Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Silvia Pineda-Munoz, PhD - Climate Ages @climateages.bsky.social · 8h

A 126,000-year-old butt-drag just made fossil history.
A tiny rock hyrax scooted across the sand of ancient South Africa, and that moment was preserved in stone.

Even the smallest acts can echo through time.
🧪 #SciComm
buff.ly/dcGWTR4

The 126,000-Year-Old Butt-Drag That Rewrote What Counts as a Fossil

How a small animal’s odd habit turned into one of the most unexpected stories ever preserved in stone Some discoveries make headlines because they’re dramatic: new...

climateages.com

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Prof. Juan Cisneros ⚒️🐉 @cisneros.bsky.social · 9h

Um galinho de Brachyphyllum, um tipo de araucária que viveu no Nordeste há +100 milhões de anos. #FossilFriday

Foto mostrando um pequeno galho fossilizado, de cor laranja-marrom, dentro de uma laje de rocha amarelada.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Cam Muskelly (Explorer of Deep Time ⏰ ⚒️) @cambriancam.bsky.social · 10h

Welcome back to #fossilfriday

Here is the fresh water Dastilbe elongatus. This specimen comes from the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian-Albian) Santana Formation in Serra de Araipe, Brazil. The Santana Formation is well known for its exquisite preservation of pterosaurs fossils.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

BSBI Botany @bsbibotany.bsky.social · 13h

Want to up your #WildFlowerID game this winter?
We just launched our Winter Webinar programme!
7-8pm, every Tuesday from 4 Nov - 10 Feb.
Thanks to funding from @daera-ni.gov.uk, these 10 great plant ID webinars are FREE for all of you to attend!
Programme & booking links: bsbi.org/botanical-sk...

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Turku BioImaging @turkubioimaging.bsky.social · 13h

🚀Join Helsinki BioImaging as an Image Analysis Specialist🖥️to support cross-disciplinary image analysis projects. If you love coding and are interested in working at the crossroads of computer science and biology, apply by 🗓️ November 15, 2025⤵️
jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...
#jobopening

Image Analysis Specialist/Engineer/Coordinator, Helsinki Bioimaging

jobs.helsinki.fi

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Association for Scottish Literature @asls.org.uk · 13h

…the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches’ caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur…

—Hugh Miller, MY SCHOOLS & SCHOOLMASTERS (1854) – also on @gutenberg.org
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gutenberg.org/ebooks/30737

Immediately beyond the granitic gneiss of the hill there is a subaqueous deposit of the Lias formation, never yet explored by geologist, because never yet laid bare by the ebb; though every heavier storm from the sea tells of its existence, by tossing ashore fragments of its dark bituminous shale. I soon ascertained that the shale is so largely charged with inflammable matter as to burn with a strong flame, as if steeped in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the common experiment of producing gas by means of a tobacco-pipe luted with clay. And, having read in Shakspere of a fuel termed "sea-coal," and unaware at the time that the poet merely meant coal brought to London by sea, I inferred that the inflammable shale cast up from the depths of the Firth by the waves could not be other than the veritable "sea-coal" which figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly; and so, assisted by Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the substance, as at once classical and an original discovery, I used to collect it in large quantities and convert it into smoky and troubled fires, that ever filled our cavern with a horrible stench, and scented all the shore. Though unaware of the fact at the time, it owed its inflammability, not to vegetable, but to animal substance; the tar which used to boil in it to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture as ever yet bubbled in witches' caldron—blood of pterodactyle and grease of ichthyosaur—eye of belemnite and hood of nautilus; and we learned to delight in its very smell, all oppressive as that was, as something wild, strange, and inexplicable. Once or twice I seemed on the eve of a discovery: in splitting the masses, I occasionally saw what appeared to be fragments of shells embedded in its substance; and at least once I laid open a mysterious-looking scroll or volute, existing on the dark surface as a cream-coloured film; but though these organisms raised a temporary wonder …

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Ferwen @ferwen.bsky.social · 12h

#FossilFriday Gertrude Lilian Elles was born on 8 October 1872. She was a field geologist, stratigrapher & palaeontologist. In 1919 she won the Murchison Medal & became one of the first female Fellows of the Geological Society.
#FeministFriday #WomenInSTEM
paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/f...

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Bob Fischer @bobfischer.bsky.social · 12h

Good people of Glossop! I am bringing The Haunted Generation show to your Labour Club on Saturday 25th October...

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Dr Thomas Clements @taphonomist.bsky.social · 1d

Had the amazing privilege earlier in the year to watch a lithographic limestone plate be made by one last plate makers in Germany. Each plate is cut and then hammered by hand into shape - and after having a go it's very skilled work. Currently they have no apprentices, so a truly dying art.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Keith Duncan @cygnusplantxray.bsky.social · 13h

I'm frequently asked if we can use XRM imaging to study Arabidopsis, and the answer is absolutely yes. The pollen grains were segmented using basic grayscale thresholding. This scan used the 4X lens, stayed tuned for results from the 20X.
@danforthcenter.bsky.social
@zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social

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Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 13h

Well absolutely

Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Mount St. Helens in 1980 @mountsthelens1980.bsky.social · 1d

#MSH45 | Richard Lasher
You've been at a job long enough to know a decent colleague to chat with.

The more you get to know them, the more they share. What's fact or fiction? You don't know, but you listen.

Then there's one story that's so over the top—a bona fide lie. But then, a photo appears.

