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extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Ben Miller
@extinctmonsters.bsky.social
4.2K followers 820 following 2.8K posts
Mostly posts about the art history of paleontology in museums. Exhibit developer at the Field Museum, opinions my own. he/him

Website: extinctmonsters.net
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extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · Nov 19
I’m closing in on 2k followers (thanks!) so I think I should clarify what I mean in my profile when I say the fun dinosaur pictures I post are a form of art history (besides wanting to sound elitist or something). 🧵
Triceratops skeleton between two T. rex skeletons in a bed of artificial ferns. Photo is taken behind and beneath one of the rexes, so we're looking up through it's lower jaw. Against a blue and purple simulated sky backdrop.
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
I didn't make as much headway on personal research projects as I would have liked in 2025, or write many substantial blog posts. On the other hand, no less than five exhibits that I wrote opened this year. I hope you all enjoyed them!
Snake, crocodile, and other reptile skeletons under green spotlights on black pedestals. Projected image of cartoony reptiles on the wall behind. Series of honeycombed archways with colors going from warm to cool. There's a Uintatherium skull in a case to the left. 80s-style computer terminal with metal tube projecting up (it's a scanning electron microscope). Partially under glass with interpretive panels. Museum space with old-timey lab equipment on desk in foreground and pink snakes and organic shapes accompanying photos and pink text on the black walls.
December 30, 2025 at 10:35 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
What is it about deer that make them so hard to recreate with cgi? I was just watching the uncanny deer in Del Toro’s Frankenstein but there are so many other examples.
December 30, 2025 at 5:05 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
The Giraffe Titan, a poem by Brandon Kilbourne. A wonderful exploration of the multiple narratives embodied by objects on public display in general, and by dinosaurs in particular. From brooklynrail.org/2025/12/poet...
The Giraffe Titan (I) by Brandon Kilbourne In the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. the dinosaur exhibition is composed largely of specimens excavated between 1906 and 1913 at Tendaguru, a site in the former colony of German East Africa (today Tanzania). Of these dinosaurs, the most iconic is Giraffatitan brancai. Coincidentallv, European and other major world powers met in Berlin, some twenty ears prior to the dinosaurs excavation, at the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), where these powers negotiated their claims to regions of Africa for colonial expansion. At the feet of a precipice-tall skeleton, we wonder about the horrors of the Jurassic, predators stalking, then slicing into, their prey. Walking among Berlin's exhibited bones embodying bridge-span necks and column limbs, lance-point armor and knife-lined jaws, we try to picture a world beyond our ken, subiect to claws evolved as killing personified, laws of unremitting savagery Imagine on an over-muggy Earth, a head towering above in the domain of treetops and dogfighting pterosaurs, imagine the head-crowned neck crashing down like a felled alder, the impact thundering as if a deposed god was hurled to Earth; in final moments, would the aged Titan be able to imagine scavengers biting into its cold skin, its bones swallowed by tidal mud? Could it then possibly imagine a world beyond its ken hundreds of thousands of millennia later in which twenty men in Berlin would carve its continent into plantations, mines, and ivory. hunting grounds, their talons manifest in massacres charring within burning villages, famine's gaunt ribs slowly quelling rebellions, black skin in the mouths of ravenous empires? Even if so, why try wondering at all? A predator is a predator after all, regardless of the time in Earth's history- -they simply differ in their habit and the hunt: some sink their honed teeth into a scaly hide, a roar professing their territory; others convene over a landmass map, howling false claims in English, French, and German Photo of sauropod skeleton with striding posture and vertical neck in a large multi-story hall with skylight roof. Shares a flatform with a smaller trailing sauropod.
December 30, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
I'm delighted to have gotten ahold of some footage of Life Over Time's last day (May 3, 2004)! This was kindly shared by Dave Dolak, who used to show it in his classes at Columbia College.

