Dancing wildflowers at Anza Borrego state park - light purple flowers dancing in the wind and blurry with many yellow flowers and mountains in the background illuminated by the sun during golden hour
Captured some whimsy during golden hour at the tail end of the superbloom out in Anza-Borrego
Topsail Beach, North Carolina
fossil hunting in the Pryor Mountains, Montana
my favorite wedding photo
Earth Science department spring party, right after we had started dating, 2005
21!! YEARS AGO TODAY (!) a cute boy from California asked me out on a date. I couldn't imagine the last 21 years without you by my side, and wouldn't trade them for the world. (He even tolerates my horrible puns!) Happy anniversary Bobby! 💕💕 @coastalpaleo.bsky.social
a california sea lion surfing under a wave; the wave is breaking all around it and the sea lion is framed in a window of clear water
A very clear sea lion just inches below the surface of a cresting wave. The water is a dark bluish turquoise.
Three sea lions swimming just below the surface in a low wave.
Surfing sea lions - La Jolla, CA 🦑🐬
A juvenile skeleton of the Miocene sea cow Dusisiren jordani. The skeleton is dominated by the inflated ribs which make this little guy look like a bony blimp. This photo is from the top.
A juvenile skeleton of the Miocene sea cow Dusisiren jordani. The skeleton is dominated by the inflated ribs which make this little guy look like a bony blimp. This photo is from bottom, and shows the flippers and the skull in better detail.
A juvenile skeleton of the Miocene sea cow Dusisiren jordani. The skeleton is dominated by the inflated ribs which make this little guy look like a bony blimp. This photo is from side. The vestigial pelvis is evident.
The adult ?female skeleton mounted side by side with the juvenile, shown as mother and calf. The adult has a proportionally longer tail.
#Fossilfriday Baby sea cow! Juvenile Dusisiren jordani skeleton from the upper Miocene (~9-10 myo) Santa Margarita Sandstone of the Santa Cruz mountains. On display at @nhm.org. When I first started digging up marine mammals 25 years ago, it was this species.
Me in shorts standing in front of a grove of fan palms in a desert valley
A spring-fed stream emerges from the palm oasis in an otherwise barren, rocky desert canyon
The main grove of palm trees in the palm canyon oasis; reddish tan rocky mountains rise above the palms
Sarah sitting down next to a granite boulder with a mountain and palms behind her
Hiked to a palm oasis in Anza Borrego a few days ago with @tetrameryx.bsky.social. I had no idea there were places in California like this. California's only native palm, the California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera
A slightly more than half moon rising over some jagged desert cliffs in the daylight sky.
Whelp, we woke up at 3am and the lunar #eclipse was completely obscured by thick fog. So, instead, here's a daytime photo of the #moon over a cliff at Anza Borrego State Park from a hike last week with @tetrameryx.bsky.social
A bald eagle flying to the right side in the low morning sun; many details of the brown feathers are visible. White head, white tail, yellow hooked bill, yellow feet tucked up.
A bald eagle flying to the right side in the low morning sun; many details of the brown feathers are visible. White head, white tail, yellow hooked bill, yellow feet tucked up.
A bald eagle flying to the right side in the low morning sun; many details of the brown feathers are visible. White head, white tail, yellow hooked bill, yellow feet tucked up.
A bald eagle flying to the right side in the low morning sun; many details of the brown feathers are visible. White head, white tail, yellow hooked bill, yellow feet tucked up.
I have definitely seen a bald eagle before, but this was the first time I had my enormous 600mm telephoto at the ready! Haliaeetus leucocephalus - Coos Bay, Oregon. I know some of my friends in the PNW get tired of this bird but they're still a novelty to me. #birding #oregon
A photo of me snorkeling in a black wetsuit with a whale shark behind me. You can make out its square head and the spotted pattern.
A photo of the head of the shark and the left pectoral fin gliding over the rippled sandy bottom. Several remoras are attached to the shark above its fin.
Two snorkelers relaxing at the surface after diving with the giant shark - Joe El Adli on the left and me on the right
A photo from in front of a whale shark showing its mouth wide open as rays of sunlight cascade down from above.
