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fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Dr. Brendan Anderson
@fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
4.2K followers 3.4K following 1.3K posts
Paleobiologist. evolution and paleoclimate. Coffee enthusiast. Snail evangelist. Visiting Professor @ SUNY Oneonta. Paleontological Research Institution Research Associate. Dartmouth, KU, Cornell alum. He/him. Opinions my own. https://www.brendan-anderson
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fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Dr. Brendan Anderson @fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social · 24d
Friends of the Paleontological Research Institution met today at #GSA #GSA2025 and Carl Brett (Universityof Cincinnati), a great friend of PRI gave a speach on why this place is worth saving Part 1 of 2
#SavePRI ⚒️🧪
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
thetattooedprof.bsky.social
Texas A&M is no longer a "university". It's a Vacation Bible School with a football team and parking problems.
brookenewman.bsky.social Brooke Newman @brookenewman.bsky.social · 5h
Message to all faculty: your expertise is no longer trusted or valued at this so-called “university.”
A thread by an A&M professor describing how the new rules will impact faculty. Syllabi must be fed into AI to be checked for content not aligned with approved syllabi; students will be encouraged to report faculty for inaccurate content; and young people are now being told they get to decide what a professor should teach.
November 14, 2025 at 12:49 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Day194 of photoshopping @lastweektonight.com's John Oliver with fossils in the hopes that he helps save the Paleontological Research Institution

Think of the deep sea synergy John (H. sapiens) could have with PRI's collection, including this fossil coelacanth (Diplurus longicaudatus) #FossilFriday🧪
fake album cover of John Oliver laying down in front of a purple background. John Cradles a fish fossil and holds a rose. The title says "Deep Dive 2".
November 14, 2025 at 2:33 AM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
cornellaaup.bsky.social
Our Chapter's comments on the Cornell-Trump Deal are now available in the Daily Sun.

We will continue fighting to protect academic freedom and shared governance as Cornell moves from negotiating to implementing this dangerous agreement.
GUEST ROOM | AAUP Statement on the Trump-Cornell Deal
The Cornell Chapter of the American Association of University Professors writes to address harmful provisions in the University's deal with the Trump administration.
www.cornellsun.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:41 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Looking forward to running a session for the NY Mohawk Valley MTP with @lkefct.bsky.social

"From the Tropics to the Poles: An In-Depth Look at the Ocean and Atmosphere Across the Globe"

Should be fun and I'm looking forward to meeting more K-12 educators in the region.🐌❄️🏝️🐠
Image of the Earth Viewed from space above the north pole
November 13, 2025 at 4:03 AM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Day193 of photoshopping @lastweektonight.com 's #JohnOliver with fossils in the hopes that he saves the Paleontological Research Institution

We know you support science bugs, John(H. sapiens), so enjoy a visit from this fossil roach(Etoblattina;PRI49722)
#fossils #SavePRI 🧪⚒️ #insects #invertebrates
John Oliver sitting down with a giant roach wearing a "get vaxxed" shirt, a mask, and with hypodermic needles in its legs. In the front of John at the right of the image, a cockroach fossil with faint wings and a face peaks in.
November 13, 2025 at 3:45 AM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Day192 of photoshopping @lastweektonight.com's John Oliver with fossils in the hopes that he saves the Paleontological Research Institution

#JohnOliver (H. sapiens) can try to hide in the Pseudocidaris mammosa echinoid spines, but the coprolitastic shed awaits! #savePRI ⚒️ #fossils #LastWeekTonight
John Oliver's face is hidden among similar size and shaped bulbous echinoid spines
November 12, 2025 at 5:27 AM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
New feom @drdonhaas.bsky.social

www.priweb.org/blog-post/cl...
Climate Education is Changing in New York State — Paleontological Research Institution
by Dr. Don Haas On November 4, 2025, at the meeting of the Board of Regents, the Regents provisionally adopted instructional requirements for personal finance and climate education, marking the shi...
www.priweb.org
November 11, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
drdonhaas.bsky.social
hechingerreport.org/climate-chan...

