Russell Garwood
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russellgarwood.co.uk
Russell Garwood
@russellgarwood.co.uk
1.7K followers 800 following 870 posts
I do science with fossils, X-rays and computers at the Unviersity of Manchester and Natural History Museum, UK. Working at Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin until September '25. Run the Palaeontological Association web systems.

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Me reading any statement about chelicerate phylogeny not couched in uncertainty:

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Samuel Johnson meme - top panel, johnson reading a book avidly, lower, him looking disconcerted
September 16, 2025 at 10:50 AM
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Well done Manchester. Don't change 🫡
An EU flag in Manchester city centre that has been put up in response to all the St George's cross flags appearing across the UK.
September 15, 2025 at 11:08 AM
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At the end of my fellowship in Berlin - me completing the character coding for my arachnid phylogeny v.s. me actually looking at the tree

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A two panel meme - the first "I am a genius" with a happy anime face, the second, "Oh no"
September 1, 2025 at 4:35 PM
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Also, I think it's worth highlighting just how much love went into these figures: all are stippled. As is clearer in the close up of a claw below, all the shading you see is the result of ?tens of thousands of individual, 0.1 mm points hand drawn with a Rotring pen 🤯
A close up of a scorpion claw from the image I posted before showing that the thing is shaded with hundreds of individual points
August 22, 2025 at 1:24 PM
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For #FossilFriday here's some gorgeous fossil scorpions - four reconstructions of species spanning 200 million years by my very talented colleague Jason Dunlop at @mfnberlin.bsky.social. Far left of these four is Palaeophonus, also shown in the photo and an interprative drawing below.

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
Reconstructions of four fossil scorpions - black and white stippled drawings of scorpions becoming increasingly moderm looking towards the right. Original caption: From left to right are shown: the Silurian Palaeophonus, of note are leg proportions and digitigrade stance; Silurian Proscorpius, the carapace of which bore both median and compound lateral eyes; Lower Carboniferous Pulmonoscorpius, which for which there is unequivocal evidence of book lungs; and Upper Carboniferous Compsosorpius, which is an early representative of the orthosternous scorpions. A photo of Palaeophonus - a dark brown smudge on a rock. It's quite underwhelming really. On the right is an interprative drawing which makes it a little clearer. Original caption: Palaeophonus caledonicus Hunter, 1886 (Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, UK) from the mid-Silurian (Llandovery to Wenlock) of Lesmahagow, Scotland, UK, image courtesy of Lyndsay C. Jess, and by permission of East Ayrshire Council/East Ayrshire Leisure Trust, and a reconstruction from Pocock (1901).
August 22, 2025 at 1:09 PM
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Thanks both - a slight delay while I figured out rwty (which is a great package!). But traces seem to look OK to my, admittedly poorly trained, eye (small burnin removed, traces up to point of crash):
August 16, 2025 at 3:43 PM
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Phylo chums: I am doing a morphological clock analysis, and am getting this error after a few hours run time. Obviously something to do with the tree prior.

Anyone have any guidance on how to find out what? .con.tre at this point looks fine.

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August 15, 2025 at 1:07 PM
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Rosa/Röschen and Salomon Paskusz last lived by choice on what is now Erich-Weinert-Straße, Prenzlauerberg. Rosa was born 1867 in East Frisia (Saxony). By 1906 she was living in Berlin: we know because she married there a man called Adolf Michaelis. They had a daughter, Irma, that year.
Two stolperstein, memorialising Salomon annd Roschen Paskusz - small brass squares in a paved street An image of a tall, white building, on a tree lined street. It has a grey door, balconies and tall windows
August 10, 2025 at 1:34 PM
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This is handily depicted in this tree - it could go in the red shaded areas - and Metacoleoptera includes all living beetles.
A phylogenetic tree showing a bunch of different taxa, and where this fossil might sit. Original caption: Phylogenetic position of †Coleopsis archaica (red) based on apomorphies visible in the fossil re-described here. †Tshekardocoleidae is designated as potentially non-monophyletic, due to the absence of apomorphic characters. The clade Metacoleoptera (Boudinot et al. 2022) includes all extant beetles and the stem group taxa except for †Tshekardocoleidae, †Permocupedidae and †Coleopsis archaica.
August 1, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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Beetles are the most speciose animal order: 25% of described animal species are beetles. Everything has to start somewhere, though, and for #FossilFriday, here is the earliest known 'beetle' - the 297 million year old Coleopsis, found in Freisen (Saarland, Germany).

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
A photograph of a fossil insect in a rock. The rock is beige fossil black, and kinda patchy in colour. It has a head towaerds the top, and the majority of the fossil is two easy to spot wing cases, which is how we know this little dude(tte) is a beetle.
August 1, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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Our AWS servers are dead, domains cleaned, and our GitHub repository has been archived.

Le site est mort, vive le site!
A screenshot of the "archive repository" screen on GitHub, showing the archive screen for the repo ThePalaeontologicalAssociation/palass
July 28, 2025 at 2:35 PM
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It's #FossilFriday, so meet an absolutely stunning ~310 million year old fossil millipede - Pleurojulus. This fossil was discovered in the Czech Republic in the 19th century. Exactly how these animals are related to living millipedes remains debated, but they presumably..

