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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 5h

The rich mosaic of self-willed biodiversity at Cringleford, is threatened. We could survey and record it then tell the landowner. But perhaps the site just shows us what may happen when land is allowed to have its will.
@norfolknats.bsky.social @pauldolman.bsky.social @britishwildlife.bsky.social

Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 13h

Who will get a grip of meeting and balancing the needs of both humans and biodiversity?
#BiodiversityCrisis
Would people buy new houses which have settings in which nature is allowed to autogenerate & build richness on its own terms? Forgetting landscape architects who choose shrubs & lay turf.

A sign advertising expensive houses for sale at Round House Way, Cringleford.

Land north of Round House Way, Cringleford. It is a level field which was, until recently, a mosaic of grassland and scrub. Here, brown patches show where bramble patches were and splintered stumps indicate the sites of trees.

A rose bush loaded with scarlet rosehips. It is part of a mosaic of biodiverse grassland and scrub at Round House Way, Cringleford, in the suburbs of Norwich.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 13h

Who will get a grip of meeting and balancing the needs of both humans and biodiversity?
#BiodiversityCrisis
Would people buy new houses which have settings in which nature is allowed to autogenerate & build richness on its own terms? Forgetting landscape architects who choose shrubs & lay turf.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 14h

Happy to contribute :-)

Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 14h

"Waste ground".
Who evaluates it?
How shall we judge which patch has sufficient biodiversity to be worth retaining intact - or at least integrating with the housing development as a distinct environmental asset? #GreenInfrastructure #BNG
Nightingale Way.
Foxglove Close.
Kestrel Drive.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 18h

# Norfolk #BiodiversityCrisis

Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 18h

Mosaic scrub land at Cringleford, Norwich is ear-marked for housing development. It is vibrant with life: goldfinches, bushes & berries, ivy bees humming round nest holes.
Across the road, the flail mower has thrashed all this life to the ground. What value do we put on urban fringe biodiversity?

Biodiverse former farmland at Round House Way, Cringleford, Norfolk, UK; part of the suburbs of Norwich. A mosaic of self-seeded herbs, bushes and sapling trees contributes to an island of great biodiversity in the city's urban fringe.

Ivy Bees (Colletes hederae) busy round their nest holes in sandy soil.

Formed biodiverse scrub land at Round House Way, Cringleford, Norwich, swiped off in preparation for new housing development.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 1d

Or an entire Mastodon skeleton, as said to have been found in the Norwich Crag basement bed at Horstead in the early C19th. Seen here, the basement bed at St James's Pit, Norwich.

The Norwich Crag basement bed overlying an undulating surface of Upper Chalk, exposed in St James's Pit, Norwich, 2011. Brown clayey material containing large flints contrasts with the white chalk.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 1d

In Norfolk we have a SSSI designated purely for potential to yield Mosasurus from a certain stratum of Campanian Chalk. The original fossiliferous site (Lollard's Pit) was lost to development. I don't know how valid a 'pis aller' site is in geoconservation terms - I know of no research there.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 1d

The antis won't like this information.
But will photovoltaic installation agreements in East Anglia permit stock grazing among the panels? It makes economic and bioconservation sense.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 2d

Nox : Fox

Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 2d

There has been some good American music.

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Reposted by Tim Holt-Wilson

Anthony Speca | Aspen Ecology @aspenecology.com · 2d

Announcing another chance to learn #lichens online! My next 'Lichens for Beginners' course starts in January. Perfect for anyone just discovering these unique and beautiful life-forms. All you need to know to understand lichens and identify common species. Join me! aspenecology.com/lichens-for-...

Variospora (Caloplaca) flavescens : England : VC25 East Suffolk : TM3389 : September 2022 : On limestone gravestone

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 3d

Snowflake is an Americanism. It's worth calling them out on that.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 3d

Hello Big Boy

#arachnophilia
#arachnophobia
#arachnogalloping
#arachnoctober

A large Eratigena atrica spider on a 'magnolia'-painted, woodchip-textured wallpaper in someone's kitchen.

