Jeanne Timmons
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mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Jeanne Timmons
@mostlymammoths.bsky.social
2.3K followers 420 following 4.5K posts
Freelance writer (she/her) interested in paleontology and archaeology. Avatar by Natalia Jagielska.
https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/freelance-work/
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mostlymammoths.bsky.social
The answer. (2/end.)
Side view of a glass dish with equal parts sweet potatoes (and spices) and marshmallows Top view of another glass dish with slightly browned marshmallows across the top
November 27, 2025 at 6:38 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Guess who's in charge of sweet potatoes for tomorrow
A canvas bag full of sweet potatoes, although only the top layer is visible
November 27, 2025 at 12:03 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who’s coming to save you?

Definitely in good hands.

(image from @pbs.org: www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterp...)
November 25, 2025 at 10:41 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
I hung a rectangle of seeds & mealworms towards the end of the branch to provide another source of food for the birds, but squirrels have figured out that they can eat from it, too, if they hang upside down. :)
A squirrel hanging upside down from the end of a branch in the bush to eat from the hanging rectangle of seeds/mealworms.
November 25, 2025 at 2:15 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
“It’s my job to highlight what dominant culture doesn’t want us to notice." @profkori.bsky.social

www.bu.edu/cas/arts-sci...
Screenshot of text: KNOW-YOUR-PLACE AGGRESSION In her first book, Living With Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citzenship, 1890–1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011), Mitchell put forward a theory that has become a hallmark of her work. “Black folk are not always protesting so-called dominant culture,” she says—even though that’s been a critical lens often applied to everything from slave narratives to hip-hop songs. “It’s not about protest; it’s about Black success.” Lynching plays provided a perfect case study. Often referred to as anti-lynching plays—a label that immediately defines them as against something—they highlighted the violence that terrorized Black people in the early 1900s. In the scripts, often written by women, Mitchell saw attempts to celebrate Black families and communities despite the violence. “There’s a cause-and-effect relationship here, and we have it reversed,” she says. Rather than interpreting Black creative work as a response to racism, she considers racism to be a response to Black success.
November 22, 2025 at 6:26 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
An expansive view of how White Sands National Park may have appeared in the Pleistocene. Art by Karen Carr.

(from: www.karencarr.com/portfolio-im...)
Caption in website: "Shown: Aerial view of ancient Lake Otero, in what is now the central valley of New Mexico." Columbian mammoths and a baby C. mammoth are on the edge of a pond in the bottom right. The landscape is dotted by lots of ponds, green vegetation, white sand, megafauna and other animals. Enormous mountains and clouds are in the distance.
November 22, 2025 at 5:32 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Look at all of those insect fossils! Wow!

Story by @donnadlu.bsky.social
Caption in article: "Dr Matthew McCurry with Jurassic fossil insect specimens held in the Australian Museum’s collection. Photograph: Louise Reily/Australian Museum" On either side of the paleontologist, there are shelves of fossils. A number of the shelves are open, displaying tons of fossils.
November 22, 2025 at 5:02 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Some of the many visitors to the feeder (and make-shift bird bath) outside my window at work 🪶🐿️
A downy woodpecker peeks around the side of the green cylindrical feeder in a bush. The branches have no leaves, so the ground below is visible. A squirrel caught in the midst of curling back up the branch near the feeder (it was hanging upside down two seconds before the shot). Two blue jays - one perched on the side of a glass bowl filled with water, some of it ice; the other standing near the bowl.
November 20, 2025 at 2:16 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
I adore chickadees. ❤️🪶
A black-capped chickadee perches on a green cylindrical feeder hanging from a Buch. The picture was taken through a screen window, so there are traces of the screen throughout the picture.
November 19, 2025 at 12:17 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Where I would like to be now 🚲
An expanse of blue sky and lots of clouds over a field and distant forest on the side of a bike path. (Taken when there were leaves still on the trees.)
November 18, 2025 at 12:56 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
The team also found evidence of metabolic cell stress in Yuka's muscle tissue, which seems to support being attacked by large predators, but how Yuka died is still unknown. 🦣
Screenshot of text: Screenshot of text: What the team saw in Yuka's muscle RNA reflects the potential horror of its last moments. Mármol Sánchez explained that they uncovered "molecular evidence of metabolic cell stress in Yuka's muscle," which corresponds with what a separate scientific team described in 2021. In that study, the researchers noted many claw marks that may have been made by cave lions (Panthera spelaea), as well as bite marks from smaller predators on the mammoth's body and tail. But whether Yuka was hunted and killed by large predators or simply scavenged after death is unknown. The researchers do not know what caused the cell stress observed in the RNA.
November 14, 2025 at 10:54 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Yuka--named for the people who discovered it from the village of Yukagir--produced the best results. Remarkably, their research contradicts what its physical attributes suggests: male genetics, but possible female morphology.