A red Ford Pinto hatchback angles across a narrow gravel forest service road, a blue enduro motorcycle on a rear hitch carrier. Tall firs frame the view. Beyond them, a towering ash cloud from a pyroclastic density flow billows skyward. Photo by Richard Kent Lasher, May 18, 1980.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 13h

A new long & narrow-snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #FossilFriday @morphobank.bsky.social #PapersinPalaeontology

Photograph of the holotype and only known specimen of the hauffiopterygian leptonectid, Xiphodracon goldencapensis (ROM VP52596) from Golden Cap, between Charmouth and Seatown, Dorset, UK. The skeleton is exposed in ventrolateral view. The skull has been fully prepared free of matrix whereas most of the skeleton is still in matrix. The left (upper) forefin has been prepared so that it is
three-dimensionally preserved and projects upwards. Scale bar (lower left) is 20 cm.

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Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 13h

Carrie actually gets to have a character! My problem (if it is a problem) when listening to it is that I just end up singing the songs anyway when I hear the appropriate cues.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Dr Suresh Singh @palaeosingh.bsky.social · 14h

A couple snapshots of an ancient apex predator for this #FossilFriday - presenting the fossil teeth & snout of an #Erythrosuchus africanus, the big-headed, hypercarnivorous archosauromorph from the Early-Mid #Triassic of South Africa 🇿🇦

#Paleontology #Science

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Isolated teeth of Erythrosuchus africanus from the collections of the Natural History Museum UK.

The tip of the snout of Erythrosuchus africanus from the collections of the Natural History Museum UK.

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Dr Susannah Lydon @susieoftraken.bsky.social · 14h

Saw them in Manchester earlier in the year. Amazingly good 🖤

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Mellow Lugosi’s Dead 🧛🏻‍♂️ @flyingtrilobite.com · 14h

Still have the live remix of Closer by Nine Inch Nails with Boys Noize stuck in my head from their Toronto concert a few weeks ago.

🔥🔥🔥

Nine Inch Nails - Closer (live @ Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, August 23, 2025)

YouTube video by ryabz

youtu.be

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Erika Anderson @andersonmineral.bsky.social · 15h

The fierce carnivore Inostrancevia is one of the species of synapsids that went extinct in the Great Dying, known as the Permian-Triassic Extinction event. #FossilFriday ⚒️🧪

Mounted skeleton of fossil Inostrancevia with its body facing left. It’s skull shows large saver like teeth. It stands on a bed of shale fragments on a plinth with red plexiglass behind it. At the Royal Ontario Museum.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Biodiversity Heritage Library @biodivlibrary.bsky.social · 2d

BHL has retrospectively assigned DOIs to 50,000+ historic journal articles These articles, which include the first scientific description of the Platypus (1799), are now part of the great linked network of scholarly research: doi.org/10.5962/p.30... #ILoveBHL #RetroPIDs 🧪
@crossref.bsky.social

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

ChaSE Project @chalksea.bsky.social · 17h

#FossilFriday from the chalk seas of #Yorkshire - a good day in the field yesterday sampling a working chalk pit containing outcrops of the 'Black Band'; corresponding to #Cretaceous Ocean Anoxic Event 2. Thanks to the folks at Ashcourt Group for facilitating our visit!

An outcrop of chalk with a tape measure for scale. A prominent layer of dark shale - the 'Black Band' - runs through the middle of the sequence.

A large chalk pit under a blue sky. A man in a high vis jacket and hard hat is examining the rock outcrops.

A close up of a finely laminated rock showing small fossil burrows- proof thst even during an 'Ocean Anoxic Event' there was life on the sea floor.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 16h

#FossilFriday: Good to see a new ichthyosaur added to the Lias fauna of Dorset's Jurassic Coast by Dean Lomax, Judy Massare and Erin Maxwell. It was found by Chris Moore at Golden Cap, about 4 miles east of Lyme Regis, a section also visited by Mary Anning.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A new long and narrow‐snouted ichthyosaur illuminates a complex faunal turnover during an undersampled Early Jurassic (Pliensbachian) interval

Ichthyosaurian faunas before and after the Pliensbachian stage of the Early Jurassic are known from numerous, often complete fossils. The two faunas are very different taxonomically, with only one of...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Tom Sharpe @tomsharperocks.bsky.social · 16h

#FossilFriday: pterosaur jaw from the Lias of Lyme Regis, collected by Dr James Harrison (1819–1864) who moved to Charmouth in 1850 and took up fossil collecting, his most notable find being bones of the dinosaur Scelidosaurus at Charmouth in 1858.
This specimen in Lyme Regis Museum.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Jacquet-chris @jacquet-chris.bsky.social · 1d

Want to see ferns under attack and how they respond to pathogens? Check out our latest paper!
doi.org/10.1186/s129...
Congrats on this huge team effort to @baptistebio.bsky.social @madeleinebaker.bsky.social @kellerjeanphd.bsky.social @maximebonhomme.bsky.social @pierremarcdelaux.bsky.social

Various ferns species inoculated with S. sclerotiorum.

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Nicola Lawrence @drnicolal.bsky.social · 17h

Do make time for this talk on Identifying and managing Lyme disease if you are at the #RCGPConference today @rcgp.bsky.social

Lyme Resource Centre @lymeresourcecentre.bsky.social · 19h

Our GP advisor Dr Anne Cruikshank will also be giving a presentation - SS.19 "Identifying and managing Lyme disease - The 'New Great Imitator' - it's more than skin deep..." at 12:45pm!

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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon

Dr Dave Hone @davehone.bsky.social · 17h

In advance of the publication of my new book with @markwitton.bsky.social, "Spinosaur Tales" (Nov 6th), for #FossilFriday, here's a nice close up of a tooth of Baryonyx sitting in the jaw of the holotype. More spinosaur goodness coming in the next weeks as I desperately try to promote the book.

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