Some more photos from Baja - on our last day Joe El Adli and I fit in some snorkeling on the tail end of our #whaleontology expedition to see whale sharks (Rhincodon typus). It was nothing short of life changing. This one was about 8-9 meters - medium sized! More photos coming soon! 🤿🦑
I mean, we literally are about to launch Artemis II, and there isn't even a new lander built yet and Artemis III was supposed to be a landing. I am extremely skeptical that A) any landing would happen prior to 2030 and that B) it will involve Starship in any capacity.
Tail skeletons of Oncorhynchus rastrosus in a sandstone slab
A well-preserved, about 30 cm long skull of Oncorhynchus rastrosus
A smaller skull of Oncorhynchus rastrosus with laterally projecting tusks
Win McLaughlin and master's student Andy Quintanilla survey fossil Oncorhynchus specimens
#fossilfriday Oregon, part 2 - I saw some beautifully preserved gigantic fish while visiting UOMNH in Eugene - the saber toothed salmon, "Smilodonichthys", recently reclassified as Oncorhynchus rastrosus.
Algae covered wave-cut platform along the Oregon coast, with trees on a low bluff to the left.
A beautifully preserved and exposed scallop emerging from 9 million year old siltstone.
Win McLaughlin standing on the Coos Conglomerate in coastal Oregon.
Win holding a small concretion from the Empire Formation studded with fossil mollusks
Oregon trip, part 1: a couple of weeks ago @paleowin.bsky.social flew me up to coastal Oregon. Before my lecture, we went out to explore the Empire Formation - a famous late Miocene locality for giant walruses (e.g. Pontolis magnus).
#whaleontology 🐬🦖New blog post - public lecture on the evolution of whales and dolphins revealed by fossils from the Pacific Northwest, and the origin of baleen. Full recorded lecture is up on youtube! Read the post, and watch the video, here:
A cast of the skeleton of Atopotarus. The skull is to the right and the ribcage and flippers are to the left, the hindlimbs are missing. The skeleton is lightly disarticulated, with the ribs splayed out; the two mandibles are somewhat askew. It is mounted on a white wall in NHM Los Angeles.
#fossilfriday A cast of the well-preserved skeleton of the middle Miocene pinniped Atopotarus courseni, a relative of the much larger Allodesmus. Discovered in 1952 in exposures of the Altamira Shale on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles; ~15-16 myo. 🐬🦖On display at @nhm.org
Vertical shot of the tidepool along the shore of Coos Bay with thousands of kelp crabs stuck in the deep end of a large tidepool. A mud flat is exposed in the background at low tide.
Hundreds of kelp crabs, resembling small spider crabs, hanging out in a tidepool; they have a smooth, hexagonal carapace with spines at the corners, and long legs. These are all a darkish brown color.
Hundreds of kelp crabs, resembling small spider crabs, hanging out in a tidepool; they have a smooth, hexagonal carapace with spines at the corners, and long legs. These are all a darkish brown color. A reddish individual is sitting next to a fossil scallop exposed in the bedrock that makes the tidepool.
Hundreds of kelp crabs, resembling small spider crabs, hanging out in a tidepool; they have a smooth, hexagonal carapace with spines at the corners, and long legs. These are all a darkish brown color.
Incredible tidepooling experience: last week in Coos Bay Oregon I saw thousands of northern kelp crabs (Pugettia productus) with @paleowin.bsky.social, all huddled in a large #tidepool. I have no idea what was happening. Bonus fossil scallop if you can find it 🦀🦑🧪
Nerd stuff:
780 frames, stacked (~2 hours)
Seestar s30 Pro
Stacked in Siril, and processed in Pixinsight, with minor edits in Gimp
The Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) is to the lower right in this image, and is an area of active star formation. It was cloudy on Chinese New Year (February 17th this year) but in the Chinese zodiac 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse, so I was happy to image this target again!
