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markopalaeo.bsky.social
@markopalaeo.bsky.social
40 followers 29 following 44 posts
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geolassoc.bsky.social
Join us online via Zoom on Fri 6th Feb at 19.00 GMT for our next free talk when @dremmanicholls.bsky.social of @morethanadodo.bsky.social will deliver 'Tales from a Geological Curator'

Members and non-members must register in advance: non-members email [email protected] for details
January 22, 2026 at 4:17 PM
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bas.ac.uk
Cut the ribbon: the Discovery Building is open!

From 1976 to today, Rothera Research Station has been the UK’s Antarctic gateway for 50 years.

The new building will power polar science for decades to come - and understanding Antarctica means understanding our planet.

#PolarScience
Aerial view of a remote Antarctic research station surrounded by floating icebergs and snow-covered land. A large blue industrial building under a dramatic purple and pink cloudy sky at dusk. View of a colourful sunset over icy mountains and water, seen through open industrial doors of a building.
January 14, 2026 at 3:53 PM
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bas.ac.uk
Landing at Wolf's Fang, a staging camp on the Antarctic continent 🇦🇶

The team are on the way to Halley Research Station on the Brunt Ice Shelf.

They were meant to get to Halley today, but weather on the rest of their route is causing delays. Not a bad view to wait with though, eh?
November 5, 2025 at 5:26 PM
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jackjamesmatthews.bsky.social
Superb! A new species of Charnia - found in Charnwood Forest - has been named after Prof Martin Brasier 😊
charnwoodforest.bsky.social Charnwood Forest Geopark @charnwoodforest.bsky.social · Nov 4
🥳 NEW FOSSIL! Researchers from Canada have named a new species of fossil from the 560 million year old rocks of Charnwood Forest!

🌟 Its called Charnia brasieri, shaped like a frond, and could grow to a metre long.

🌐 Read more on our website: www.charnwoodforest.org/researchers-...
November 4, 2025 at 9:09 AM
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peterfalkingham.com
Oxford had a talented group make a video about the #dinosaur tracks in Oxfordshire this summer.
Birmingham also had a talented group make a video.

I made the video for our group. It is less professional. And has wildly inappropriate music:

youtu.be/6ULOHr7dkF0
Oxfordshire Dinosaur tracks - Falkingham Lab from Liverpool John Moores University
YouTube video by Peter Falkingham
youtu.be
October 14, 2025 at 4:33 PM
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morethanadodo.bsky.social
Museum researcher Frankie Dunn has a funded research placement opportunity with @charnwoodforest.bsky.social ! Applications are now open!

The project is part time (14 hours per week) over 12 weeks and the researcher will be receive a stipend of £1,300

www.charnwoodforest.org/collaborator...
Geopark and Partners Seeking to Recruit Two Researchers - Charnwood Forest Geopark
We’re looking for two researchers to join exciting and innovative projects that will help shape the future of our work in Charnwood Forest. Do you know someone who might be interested? Working with pa...
www.charnwoodforest.org
October 14, 2025 at 2:33 PM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
@fossiliam.bsky.social I guess you’ve seen this one in Chapter House Street, York?
markopalaeo.bsky.social markopalaeo.bsky.social @markopalaeo.bsky.social · Jul 4
For #FossilFriday, a cobble from the streets of York with corals, not sure of the precise taxon. Maybe Carboniferous?
July 6, 2025 at 3:26 PM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
For #FossilFriday, a cobble from the streets of York with corals, not sure of the precise taxon. Maybe Carboniferous?
July 4, 2025 at 5:08 PM
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bas.ac.uk
👋Bon voyage as the 2024/25 season ends in Rothera! ❄️

The new Discovery Building is now in use, powering and supplying the station as a new era of polar science begins.
Final works continue ahead of handover later this year.

Read more: www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/e...

