Richard Fallon
@richardfallon.bsky.social
Scholar of Earth's history in literature and culture. Research Associate in Natural History Humanities at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge ([email protected]). Author of "Contesting Earth's History" and "Reimagining Dinosaurs".
Pinned
Richard Fallon
@richardfallon.bsky.social
· Sep 15
In a few weeks, I'll be starting a new role as Research Associate in Natural History Humanities at Cambridge, based at the @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social. As part of @camglamresearch.bsky.social, my project will be about 'Re-Excavating the Cambridge School of Geology, 1850–1914'.
So I'm editing the Edinburgh Edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Relatedly, if you're in the UK and you or your library possess the deluxe large paper British edition (1912 or 1914 versions), please let me know. It's the version with Iguanodon footprints on the cover.
November 25, 2025 at 8:02 AM
So I'm editing the Edinburgh Edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Relatedly, if you're in the UK and you or your library possess the deluxe large paper British edition (1912 or 1914 versions), please let me know. It's the version with Iguanodon footprints on the cover.
This sounds made up, but I was putting boxes in the unlit garage and barely holding onto my phone, using it as a torch, when it slipped onto YouTube and — in rough accordance with my listening habits — started to play the menacing theme tune from the 1981 Italian horror film The Beyond.
November 24, 2025 at 5:34 PM
This sounds made up, but I was putting boxes in the unlit garage and barely holding onto my phone, using it as a torch, when it slipped onto YouTube and — in rough accordance with my listening habits — started to play the menacing theme tune from the 1981 Italian horror film The Beyond.
Now that's a dustjacket. As other illustrators of Arthur Conan Doyle stories have recognised, you don't miss the chance to depict a seance unicorn.
November 23, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Now that's a dustjacket. As other illustrators of Arthur Conan Doyle stories have recognised, you don't miss the chance to depict a seance unicorn.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
Lovely unusual coloured version of Henry De la Beche's 1832 cartoon The Light of Science for sale at auction next month. Seeking government support for science, De la Beche draws a fashionable female figure with gas lamp, wristwatch & of course a geological hammer.
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
November 23, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Lovely unusual coloured version of Henry De la Beche's 1832 cartoon The Light of Science for sale at auction next month. Seeking government support for science, De la Beche draws a fashionable female figure with gas lamp, wristwatch & of course a geological hammer.
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6...
Reposted by Richard Fallon
Anirudh’s Sridhar’s Agon: Poetry’s Challenge to the Mathematization of Reality, has just been published by OUP, a monograph derived from the doctoral thesis he wrote under my supervision from October 2017 to April 2020.
Congratulations, Anirudh!
Congratulations, Anirudh!
November 22, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Anirudh’s Sridhar’s Agon: Poetry’s Challenge to the Mathematization of Reality, has just been published by OUP, a monograph derived from the doctoral thesis he wrote under my supervision from October 2017 to April 2020.
Congratulations, Anirudh!
Congratulations, Anirudh!
This is rare content: the beady eye of Diplodocus carnegii, as interpreted by the Reverend H. N. Hutchinson in 1916. #FossilFriday, as far as I'm concerned.
November 21, 2025 at 8:05 AM
This is rare content: the beady eye of Diplodocus carnegii, as interpreted by the Reverend H. N. Hutchinson in 1916. #FossilFriday, as far as I'm concerned.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
THIS IS TONIGHT! Grab a free ticket if you're around #Cambridge and are curious about what natural history #museums get up to.
Sedgwick Museum Lates: Behind the Scenes uncovered
Free, 18+ evening event.
Thursday 20th November, 6-9pm
Delve into our work behind the scenes. Featuring @jackdashby.bsky.social ‘in conversation’ as we discuss his book ‘Nature’s Memory, Behind The Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums’.
Free, 18+ evening event.
Thursday 20th November, 6-9pm
Delve into our work behind the scenes. Featuring @jackdashby.bsky.social ‘in conversation’ as we discuss his book ‘Nature’s Memory, Behind The Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums’.
November 20, 2025 at 7:51 AM
THIS IS TONIGHT! Grab a free ticket if you're around #Cambridge and are curious about what natural history #museums get up to.