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Reposted by Tim Holt-Wilson

ChaSE Project @chalksea.bsky.social · 4d

#FossilFriday from the chalk seas of #Yorkshire - a good day in the field yesterday sampling a working chalk pit containing outcrops of the 'Black Band'; corresponding to #Cretaceous Ocean Anoxic Event 2. Thanks to the folks at Ashcourt Group for facilitating our visit!

An outcrop of chalk with a tape measure for scale. A prominent layer of dark shale - the 'Black Band' - runs through the middle of the sequence.

A large chalk pit under a blue sky. A man in a high vis jacket and hard hat is examining the rock outcrops.

A close up of a finely laminated rock showing small fossil burrows- proof thst even during an 'Ocean Anoxic Event' there was life on the sea floor.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 5d

Thriving in the interglacial warmth of eastern England 120,000 years ago, a hippopotamus died and conferred its skeletal flotsam to the flood of time. A limb bone ended up in Waveney valley sediments, findspot uncertain.
A detective story ... shorturl.at/b4iWM #Pleistocene #palaeontology

A line drawing of a humerus bone of Hippopotamus amphibius found in the Waveney valley, East Anglia, UK.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 5d

Thriving in the interglacial warmth of eastern England 120,000 years ago, a hippopotamus died, conferred its skeletal flotsam to the flood of time. A limb bone ended up in Waveney valley sediments. My detective story trying to work out where...
shorturl.at/b4iWM
#Pleistocene #Eemian #palaeontology

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Reposted by Tim Holt-Wilson

Ferwen @ferwen.bsky.social · 6d

Ancient DNA from 300,000-year-old horses communities.springernature.com/posts/ancien...

Ancient DNA from 300,000-year-old horses

By combining archaeology, ancient DNA, and bioinformatics, researchers reconstructed 300,000-year-old horse mitochondrial genomes, uncovering a previously unknown branch at the base of all living hors...

communities.springernature.com

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 6d

So... my solution is evaluate my carbon footprint then pay a voluntary 'tax' to mitigate it 100% by sending money to native forest & peatland regeneration projects in the Highlands. Will that do?
If so, how to identify worthy recipients and how much to spend? #Caledonia @treesforlife.bsky.social

A patch of native woodland near Lagavulin on the Isle of Islay, Scotland, seen across sheep pasture. A bald mountain lours over the scene in the background.

Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 7d

"Part of the excavation will be broadcast live via satellite internet, allowing the public to witness paleontology in real-time".

MTgeo @dhann.bsky.social · 7d

paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/p...

Paleo-streaming: the resistance of Argentinian Science.

Following on the unexpected success of a scientific livestream that drew 61,000 viewers—tripling the audience of The Voice Argentina—a team of paleontologists is preparing for a new groundbreaking …

paleonerdish.wordpress.com

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Reposted by Tim Holt-Wilson

Butterfly Conservation Suffolk @bc-suffolk.bsky.social · 7d

Sat 11th Oct 2025 2.15 pm
Suffolk Branch Members' Afternoon 2025
at Earl Stonham Village Hall, IP14 5HJ

Pete Eeles will be our guest speaker. He runs the UK Butterflies website & has recently published British and Irish Butterfly Rarities

See suffolkbutterflies.org.uk

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 7d

A tragedy!

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Reposted by Tim Holt-Wilson

UNESCO International Geodiversity Day @geodiversityday.bsky.social · 8d

🥳 Happy Geodiversity Day!

⭐ As we celebrate with the theme 'One Earth, Many Stories', read this message from the new UNESCO Chair in Geodiversity and Geoconservation:

🌐 www.geodiversityday.org/post/unesco-...

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 7d

Happy Geodiversity Day - a reminder that physical nature is the earthly frame for our biological nature.
#geology #geomorphology #soils #water #fossils #GeodiversityDay #Cornwall
@jackjamesmatthews.bsky.social

A watercolour and ink painting signed by David Chalmers. It shows an ancient wall of boulders under a grey, stormy sky, perhaps in Cornwall, UK. In the background, seabirds are being tossed by the wind.

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Tim Holt-Wilson @timholtwilson.bsky.social · 8d

Also to read: 'The Crisis of European Sciences' by Edmund Husserl, on how Science is constituted and how revising Descartes restores Science to the world we co-experience.

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