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trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Gen
@trigonotarbida.bsky.social
700 followers 200 following 510 posts
Palaeoart & various other biology art. Palaeontology student (4th year) and into a range of hiking and nature stuff (though I particularly like strange arachnids and crustaceans).

open for commissions: gencoelacanth@gmail.com
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trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Gen @trigonotarbida.bsky.social · Jan 14
New #portfolioday post, I'm a palaeontology student (about to start 4th year) and do various detailed illustrations of animals (both extinct and living), landscapes, and technical illustration. Contact for commissions is gencoelacanth@gmail.com
digital illustration of a Urodacus yaschenkoi species complex scorpion standing on sand in early morning light Graphite illustration of rock formations in a cave Digital illustration of a Phreatoicopsis raffae isopod on damp moss Digital illustration of two Eusthenopteron fish swimming through algae and charophytes
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katataba.bsky.social
my piece for the #turbophone2026! (learned a lot of disturbing facts about seabirds in the process)

we had 24 hours to draw from the previous participant's picture, check out the wonderful and unexpected transformations in all the teams! ascalaphid.com/telephone/tu...
February 14, 2026 at 10:09 PM
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joschuaknuppe.bsky.social
Because of Valentine's Day we had today a Flower Flocking #paleostream, covering different kinds of fossil angiosperms!
Florissantia, Lovellea, Leguminocarpum and Sagaria!
February 14, 2026 at 2:35 AM
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brushwhisperer.bsky.social
Forest floor full of layered leaves.. .
Eastern Comma emerging . .
Along with early spring ephemerals. .
Life thrives together. .
In harmony. .
In interdependence. .
Watercolor in progress ©️Heeyoung Kim 2026

#botanicalart #naturalhistoryart #natureart
A watercolor painting depicting forest floor full of layered leaves and mushrooms. A butterfly, Eastern Comma emerging from them along with early spring ephemerals. Enjoy! 😊
February 15, 2026 at 6:57 PM
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kodasea.bsky.social
Pareidolia
February 15, 2026 at 6:34 PM
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trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Graphite powder attempt 1 a cyphophthalmid arachnid, which is actually a type of harvestman.
graphite drawing of a a cyphophthalmid arachnid, a small round segmented animal with short legs on moss
February 15, 2026 at 12:45 PM
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ppaleoartist.bsky.social
this week's #Paleostream was a Valentine's Day special where we drew fossil angiosperms! this week we drew Florissantia (i drew F. quilchenensis), Lovellea, Leguminocarpum olmensis, and Sagaria #paleobotany #palaeobotany #paleoart #botany #sciart
small red vaguely bell-shaped flowers with translucent fused sepals of the species Florissantia quilchenensis face downwards towards the camera, the branch they're growing from is seen to the right while the leaves of the branch are behind the flowers. behind in the background is a blurry branch showing more flowers and leaves Florissantia quilchenensis is a species of Eocene, Canadian malvacean (mallow family) bisexual reproductive organ who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here I have reconstructed it as a tree similar to other plants in the subfamily Sterculioideae, of which it is nested in. it had an androgynophore with five petals fused into a corolla in alternation with the calyx, the style was longer than the stamens, there were five stamens that bifricated at their tips into two anthers giving it a total of ten anthers per flower, as mentioned previously the sepals of this plant were fused into the distinctive bell-shaped cup at night after a brief shower of rain, an artificial light illuminates the branches of a tree showing very small pink flowers of the genus Lovellea, small blobs of water cling to the waxy cutiles of the leaves, another two blurry branches (though, without flowers) can be seen in the background Lovellea is a kind of small and basal laurale reproductive organ who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. Here i have reconstructed it after a more basal condition with a singular flower to each leaf growing from the axillary bud. the flower was shaped like a radially symmetrical pear with an opening at the top in which small pollinators could crawl in for pollination, the ovaries surrounded by a thick layer of overlapping tepals a kritosaurin hadrosaur has plucked a branch off of a legume tree that's growing fruit of the species Leguminocarpum olmensis, the branches themselves are partially in fruit and partially in flower still kritosaurin hadrosaurs are a group of "duck billed" dinosaurs from Mexico with tall robust nasals but no nasal crests like those found in saurolophines Leguminocarpum olmensis is a species of Late Cretaceous, Mexican fabacean (bean family) fruit of uncertain taxonomic affinities to other fabaceans, and who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here i have reconstructed it as a cercidoidean with racemose infloresence and alternate distichous bilobed leaves tri-paired three follicles in the genus Sagaria are seen growing on a plant with two pink flowers below them, each internode grows from a three-lobed leaf's axillary bud. trichomes coat the entire plant, catching drops of water, a soft orange light glows behind the plant Sagaria is a genus of Albian, Italian ranunculacean (buttercup family) fruit who's growth-form and whole-plant appearance is unknown. here i have reconstructed its flowers as closer to buttercups with six overlapping petals forming a cup-like shape and many anthers in its centre. follicles are a kind of fruit that splits down a central seam when ripe to release its seeds
February 15, 2026 at 6:27 PM
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joschuaknuppe.bsky.social
And here there result of the Naracoorte #paleostream!
This classic Australian megafauna assemblage is a well preserved treasure trove in South Australia that gives us a glimpse at a fauna just before the arrival of humans. Subsequently a large portion of the...
February 16, 2026 at 5:16 AM
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trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Cyphophthalmi meeting...
5 Cyphophthalmi harvestmen together on moss
January 12, 2025 at 7:13 AM
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trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Argh when I said graphite powder I meant charcoal powder. I do like graphite more for a range of reasons but charcoal definitely photographs better.
February 15, 2026 at 12:47 PM
trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Graphite powder attempt 1 a cyphophthalmid arachnid, which is actually a type of harvestman.
graphite drawing of a a cyphophthalmid arachnid, a small round segmented animal with short legs on moss
February 15, 2026 at 12:45 PM
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patrlynch1.bsky.social
Red-Breasted and White-Breasted Nuthatches (Sitta sp.). From A Field Guide to Long Island Sound, Yale Univ. Press, a.co/d/ffZ6GFP
🧪🌿🌎🪶🐡 #wildlife #scicomm #sciviz #wildlifeart #illustration #scientificillustration #natureart #visualscicomm #sciviz #scicomm #ducks #LongIslandSound #birds #BirdArt
Illustration of two common Eastern North American nuthatch species in a characteristic head-down pose on a tree trunk.
February 14, 2026 at 3:44 PM
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birdmofu.bsky.social
Bennu
February 1, 2026 at 11:08 AM
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tstld.bsky.social
Little Magpie

