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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 18h

The Peale mastodon at the National Portrait Gallery in 2021.

It’s the 1st mounted fossil skeleton displayed in the US (1805), and 2nd worldwide. Its original viewers didn’t know about evolution. Even extinction was a new concept. More fossils interpreted as history and art, please! #FossilFriday

Mastodon skeleton with long tusks on a gravel bed between two white columns in an art gallery. Seen from the front.

Same from driver side rear view. Red curtain entrance to exhibit is visible from
This angle

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 21h

Wish I had an uplifting note to end this on. We are more aware of this than ever, and many smart people are working hard. I guess that's what I've got.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 21h

And yet these extinctions are a tiny, tiny fraction of what's being lost. Birds are charismatic - but 99.9% of Earth's biodiversity is in less-well-known taxa. Where we often don't know if something is extinct or not; where species are often lost before they even become known.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 21h

Yesterday I was looking at passenger pigeons, Carolina parakeets, and ivory-billed woodpeckers in a museum collection. They hit hard, and so does this.

Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 1d

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 21h

Had a wonderful tour of the collections at the New Brunswick Museum yesterday. Among many other things there were #SharksNearMe - these are jaws from the blue shark, Prionace glauca.

Saw many treasures - a few I'll post later; some so new and wonderful that I can't post about them here!

A museum drawer pulled open to show about a dozen shark jaws resting on white foam. Each is about 8" wide with sharp teeth all along lower and upper jaws.

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

NSF instructs peer reviewers not to use the first person in writing a review. Why on earth? And isn't this terrible advice?

There’s no “I” in “peer review” – or is there?

In which occasional guest blogger Greg Crowther asks me a peer review question that stumps me – so together, we puzzle it out. Greg: Steve, I was recently reviewing some grant proposals for NSF whe…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Dr. Viktor Baranov🧪🦟🐛🪲 @swarmofthoughts.bsky.social · 3d

thread 1/9
How a 150 MYA fly from Australia helped us understand continental drift 🪰🌏🧪🦖
Meet Telmatomyia talbragarica — a new Jurassic non-biting midge (Diptera: Chironomidae) from the Talbragar Fish Beds, NSW. It once clung to life in a Jurassic lake. @ebdonana.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/2v3kx4h7

The oldest Gondwanan non-biting midge (Diptera, Chironomidae, Podonominae) sheds light on the historical biogeography of the clade

Podonominae, a group of non-biting midges within the Chironomidae family, serves as an important biogeographical model. For a long time, it was believ…

tinyurl.com

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Soh Kam Yung @sohkamyung.bsky.social · 2d

My first pseudoscorpion observation was pure luck. Happen to see this wasp and took a shot. It was only later did I see what was hanging on the antenna.

On iNaturalist [ www.inaturalist.org/observations... ]

A brown pseudoscopion hanging on to the antenna of a wasp. The wasp is yellow with black stripes and transparent wings.

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 3d

I've been working on a book proposal and alternating between "this is meaningful" and "this is pointless," and a friend recently shared this quote that she stumble on in a Goodreads review: "Every book is a grand gesture of optimism on the part of both the reader and writer." Keep creating, friends.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

So we hope the book (scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2024/12/10/w...) will help with that bit, at least. But read @briles34.bsky.social's preprint - there's lots more to it!

What our new book looks like: “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences”

About a year ago, I posted some basic information about my new book, coauthored with the brilliant Bethann Garramon Merkle. It’s time for an update: as books grow up, they change and presumably imp…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

One issue the preprint identifies is that mentors are super important - but they (we!) lack training in effective writing mentorship. That's exactly why @bgmerkle.bsky.social and I wrote our forthcoming book, 'Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences" - our next month.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

Fascinating preprint from @briles34.bsky.social asking how physics and astronomy students learn to write. A LOT of it resonated with me, and you can imagine that I Have Thoughts! www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.03493

Surveying the State of Writing Education in Physics and Astronomy

Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are tra...

www.arxiv.org

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

Ooh! Thanks. Yes, extremely interesting - I can feel a blog post coming on to discuss this.