(📸. from: www.livescience.com/48625-mummy-...)
The somewhat squashed-looking carcass of Yuka, a well-preserved juvenile mammoth with ginger-colored hair on its legs, but not much of its torso in this picture.
November 14, 2025 at 10:48 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
A better picture of a downy woodpecker when leaves were still on the bush. 🪶
A beautiful black and white downy woodpecker (with a speck of red on its head) hangs from the bottom of the feeder in a bush. Nearby leaves are mostly greens, with a few pink. Pink leaves blanket the ground below.
November 13, 2025 at 1:57 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
I see you, downy woodpecker.🪶
Peering out behind a green cylindrical feeder is the head and torso of a downy woodpecker. A large part of the window frame is on the right.
November 13, 2025 at 1:55 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
There were six blue jays outside my window at work at times throughout the day. I couldn't get a picture of all of them (they moved too fast, hopping across the ground, leaping from branch to branch and feeder and then to the ground again). 🪶
A blue jay perched on the green cylindrical feeder hanging from a branch in the bush, and another blue jay on a nearby branch. The bush is almost bare of leaves. Two blues jays eat the seeds and nuts scattered on the ground.
November 13, 2025 at 1:54 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
First light flurries of the season today (which didn't stick and aren't visible in these shots). ❄️

Great time to get in a bike ride. 💙🚲
November 11, 2025 at 8:02 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
Love this and the video and text on the link provided. ❤️🦏🦓
Screenshot of text: The unlikely pair bonded instantly. Notty and Tytan do everything together: They have their bottles side by side, they browse quietly in the forest as a duo, they even sleep in adjacent stockades. When Tytan has his mud bath — an activity he enjoys enormously — Notty stands off to the side, basking in the muddy spray. Where one goes, the other follows.
November 9, 2025 at 4:10 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
“While some species evolved defenses to avoid these insects, others took the opposite approach — if you can’t beat them, eat them.” @haidomyrmex.bsky.social 🐜
Screenshot of text: Today, ants and termites number over 15,000 species with a combined biomass exceeding all living wild mammals, but in the Cretaceous, they made up less than 1% of insects on Earth. Numbers did not reach modern levels until the Miocene ~23 million years ago, when they rose to 35% of all insect specimens, Barden says. “It’s not clear exactly why ants and termites both took off around the same time. Some work has implicated the rise of flowering plants, along with some of the planet’s warmest temperatures during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 55 million years ago,” Barden explained. “What is clear is that their sheer biomass set off a cascade of evolutionary responses across plants and animals.”
November 9, 2025 at 3:33 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
SO OFFENSIVE
Screenshot of text: On Thursday, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen had downplayed the impact of paused SNAP benefits on families in his state, saying, “Nobody’s going to go hungry.” Pillen, a Republican and multimillionaire, said food pantries, churches and other charitable services will fill in the gap for SNAP recipients.
November 7, 2025 at 6:00 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
"They are very comfortable bedfellows because once you have created a culture in which all expertise is denigrated and removed from the equation and considered nonessential, you create the circumstances in which AI can flourish." @maggietokudahall.bsky.social
Screenshot of text: “One thing that I try to make clear any time I talk about book bans is that it’s not about the books, it’s about deputizing bigots to do the ugly work of defunding all of our public institutions of learning,” Maggie Tokuda-Hall, a cofounder of Authors Against Book Bans, told me. “The current proliferation of AI that we see particularly in the library and education spaces would not be possible at the speed and scale that is happening without the precedent of book bans leading into it. They are very comfortable bedfellows because once you have created a culture in which all expertise is denigrated and removed from the equation and considered nonessential, you create the circumstances in which AI can flourish.”
November 7, 2025 at 12:34 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
❤️🦣🐘🦥🦏 The trailer for Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7kv...
An adult or a subadult proboscidean w/a baby in tow in a jungle. Baby mammoth being caressed by the trunk of an adult woolly. The background is an icy, snowy landscape. Giant ground sloths with lots of white/brown hair in the snow. one is sliding down on its back; the other is walking down hill with a baby clinging to its back. Woolly rhinos in a snowy forest.
November 7, 2025 at 12:05 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
"...the fed gov is 'directing states to use the most complex & labor-intensive approach possible,' according to a bluntly worded letter sent...by Pennsylvania Human Services Secretary Val Arkoosh to [USDA]..." - Kate Giammarise @wesa.fm

www.wesa.fm/politics-gov...
November 6, 2025 at 11:41 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
"Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett had nothing — not a word — to say about [the harm this will inflict] when allowing the Trump administration to implement its policy." @chrisgeidner.bsky.social
Screenshot of text: Cases, including the classwide injunction at issue here, followed, with the policy being blocked in two different courts — due to the strength of the legal case made by the trans and nonbinary plaintiffs and the harm they showed they would face if Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department were allowed to enforce the policy. And yet, on Thursday, at least five of the six Republican appointees on the court — none of the six wrote anything, or stated their vote publicly — rejected all of that in an appallingly dismissive, horrifyingly abrupt order.
November 6, 2025 at 11:32 PM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
GORGEOUS artwork by Guilherme Gehr.

#ichnology #Brasil
From paper: Fig. 3 - Paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Botucatu paleodesert (Early Cretaceous, Berriasian-Barremian). The trackmaker of Farlowichnus rapidus Leonardi et al., 2024 has found a prey, namely, a specimen of the Brasilichnium elusivum Leonardi, 1981c trackmaker, which had unwisely ventured out of its den. The scene is depicted as occurring under the moonlight, as the best tracks were likely impressed at night, when the substrate was slightly moist with dew. Art by Guilherme Gehr.
November 6, 2025 at 2:24 AM
mostlymammoths.bsky.social
California voters approve new US House map to boost Democrats in 2026

apnews.com/article/cali...
Screenshot of text: LOS ANGELES (AP) — California voters approved new congressional district boundaries Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026 and, with it, the power to thwart or advance President Donald Trump’s agenda. The approval of Proposition 50 gives Democrats a shot at winning as many as five additional seats, just enough to blunt Texas Republicans’ move to redraw their own maps to pick up five GOP seats at Trump’s urging. Texas’ move and California’s response have kicked off a flurry of redistricting efforts around the country, with Republican states appearing to have an edge. Deeply blue California is Democrats’ best opportunity to make up seats.
November 5, 2025 at 4:10 AM