Pastel and ink on toned paper

#art #birds #nature #sciart
Drawing of a magpie made with pastel and ink on toned paper.
February 14, 2026 at 11:31 PM
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emilydamstra.com
This #paleoart shows 3 views of the Devonian brachiopod fossil Paraspirifer bownockeri; one is reconstructed w/ some epifauna and boreholes. These are fun to find; they're an impressive size (for brachiopods). I had an excellent specimen to use as a reference for this painting.
#FossilFriday #sciart
Detailed color illustration showing 3 different views of the same specimen. Two at the bottom are the unreconstructed fossil from different angles. The reconstruction at the top shows the brachiopod in life position, with 9 visible boreholes and the common epibionts Cornulites and a bryozoan. The shell has pinkish and whitish horizontal stripes and the valves are slightly agape, with cirri lining the opening.
February 21, 2025 at 7:01 PM
trigonotarbida.bsky.social
Trying charcoal powder
Photo of an in progress drawing of a Cyphophthalmi harvestman on moss
February 14, 2026 at 2:17 PM
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annevandenbroekart.bsky.social
House Sparrows.
Originally I painted these little guys for my "moving house" postcard.
#SciArt #birds #birdart #gardenbirds
Two House Sparrows. One flying and one sitting watching the other.
February 13, 2026 at 12:42 PM
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dustinvanwechel.com
Here’s one from a wayzzz back, “Slow Drift,” oil on linen, 30”x24”.
A white trumpeter swan drifts across the glass surface of a pond peppered with lilly pads. Stacks of submerged deadfall lie undisturbed.
February 13, 2026 at 4:12 PM
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amypteride.bsky.social
What time is it? It’s #Cheliceratime & #Fossilfriday!
Our first scorpion in Cheliceratime, and one of the oldest while still being weirdly modern for its age!
All the basic infos are here but if you want to learn more, there’s more below!⬇️

#scorpion #silurian #paleoart #sciart #bugsky #invert
1/4
This ancient scorpion is kinda unique regarding its age, exhibiting a surprisingly modern leg’s anatomy than other silurian scorpions. It hints to a more complicated history of scorpions’ transition from water to land that could have begun way earlier than we thought. Size : maybe 10-ish cm of body length in general Time period : Late Silurian Paleoart speculativometer : Few missing details The animal drawn is a brown scorpion with little yellow lines on its sides
February 13, 2026 at 4:25 PM
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amypteride.bsky.social
First, there's already a lot to say regarding when & where did it live and what it looked like, thanks to numerous well-studied specimens.