Tonight at the @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social I'll be showing a very special dinosaur: one of the Diplodocus models produced by H. N. Hutchinson in 1916 — something I discuss in my book Reimagining Dinosaurs. Lots of other fun things here tonight, including a conversation with @jackdashby.bsky.social.
November 20, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Tonight at the @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social I'll be showing a very special dinosaur: one of the Diplodocus models produced by H. N. Hutchinson in 1916 — something I discuss in my book Reimagining Dinosaurs. Lots of other fun things here tonight, including a conversation with @jackdashby.bsky.social.
Just witnessed the ceremonial unrolling of some beautiful and often rather intriguing geological wall posters at the @theul.bsky.social. Here's a selection.
November 20, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Just witnessed the ceremonial unrolling of some beautiful and often rather intriguing geological wall posters at the @theul.bsky.social. Here's a selection.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
The geology department at the University of Leicester, where myself and countless others did our palaeontology PhDs, is at serious risk of closure
Please show your support by signing the below!
c.org/KtYyZB8dHk
Please show your support by signing the below!
c.org/KtYyZB8dHk
Save Geology at the University of Leicester
Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?
c.org
November 19, 2025 at 9:50 AM
The geology department at the University of Leicester, where myself and countless others did our palaeontology PhDs, is at serious risk of closure
Please show your support by signing the below!
c.org/KtYyZB8dHk
Please show your support by signing the below!
c.org/KtYyZB8dHk
It's a darn shame this LoC scan is in black and white. Inspired by geologist Dorothy Wyckoff, George Eckhardt talks about how 'The Huge Dinosaurs of North America 100,000,000 Years Ago Not Drab Nightmares But Fantasies of Nature Brilliant as Butterflies' (Detroit Evening Times, 12 April 1942).
November 19, 2025 at 10:21 AM
It's a darn shame this LoC scan is in black and white. Inspired by geologist Dorothy Wyckoff, George Eckhardt talks about how 'The Huge Dinosaurs of North America 100,000,000 Years Ago Not Drab Nightmares But Fantasies of Nature Brilliant as Butterflies' (Detroit Evening Times, 12 April 1942).
Robert Parr Whitfield's illustration of (what was then called) Graptolithus octobrachiatus, engraved by James Duthie. Part of James Hall's classic Graptolites of the Quebec Group (1865). A 10/10 graptolite and there's a lot of competition.
November 19, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Robert Parr Whitfield's illustration of (what was then called) Graptolithus octobrachiatus, engraved by James Duthie. Part of James Hall's classic Graptolites of the Quebec Group (1865). A 10/10 graptolite and there's a lot of competition.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
'Rain on Princes Street,' is one of a small number of Fururist pictures Stanley Cursiter painted in 1913 which capture the sensation of modern life: people, colours, objects, and sounds - these works brought him major critical attention at home.
November 17, 2025 at 7:43 AM
'Rain on Princes Street,' is one of a small number of Fururist pictures Stanley Cursiter painted in 1913 which capture the sensation of modern life: people, colours, objects, and sounds - these works brought him major critical attention at home.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
“On a willow twig a kingfisher perches. It watches the eels with interest, but these are well-grown and too big for him to catch”
‘What to Look for in Autumn’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer:
EL Grant Watson
‘What to Look for in Autumn’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer:
EL Grant Watson
November 16, 2025 at 8:17 AM
“On a willow twig a kingfisher perches. It watches the eels with interest, but these are well-grown and too big for him to catch”
‘What to Look for in Autumn’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer:
EL Grant Watson
‘What to Look for in Autumn’
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer:
EL Grant Watson
Reposted by Richard Fallon
If you want to bear witness to a perverse experiment, here's the de-silentised 2005 German dub of The Lost World, which removes all intertitles and hastily dubs in all the dialogue. Thought colourisation was offensive? Try this on for size!
November 15, 2025 at 8:55 AM
If you want to bear witness to a perverse experiment, here's the de-silentised 2005 German dub of The Lost World, which removes all intertitles and hastily dubs in all the dialogue. Thought colourisation was offensive? Try this on for size!
Turns out specialisation in human affairs and scholarship got so extreme in Germany by 1889 that people barely even bothered to write poetry anymore. Or so claimed Robert Spence Watson, rather tenuously, in an 1889 talk on 'Wordsworth's Relations to Science'.
