time around they’re consuming the work of microbes so it all depends on if rabbits are vegan.

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 11h

I just keep getting Homer in my head saying "I'm gonna name him Bitey!"

a cartoon of homer simpson standing in front of a birdhouse that says attempted birdhouse i

ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson standing in front of a birdhouse that says attempted birdhouse i

media.tenor.com

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 12h

It's Sunday and I'm just having my first cup of coffee so OF COURSE I'm giggling to myself there is a snake named "Bitis"

Adam Summers @fishguy.bsky.social · 1d

Workshops give me a chance to play with other people's data. In this case Kate Jackson's snake heads. This is Bitis nasicornis.

Storing bones in formalin is bad for mineralization.
🧪🐡

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 1d

New Idiot Dog had some minor surgery and has to wear the t-shirt of Shane again. Maybe I'll make her a different mask this time around

A golden retriever in a Bonnerichthys t shirt wondering why her dad is so weird

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 1d

Ha! I had that pop up when I was doing fieldwork in South Dakota

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2d

Can't wait for my mosasaurs to join the club!

Obvious Plant @obviousplant.bsky.social · 2d

Club Cloaca

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2d

We find SO MANY mosasaurs with injuries. Winnie, the Plesioplatecarpus I found earlier this year, had a broken jaw, and boring marks from parasites on its skull.

Life was hard.

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2d

We did try and X-ray the specimen to see if there were any embedded teeth in there, but didn't find any.

Unfortunately the mass of reactive bone growth obliterated any of the original wound shape, so we may never know if it was a shark that bit the specimen, or even another mosasaur

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2d

Injuries are actually fairly common to find in fossil specimens, even in the seaway that used to cover Kansas!

This #FossilFriday pic is the end of the tail of a Clidastes mosasaur. The gnarly mass in the middle is around 6 vertebrae that fused together due to trauma, likely an infected bite.🧪

Brown mosasaur vertebrae om yellow Niobrara chalk coalesced into a frothy bone mass due to injury

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 2d

Our local utilities used to have a "Brewshed" talk program at local breweries. It touched on watershed issues especially how when you don't pick up after your dog, the waste makes it into the water that you're currently drinking (flavored with hops of course)

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3d

I think we should email the entire editorial team in their entirety about this... What a joke.

The journal only has a one man editorial team. And their "About the Journal" page they try to direct prospective authors to is completely blank.

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3d

1062 is such a little cutie.

Side view of MOR 1062 during the digital registration process

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3d

For Spooky Season, here's us raising the dead mosasaur Plioplatecarpus peckensis for the Cretaceous Crossroads exhibit at @museumoftherockies.bsky.social over the past 2 years. Lots of work goes into getting these specimens ready for their big public moments rmdrc.blogspot.com/2025/10/plio...

Plioplatecarpus Necromancy: Reconstructing MOR 1062

People familiar with news in paleontology have no doubt seen that the Cretaceous Crossroads exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies recently o...

rmdrc.blogspot.com

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3d

I mean why the hell would you not? And don't even get me started with those freaks that close their shades for takeoff and landing.

Arizona as seen from the left side of a 737-824

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 3d

I'm not sure if it's the concept of "turns", or just the oxygen deprivation that gets them the worst

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

Sometimes the Dutch are just... Right.

A guitar in a cellar bar in Haarlem with "No Wonderwall!" underlined and scrawled across it. They seem pretty serious about this

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

Same. We could also go with Buena (as in Vista)

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

I don't think I could sit through 4 movies about a band I even liked. Certainly not anything more than 5 minutes long involving the Beatles

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

It was likely there since hatching and this is from a pretty old animal, so it didn't cause any major issues. But then again my degree is in limestone and im definitely not a doctor, so take that with many grains of salt

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

I'm busy updating our exhibits with real, pathological specimens that ive found through the years.

The Triceratops chin beak to the left has a unique cleft in it, deep enough to make Bruce Campbell blush. The one on the right is normal for comparison

2 arrowhead shaped predentary beaks from Triceratops. Curatorial finger pointing out the cleft pathology in the left

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Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

I'm sad at the shade thrown at fish.

Anthony Tackles Dead Cows @mosasaurologist.bsky.social · 4d

Who the hell even asked him?