Brandon Peecook
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gondwannabe.bsky.social
Brandon Peecook
@gondwannabe.bsky.social
600 followers 260 following 80 posts
Paleontologist 🦴 / Curator 🏛 Idaho Museum of Natural History / Associate Prof 👨🏻‍🏫 Biological Sciences Idaho State University 🐅 Biodiversity Superfan 🌍🦚🦉🦩🦖🦕🐊🐢🐍🐋🦬🦒🦇🦫🦣🐠🐡🦈🐝🐞🦗🦞🕷🪱🦑🐌🪸🍄🌲🌴🌾🌻
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gondwannabe.bsky.social
I made a run to the Field Museum this week and finally saw the Chicago Archaeopteryx.
Just wow, it’s a stunner. And the exhibit is a beauty! 🪶 👀🤩
#FossilFriday
October 31, 2025 at 1:30 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Been waiting for the Nanotyrannus news to drop; and checked my phone right when I was in the perfect company 🦖!
Two buds with a Chicago connection
October 30, 2025 at 5:27 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Big week at the @imnh208.bsky.social as one of our *best* Bison latifrons 🤩 🦬 was packed for a long term loan to the Smithsonian in DC! #FossilFriday Named “Junior” btw. 👀 Look for this Idaho treasure next summer. Thanks @mosasaurologist.bsky.social!
Huge brown Bos “Bison” latifrons skull surrounded by foam and wooden framing. Bos “Bison” latifrons skull with foam and tin foil stuck into its eyes and nostrils. Safety first! Not a white spaceship prototype, but an upside down giant Ice Age bison skull in its new clamshell jacket. Dressed for travel!
October 17, 2025 at 6:18 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
I call this piece “Triassic still life”
#FossilFriday
October 10, 2025 at 3:13 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
#FossilFriday and the Peecook lab is out in the Pleistocene of Idaho making some new friends!
🦬🐪🦥 @garyonyx-mcgoy.bsky.social @imnh208.bsky.social @idahostateucose.bsky.social
Group selfie on an Idaho beach: wide sandy expanse and blue skies. Sloth vertebra in the foreground!
October 3, 2025 at 8:17 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Slightly underside torso view of Montana’s Tyrannosaurus rex (MOR 980) at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT. Lots of gastralia, knees and tight pectoral girdle coming at ya. Skeleton is a dark brown, with reconstructed areas in caramel color.
February 23, 2025 at 3:12 AM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
The #Permian has long documented the transition of the synapsid line, from Carboniferous early amniotes to Triassic mammliaforms & cynodonts.

Not so much for reptiles, but Milleropsis is showing us quite a bit! 👂🦎🐢🐊🦉

Enjoy this wonderful reconstruction by the incomparable @serpenillus.bsky.social
Milleropsis, a stem reptile that looks pretty "lizard-like" alongside some dropped Glossopteris leaves. The animal is transitions from bright green to hues of brown anteroposteriorly, with longitudinal stripes of light yellow, and a band of orange.
January 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
The one and only Stegosaurus for #FossilFriday at the Field Museum. I’ve always been struck by the long femora 🦴 on these animals. #notfast

Behind it is a real treasure: a near 98 year old mural 🖼️ by Charles Knight.
Skeleton of stegosaurus in left lateral view; lit so that the alternating plates contrast nicely. Mural is behind and shows an older representation (1927) of the animal’s appearance. Other thyreophoran content includes some ankylosaur specimens to the lower right.
December 27, 2024 at 3:11 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
It’s the deer time of year 🦌 ❄️

This is Cervalces at the @romtoronto.bsky.social, a genus of moose 🫎 that sleighs.
#FossilFriday
Brown skeleton of the moose Cervalces scotti of Pleistocene North America mounted at a trot. The palmate antlers have a narrow base but flare in separate directions. There is an American mastodon behind it, and a hint of larger Eurasian deer cousins on the far wall. The ridiculous antlers of Cervalces, with three large sweeping palms. The giant beaver Castoroides is in front.
December 20, 2024 at 5:06 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
The skull was excavated by @gpwilson11.bsky.social’s crew (led by Dave DeMar) and amazingly prepped on a homemade rotisserie by Burke pros! ⛏️ 🐓