If you're doing this kind of work, check out the resources from PRI's Center for Climate Change Education: climate.earthathome.org. Our Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change is friendly to more than just teachers!
climate.earthathome.org/teacher-frie...
Climate change ‘is the new liberal arts’: Colleges build environmental lessons into degrees
University of California, San Diego, requires all students to learn about climate change, while other schools have added environmental sustainability requirements.
hechingerreport.org
November 7, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
lapworthmuseum.bsky.social
Feeding Without Jaws opens this Wednesday!

Our temporary #exhibition tells the immersive story of our ancestors, jawless fish. Find out about why these ancient fish have fascinated palaeontologists, & what new discoveries have been made about them.

www.birmingham.ac.uk...

#LapworthRocks
November 10, 2025 at 4:00 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
For anyone who can live in Flordia, a great opportunity in an amazing collection:

FMNH is looking for an experienced full-time Collections Manager II or III as Director of Invertebrate Paleontology Collections within the Department of Natural History.

🧪⚒️🦑
explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...
University of Florida - Details - FLMNH Collections Manager II / FLMNH Collections Manager III
explore.jobs.ufl.edu
November 11, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
skyemcdavid.com
Though the social media landscape has changed since 2024, when I was one of the larger paleontology accounts on this platform, I still intend to live-post updates from the non-embargoed talks I attend. But today I'm off to Warwickshire for the Middle Triassic Field trip. #2025SVP
November 11, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
A biologist at the American Museum of Natural History, Jonathan Coddington, cataloged a new genus of South American spiders in 1986.

Two things about the spider were unique:
they lived in caves & laid cubic eggs.

So he called them genus 'Plato', and that's the nerdiest thing I have read all year.
bealeiderman.bsky.social Bea Leiderman @bealeiderman.bsky.social · 3d
Diminutive fairy wombat poop. Tiny cubes under 2mm on each side.

These are egg sacs made by a spider in the family Theridiosomatidae.

They made yesterday’s hike special. Finding something I’ve never seen before is such a thrill.

🌱 #nature #macro #spider
Tiny pink and cream colored cube under 2mm stuck to the surface of a leaf. There were several, scattered around randomly, but the photo is cropped to show the one that was in best focus. The second picture shows a bit of my thumbnail in the corner, with sparkly nail polish. Tiny pink and cream colored cube under 2mm stuck to the surface of a leaf. There were several, scattered around randomly, but the photo is cropped to show the one that was in best focus. The second picture shows a bit of my thumbnail in the corner, with sparkly nail polish.
November 11, 2025 at 12:10 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
skpevsner.bsky.social
Are you attending #2025SVP #SVP2025? Come see my talk on Thursday at 2pm in the Synapsida technical session on tail length evolution in across stem mammals, and find out why this long-neglected part of the skeleton has a much more complicated story to tell than we previously thought!
The title slide for my SVP talk entitled “Comparative Evidence for Independent Evolutionary Reductions of Tail Length Among Stem Mammals”. Authors for the talk are myself (Spencer K. Pevsner), Katrina E. Jones, and Roger B. J. Benson. The slide shows photos of skeletons of Sphenacodon, Diictodon, and Thrinaxodon, all with tails present.
November 11, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
assignedmedia.org
NEW: Firings of LGBTQ staff at NBC and Condé Nast have worsened an already dire picture for legacy news media when it comes to covering the trans community.

From @billiejsweeney.bsky.social, a close look at our increasingly degraded media environment.

www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
Corporate Media’s Queer Purge — Assigned
It’s no coincidence that historic assaults on trans and queer people’s rights have been accompanied by the mainstream media’s widespread dismissal of LGBTQ+ journalists and the elimination of beats de...
www.assignedmedia.org
November 11, 2025 at 2:11 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
Day191 of badly photoshopping @lastweektonight.com's #JohnOliver with fossils in the hopes that he saves the Paleontological Research Institution

John(H. sapiens) seems very at home as a trilobite(Dipleura dekayi;PRI50318)

