A Septarian nodule - a fossilized mud bubble that has eroded out of the shale layers at the Cliffs of Moher.
County Clare, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

Im #Sudan tobt ein verheerender #Bürgerkrieg, wobei die #RSF - Angreifer maßgeblich #fossil über die #VAE finanziert werden.

Und ich beobachte, auch genau deswegen gibt es da wenig #Wahrnehmung oder auch nur #Kritik. Der immer noch vorherrschende #Fossilismus will sich ja nicht selbst in Frage stellen (lassen).

Wer weiterhin #Öl & #Gas bezieht, finanziert auch diese Katastrophe indirekt mit... :-/ https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2025-08/sudan-buergerkrieg-rsf-13-tote-darfur

A fossilized piece of a Solitary Rugose Coral.
County Donegal, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

Tea party

New blog post! The last (for now) of my posts about ribs: a story about hidden fossils, CT scanners, and tiny dragons!

As always, if you like what you read please support the blog and the Western Science Center by subscribing or leaving a tip.

#FossilFriday #paleontology #museum #scicomm #Triassic #fossil

https://life-from-a-certain-point-of-view.ghost.io/ribs-on-the-wing/

This week for #Fossilfriday we have another #Guess that #Lego #Fossil.

This one I would rate as medium. This dinosaur was found in the Neuquén, Argentina .

Reminder: hide your answer behind a content warning. This will allow others to guess without a hint. I will post the answer tomorrow (and to anyone who guesses correctly).

This was designed by MesozoicAsh

High on a rock layer above the scenic and visitor-oriented Colorado town of Ouray are the pothole-like tracks of a long-necked dinosaur. A steep two mile hike got me there, and I knocked off part of that late in the evening, slept out under smoke-veiled stars, and made it to the site when the morning sunlight was highlighting the tracks with shadow.

The trackway was fascinating to see. About 106 meters long, 134 tracks, (I didn't count/measure. I read this.) there's a straight section, a 270⁰ turn, and a long gentle curve. It was fun to imagine the creature walking through an algae-covered mud flat 150 million years ago, and suddenly deciding to change direction. Why? Predator? Companionship? Resource choices? Any answers in the stone have eroded away.

The sandstone layer shows other textural evidence. Likely the top layer was a microbial mat, a 2-3 cm thick colony of algae that overlayed the mud layers. On field trip I took this spring, experts suggested that this living layer is frequently a factor that helped to preserve a majority of known trackways. [https://www.greenriverrocks.com/dino-tracks-micro-mats].

But there's more. Some of the associated layers show symetrical ripples from moving water. Plus, there are parallel striations that show that the layer was scraped by the belly of a glacier during its history. All before being uplifted and eroded to its present canyon-side location.

A beautiful stormbeach Goniatite fossil, polished by Atlantic waves.
County Clare, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

Fossilized Solitary Rugose Corals - the remains of an ancient tropical sea bed.
County Donegal, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

Poet Christina Olson from Georgia Southern University doing a reading of her paleontology-themed poems at PaleoCon. #paleontology #scicomm #fossil #museum #Poetry

Today is the public day for PaleoCon at Western Science Center! Our visiting scientists and Teen Ambassadors are on the exhibit floor doing show-and-tell about their research. #paleontology #scicomm #museum #fossil

It’s the 2nd day of Western Science Center’s annual PaleoCon event! Today our visiting scientists met with 6th grade students from Western Center Academy.

Scientists discover an ancient whale with a Pokémon face and a predator bite.

From @AssociatedPress: "Researchers this week officially named Janjucetus dullardi, a cartoonish creature with bulging eyes the size of tennis balls."

https://flip.it/lOkQIj

Replica of the Japanese elasmosaurid plesiosaur Futabasaurus on display in the NHM London's touring Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The exhibition is about prehistoric sea life beyond the Jurassic. Indeed, Futabasaurus is from the Late Cretaceous.

Picture by @crazy8wizard used with permission.

Fossilized Goniatites like galaxies spiraling through space. Over 300 million years in the making.
County Clare, Ireland.

Cormacscoast.com walking tours

This week for #Fossilfriday we have another #Guess that #Lego #Fossil.

This one I would rate as easy. This frozen theropod is known to have a cool crest.

Reminder: hide your answer behind a content warning. This will allow others to guess without a hint. I will post the answer tomorrow (and to anyone who guesses correctly).

This was designed by me

Happy Unearth Day, SUE! Of course she'd be a fellow Leo queen! (On August 12, 1990, Sue Hendrickson unearthed Specimen FMNH PR 2081, the world’s largest and most complete T. rex #fossil ever found.) In her honor, #ThrowbackThursday to 2018 when the Field #Museum invited me to preview SUE's then-new exhibit/permanent home in the Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet and I shot this #photo of the debut multimedia show on my iPhone 5s.

New blog post!

Thanks to Hurricane Camille, we discovered some unusual whale ribs.

If you like what you read, please support the blog and the Western Science Center by becoming a subscriber or leaving a tip.

#fossil #paleontology #scicomm #whales

https://life-from-a-certain-point-of-view.ghost.io/more-whale-rib-strangeness/