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fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
@fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
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fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
The University of Queensland has this frieze, and several carvings all around the Great Court area.
A carved sandstone frieze from the 1950s depicting a forest scene with what appears to be a Triceratops, two Rhamphorhynchus-like pterosaurs, two small creatures (possibly mammals?), a Stegosaurus, two Archaeopteryx-like birds, a temnospondyl amphibian, and two sauropods. All of these are plausibly Jurassic, except for the Triceratops, so I'm not sure where that came from. Stegosaurus and Triceratops are North American, and Archaeopteryx is European, but sauropods, temnospondyls, and distant relatives of Stegosaurus are all found in Australia.
October 9, 2025 at 5:38 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science has something like a dozen elves hidden in murals around the museum, and people go on scavenger hunts to find them...
Ornithomimus in one of the dinosaur exhibit murals. Close-up on the Ornithomimus. There is an elf riding on its back.
September 29, 2025 at 4:03 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
For whatever reason, photos of hummingbirds perched (absolutely gorgeous, by the way!) always remind me of this:
Post reading, "Remembering that time in grade school when my advisor, a great ornithologist, got a random call: drunk guy, bar noises in background: IS THIS THE BIRD PROFESSOR? my advisor: um.. yes? drunk guy: DO HUMMINGBIRDS HAVE FEET? my advisor: ...yes *wild cheering over phone from bar*"
September 19, 2025 at 1:56 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Duck of the Day #5

Argentine Blue Duck / Lake Duck
Oxyura vittata

Like many other oryurines, lake ducks have blue bills and stiff tails. They are actually more closely related to swans and geese than to ducks like mallards. Their intromittent organ (penis) is about as long as their whole body.
Breeding male. This duck has a chestnut-brown body with a black head and tail, and a blue bill. It closely resembles other members of Oxyura, such as the ruddy duck (O. jamaicensis) and Andean duck (O. ferruginea) except that lake duck males don't have white patches on their heads. The range of the lake duck overlaps with the Andean duck, but lake ducks are generally found further more prominently in the lowlands near the lower portion of South America. Image credit: Dude Daniels A female lake duck. Like females of many duck species, this one is much drabber than the male. Its body feathers are mostly gray and brown and have a little more texture to allow them to better camouflage. The tail is still dark and made of stiff feathers (oxyurines are often called stiff-tailed ducks). There is a pale stripe under the eye, and the bill is dark gray. I don't think this image is distorted or stretched -- these ducks just kind of look like that. They're short little guys. Image Credit: Ariel Cabrera Foix A non-breeding male lake duck. Colorful birds are often most colorful during the breeding season, when their brilliant colors help them find mates and maintain social status. For the rest of the year, many species adopt less conspicuous coloration that is more effective camouflage, and ducks are no different. Many male ducks may be mistaken for females outside of the breeding season. In the case of the lake duck, the males mostly lose the bright blue bill coloration, but don't necessarily adopt a more female-like coloration. The duck in this picture is a similar brown with a black head and tail to the first image, except that it has a mottled black and gray bill with faint hints of blue. Image Credit: Santiago Carvalho I know you wanted to see it, so here's the penis! The image depicts a grayish-brown male with a black head and blue bill. The penis is visible as a long coiled and wrinkly tube the length of the rest of the animal. Although we often call it a penis, this structure is more formally called the intromittent organ and is a bit different than that of mammalian penises. One major difference is that ducks only have them for a few weeks out of the year. Their organ doesn't fall off; it is made from an extension of cloaca lining, so it simply regresses to a much smaller size outside of the breeding season. They then re-grow it at the start of the next breeding season. Why the long penis? We don't know for sure, but it may have originated in conjunction with the promiscuity and sexual aggressiveness of anseriforms. Most birds don't have anything like this, but ducks and their relatives have evolved the longest and most complex intromittent organ of any known bird (of which, the lake duck's is the longest). The intromittent organ of ducks often has bristles or spines that can scrape off sperm from inside the cloaca, which gives the male a better likelihood of fertilizing the eggs. Female ducks often have long, elaborate vaginal canals that give them more control over which male's sperm can fertilize their eggs. Intersexual competition between males and females, and intrasexual competition between males, likely drives the evolution of diverse intromittent organ shapes in anseriforms. And if spines to scrape off sperm sounds strange, I have a secret to tell you: humans have this sort of thing too! Our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, actually have simple pointed penises. The mushroom-shaped penis tip of humans (which has a little fringe of bumps called the coronal ridge) can scrape semen out of the vagina to give improved odds of the penis-haver being the one to fertilize the egg. Image Credits: McCraken et al. 2001
August 30, 2025 at 3:04 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Duck of the Day #4