2/4
#Cheliceratime
Eramoscorpius brucensis was named in 2019 after the discovery of several specimens from the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario (Canada), all of them dating back to the Early Wenlock (433-430 million years ago). This scorpion lived in some of the first semi-aquatic to terrestrial complex environments, the second half of the Silurian being known for the first occurences of vascularized plants & the rise of plant-animal trophic interactions. More than 10 specimens are known, giving a pretty good idea of what this scorpion looks like. Exact length is unknown due to sizes ranging from 2 and a half cm to more than 15 cm in length. It has the whole scorpion look, with pedipalps turned into pincer claws, a short square-shaped prosoma followed by a long segmented opisthosoma. The legs, despite being shorter than those of modern scorpions, are thick & well adapted for land locomotion (more on that later). The metasoma (the tail part) is quite long, accounting for something like half the main body length. However, E. brucensis‘ morphology shows significant differences compared to modern scorpions, some features looking more arachnid or chelicerate generic than scorpion-like: - Huge lateral eyes, something way more reminiscent of eurypterids & horseshoe crabs than the centered vs little lateral eyes of modern scorpions. - 5 pairs of book lungs, while modern scorpions have 4 of them. A big difference is also the lack of coxapophyses, parts of the leg bases coming together at the front and forming a whole cavity. This preoral chamber, called a stomotheca, foreshadows the mouth when a scorpion eats today. E. brucensis had none of that, looking way simpler & maybe processed food in a completely different way than its modern relatives. It also indicates a weaker leg support than modern species. There's also on the slide a pic of Eramoscorpius ventral side with the sternum (ventral plate between the legs) looks like a triangle & is not covered by the legs, a morphology typical of really old scorpions
February 13, 2026 at 4:25 PM
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amypteride.bsky.social
And this entry is the opportunity to talk about the mess of stem-group scorpion's evolution. Eramoscorpius being one the oldest of the bunch, it tells a completly different pictures than what we see with modern species.

3/4
#Cheliceratime
Eramoscorpius brucensis wasn’t alone, the Silurian period being known for the beginning of a firmly established animal presence outside of water. Several scorpion species are known from this period and represent the earliest confirmed arachnids known, like Proscorpius osborni & Palaeophonus caledonicus. Although scorpions have a smaller role in today’s environments, their early ancestors seemed to have been among the earliest major predators that helped to build terrestrial ecosystems’ blueprints. The slide also comprise fossils of 3 silurian scorpions: Proscorpius osborni, Eramoscorpius brucensis, Palaeophonus caledonicus Where E. bruncensis falls in scorpion phylogeny is... unclear to say the least. Even tho everyone knows what a scorpion looks like, modern species only represent a fraction of the total scorpion’s diversity: even tho this tiny sub-group may have appeared during the Carboniferous, they seem to have only become truly ecologically important alongside the dinosaurs. Some extensive works to clarify the group’s systematic have been done recently, but we still lack a clear phylogeny, making the understanding of early scorpion evolution really difficult (and still easier to explain with grades than clades), especially when some crucial morphological features could have evolved convergently. Paleozoic scorpion’s diversity is astonishing in terms of morphological features & possible ecologies, modern species being extremely far from the “living fossil” label many people give them. In a way, scorpions are a bit reminiscent of dinosaurs & sea urchins: both groups have an extensive past diversity and only survive today through a smaller sub-group that appeared later and whose anatomy is sometimes highly derived in comparison to their extinct relatives. The slide also comprise several extinct scorpions from the Paleozoic: Palaeophonus caledonicus, Eramoscorpius brucensis, Proscorpius osborni, Waeringoscorpio hefteri, Pulmonoscorpius kirktonensis, Compsoscorpius buthiformis (only species here from the modern orthosternian scorpions), Cyclophthalmus senior For the few things that can be used without saying nonsense, it’s at least clear that E. brucensis is far from the Orthosterni (modern scorpions): the huge lateral eyes are common in early scorpions, as the lack of a pre-oral chamber. This puts this species among the first branchings of scorpions’ evolution, with a gap of at least 150 million years between this species and the birth of the earliest ancestor of all modern scorpions. But, lucky us, phylogeny isn’t that vital to understand why Eramoscorpius brucensis is important for scorpion early evolution and why this species isn’t at the base of the scorpions’ phylogeny. The slide also showcase a simplified siagram of scorpion evolution, starting as the broader group "Scorpionida", from which several broad groups emerges one after another (Paleoscorpiones first, than true scorpions with the Mesocorpionina group, and finally Neoscorpionina, the group comprising the current scorpions (Orthosterni).
February 13, 2026 at 4:25 PM
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amypteride.bsky.social
What makes Eramoscorpius really special is how modern its legs look while still being one of the oldest scorpions, hinting to a more complex story on how scorpions transitionned from water to land (+paleoart auto feedback & refs)