November 14, 2025 at 1:15 PM
Turns out specialisation in human affairs and scholarship got so extreme in Germany by 1889 that people barely even bothered to write poetry anymore. Or so claimed Robert Spence Watson, rather tenuously, in an 1889 talk on 'Wordsworth's Relations to Science'.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
#FossilFriday Painted black to enhance contrast, a pair of cheilostome colonies encrusting a test of Echinocorys from the English Chalk. Bryozoans are exceedingly common on the tests of this infaunal echinoid which had to be exhumed before encrustation.
November 14, 2025 at 7:52 AM
#FossilFriday Painted black to enhance contrast, a pair of cheilostome colonies encrusting a test of Echinocorys from the English Chalk. Bryozoans are exceedingly common on the tests of this infaunal echinoid which had to be exhumed before encrustation.
Disillusioned to learn that the famously terrifying lost 'Spider Pit' scene from King Kong (1933) was almost certainly never even filmed, although models were made. Clearly I knew enough to know there was a lost Spider Pit scene in Kong, but hadn't looked into it enough to know there also wasn't.
November 13, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Disillusioned to learn that the famously terrifying lost 'Spider Pit' scene from King Kong (1933) was almost certainly never even filmed, although models were made. Clearly I knew enough to know there was a lost Spider Pit scene in Kong, but hadn't looked into it enough to know there also wasn't.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
A curious thing I share about #okapi is their long history with the U.S., esp. New York: @amnh.org, Bronx Zoo, @wcs.org. Deals w Belgian Congo, Lang's Congo trip, Gilman's philanthropy, #Warhol & Anne Eisner Putnam's art, & Madison Square Gdns where Mr G, the only circus okapi, died. Book out today
November 11, 2025 at 9:10 AM
A final handful of leaves on the Ginkgo biloba in Queen's Park, Chesterfield. Planted in the early 1980s.
November 9, 2025 at 12:58 PM
A final handful of leaves on the Ginkgo biloba in Queen's Park, Chesterfield. Planted in the early 1980s.
Reposted by Richard Fallon
My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS
Please consider signing
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS
Please consider signing
November 8, 2025 at 12:46 PM
My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS
Please consider signing
c.org/VPhzVVrHPS
Please consider signing
Reposted by Richard Fallon
For those of you attending the 85th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology that have never been to #Birmingham before, here is a short introduction from the one and only #TellySavalas. 🍭
#SVP2025 #2025SVP
youtu.be/EoHVO1eSMFc?...
🦴 🐟 🦈 🐸 🐍 🦎 🐊 🦕 🦖 🦆 🦜 🐀 🦣 🐋 🐾
#SVP2025 #2025SVP
youtu.be/EoHVO1eSMFc?...
🦴 🐟 🦈 🐸 🐍 🦎 🐊 🦕 🦖 🦆 🦜 🐀 🦣 🐋 🐾
Telly Savalas Looks at Birmingham
YouTube video by seacaptainjoe
youtu.be
October 26, 2025 at 5:37 PM
For those of you attending the 85th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology that have never been to #Birmingham before, here is a short introduction from the one and only #TellySavalas. 🍭
#SVP2025 #2025SVP
youtu.be/EoHVO1eSMFc?...
🦴 🐟 🦈 🐸 🐍 🦎 🐊 🦕 🦖 🦆 🦜 🐀 🦣 🐋 🐾
#SVP2025 #2025SVP
youtu.be/EoHVO1eSMFc?...
🦴 🐟 🦈 🐸 🐍 🦎 🐊 🦕 🦖 🦆 🦜 🐀 🦣 🐋 🐾
You can find my piece on the Hollow Earth in this month's @historytoday.com, alongside Kublai Khan, the National Smoke Abatement Society, and the Battle of Baku.
November 8, 2025 at 9:34 AM
You can find my piece on the Hollow Earth in this month's @historytoday.com, alongside Kublai Khan, the National Smoke Abatement Society, and the Battle of Baku.
The dedication of this Pelican book — which has been described by some as 'eminently readable' — may be of interest to fans of Breaking Bad.
November 7, 2025 at 12:49 PM
The dedication of this Pelican book — which has been described by some as 'eminently readable' — may be of interest to fans of Breaking Bad.