Torrent Duck
Merganetta armata

An Andean shelduck, the torrent duck is found near well-oxygenated rapids of mountain streams where it dives into the fast-moving water to feed on insect larvae. They can swim upstream even in a rough current, but are relatively weak fliers.
Male and female torrent duck pair on a rock above a churning pit of water in Peru. These are striking birds, with well-defined feathers and reddish-orange bills. The male has a white head with black streaks. The female has a mostly black head with reddish-brown cheeks and belly. The patterning varies a bit by subspecies and polymorph. Unlike more social ducks, torrent ducks are highly territorial and pairs like this one will defend their territory aggressively from other torrent ducks. I wonder if that's because of the limited food availability in their habitat. Image credit: Timo Mitzen A male Ecuadorean torrent duck. From this front view, you can see the beautiful red feet. The webbing between their toes is black. The feathers of the duck are mostly brown or gray, but with lovely black streaks throughout. The bill is bright red with hints of black, and the head is black and white like in the previous photo. Image Credit: Andres Vasquez Noboa Female and hatchling torrent ducks. There are two hatchlings, both mottled pale gray and dusky brown. They have gray bills and feet, unlike the bright red of their mother. The adult duck's breast feathers are a rich chestnut brown and her head is a matte black. These ducks are wet, so the light hits their feathers a bit differently than in the previous pictures. Image Credits: Jeremiah Trimble A torrent duck casually walking along the shallow part of some river rapids. This is a female, probably from a different subspecies or polymorph than the previous photographs. This photo was taken in Ecuador, according to its photographer. This duck has more reddish-brown on its body, including most of its face. It carries itself with a low profile, holding its head more horizontal, in-line with the rest of its body. Image Credits: Andres Vasquez Noboa
August 21, 2025 at 4:40 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Not the same species, but here's what a screamer's carpometacarpus (wrist bone) looks like. They are one of many groups of anseriforms that have evolved wing spurs to use as weapons. In life, these spurs are covered in keratin.
Two carpometacarpi from a related species, the northern screamer (Chauna chavaria). There are typically two spurs, the more distal of which is smaller (proximal is down in this image). However, there is a lot of variation in the size and sharpness of the spurs, even within the same individual. Screamers use these spurs in combat with other screamers. Image Credit: Hume and Steel 2013
August 20, 2025 at 3:42 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Duck of the Day #3

Horned Screamer
Anhima cornuta

Doesn't look like a duck? Fair. And yet, South American screamers are the earliest branching Anseriformes. They're semiaquatic and have a number of duck-like traits -- though the rod-like "horn" of collagen in the horned screamer isn't one of them!
A horned screamer in flight. It is a strange-looking bird, similar to a grouse or other ground fowl in appearance, with a bulky body and a small head. Its bill is pointed and slightly hooked, similar to that of a chicken. Its feathers are mostly black, though it has a white belly and white speckling on its neck. Its eye is wide and yellow, adding to the goofy appearance. The wings are large and blunt, and if you look closely, you can see a long spine emerging near the wrist -- this is the bird's wing spur. Its "horn," which is actually a long, thin protrusion of connective tissue, is just barely visible against the sky. Image credit: Joshua Vandermeulen Two horned screamers walking along what looks to be a sandy shore. Both are posed in a similar way, lifting up their massive feet. You can see in this photo that their feet aren't webbed the same way ducks' are -- they have a little bit of webbing at the base, but are otherwise mostly open. Screamers have disproportionately long toes and feet a bit more similar to those of wading birds like herons. The horn on the left screamer is drooping. The horns are attached to the skull at their base, but are fairly mobile and somewhat flexible, so sometimes they bob around when the animals move their heads. Image Credit: Bradley Hacker A fluffy gray hatchling horned screamer. It hasn't grown its horn yet. I love this thing. Image Credit: Cullen Hanks Two beautiful horned screamers showing off their horns. The horns don't seem to be used for combat, not would they be especially effective for it (imagine taping a pencil to your forehead and you'd have something that looks and acts somewhat similar). The purpose of the structure hasn't been heavily studied to my knowledge, but it appears to be one of many elaborate growths evolved by birds that may have a social and/or sexual function for communication and attracting mates. Both male and female adults have them, and they tend to grow larger in older individuals, though they are also fairly fragile and sometimes the tips break off. No other bird seems to have anything quite like this structure. Image Credit: Jess Findlay
August 20, 2025 at 3:42 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Duck of the Day #2 is actually a goose!

