Origin of life and Cambrian explosion enthusiast. Mostly retweets about science and academic pursuits.

Joined January 2017
124 Photos and videos
Sedimentary rock from Turner’s Falls, MA can be split to reveal fish fossils from the #Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago! #WesternMassWeekend
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flatcrank retweeted
Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Through geologic fire and brimstone, much about its earliest eon has been lost to history, but the basics are agreed upon: It began as a ball of mostly molten rock. It became a blue marble. How? quantamagazine.org/where-did…
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A decade after Deuteropoda – insights into the systematics, evolution and dynamics of Cambrian euarthropods osf.io/preprints/paleorxiv/n… via @OsfFramework

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flatcrank retweeted
A lack of sexual reproduction in the world's earliest animals slowed evolution to a crawl half a billion years ago. But when competition and a lack of resources led to the development of sexual reproduction, it gave evolution a turbo boost. New research from @CamZoology 👇 cam.ac.uk/research/news/a-la…
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flatcrank retweeted
Was pleasantly surprised to find a new exhibit featuring some interesting #fossil displays at @assiniboinezoo. Some really neat pieces on display and beautiful artworks, definitely worth checking out. #FossilFriday
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flatcrank retweeted
Jun 11
Gargantuan deep-sea crustaceans can go for years without eating, thanks to a metabolism-related gene borrowed from bacteria go.nature.com/4e4eT0H
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flatcrank retweeted
#Cambrian #illustration #paleoart 🦖 PALEONTOLOGY QUIZ! If you picked No. 4, Haikouichthys, you were right! The clue was where the fossils were found!
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flatcrank retweeted
Great news for Life Sciences @JohnsHopkins 💙
Incredibly exciting announcement. Johns Hopkins University will provide $80M per year for the next two years to support large Life Sciences projects. (1) Transformational Science Teams awards: >$10M each, $40M/year. (2) High-impact individual awards: $200-500K each, $40M/year.
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flatcrank retweeted
Looking for a #PhD or #Postdoc position in Molecular Geo-, Astro-, & Paleobiology? Apply to join our stellar team at Hopkins! Please share this with anyone who might be interested! #evolution #astrobiology #paleontology #biosignatures #geochemistry #genomics #MachineLearning
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flatcrank retweeted
The Deep Sea Is An Untapped Evolutionary Engine Says New Study astrobiology.com/2026/06/the… #astrobiology #oceanography #evolution
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flatcrank retweeted
A dinosaur trackway made up of 200 footprints which were made 166 million years ago is one of the longest of its kind uncovered in the world bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yz…
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flatcrank retweeted
Spotted today at Arlanda airport Stockholm: Orthoceras regulare, a fossil cephalopod mollusc from the middle Ordovician c. 470 million years ago. There are thousands of these fossils in the paving stones, originally mined from limestones on Öland in the Baltic Sea.
Retarding effects of the domestication. Compare the skulls of the 'Chad" auroch (Bos primigenius) on the right, and it's descendant - domestic cattle (Bos taurus) on the left.
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#WildWednesday: Antarctic Comb Jellies Comb jellies drift through the Southern Ocean with bodies made up of 95% water. Small hairlike cilia propel them, turning their bodies into rainbows when the light hits just right. 📷 iNaturalist CC-BY-NC: davidcothran, Kim Nesbitt, kaiden
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flatcrank retweeted
Wow. Probably lots of sharks teeth too. This sounds a bit like what the New Zealand ‘greensand’ environment would have looked like when it was accumulating.
Millions of fossil whale bones found in deep-ocean ‘necropolis’ Researchers diving 7 kilometers deep in a crewed submersible have discovered a vast collection of whale bones, including fossils up to 5 million years old and species new to science newscientist.com/article/252… docs.google.com/document/d/1…
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flatcrank retweeted
🦕I’m excited to announce that I’ve been invited to give a talk at one of the most prestigious institutions I can think of.🦖 The audience will be intimidating. They represent some of the brightest young minds who will help shape our society for decades to come. 🧪 #SciComm
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flatcrank retweeted
A 400-million-year-old plant creates water so weird it looks alien Oxygen isotopes function as tracers, allowing scientists to learn about water sources, plant transpiration, and atmospheric moisture. Read More: geologypage.com/2025/12/a-40…
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