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
A black and white photo of a really beautiful fossil millipede. The main part of the picture shows the millipede curled up, you can see tens to undreds of legs on the inside surface, and clear segmentation on the outside surface. TBH it looks a lot like living millipedes. It has a 2cm scale bar. Inset are picture of its legs, and what you can see of the ornament on its dorsal surface.
July 25, 2025 at 8:00 PM
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For #FossilFriday meet an ancestor of today's cockroaches, mantises and termites. This lovely animal is Sysciophlebia, and lived ~295 million years ago, in what is today Germany 🇩🇪 . It was 3.6cm long, and was a female. How do we know?

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
A brown rock, with a lighter fossil insect in it. The fossil has a head with antennae (left), then a pronotum (~shiled shape plate), and then long wings with prominent veins. Under these you can make out some of the walking legs. Inset is a close up of a long structure towards the back of the animal, which it used to lay eggs in life.
July 18, 2025 at 3:38 PM
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In this light, sticking with senior lecturer seems preferable.

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A tombstone that says "Reader, prepare to meet thy god" (in the UK system, many universities promote senior leccturers to readers, before professor, if you were wondering...)
July 15, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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Let's continue this #FossilFriday. Fast forward to 2018, and two teams published a neat new discovery in ~100 million year old amber. This little guy (we know it's a guy as he has modified palps for mating) had spinnerets with which he could spin silk... and that tail.

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
An image of a spider like arachnid in amber. It is dark yellow in colour, and looks lots like a spider, except it has a long, segmented tail sticking out of the back. A reconstruction of the animal in life - it shows an individual exiting a silk lined burrow in the ground, with a twig in the background with insects and other arachnids marching along it.
June 27, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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Please join me in judging the decisions of past Russell in formulating this character.

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A discrete phylogenetic character that reads: Median eyes (0 = four; 1 = two; 2 = three; 3 = absent; 4 = one).
June 25, 2025 at 12:07 PM
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That flagellum looks a lot like a structure that had been found with those other scraps in the '80s, shown below - which was not idefnitifed as belonging to an spider-like fossil because no fagellum had ever been found on such an animal at that time.
A scrap of cuticle that is bent around, has hairs, and is made of of a series of segments that were circular in cross section in life, and all slot together. Scale bare 0.5mm.
June 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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In spiders spigots are found on speciealised structures called spinnerets. Here are some in action:
The back end of a spider, exuding silk with a bunch of structures associated with that silk - these are the spinnerets
June 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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Hey! Let's learn about the origins of silk and spiders for #FossilFriday Below are fossil representatives of a group called the uraraneids. Left and middle are scraps of exoskeleton left after dissolving their host rock in acid. Shown left is a fang, and middle is a scrap with silk.

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky
A scrap of cutcile showing the fang of an ancient arachnid. The picture is black and white, towards the top y ou have the fang, and at the bottom of the picture is a toothed segment against which it artculated in life. Scale bar 0.25mm A crappy looking bit of exoskeleton - its irregular in outline, has hairs, and has darked cone like projections that made silk. There is even a small piece of silk at the end. A B&W photo of a fossil arachnid in a rock. It is darker than the surrounding rock, and you can see four legs on the left, a body in the middle with a long tail like structure coming out of the back, and then a couple of legs on the right.
June 20, 2025 at 3:32 PM
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Dangers of going to work drunk: line painting edition.
A road crossing in Berlin with very not straight dashed lines
June 20, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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This is a strong dedication for a book about arachnids 🧪
Dedication from a book - "Dedicated to all those who - for no good reason - dislike animals with eight legs"
June 19, 2025 at 10:19 AM
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Been reading about bet hedging in evolution of late (revolving around the idea that in some environments, the geometric mean of oranismal fitness through time is what matters), and came across this. That is some top punning 🫡

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A screenshot of the title of a paper, "The geometric meaning of macroevolution"
June 16, 2025 at 1:23 PM
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Mendel Schenkein last lived by choice in
Erich-Weinert-Strasse, Berlin. He was born in 1891 in Rudnik (now Poland). He traind as a watchmaker, and married Berta (nee Weinsteiner) in 1920 - that year, they moved to Berlin and opened a shop on Erich-Weinert-Strasse.
A stolperstein saying "Hier wohnte und arbeitete Mendel Schenkein jg. 1891 Ausgwiesen 28.10.1983 Ermordet 20.03.1942 Rogatin" A photograph of the building this stone is outside - it is sunny with a tree in the foreground, and is largely white with ornate window decorations. The bottom is painted salmon.
June 15, 2025 at 2:11 PM
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Oh no y'all, I don't think I'm cool eenough to drink the beer I just bought.
A nordberliner hell bottle of beer with a dude with sunglassses on the label The back of the same bottle that has a guy with blonde hair with a frinde, sunglassses, and a teal tux on. It's very.
June 14, 2025 at 6:16 PM
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Hah, the more fossil scorpions I code, the more I'm like:

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June 14, 2025 at 1:39 PM