#PolarScience #Sustainability
A spectacular red sky over a snow covered landscape of mountains and sea with some buildings and construction vehicles in land in the foreground. A range of snow covered mountains next to the icy sea and a flat snow covered piece of ground with some containers on it and two long narrow buildings at the foreground. A pointed snow capped mountain range in the distance with two large buildings on top of a snowy landscape at the front - one is a large bright blue building with an octagonal tower on top with large windows around it and the other building is green with red around the windows.
June 25, 2025 at 10:59 AM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
Here we go, day 1 of Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. Come and find us in the Jubilee Pavilion @bas.ac.uk #FossilFestival
June 14, 2025 at 6:47 AM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
A very happy 99th birthday to Sir David. I’ve had the great honour to have met him several times in both human and ship form.
May 8, 2025 at 9:10 PM
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Great to see that the 2025 Lyme Regis Fossil Festival programme is now published. I'll be giving a couple of talks about local lass #MaryAnning (of course!) The festival is a fantastic event, loads to see and do, and not to be missed! I hope to see you there!
fossilfestival.com/lyme-regis-f...
April 8, 2025 at 9:23 AM
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
6 April 1821: at @geolsoc.bsky.social, William Conybeare introduces the genus Plesiosaurus for some bones from the Lias of Lyme Regis that differed from Ichthyosaurus. The best specimens (probably bought from #MaryAnning) were in the collection of Thomas Birch, but no complete specimen was known.
Title of published paper: Notice of the discovery of a new Fossil Animal, forming a link between the Ichthyosaurus and Crocodile, together with general remarks on the Osteology of the Ichthyosaurus; from the Observations of H. T. De la BECHE, Esq. F.R.S. M.G.S. ANDThe Rev. W. D. CONYBEARE, F.R.S. M.G.S. DRAWN UP AND COMMUNICATED BY THE LATTER Plate from the published paper showing vertebrae of Plesiosaurus. A skeleton of the animal in question, deficient only in the bones of the head, preserved in the well known collection of Col, Birch, (who most liberally allowed us the full use of the very valuable materials he possessed) confirmed in a most satisfactory manner most of my previous conjectures, and enabled us to assign to it its true place in the zoological order, and to designate it by an appropriate name. That of Plesiosaurus has been chosen, as expressing its near approach to the order Lacerta. Detail of a plate from the published paper showing the paddle bones of Plesiosaurus.
April 6, 2025 at 9:31 AM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
For #FossilFriday here’s a Homo sapiens trace fossil on the Norfolk coast being revealed by coastal erosion due to anthropogenic climate change.
March 7, 2025 at 6:45 PM
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
20 January 1814: the 'Caledonian Mercury' reports that William Bullock is sending a collection of natural history specimens from his new London museum to Edinburgh, including 'the fossil head of a crocodile' – the first public display of the 1811–12 ichthyosaur found by #MaryAnning and her brother.
Newspaper cutting from the Caledonian Mercury 20 January 1814 about William Bullock sending a collection of his duplicate natural history specimens for exhibit in Edinburgh. These include 'the fossil head of a crocodile, lately found in Dorsetshire', the ichthyosaur skull found by Mary Anning and her brother in 1811 and 1812 at Lyme Regis. Drawing of an ichthyosaur skull with its large eye containing the bony plates of its sclerotic ring and a long snout with many sharp conical teeth. Portrait of the showman and entrepreneur William Bullock, round-faced, and balding, who had acquired the Anning ichthyosaur, then thought to be a crocodile, for his London natural history museum on Piccadilly.
January 20, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Henry De la Beche celebrated Buckland's coprolitic inclinations in this wonderful cartoon, 'A Coprolitic Vision', c.1829, following Buckland's paper on several discoveries by #MaryAnning: her pterosaur, fossil sepia and coprolites, which she had realised as early as 1824 were fossil faeces.
December 13, 2024 at 5:37 PM
markopalaeo.bsky.social
