For #FossilFriday this week I present a little personal mystery I think I have now solved. Way back in my youth I collected a few of these spiny objects from #Miocene marine clays on the banks of the #RiverMurray . What are they? My first guess was that they were fish jaws from a small predatory fish. 🧵

“Beyond the Barstow” opens this Saturday! The new @westernsciencecenter exhibit uses a mix of original fossils, casts, and #3dprints to give visitors a glimpse of middle #Miocene North America. The opening coincides our first annual #Paleocon!

#fossil #paleontology #scicomm #museum #exhibit

Our new @westernsciencecenter exhibit, “Beyond the Barstow” opens in 8 days! This exhibit features more than 150 #fossils, casts, and #3dprints of North American mammals from museums across the US, all from the Barstovian Land Mammal Age (16.3-13.6 million years ago). Staff are hard at work completing the install. The exhibit features original artwork from Corbin Rainbolt.

#FossilFriday #paleontology #museum #exhibit #scicomm #miocene

wow, so incredible: An exquisitely preserved #Fossil #forest from #Japan provides missing links & helps reconstruct a complete Eurasian plant from the late #Miocene epoch

#FossilFriday #trees #plants https://www.asiaresearchnews.com/content/miocene-period-fossil-forest-wataria-found-japan/

Tiny Leptocyon faces off against giant Peraceras!
Leptocyon was an early dog, about the size of a small fox. Peraceras was a tusked, hornless rhinoceros about the size of, well, a rhino.
These lower jaw #3dprints are based on specimens from middle Miocene Nebraska, in the Univ. of Nebraska State Museum. They will be included in the new exhibit “Beyond the Barstow”, opening @westernsciencecenter on August 26.
#FossilFriday #fossil #paleontology #Miocene #rhinoceros #dog #3dprinting

While systematically sorting through our Alcoota collection @Samosthenurus discovered we have the associated femur and tibia of a teeny-weeny Dromornis chick

#MegafaunaCentral #Alcoota #Miocene #FossilFriday #BirdsOfMastodon

A new study reveals that wooded grasslands flourished in Africa 10 million years ago. The study shows that these ecosystems were widespread and diverse and supported a variety of animals, including early hominins. The study challenges the idea that savannas were the dominant landscape in Africa during the Miocene epoch. #grasslands #africa #miocene https://phys.org/news/2023-04-wooded-grasslands-flourished-africa-million.html

Merycodus warreni was a tiny #pronghorn from the middle #Miocene. The pronghorn family, Antilocapridae, are native to North America & are more closely related to giraffes than to deer or antelopes.

This is a #3dprint of a specimen from the Nebraska State Museum, produced for the exhibit “Beyond the Barstow” that opens @westernsciencecenter next month.

#FossilFriday #fossil #paleontology #3dprinting #exhibit

"An exquisitely preserved fossil forest from Japan provides missing links and helps reconstruct a whole Eurasia plant from the late Miocene epoch".

#fossil #plant #forest #miocene #reconstruction
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/996321

A couple of weeks ago I posted my most recent find - a largish #Miocene echinoid from the River Murray. For #FossilFriday I'm posting the same specimen now that the preparation is complete.
#echinoderms #RiverMurray

On the edge of a #Miocene grassland in South America,a group of #Thoatherium is ambushed by #Phorusrhacos.They scatter,but the #terrorbird catches one,lifting it high up into the air,and SLAMS it down on the ground to kill it.Other nearby animals have mixed feelings about this situation. Tupinambis flees for its life,while Dryornis flies closer just in case.Hapalops and Astrapotherium are unbothered and have business of their own to take care of.

#Neogene #paleoart #MyArt #autumn

I finished up my fossil trip a couple of days ago with a visit to a well-known road cutting near the riverside town of Mannum. There I found an unusually large echonoid for the site. It looked like a Eupatagus but was three times the length of a typical E. murrayensis from the site. After checking some papers I think it is E. collabus, the first time I've ever found the species.
#fossils #RiverMurray #Miocene #echinoderms

#Geoducks (genus Panopea/#Lushootseed gʷidəq) are such icons of the #SalishSea that the pronunciation of their name has become a test of Northwesterness, and with good cause: their ancestors have been in the region for a long time. The #OlympicPeninsula has yielded several #geoduck #fossils dating back to between 20 and 30 million years ago, and this #FossilFriday I share with you all a #Miocene geoduck from the #Clallam Formation next to its modern relative, the largest burrowing #clam.

Here is a closer view of the Cadell Formation. About 90 percent of all fossils at the site are a single species of turritellid gastropod, but the other ten percent is fantastically diverse. I've counted over 200 mollusc species from here, and there are crustaceans, corals, bryozoans, brachiopods, echinoids, sharks teeth and the the occasional whale bone as well.
#fossils #Miocene #RiverMurray #turritellids

So I finally made it to my main objective. This is the type locality for the Cadell Formation. I've been visiting this site since I was about 12 (close to forty years). It has been a happy hunting ground and I've discovered, described and named three new species of mollusc fossil from here, with several more to come if I get the time to write them up.
#fossils ##RiverMurray #roadtrip #Miocene

The Mannum Formation is famous for containing literally millions of heart urchins (Lovenia forbesi). Here are some really crappy ones from the Mannum Formation near Murray Bridge. #Miocene #fossil #rivermurray #echinoderms

Hot off the printer! A lower jaw of the “oreodont” Ticholeptis from middle Miocene deposits at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, original specimen from their collection. #3dprint based on a #photogrammetry model produced by @westernsciencecenter for a new exhibit coming in August.

#paleontology #miocene #fossil #3dprinting #oreodont #nps #nationalpark

A #3dprint of Procranioceras skinneri, a palaeomerycid from the Miocene of Nebraska. Palaeomerycids are an extinct family of artiodactyls, known for their elaborate horns. Most species had a horn over each eye and a third horn coming from the back of the head.

This print is based on a scan provided by the Nebraska State Museum, and will be featured in an exhibit opening @westernsciencecenter this August.

#museum #exhibit #FossilFriday #fossil #Miocene #3dprinting

A #3dprint of Procranioceras skinneri, a palaeomerycid from the Miocene of Nebraska. Palaeomerycids are an extinct family of artiodactyls, known for their elaborate horns. Most species had a horn over each eye and a third horn coming from the back of the head.

This print is based on a scan provided by the Nebraska State Museum, and will be featured in an exhibit opening @westernsciencecenter this August.

#museum #exhibit #FossilFriday #fossil #Miocene #3dprinting

#African #FossilFriday

Today, #Africa's iconic #predators are #carnivorans such as #hyenas, #lions, and wild #dogs. But before this group arrived, a different type of #predator roamed Africa: #hyaenodonts (despite their name, not close relatives of living carnivorans) This #hyaenodont, Pakakali (#Swahili for "fierce #cat") is from #Nsungwe, #Tanzania 🇹🇿, a #Miocene site that dates to just before the arrival of carnivorans from #Eurasia.

Image from Borths & Stevens 2017

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0185301