Snow Goose
Anser (sometimes Chen) caerulescens

A North American goose with gray and white polymorphs, the snow goose is famous for gathering and migrating in massive flocks, especially in their arctic breeding grounds.
A white morph snow goose. Image credit: Brad Imhoff A white morph snow goose landing or taking off, with many more geese visible in the background. Image credit: Manjithkaini Massive flock of snow geese. If you encounter snow geese in their migratory or wintering ranges, this is likely what you'll see; this image is not from their Arctic breeding grounds, but from Missouri. Image credit: Marky Mutchler Adult gray (left) and white (right) morphs in flight. Image credit: Martina Nordstrand
July 2, 2025 at 4:26 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Duck of the Day #1:

Spotted Whistling-Duck
Dendrocygna guttata

D. guttata is an Indonesian/North Sahul species of whistling duck, a genus of long-legged, early-diverging anseriforms (ducks and geese). Mallards and swans are actually more closely related to each other than to these birds!
Spotted whistling duck standing on grass. This picture gives a good demonstration of what makes this group of ducks unusual: their relatively long legs and upright-held bodies. Image credit: Dick Daniels A spotted whistling duck on a piece of wood, making good on its scientific name (Dendrocygna means tree swan). Image credit: Ian Davies A group of spotted whistling ducks swimming. Image credit: Ged Tranter
July 1, 2025 at 4:33 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
More semi-slugs.
Amphibulima patula Same species as before, I just wanted to include this one because it looks even fatter. He's too fat to fit in his home. It's very cute, I want to see these guys in something like Star Trek or Dr. Who. Image credit: Father A.J. Sanchez Munoz A. Cucullarion parkini B. Cucullarion albimaculosum C. Peloparion helenae D. Ubiquitarion iridis A series of semi-slugs from a scientific paper. The top left (A) is brown and mostly looks like a slug with a humped back. The bottom left (B) is mottled black and white and has a small nail-like shell covering its back, but also looks very slug-like. C (top right) is brown and looks much like a snail with a small shell. D (bottom left) is very intermediary, a yellowish semi-slug with a black stripe along its body and a rounded shell partially encased in skin. Image credit: G. Millen, A. Moussalli, Isabel HymanIrantzu de la Iglesia Lamborena, Frank Köhler Amphibulima depressa Also a very good semi-slug, it is dark brown and has the dinkiest shell. This slug is also oddly-proportioned, with a long front half and short back half, making it look very much like a snail that had to settle for the cheapest home it could find. It reminds me of when people get the smallest camping equipment they can find, thinking it'll be nice and portable, only to use it for the first time in the field and realize they have made a terrible mistake. Image credit: Claudine and Pierre Guezennec Helicarion mastersi Very classic semi-slug, looks like a slug holding a small snail shell on its back. The shell is partially encased in the semi-slug's pinkish skin, but because of the angle of the light, you can see the outline of the shell and its whorls very clearly. Image credit: Peter Woodard
June 28, 2025 at 6:12 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Today I discovered semi-slugs! Snails and slugs aren't separate taxa on their own; snails are just gastropods with coiled shells, and "slug" is what we call the species that have lost their shells. Snails that have tiny shells too small to fit inside are called semi-slugs.
Semilimax pyrenaicus Brown semi-slug that looks much like a slug, but has a small brown oyster-like shell partially enclosed in skin. Image credit: Roy Anderson Parmarion martensi Gray animal that looks a lot like a slug, but a tiny glimpse of its copper shell, nearly enclosed in skin, is visible on its back. Image credit: Bernard Dupont Insulivitrina solemi Actually kind of pretty with dark and light stripes and a cream-colored shell, this semi-slug looks much more like a typical snail, but its coiled shell is clearly very small and there's a flap of skin covering the front part of it. Image credit: Cornelis J.P.J. Margry and Wijnand Heitmans Amphibulima patula I love this guy, he looks kinda fat. This semi-slug is much more like a typical snail than most of them, but its shell is splayed out and fairly small relative to its body. The shell is a typical brown, but the body of the snail is kind of a pretty yellow and cream color. Image credit: Jeffrey W. Lotz
June 28, 2025 at 6:12 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
When I was a kid in the early 2000s, my dad had refdesk set up as the home page for our internet. It was a site that listed a massive amount of links to news articles and useful websites.

