witmerlab.bsky.social
21st-century approaches to fleshing out the past! Mission: to use the structure of past & present animals to interpret evolutionary history...and to share it!
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I routinely encourage my students to indicate city, state, and country for all institutions in the Institutional Abbreviations section, even for obvious or famous ones. If the editor wants to scale them back, that’s fine, but it’s always best to include as much information as possible.
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Agreed! And of all nice pinniped skulls at the Carnegie Museum, this is the one that I took a selfie with. Still, old male hooded seals have pretty amazing skulls, too...but maybe my perception is colored by my having dissected them—their soft-tissue anatomy is just nuts!
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*make that *Steller* sea lion, altho' this was a pretty stellar specimen. Thanks @coastalpaleo.bsky.social for the heads up!
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I have many newish 180g archival pressings, but I also love my beat-up old records. There’s something exciting about listening to my totally trashed original Sgt Peppers—the actual physical object that was blowing people’s minds in 1967. Like the diff betw a real fossil & a restored cast. Real deal!
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Yup, it’s a pretty young animal, but I think the perspective of the photo makes its legs look overly short. I have others from this cohort (casualties from a farm) that are definitely older.
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Nice! I love the "paleo of paleo"—the historical aspect. I can now envision some NHM worker in 1862 unpacking the Häberlein shipment: "Whoa, check out these rad feathers—that's gotta be 37001, but, dude, this super-cool giant Rhamphorhynchus has gotta be next!" I'm paraphrasing, of course.
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Nice work Dave & Skye! The specimen number (NHMUK PV OR 37002) caught my eye as being "one louder" than the London Archaeopteryx (NHMUK PV OR 37001), which you explain as being "part of the 1862 purchase of Solnhofen specimens from Dr Karl Häberlein that also included...Archaeopteryx." Cool history!
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Pinky has no respect for history (or prehistory). 3/3
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Today I dug out the old card catalog I had made as a kid for my fossil collection. The second photo shows the actual color of the trilobite fossil (along with the catalog number I assigned it 🙄). This side was down and protected from the smoke and ash. 2/3
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Wonderful! Xmas is for sharing, as they say! I have the Lucas & Stettenheim volumes as books—there was a time you could buy them from the U.S. government for like 5 bucks! Not sure I have the PDFs so these are welcome additions!
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Nice! Can’t believe I wasn’t aware of this one, especially given how much our team has worked on turkeys! Sounds like the emergence of the best new Christmas tradition—the “sharing of obscure anatomy atlases.”
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Love that skull! It’s an old friend: youtu.be/qlLuS49oYUo?...
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We’ve had people (e.g., art students) come into our lab to do just that, as well as photographers to develop their portfolios. Science aside (which I rarely say!), the shapes of natural objects and how they react to light can be so beautiful and moving. #STEAM
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Y’know, I almost shared a dissection photo of a hooded seal head but I decided it looked too much like the worst Butterball in the history of Thanksgiving. You’re welcome.
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The darkest dark meat I’ve seen is from hooded seals. Their muscles are so loaded with myoglobin for their insanely deep dives that their muscles are so red they’re almost black. Amazing animals but a challenge to dissect.
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Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it? Let’s hope we can keep it this way. I still have my Twitter but ugh! There’s a broader vibe here, too, more like a SICB meeting.
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Virtually all birds & reptiles have a bony hyolingual apparatus. In the original photo, the tongue bones comprise the wispy element below the skull. Those curved bits wrap around the back of the skull & allow extension of the tongue. Woodpeckers do the same thing! Here's how it works: bit.ly/3V8CRxO
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Virtually all birds & reptiles have a bony hyolingual apparatus. In the original photo, the tongue bones comprise the wispy element below the skull. Those curved bits wrap around the back of the skull & allow extension of the tongue. Woodpeckers do the same thing! Here's how it works: bit.ly/3V8CRxO
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Sure, you can download it here: bit.ly/4i3iwnq
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It’s all about recency of common ancestry, which produces what Darwin called “groups within groups.” T. rex & birds share a more recent common ancestor than either does with Allosaurus. Plus there are plenty of similarities that unite tyrannosaurs & birds within Coelurosauria but exclude Allosaurus.
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If the evolutionary connection between T. rex & hummingbirds weren't enough, note here in another hummingbird (spread out on a T. rex tooth) that its scleral eye ring is bigger than its humerus & its tongue skeleton is longer than its trunk! Evolution is crazy! 2/2