New Paper by Parry et al., reinterpreting the oldest diverse #jellyfish fauna as sessile polypoid dinomischids 🪼

These findings significantly expand the temporal and geographical range of dinomischids, elucidating their morphological and taphonomic variation.

buff.ly/ERV7P3C

#PaleoSky #Fossils

🚨Deadline alert🚨 Just a few hours left to submit your abstract for GSA Connects 2025 (23:59 Pacific time TONIGHT!). If you want to present your latest paleontological, geochemical, sedimentological, or geobiological research on the Cambrian, session T155 is here for you!

Reminder: the abstract submission deadline for GSA Connects is rapidly approaching! If you'd like to contribute to our multidisciplinary session Evolution of Life in the Cambrian Seas, submit your abstract by 🚨Aug 5🚨. We're all super excited to hear about your latest research 🥸🤔🤠🤓!

Paleontologist to lead U.S. national academy | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

🚨Paper alert🚨 Permian bacteria fossilized as rod-shaped pyrite aggregates! A sweet taphonomy-oriented project led by L. Melim. If pyrite aggregates can similarly form in spherical bacteria, how could we distinguish them from extracellularly formed framboids 🤔🤔🤔
doi.org/10.2110/palo...

#FossilFriday Elrathia kingi is one of the most common trilobites in the Cambrian rocks of Utah’s West Desert. Thousands are found yearly—many geologists have one on their fridge. Yet this specimen - first published in 2008 - is the only one I know of that preserves both limbs and gut remains. 🤩

Enrolled Isotelus latus w dorsal pygidium broken away revealing classic isoteline "forked" #hypostome (ventral "mouth plate") disarticulated from cephalic doublure. Beautiful preservation of fingerprint-like #terrace ridges! #Ordovician (~450 MYA), Lindsay Fm, Colborne, #Ontario 🇨🇦 #TrilobiteTuesday

Another 🚨Paper alert🚨 Everything you ever wanted to know about colony development in graptolithine pterobranchs 🪸 Still much to uncover, but this sums up what we know so far. Enjoy, it is open access 😜
doi.org/10.1111/ede....

Reminder ⚠️ We are organizing a session at GSA Connects 2025 — T155: Evolution of Life in the Cambrian Seas — which aims to bring together paleontologists, sedimentologists, geochemists, and geobiologists working on this remarkable geological period. Submit your abstract by August 5❗

Many may not remember the DENDROGRAMMA mystery! This weird mushroom-shaped thing was described in 2014 as a "new metazoan" of unknown affinities! They were hinting that it might be a new phylum-but THEN 2 years later @drtimohara.bsky.social sequenced it and BOING! BENTHIC
#SIPHONOPHORE!

Time for a long-overdue post—I've got lots to share lately!
Let’s start with a 🚨paper alert 🚨: a great project on the Ediacaran tubicolous taxon Corumbella, masterfully led by @beckerkerber.bsky.social (🙏 thanks Bruno!).
Takeaway: this tube was single-layered and round. doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

🚨Conference alert🚨 L. Tarhan, R. Gaines, @invertebratepal.bsky.social and myself will co-chair session T155 - Evolution of Life in the Cambrian Seas at @geosociety.bsky.social GSA Connects 2025. Contact me if you have any questions about it. Deadline for abstract submission: August 5th.

Scientists first collected a pig butt worm from the dark ocean depths near Monterey, California. The size of marbles, pigbutts are a near complete mystery. Officially described in 2007, scientists aren’t even sure if the pigbutt form is an adult, or just a very very awkward adolescent stage.

That's an amazing harvestman 🤓

As we wind down 2024, we've put together a list of the top #science stories of the year including a few familiar to @nhmu.bsky.social! Follow this link to read more: bit.ly/3DzCo1w

Using RAMAN to explore the preservation of soft-bodied fossils (here Cambrorhytium) from the mid Cambrian Gray Marjum site in Utah.

And myself bsky.app/profile/camb...

MASSIVELY excited to see Tityus achilles, South America's first #venom spraying #scorpion, finally described in
@zoojlinnsoc.bsky.social !
This new species from #Colombia can spray venom at potential predators, a striking case of convergent #evolution 🧵 (1/n)

academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Platyhelminthes 2.0? 🤔
seas.harvard.edu/news/2024/12...

For #FossilFriday have you ever considered the scorpion fossil record? This is surprisingly rich, but how we categorize these animals transcends being a hot mess. It's a spicy disaster. My colleague Jason and I wrote a paper on it which came out today:

peerj.com/articles/185...

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

Gills of lamprey ammocoete larvae, cephalochordates & the hemichordate enteropneust Saccoglossus are not for gas exchange. Instead, they function in ion regulation! Enteropneusts (="gut breathing") do not breathe from the gut.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

For anyone interested in our work on Utah’s mid-Cambrian Marjum Formation and its extraordinary fossil biota, here’s a short article detailing the project’s genesis and significance. Many thanks to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard for highlighting this research in their annual report.