Anyway, it apparently still exists and hasn't updated its format since at least 2005. Good resource still.
Refdesk's main page a few mintues ago, talking about Trump tariffs, the recent spending bill, the war in Ukraine, etc. It's fact of the day is "A cyberchondriac is someone who scours the Internet looking for details of their illnesses." The screen is mostly boxes arranged in three columns with yellow bands at the top, and a logo for the site that is made of rectangles meant to look like books. The logo gives distinctly 1990s vibes. A screenshot from the Wayback Machine of Refdesk's main page on August 29th, 2005. It looks virtually unchanged. Its main news topics are about gas prices, the Iraq war, and Hurricane Katrina. This was the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The site added additional links related to storm resources and hurricane relief that it didn't have a few days earlier.
May 24, 2025 at 5:05 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
The state includes eight congressional districts, each with about 777,000 people living there.
District 1: Much of the northern & downtown city of St. Louis (state’s 2nd largest population center and major historic city), surrounding neighborhoods District 2: Southern St. Louis & surrounding neighborhoods, St. Louis western suburbs, rural region to the west of St. Louis District 3: Suburbs north of St. Louis, small towns and rural area in Central Missouri, rural area encompassing District 2, southern half of the city of Columbia (4th largest population center, college town) District 4: Rural areas and small towns in Western Missouri, much of the lakes & Western State Parks region, northern half of Columbia District 5: Missouri portion of Kansas City (1st largest population center in the state), including suburbs of Independence (5th largest population center and historic city) and Lee’s Summit (6th largest population center) District 6: Northern rural region of the state, northern suburbs of Kansas City District 7: Southwestern corner of the state, including city of Springfield (3rd largest population center) District 8: South-Central and Southeastern corner of the state, including small towns, rural area, and Eastern State Parks
May 23, 2025 at 11:11 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
This is what Bowling Green looks like today.

#NoKings
2024 photo of the Bowling Green park. The fence is there, but no statue. Photo by Justin Watral, Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical Damaged fence post where the symbols of the Crown were apparently sawed off by the mob. Photo by OneGoodDad, New York City’s Bowling Green Fence Tells a Historical Story Another view of one of the damaged fenceposts. The thicker sections that appear like they would have held a bauble look like their tops are missing; the rest of the fence is intact. Photo by OneGoodDad, New York City’s Bowling Green Fence Tells a Historical Story A plaque denoting the site. It reads: "Landmarks of New York, Bowling Green Fence. Erected by the common council in 1771, this fence surrounds New York's earliest park. The park was leased in 1733 for use as a bowling green at a rental of one peppercorn a year. Patriots, who in in 1776 destroyed an equestrian statue of George III which stood here, are said to have removed the crowns which capped the fence posts but the fence itself remains. Plaque erected by the New York Community Trust." Photo by Another Believer, retrieved from Wikipedia.
April 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
They toppled the statue at Bowling Green and pried off the crowns on the borders of the fence. The statue was made of lead, so they melted it into musket balls for the Revolutionary War.
Pulling Down the Statue of George III at Bowling Green, 9 July 1776, by William Walcutt, 1854. A dynamic and chaotic painting of a crowd, some dressed fancy-like, pulling the statue down. The statue is mid-topple and some people are pushing it from the bottom with long sticks. A few people are climbing over the fence. One person is raising what appears to be either an axe or a sledgehammer in anticipation of what the crowd will do with the statue once it falls. It is a very good painting. Image from page 216 of a book with a ridiculously long title: "Historical collections of the state of New York; being a general collection of the most interesting facts, biographical sketches, varied descriptions, &c. relating to the past and present; with geographical descriptions of the counties, cities, and principal villages, throughout the state. Illustrated by numerous engravings." by John W. Barber, 1851 -- his punctuation, not mine. The engraving depicts a group of colonists waving their hats and pulling on a rope that is tied around ol' Georgie's neck. One man is standing precariously on some of the debris around the site, about to bop the statue with a massive hammer. Newspaper clipping archived by the Litchfield Historical Society. The caption below the image reads, "Celebration of Independence/At New York in 1776 At this celebration the statue of George III was demolished - being composed of Lead it was covered into Musket Balls." The image follows a familiar trend of a group of people happily waving their arms, many of them holding hats, as the rest pull the statue down with a rope. The rope is tied around King George's neck; he (George) seems quite perplexed by what is happening to him. There are soldiers watching the whole affair stoically. Presumably the soldiers are from the colonies, but I like to think they are redcoats who were unprepared to see an idol of their sovereign is yeeted off its plinth, so they're just standing there, gobsmacked. The Sons of Liberty pulling down the statue of King George III at the Bowling Green, New York, on the night of 9 July 1776, by Felix O. C. Darley, 1877. We really like depicting this moment, don't we? I wonder why. This engraving is much like the others, but has some nice additions, like the man in the foreground waving his hat in one hand and his cane in the other, another man about to throw either a rock or a tomato at the statue, and a third who looks like he's going to kneecap the horse with a hammer.
April 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
In 1770, the British government erected a gilded statue of King George III in New York City as a show of power to the restless colonies.