Thank you for reading & I’ll see you on the next #Cheliceratime!
4/4
What really sets apart this scorpion from all the other silurian scorpions is the tip of its fourth legs. Silurian scorpions tend to have pointy legs or to walk on the tip of the last leg’s part, but not E. brucensis. Its last leg’s part, the tarsus, fully touched the ground, just like how modern scorpion’s legs bend at this joint to be fully in contact with the ground. It can seems like it’s nothing, but it completely changes how the animal walk, giving it a wider walking base (a common trend among terrestrial arthropods), way more stable than the digitigrade stance of the other scorpions of this time. All of these features, from a modern-like scorpion stance combined with weaker leg support, to different fodd processing, another way of breathing, make this species really important to scorpion evolution, showing a clear but still shaky leap to a more terrestrial life style. Eramoscorpius brucensis may have been a bit clumsy on land, not going as fast as our modern species, and may even have been very close to water if needed. The possibility of semi-aquatic scorpions at the beginning of the group’s history has been a long theorized hypothesis (no link to eurypterids, scorpions are closer to spiders or amblypygids). E. brucensis, as one of the most ancient known scorpions, hints to an unknown history of how scorpions transitioned from water to land that could have happened earlier & faster than previously thought. Is this paleoart accurate ? The morphology is taken straight out of the 2019's description, couldn’t be more on point! The sting/telson may be a bit too oriented forward, I was out of place on the sheet The tarsi aren’t all equal in their ground support, the fourth leg is the most modified one for terrestrial locomotion REFERENCES · Dunlop J.A. & Garwood R.J., 2024. A review of fossil scorpion higher systematics. PeerJ 12, article e18557, 50 pp. • Dunlop J.A. & Penney D., 2012. Fossil Arachnids. Monograph Series Vol.2, Siri Scientific Press. 192 pp. · Haug C., Wagner P. & Haug J.T., 2019. The evolutionary history of body organisation in the lineage towards modern scorpions. Bulletin of Geosciences 94(4), p. 389–408. · Santibáñez-López C.E., Aharon S., Ballesteros J.A., Gainett G., Baker C.M., González-Santillán E., Harvey M.S., Hassan M.K., Abu Almaaty A.H., Aldeyarbi S.M., Monod L., Ojanguren-Affilastro A., Pinto-da-Rocha R., Zvik Y., Gavish-Regev E. & Sharma P.P., 2022. Phylogenomics of Scorpions Reveal Contemporaneous Diversification of Scorpion Mammalian Predators and Mammal-Active Sodium Channel Toxins. Systematic Biology 71, p. 1281–1289. · Waddington J., Rudkin D.M. & Dunlop J.A., 2015. A new mid-Silurian aquatic scorpion—one step closer to land? Biology Letters 11, article 20140815, 4 pp. Dunlop J. A., Penney D. & Jekel D. 2023. A summary list of fossil spiders and their relatives. In World Spider Catalog. Natural History Museum Bern, online at http://wsc.nmbe.ch, version 23.5. Colorado Plateau Geosystems Inc., 2023 & 2025. North America & Global Series. In DeepTimeMaps . Online at https://deeptimemaps.com/map-lists-thumbnails/global-series/
February 13, 2026 at 4:25 PM
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mariolanzas.bsky.social
THERIZINOSAURIA, from the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y77U... dedicated to this lineage of dinosaurs #therizinosauria #therizinosaurus #falcarius #paleoart #dinosaurs
February 12, 2026 at 10:25 AM
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sumipigeon.bsky.social
春の気配

#illustration #art #pigeonsky
#birb #鳩
首のうしろを掻くドバトのイラスト
February 12, 2026 at 1:05 AM
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jhemiptera.bsky.social
#Paleoart commissions are always open.

I have experience working on various books and papers, with the most notable artwork being the cover of the 4th issue of Volume 44 of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Feel free to contact me!
January 17, 2026 at 3:26 AM
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patrlynch1.bsky.social
My illustration of one of the most iconic keystone species of the U.S. Atlantic Coast, the Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus, female), or "beautiful, savory swimmer."
🧪🌿🌎🐡 #wildlife #scicomm #sciviz #wildlifeart #illustration #scientificillustration #natureart #sciviz #scicomm #crabs #BlueCrab
Detailed illustration of a female Blue Crab, as seen from above.
February 12, 2026 at 2:34 PM