I've cut the video into three parts for easier viewing, starting with the Paleozoic:
December 20, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Reposted by Ben Miller
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Recently unearthed in a desk drawer: guides for now-extinct paleo galleries at the Field and Carnegie.
Pamphlets for fossil galleries long since renovated. On the left, "DNA to Dinosaurs" at the Field featuring a spiral with very 90s illustrations of assorted extinct creatures. On the right, "Dinosaur Hall" at the Carnegie with a black-and-white photo of the head, neck, and arms of the old T. rex mount.
December 27, 2025 at 7:55 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
I love long breaks when paleontologists just start lashing out at entire phylogenic groups they don't like 😅
brandontbishop.bsky.social Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 2d
It is still a disaster of world historic proportions* that the wrong branch of archosaurs took over for 140 million years.

*It is: the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event is the same scale as the famous Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) event, it just doesn't involve a space rock.
December 28, 2025 at 9:58 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Look at the teensy front legs and giant back legs on these steneosaurs
Two in situ preps of fossil marine crocodiles in similar swooping poses, in a wooden display case. As mentioned the front legs are comparatively tiny
December 28, 2025 at 1:30 AM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
a lot happened in 2020 but remember this guy? youtu.be/Ofp26_oc4CA?...
Mobbed by Raccoons (25) Tuesday Night 03 Nov 2020
YouTube video by James Blackwood - Raccoon Whisperer
youtu.be
December 27, 2025 at 5:20 AM
Reposted by Ben Miller
dunkingdonuts.bsky.social
cracking open a cold one with the boys
discontinuedfoods.bsky.social Discontinued Foods! @discontinuedfoods.bsky.social · Nov 30
Thirsty Dog!/Thirsty Cat! (1994-1994): Liters of lightly carbonated bottled water made specifically for pets, containing vitamins and flavorings ("crispy beef" for dogs, and "tangy fish" for cats), but FDA approved for humans consumption, and even certified kosher.
December 26, 2025 at 10:22 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
The steps outlined here are what I'll be looking for in people to vote for next year.
December 27, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Reposted by Ben Miller
mhfubird.bsky.social
Spinosaurus
December 23, 2025 at 3:50 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Um, this is a first.

A sex/lifestyle website cited one of my old blog posts to introduce The Triceratops Position (which I assume they just made up) to the world. I'm sure Marsh and Gilmore would be thrilled. 😂

My post on Triceratops forelimb position is here: extinctmonsters.net/2014/07/16/m...
What Is the Triceratops Position You can think of the Triceratops Position as a creative and playful take on intimacy that draws inspiration from the iconic dinosaur's stance. In this position, you and your partner mimic the upright, athletic posture of a Triceratops, with one partner on all fours and the other positioned behind. The receiver supports themselves with their hands and knees, keeping their elbows slightly bent and their back straight. The giver kneels or stands behind, aligning their body for both comfort and stability. This arrangement allows you to maintain close contact while exploring new sensations and angles. The historical inspiration for the Triceratops Position comes from early paleontological reconstructions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists like O.C. Marsh and Charles Gilmore shaped public perception of the Triceratops by displaying skeletons with upright, vertical forelimbs. These reconstructions emphasized a sturdy, athletic posture, which now influences the way you can approach this position in the bedroom.
December 26, 2025 at 5:56 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Sue under construction in late '99/early '00, first in Phil Fraley's shop and then in Stanley Field Hall.

At this point the Field wasn't sure about keeping the name Sue. There was even a renaming contest—"Dakota" won, but ultimately the T. rex kept the name it already had. #FossilFriday
Front end of a mounted T. rex skeleton. Arms haven't been added yet. In a crowded warehouse with people around, including one on a ladder. Same rex from the back, now under construction behind a white curtain in a big, open space. A woman stands on a scaffold and reaches toward the tail.
December 26, 2025 at 5:35 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Today we exchanged loot, made friends with a bunch of goats and miniature equids, and got Chinese takeout. Not sure what holiday we were celebrating but it sure was fun!
A warmly dressed woman in a stable surrounded by two goats, a miniature horse, and a miniature donkey
December 26, 2025 at 3:50 AM
Reposted by Ben Miller
jackgardnerpaleo.bsky.social
Here’s a sneak peak at another #lego model I’ve had the chance to work on depicting recently published Late Triassic animals, specifically the little amphibian Ninumbeehan!