On July 9th, 1776, George Washington read the Declaration of Independence at City Hall. Afterward, a mob of colonists marched down Broadway with ropes and saws.
Equestrian Statue of King George III, Bowling Green, New York City, painting from circa 1912 from the Estate of Charles M. Lefferts. The painting depicts a statue of a man in Roman garb atop a horse on a tall plinth. I'm sure nothing bad will happen to it.
April 14, 2025 at 5:59 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
What I love about this is that if you didn't know the fossil, you would probably think the teeth were the most inaccurate part of the reconstruction. And yet.
March 14, 2025 at 2:54 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
I am limited in what I can give in these trying times, but I can offer the catharsis of this comic where Hellboy punches a Nazi in the face.
Panel 1: An old man says, "I was there." He is dressed in a uniform with Nazi symbols on it. Panel 2: Close-up on a medal of an eagle holding a swastika. I have blocked out the actual swastika out of respect for those who have seen enough of them lately. We all know what it is already, and I figure that anyone who wants to see a swastika right now should instead get a gray circle with the word "swastika" written in comic sans. Panel 3: Hellboy sees the swastika. He doesn't like it. Panel 4: Hellboy WOKS the man with his left hand (the small one, cuz Nazis are weak) and shouts "NAZI!" at him. I am happy to report that the Nazi dies a few pages later.
January 20, 2025 at 11:48 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
Maybe they were bragging about the size of the deer they had brought down, like the 18th-century farm estate owners were with their rectangular livestock paintings.
December 6, 2024 at 5:33 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
This must be what leatherback sea turtles are like to jellyfish.
November 17, 2024 at 3:21 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
For context, this is what he normally looks like.

10/10, great game.
A much more serious-looking Barry the Beardless Dwarf.
November 11, 2024 at 11:29 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
I started playing Dragon Age: Origins with some friends the other night, and I tried really, really hard not to make a silly character. But for some reason, they let you customize your in-game avatar, and I'm simply not that strong.

Anywho, this is now permanently in the corner of my game screen.
Barry the Beardless Dwarf, looking happy at something off-screen in the upper right corner. Or possibly just looking aimlessly happy. It took me and my friends about an hour of gameplay to realize I'd accidentally made his name a pun.
November 11, 2024 at 11:29 PM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
In fact, the only bird I could find that grows anything similar is the Lesser adjutant (Leptoptilos javanicus), a bird I first learned about today. Lesser adjutants are storks more distantly related to the wood stork. They grow similar keratinous frontal plates as adults.
Head of a lesser adjutant stork. It has a long straight bill, gray eyes, a yellow-tan forehead, pink cheeks, and a tannish neck. Image: Joel Sartore Close-up of the head of the lesser adjutant. There is a bone-colored keratinous plate on the forehead of the bird. Credit: Airubon Full body of a lesser adjutant. This one has a more yellowish neck, which seems to be more typical based on the pictures I've seen. Image credit: Irothu
November 9, 2024 at 1:13 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
The plates are largely unique to wood storks. Other members of Mycteria have feathered necks and lack any plates at all.
Yellow-billed stork, Mycteria ibis. Image: Donald Macauley
November 9, 2024 at 1:13 AM
fossilfamilytree.bsky.social
These scale-like plates are formed from thickened keratin on the featherless head. However, I haven't found any information about why the storks have these. The plates are absent in younger animals and develop as the birds age.
Head of an adult wood stork, showing the many plates on the head. Image: Alec Hopping Hatchling wood stork. It has a shorter bill than the adults, a gray face and forehead, and white plumage. The neck is covered in feathers, unlike in the adult. Image: S. K. Jones Image: Subadult wood stork. It looks much like the adult, except it has a brown, feathered neck, and a black face and forehead without any apparent frontal plate. Image: Jason Denesevich
November 9, 2024 at 1:13 AM