Dr Susannah Lydon
@susieoftraken.bsky.social
4.5K followers 1.3K following 1.5K posts
Palaeobotany | Scicomm | Associate Prof in Plant Science, Nottingham, UK | Vogon poet | Views my own | She/her
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Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
callanbentley.bsky.social
A log, petrified with malachite + azurite. University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), 2012. ⚒️
A big log sitting on concrete with a rock wall behind it and a scale pencil on top of it. The log is blue and green!
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
easternblot.bsky.social
Did you know that recent model iPhone Pros have a LiDAR sensor? You can use it to measure distances, and scientists in Spain used it to recreate a digital version of a cave filled with ancient cave art. 🧪 #scicomm www.forbes.com/sites/evaams...
Mapping Cave Art With A Cellphone
Researchers in Spain used Apple iPhone’s built-in LiDAR sensor to create a 3D map of a cave with hundreds of prehistoric cave paintings.
www.forbes.com
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
tweetisaurus.bsky.social
We cover a lot of ground in this one: the ethics of publishing on Myanmar amber, article retraction, and whether Rob has any credibility. It's a good one. Give it a listen 👇
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
bucbotany.bsky.social
🌱🌾🌍🌺🌳🌿🌲🥕🥦 Here's a past Botanical University Challenge question: The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. #BUC2025
Picture of bacon sandwich with HP Brown Sauce. The distinctive flavour of brown sauce is from tamarind. Which plant family is tamarind from? Five choices: Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Rosaceae, Apiaceae, Brassicaceae. A question from a past Botanical University Challenge competition.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
philipcball.bsky.social
Because there's so much awful stuff to write about, I decided to write my latest column for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social about something interesting and removed from all that: the discovery of a blue pigment in a Neolithic artefact.
www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
How did cave artists get a brand new pigment?
The discovery of traces of a blue pigment on a stone shaped into a shallow dish at a Palaeolithic site in Germany is quite a find
www.thenewworld.co.uk
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
juleshoward.bsky.social
Sudden urge to pitch an event called 'STOP BEING A FANNY ABOUT INSECTS' to a major festival. 'Jules Howard and special guest tell the audience to stop being fannies about wasps and flies and bloody well just replant their front driveway spaces to make a home for earwigs'. Too much? Yes. Yes it is.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
rakshasa.bsky.social
How fucking embarrassing is it for the entire political establishment that they're being outflanked on the left by MICHAEL FUCKING HESSELTINE
bbcnewsnight.bsky.social
“You described Reform and other parties across Europe today as among the 'right wing equivalents of the fascists in the 1930s'. Why?”

“Because that’s what they are”

@vicderbyshire.bsky.social asks Lord Heseltine about remarks he made at Conservative Party Conference.

#Newsnight
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
catmachine.com
If people can write detailed text prompts for AI image generators then they can bloody well write alt text.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
esthervanhulsen.bsky.social
Muttaburrasaurus munching on some leafs
Water color and colored pencil on board
11.8″ x 17.7″ (30 x 45 cm)

www.esthervanhulsen.com

#paleoart #paleoillustration #naturalhistoryillustration #naturalhistoryart #dinosaurart #animalart
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
jfcudennec.bsky.social
#UnrelatedPicsWednesday !

Left : 28 late Cretaceaous dinosaur eggs from China, deposited 85 million years ago

Right : 27 Mesolithic skulls from the "Skull nest" of the Ofnet Cave in Germany
Egg clutch sampled for chronological studies. Credit: Dr. Bi Zhao Part of great skull burial at Ofnet, Bavaria. Copied from Hugo Obermaier, Fossil man in Spain, Newhaven, 1924, figure 143, page 338. (After F.R. Schmidt). Mesolithic level. General Collections Keywords: disposal of the dead; pre-historic; Archaeology; funerary techniques
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
emilyart.bsky.social
#Paleoctober2025 day 7 paleoart sketch of the extinct conifer Sequoites.

#Paleoctober #Paleoart #Sequoites #Enantiornithes
The genus existed until the Miocene, but I chose the Late Cretaceous Sequoites dakotensis so I could include an enantiornithine bird. The juvenile avialan is begging for food from an unseen parent perched atop the conifer branch with a cone and speculative leaves below it. The scene is overcast with fine rain.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
spitewinter.bsky.social
#plants #botany #gardening #art 🌱

Dryopteris filix-mas syn. Aspidium - Male/Basket/Shield Fern.

I haven't paid much attention to ferns in the past. Here's a green, graceful example common to the N. Hemisphere. Likes the damp, shady places that need some life.

RHS:
www.rhs.org.uk/plants/11446...
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
himmapaan.bsky.social
'Princess Joveta sends her grateful thanks to her friend the great Khan for his kind gift of her new pet Velociraptor, with whom she is delighted. Isambart now responds to his name, is taking well to training, and bids fair to becoming a very fine hunter.'
Brown pencil drawing of a lady in fine robes and a headscarf walking a feathered Velociraptor on a leash.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
warringtonruncorn.com
I'm onto the second half of the tour now, 7 dates remaining from Bonnie Scotland to the Big Smoke. Quite a few have sold out, but there are still tickets available for Cambridge tomorrow, and Glasgow and Edinburgh next week.
warringtonruncorn.com/live
A tour poster for my last remaining seven dates of my Autumn tour.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
naomialderman.bsky.social
feels like yet again time to mention that the *videogames* industry (that's a creative industry, which people do creative degrees in) brings in more than twice the amount to the British economy as the fishing and steel industries *combined*
naomialderman.bsky.social
I cannot understand what these people think the purpose of human life is?

It is *not* "pursue joy, deal justly, love well, try to understand as much and see as much of this beautiful world and of the deepness, richness and variety of human culture and experience as you can before you die"?
outonbluesix.bsky.social
How is this repeatedly made into a policy issue - by *all* parties - when the blunt fact of the matter is that grown adults who are obliged to pay for their own education, and relentlessly pursued to repay their loans, should be able to study whatever the fuck they want.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
sardonicus.eu
Sergey Fyodorovich Podmarev.
stylised painting, long thin trees reaching up to the sky
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
miniver.bsky.social
I just realized that the Portland Antifascist Frog has singlehandedly reclaimed amphibians from the “alt right”. Yet another way he is a Great American.
susieoftraken.bsky.social
This is so Richard Scarry
chibdm.bsky.social
Just watched the Weiner-mobile pick up someone from the airport
Weinermobile
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
scottzona.bsky.social
Here’s yet another kind of pollination in Ipomoea: pollination by hawkmoths. This is I. alba, a fragrant, night-blooming species with a long, narrow corolla tube. #teammoth #Sphingidae #Convolvulaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Night photo of three, salverform, white flower with exserted stamens. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
scottzona.bsky.social
Magnolias are much used as ornamental, flowering trees. I like the deciduous, yellow-flowered cultivars very much, even though their flowering period is brief. This is ‘Butterflies’, a cultivar of an interspecific cross. #Magnoliaceae #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Photo of leafless branches bearing large, pale yellow, goblet-shaped magnolia flowers. Photo by Scott Zona CCBYNC2.
Reposted by Dr Susannah Lydon
omaromalleykhan.bsky.social
Here's the relevant chart from the above report. It's rare to see such a clear, consistent slope in any social trend. That segregation is decreasing is perhaps the best evidence, least controversial social fact of modern Britain