Donations still needed!
#JohnOliverCoprolitasticShed
#trilobiteTuesday 🧪⚒️
A brown trilobite mounted on a blue wall, with a scooped cephalon. John Oliver's face covers tbe glabella, and his tie hangs down over the axial lobe of the thorax.
November 11, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
ezralevin.bsky.social
We just launched the biggest primary program in Indivisible’s history. Help us (literally) send Schumer and the surrender caucus a message. open.substack.com/pub/ezralevi...
Democratic leaders failed us again. Time to get some new leaders.
Indivisible's weekly newsletter with analysis and action
open.substack.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:17 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
To read about the history of the Paleontological Research Institution's 1/2 million specimen modern mollusk collections, including many endangered or recently extinct species;

check out page 141 on of the Nautilus issue on the history of malacology collections 🦑🦪🐌

shellmuseum.org/wp-content/u...
Front page of "the modern mollusk collection at the Paleontological Research Institution" by Dietl et al
November 11, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
assignedmedia.org
The courts are moving ahead with a scheme to make trans people as a category of second-class citizen, unprotected by law.

More by @valorievandieman.bsky.social and @billiejsweeney.bsky.social here:
An Immediate Need to Impose Bigotry: Rogue Court Endorses Trump’s Ideology — Assigned
An Immediate Need to Impose Bigotry: Rogue Court Endorses Trump’s Ideology
www.assignedmedia.org
November 10, 2025 at 12:41 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
bgrueskin.bsky.social
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
dartmouthartsci.bsky.social
“The flooding we’ve seen in recent years is the new normal.” @dartmouthgeography.bsky.social professor Jonathan Winter writes an op-ed in the Valley News about the importance of preparing for flooding in New England despite the current drought.
Column: New England should prepare for flooding, even during drought - Valley News
New England faces drought conditions, but research shows a decrease in droughts over the past 40 years. Prepare for the new normal: flooding.
vnews.com
November 10, 2025 at 8:58 PM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
The winner of the 2025 @paleosoc.bsky.social Clash-of-the Clades was...
@sethf.bsky.social !

But Mollusks took "Most Money Raised;"

From a mollusk worker, good to see that both these important groups for modern paleobiology got to shine in their own way!

#molluskmonday #paleontology #fossils
Seth Finnegan in a red and gold crown, wreathed in golden Laurels. a Banner reads "Phylum "Finnegan-ada" below text reads "Thanks to all who donated and participated" with a shell cartoon below. Above text reads "Paleontological Society" with the Paleo Soc logo, and "Clash of the Clades"
November 10, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
OSCAR ISAAC, on whether he'd return to "Star Wars":

".. Yeah. I mean, I’d be open to it, although right now I’m not so open to working with Disney. But if they can kinda figure it out and, you know, not succumb to fascism, that would be great."

@variety.com $DIS
variety.com/2025/film/ne...
Oscar Isaac Was ‘Not So Open to Working With Disney’ After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension, Said He’d Return to ‘Star Wars’ if Disney Does ‘Not Succumb to Fascism’
Oscar Isaac was not open to working with Disney after Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and will only return to 'Star Wars' if the studio avoids fascism.
variety.com
November 10, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
adamweinstein.bsky.social
I keep seeing regular Americans taking more risks every day to fight tyranny, want, and cynicism than I see from the opposition party, and I imagine many of those regular Americans are asking themselves what the value proposition of such an opposition party is, really
November 10, 2025 at 4:31 AM
fossilsndcoffee.bsky.social
🧪Day190 of photoshopping @lastweektonight.com's John Oliver with fossils in the hopes that he saves the Paleontological Research Institution

John (H. sapiens) proclaims You are now entering...the Turritellid zone, with Allmonia carniolica, a genus named for PRI's 4th director Warren Allmon #savePRI
black and white photo of John standing in front of the Museum of the Earth like Rod Sterling. a high spired snail with deep sculpture sits on Cecil the coelophysoids statue
November 10, 2025 at 5:15 AM
Reposted by Dr. Brendan Anderson
evangreer.bsky.social
Dealer: alright everyone ante up

Chuck Schumer: I fold

Dealer: … we haven’t even dealt the hand yet

Chuck Schumer: I 👏 fold 👏
November 9, 2025 at 11:50 PM