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dawnymock @dawnymock.bsky.social · 3d

Oops….

dawnymock cartoon of Rapunzel trying to go off grid… hair caught in wind turbine

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 3d

NSF instructs peer reviewers not to use the first person in writing a review. Why on earth? And isn't this terrible advice?

There’s no “I” in “peer review” – or is there?

In which occasional guest blogger Greg Crowther asks me a peer review question that stumps me – so together, we puzzle it out. Greg: Steve, I was recently reviewing some grant proposals for NSF whe…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 4d

Seconding "so cool". I love them! And nobody knows about them, despite them being all around, all the time.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 4d

Probably the first time I've seen a pseudoscorpion featured on signage at a nature reserve. I approve! This is at Tromtö Nature Reserve, near Karlskrona, Sweden. (Photo from last May, I'm slow)

Sign reading (in Swedish) "Nature Reserve - Welcome to Tromso". There's a map of the reserve, and several illustrations of creatures found there.

Closeup of an illustration of tree-associated creatures, featuring the pseudoscorpion Anthrenochernes stellae. It's a tiny spider-like organism with two big scorpion-like pincers and an orange-brown body that looks a bit like a harvestman.

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Gwen Pearson @bug-gwen.bsky.social · 5d

A little break from reality: a delightful insect procession by Nishiyama Kan'ei (Japan, Edo period). Check out the original for more delightful details www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

Detail of the the front of the painting. Katydids, grasshoppers, leafhoppers, and crickets are playing instruments and dancing, while mantids and other insects are carrying flowers

The full painting; katydids, mantids, and more lead the procession. In the middle is grasshoppers carrying a box, and in the rear are wasps offering up a comb of brood. Many are carrying flowers and dancing

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Reposted by Stephen Heard

Ferwen @ferwen.bsky.social · 7d

#FossilFriday September 30, 1861, Hermann von Meyer wrote a letter describing Archaeopteryx lithographica wp.me/p3ihHu-1Bw #histsci ⚒️🧪

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 8d

October is Canadian Library Month! Libraries are absolutely awesome; I use them daily to support my scholarship, to read for pleasure, and much more.

Earlier this year I seized on a different excuse to write about libraries:

In love with the library

Warning: a little bit saccharine. Today is World Book Day, which is perhaps a flimsy excuse for me to rhapsodize about libraries. So as a second (and equally flimsy) excuse, let me mention that I’m…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 9d

I was never lucky enough to meet this amazing woman. A trailblazer and, as far as I know, just an all-around excellent person.

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 9d

BREAKING: Jane Goodall, the conservationist renowned for chimpanzee research and environmental advocacy, has died.

Jane Goodall, conservationist renowned for chimpanzee research and environmental advocacy, has died

Jane Goodall, the conservationist renowned for her groundbreaking chimpanzee field research and globe-spanning environmental advocacy, has died. She was 91.

bit.ly

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you! Please tell your students how pleased I am to hear this.

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Christine M. Cornish, PhD @cmcornish.bsky.social · 9d

I always have this book within reach when writing! You wouldn't think reading about writing would keep your attention, but this guide is beyond helpful and very clearly simplifies scientific writing. 10/10 recommend!

Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 9d

It's off my desk! I've just sent the manuscript for the 3rd edition of 'The Scientist's Guide to Writing' to the publisher (Princeton U. Press).

"It's just a revision. It will be easy!" - and other lies I tell myself...

The Scientist’s Guide to Writing

Note: A third edition of The Scientist’s Guide to Writing is currently in production, for publication in mid- to late 2026. Watch this space for updates. While running experiments and collec…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you!!

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 9d

Ha! Christmas can wait, hope folks enjoy your show. I'll be down there next week and will definitely have a look.

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