Chris Widga
@widga.bsky.social
2.9K followers 970 following 310 posts
Director of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at Penn State. Here for museums, fossils, not-fossils, and geo-nerdom. Sucker for good jazz. Personal account. #museums #paleontology #geology #scicomm #naturalhistory
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Reposted by Chris Widga
Reposted by Chris Widga
martinebotany.bsky.social
Excited to begin the search for the next (6th) Burpee Post-Doctoral Fellow in Botany here in my lab at Bucknell! Funded research and teacher-scholar training embedded in the primarily undergraduate institution (#PUI) environment.

#iamabotanist

Details (+ application portal) here:

lnkd.in/eVsbe7K5
Photos of past Burpee postdocs with some of our great students at Bucknell.
Reposted by Chris Widga
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
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 in profile. Tusks are nearly a third of total length Same from passenger side rear view Same from driver side rear view. Red curtain entrance to exhibit is visible from
This angle
Reposted by Chris Widga
paleojim.bsky.social
Great new paper by Mannion & Moore 2025 on diplodocoid sauropods for #FossilFriday I love their latest phylogeny as it certainly supports the mass extinction of sauropods at the end of the Jurassic that is so well documented in eastern Utah. www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10....
Reposted by Chris Widga
Nice write-up of new study on European cultural grassland diversity. Resurvey from 100 year old baseline. Plant richness declines. Good photo of the field botanists! Paper is linked in article. #botany
Century-old papers saved from the bin reveal changes in Europe’s plant life
Plant inventories dating back to 1884 and nearly thrown away enable unique time-lapse study of biodiversity in Swiss meadows
www.theguardian.com
Reposted by Chris Widga
andersonmineral.bsky.social
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.
Reposted by Chris Widga
vertanatomist.bsky.social
Although my paper is not on the type of sabertooths you might be thinking, I'm honored to have my elephant/proboscidean tusks and trunks paper be included in this wonderful special issue! anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by Chris Widga
drfamoso.bsky.social
Happy establishment day for John Day Fossil Beds National Monument! On this day in 1975, JODA was taken over by the National Park Service. Its mission, to preserve the region's geological and paleontological resources and to provide for the scientific and public understanding of these resources.
Reposted by Chris Widga
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Carrie Herbel with a baby mammoth tooth. 🦣🤎
Caption in article: Troy Fedderson | University Communication and Marketing
Carrie Herbel opens a silicone mold used to create replicas of fossilized baby mammoth teeth. A completed replica is in the bottom corner of the box. Two unpainted replicas, both made of plaster, are also in the box. Creating replicas of one-of-a-kind fossils for use in museums and learning kits is a part of Herbel's job with the University of Nebraska State Museum.
Reposted by Chris Widga
rachelglade.bsky.social
Curious about the glacial geomorphology? Recent undergrad Regan Collins made this amazing ArcGIS Storymap about the formation of the Finger Lakes Region, complete with a map for a self-guided field trip to see some of the best examples of glacial geomorphology in the world! tinyurl.com/7w4asmwc
IT'S SNOW JOKE: THE HISTORY OF GLACIERS IN WESTERN NEW YORK
They Came, They Thawed, They Conquered
storymaps.arcgis.com
widga.bsky.social
Shortly before my VP class every week someone draws these delightful critters on the chalkboard--usually just in time for me to discuss them in lecture. The students have started calling this unknown artist "EMS Banksy." Complete mystery!
Chalk drawing of Tiktaalik Chalk drawing of Eusthenopteron.
Reposted by Chris Widga
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Population genomics of the muskox' resilience in the near absence of genetic variation

Patrícia Pečnerová, @lovedalen.bsky.social & team 🧪⚒️

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Chris Widga
cpgsthlm.bsky.social
🧬🧬🧬 🦣❤️🦣 🧬🧬🧬

New #CpgSthlm paper led by @maridehasque.bsky.social published in Biology Letters!

Genomic and morphological analysis reveals long-term mammoth hybridization in British Columbia, Canada
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
widga.bsky.social
More of this please. Also...this paper cites the "Big Mac index" which I didn't know about, but now I will never forget.
Reposted by Chris Widga
climateages.bsky.social
🧪Mastodons didn’t just live in the cold; they marched with the climate
Ancient DNA reveals waves of migration north and south, each leaving a genetic signature across the continent
Their resilience ended when ice and humans closed in
Today, species face the same pressures
youtube.com/shorts/wgcIA...
Mastodons on the Move: Climate, Collapse, and a Warning for Us 🦣
YouTube video by Climate Ages
youtube.com
Reposted by Chris Widga
restingdinoface.bsky.social
I'm blogging again, because sometimes I just want to write about what I want to write about. The latest is on a very spiky dinosaur and why dinosaurs are always going to be stranger than our expectations.
Extremely Spiky Dinosaur a Reminder of Fossil Record's Surprises — Riley Black
The discovery of an ornately-armored dinosaur underscores how much we don't yet know about the "terrible lizards."
rileyblack.net
Reposted by Chris Widga
ty-ty-tiger.bsky.social
A digital sketch of a #woollyrhino for #sciartseptember Glacial was the prompt. Watercolor were the procreate brushes #sciart #Art
A digital illustration of a woolly rhino in the snow with the wind blowing its fur
widga.bsky.social
Purple fossil coprolite. I have questions. @floridamuseum.bsky.social
Lumpy bumpy piece of shit with purple spots.
Reposted by Chris Widga
ecosroblox.bsky.social
A new update is coming this Friday, and among some cool changes, a few new skins will be coming as well!

To start off, the most hard-headed herbivore is rolling out with a new look:

“Scoria” Ancient Bison, a tier 2 skin priced at 500 tracks
Ancient bison bull and cow in a sunny prairie
widga.bsky.social
Nice piece on the saga of North American mastodon from @climateages.bsky.social! Also, why you should care about this sort of science, even if mastodons aren't your groove. 🦣
climateages.bsky.social
Ancient DNA from mastodons reveals they weren’t just roaming the Ice Age
these giants migrated with warming and cooling climates.

Expanding north when forests returned, retreating south when ice advanced.

Their story of resilience and collapse has lessons for today.
🧪 #SciComm
buff.ly/Ut9PO3w
DNA From Extinct Mastodons Reveals a Story of Climate and Collapse
Ancient genomes show how Mastodons repeatedly migrated with warming and cooling climates, and why their story matters today. A team of scientists opened an ancient box...
climateages.com