For #FossilFriday here’s something I came across today, the skull of the Early Jurassic plesiosaur Anningasaura. From the Natural History Museum, London.
November 29, 2024 at 11:24 PM
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tomsharperocks.bsky.social
Storm Bert hits the UK today, on the bicentenary of the Great Storm of 22-23 Nov 1824 which caused widespread destruction along the S coast of England. #MaryAnning told a friend of the damage in Lyme Regis. Contrary to some later accounts, her house was not damaged, but her brother's premises were.
Printed text of a letter from Mary Anning to a friend in London in November 1824 describing the effects of the Great Storm in Lyme Regis: 'Oh! my dear Fanny, you cannot conceive what a scene of horror we have gone through at Lyme, in the late gale: a great part of the Cobb is demolished, every vessel and boat driven out of the harbour, and the greatest part destroyed; two of the revenue men drowned, all the back part of Mrs. England's houses and yards washed down, with the greater part of the hotel, and there is not one stone left of the next house: indeed, it is quite a miracle that the inhabitants saved their lives. Every bit of the walk, from the rooms to the Cobb, is gone; and all the back parts of the houses, from the fish-market to the gun-cliff, next the baths. My brother lost, with others, a great part of his property. All the coal cellars and coals being gone, and the Cobb so shattered that no vessel will be safe there, we shall all be obliged to sit without fires this winter: a cold prospect you will allow.' The 'Unity', the ship which carried Mary Anning's plesiosaur to London 9 months earlier, was washed against the rocks between Lyme Regis and Charmouth in the Great Storm. The men on board were saved in a dramatic rescue. A sailing ship is tossed in high storm waves onto rocks as the crew cling to the rigging. On a cliff, a group of men are organising their rescue. Detail of a portrait of Mary Anning in a green cloak and straw bonnet, and holding a hammer. Extract from a newspaper report of the damage in Lyme Regis caused by the Great Storm of 1824: 'The beautiful promenade in Lyme is entirely destroyed. The house called the Cob House, which was lately purchased by Mr Walker, of Weymouth, was washed to the ground in a few minutes after himself and family had quitted it. They were all obliged to be taken out of the windows. The Hotel and several houses near the Cob, the Bank House and all the houses opposite the Pilot Boat, are in a wretched state: the sea rolled right through them, and carried away every thing that came in its way. Bennett's Hot Bath's are washed to pieces. Scarcely a house in Lyme had escaped uninjured. The town on Wednesday presented a scene of real dis-tress; not more than three or four shops were opened, but all business was suspended.'
November 23, 2024 at 7:25 AM
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bobnichollsart.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday morning's blue #PaleoArt, for all the new #Bluesky people, features the #mosasaur #Platecarpus...
November 22, 2024 at 10:12 AM
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markwitton.bsky.social
Leaping Balaur bondoc #paleoart for #FossilFriday. This image follows the interpretation that Balaur was an omnivorous bird, not a "double-clawed" dromaeosaur. The skull is unknown, so the head is based on Sapeornis. Originally created for the first @palaeogames.bsky.social book. #sciart
Two bird-like animals leap at one another. Their chests and wings are orange, their necks orange-brown, and their legs white. Feather fans project from their tail base and tail tips. They are surrounded by the bases of trees and framed against a hazy blue-green backdrop. Leaf-litter occupies the base of the image.
November 22, 2024 at 8:14 AM
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tweetisaurus.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday, I offer you a 50 million year old feather. I found this in the Green River Formation, while doing fieldwork for @johellawell.bsky.social's PhD back in 2006.
November 22, 2024 at 1:44 PM
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bobnichollsart.bsky.social
The new Woolly Rhino coin is available in a variety of metals, including silver and gold. Released today, from The Royal Mint and the Natural History Museum, London. You can buy my Ice Age Giants collection here: www.royalmint.com

#coins #coincollector #coincollecting #paleoart #sciart #scicomm
November 15, 2024 at 12:53 PM