More details and builds coming soon!

#paleoart #paleontology #scicomm #scienceart #biology #legomoc #afol
Early group render of Ninumbeehan dookoodukah (left) and Ahvaytum bahndooiveche (right). Both models are life-size and in scale with one another.
December 25, 2025 at 10:50 AM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Frankly the world should look more like Douglas Henderson’s Triassic scenes
Ophiacodon-type guys in shallow water. Black and white drawing with strong value shift from foreground to background. Hanging foreground fronds frame the top of the image. Similar style illustration: dark foreground, light background, framing foreground plants. We’ve got some sort of therapsid predator in the center foreground with Moschops-y guys resting further back. Similar style image. This one has toilet seat-headed amphibians basking with their mouth open in a swamp. White mist obscures the landscape. A darkened foreground phytosaur with open mouth. Bipedal dinosaurs race past, some in shadow, some in light. A dark fallen log across the top of the image.
December 24, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
hyperallergic.com
The British Museum has launched a long-term loans program that sent 80 Greek and Egyptian antiquities to India in “a rebranding exercise that preserves colonial power structures while pretending to dismantle them,” writes Emiline Smith.
British Museum Launches Farcical “Decolonizing” Loan Program
Long-term loans to former colonies are not restitution. They do not acknowledge historical wrongdoing, nor do they restore agency to source communities.
hyperallergic.com
December 24, 2025 at 3:43 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
These critters all lived in the first six million years of the Cenozoic and each one was, in its time, the biggest mammal that had ever existed.

It took some work to balance the intended message, desired visual impact, and tech limitations, but I think the latest version of this display works well.
Black wall with illuminated illustrations of five four-legged mammals, each bigger than the last.
December 23, 2025 at 3:27 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
asherelbein.bsky.social
I'm deep in drafting today and wrote "most popular interpretations of the Triassic are artifacts of hindsight," when it suddenly occurred to me that, necessarily, *all* paleontology is an artifact of hindsight
December 23, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
nickpetrichowe.bsky.social
'Tis the season for some festive science songs.

If you've ever wanted to hear someone sing about a dimunitive tyranosaur then now is your chance
December 18, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
melissagiragrant.com
we, in the United States, through Trump’s mass deportation scheme, have engaged in abductions and torture for the past year, none of it in secret, much of it attested to in legal documents. there is nothing to expose, only to face.
December 22, 2025 at 11:10 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
Sometimes it's worth checking linkedin
Very large, probably life-sized outdoor sculpture of a sperm whale with a pink squid wrapped around it's face. It's impaled on a stalagmite to give it height. Screenshot of post by Don Lessem: Attention Please Aquariums! We're looking to sell this 55 foot Sperm Whale and Giant Squid sculpture—a great welcoming display outside any aquarium
December 23, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Ben Miller
friedmanlab.bsky.social
On this shortest day of the year, let's all admire an iconic diorama depicting a scene from a place of eternal night . . .
Diorama at the American Museum in New York featuring the deep-sea battle between a giant squid and a sperm whale. The whale is directed toward the viewer, with the squid's arms wrapped around its jaws.
December 21, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Ben Miller
tudoraf.bsky.social
Learning Chicago-centered geology, as is proper, from a lamppost in Rogers Park.
Color photo of a painted pole of Chicago area geology from Big Bang through today. Color photo of concrete walkway, on left concrete bench with a series of colorfully painted sections going into horizon. Above benches is park, with bare trees. On right is beach with lake in far distance.
January 5, 2025 at 3:39 PM
extinctmonsters.bsky.social
How do you all feel about these sorts of things
A room where all walls and floor are projection surfaces. People stand or mill about. Currently there is rainforest imagery being projected Same space but now there’s an image of Earth wrapped across the wall and floor
December 22, 2025 at 12:19 AM