A joy of my career was helping excavate and then watching the anatomy emerge from the boulder.
Enjoy these behind-the-scenes photos! 🦖 🤩 #FossilFriday
Yours truly with the skull in the ground in eastern Montana. This is the right posterior skull upside down, it’s a slightly darker brown hourglass shape in light brown sandstone. The outrageously beautiful chocolate colored bone of the unmistakable Tyrannosaurus in right lateral view. Premaxillae slightly out of position here. You can see the light brown sandstone, the white rind of the plaster jacket, and the red metal of the rotisserie used to rotate the specimen safely during prep. Ventral view of the skull on the rotisserie, showing the palate still in matrix. Several teeth have broken away (safely) and will be reattached. The posterior widening of the skull for the large jaw muscles is particularly clear. My favorite view of the skull during prep: looking along the snout from slightly above. Same chocolate bone and tan sandstone. The rugose nasals and bones around the eye let us imagine the craggy and keratinous covering of this individual. This is my favorite view because it’s the easiest one to imagine the eye flicking toward you, the nostrils flaring, and low noise beginning… 😇
December 13, 2024 at 5:19 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
#FossilFriday: one of the most complete (stapes in place!) skulls of Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tufts-Love rex on display at the @burkemuseum.bsky.social in Seattle.
🦖
It’s a beauty!
December 13, 2024 at 4:46 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

20/20 The Age of Wonder
🪐🎈⚓️🗺️🔭👩🏾‍⚕️⚗️🧪
by Richard Holmes
December 10, 2024 at 6:43 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

19/20 Monster of God
🐊 🐻 🐯 🦈
by David Quammen
December 9, 2024 at 6:04 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

18/20 Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
December 8, 2024 at 4:28 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

17/20 Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
December 8, 2024 at 2:23 AM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
“New” fossils for #FossilFriday: this is an impressive brontothere thoracic vert I found low in the White River Formation of Wyoming. The neural spine is so long!

Brontotheres might look like rhinos 🦏 , and the are perissodactyls, but last I understood they were on the horse stem! 🐴
A large fossil vertebra in the ground. The round centrum is at the bottom, with a long long neural spine extending upward. Skeleton of the brontothere Megacerops at the Smithsonian in right lateral view. The high spines of the shoulder region stand out. From Wikipedia.
December 6, 2024 at 9:16 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge
#FossilFriday

16/20 The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker 🦕
December 6, 2024 at 5:32 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

15/20 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
December 6, 2024 at 1:04 AM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

14/20 A History of the Modern World by Palmer, Colton, Kramer
December 4, 2024 at 5:43 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

13/20 The Agony and the Ecstasy 🎨 by Irving Stone
December 3, 2024 at 11:22 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

12/20 Braiding Sweetgrass 🌾🪷🌼🌲 by Robin Wall Kimmerer
December 2, 2024 at 6:23 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

11/20 Seveneves 🌙💥💫 by Neal Stephenson
December 1, 2024 at 6:03 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
I’ve already been inspo’d so jumping on board.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

10/20 Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown 😃😔😠♥️
November 30, 2024 at 6:24 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge

9/20 The Essential Rumi by Coleman Barks (& Rumi)
November 29, 2024 at 10:37 PM
gondwannabe.bsky.social
A gorgon turned to stone for #FossilFriday.

This is the forever smile of Gorgonops, a biostratigraphically important mammal-cousin from the early late #Permian of the mid-Zambezi Basin, #Zambia. 🇿🇲
Toothy smile of the gorgonopsian therapsid Gorgonops facing to the right. The elongated saber tooth is stark against rock remaining on the fossil. Toothy smile of the gorgonopsian therapsid Gorgonops facing to the left. The elongated saber tooth and a few incisors are stark against rock remaining on the fossil.
November 29, 2024 at 5:13 PM