IC434 is a fairly bright emission nebula in the constellation Orion (found on the leftmost star on Orion’s belt). The darker nebula in front of IC 434 is the nebula Barnard 33, and known as the Horsehead Nebula, and is roughly 1375 light-years from Earth.
red nebula with a darker nebula in the shape of a horsehead over a field of stars
Horsehead Nebula (IC434/Barnard 33) and Flame Nebula (NGC 2024)
🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography #chinesenewyear
A pair of clam shells, slightly askew, protruding from a gray sandstone concretion. There is a circular drill hole from a predatory snail in the clam.
#molluskmonday A well-preserved clam (Macoma sp.) with a naticid snail boring, protruding from a fine sandstone concretion. Middle Pleistocene Port Orford Formation, Oregon.
#worldwhaleday Last week I was invited by @paleowin.bsky.social to give a lecture at her institution (SWOCC) on the evolution of whales. If you want to learn about about the origin of baleen and the importance of fossils from the Pacific Northwest, watch here: 🐬🦖🧪 www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7jg...
Happy #caturday and happy #valentinesday from @coastalpaleo.bsky.social and our clowder 🧡🖤🤍
A diagram showing fossil and modern baleen whales and toothed whales, with representative skulls; Basilosaurus is shown as the common ancestor of both lineages. Coronodon, Aetiocetus, Fucaia, and Maiabalaena are all baleen whales present, leading to modern Balaenoptera; Xenorophus, Simocetus, Olympicetus, Eosqualodon are shown leading to the modern bottlenose dolphin Tursiops.
#fossilfriday On Tuesday I gave a guest lecture at Southwestern Oregon Community College on the evolution of whales and dolphins, with an emphasis on fossils from Oregon and Washington (Aetiocetus, Simocetus). Here is one of my nicer slides from the presentation. #whaleontology 🐬🦖
A yellow brittle star with six arms on a purple branching soft coral.
A yellow brittle star with six arms on a purple branching soft coral.
A yellow brittle star with six arms on a purple branching soft coral; the yellow arms wrap around the branches like snakes.
Several yellow brittle stars on a purple branching soft coral.
Some more commensal brittle stars (Ophiothela mirabilis) on a purple octocoral (Leptogorgia rigida). Playa Balandra, La Paz, Baja California. 🦀🦑 #baja #tidepool #echinoderm
Nerd stuff:
2721 frames, stacked (~7.5 hours)
Seestar s50
Stacked in Siril, and processed in Pixinsight, with minor edits in Gimp
IC 447 is a reflection nebula - meaning it does not emit its own light, but rather dust clouds reflect light from nearby large super bright blue giant stars. Reflection nebulae are fairly dim due to this, and a bit of a pain to capture and process! It is in the constellation Monoceros.
faint blueish-green nebula in a field of stars
IC 447 - Dreyer’s Nebula
🔭 #astronomy #astro #astrophoto #astrophotography
Jonesy on his first night in our house. He's an orange tabby with big orangey doe eyes and one tipped ear.
Jonesy relaxing on a couch. His arms are draped humorously over the edge of the couch. He has white paws.
Four years ago today we brought Jonesy in from the (literal) cold! True to orange cat fashion, he oscillates between being a menace and the most affectionate cat on earth @tetrameryx.bsky.social
A newborn harbor seal pup looking up at the sky. It is mostly light gray in color with many sharp-edged black spots; its hair is wet. It has large black glossy eyes.
A newborn harbor seal pup looking at the camera with a sheepish look about it. It is mostly light gray in color with many sharp-edged black spots; its hair is wet. It has large black glossy eyes.
A newborn harbor seal pup down the beach. It is mostly light gray in color with many sharp-edged black spots; its hair is wet. It has large black glossy eyes.
Welcome little guy! On Thursday @tetrameryx.bsky.social saw this one-hour old pup - someone else filmed the birth just before we got there. 🦑🐬
Just finished updating my review on the evolution and fossil record of the eared seals (Otariidae) given the new paper that came out on the early Pleistocene Otaria josefinae from Peru 😅 #blog #paleo #paleontology 🦖🐬🧪 Read it here:
A segment of the trace fossil Gyrolithes; it is a spiral-shaped burrow that is reddish brown on light gray siltstone.
A segment of the trace fossil Gyrolithes; it is a spiral-shaped burrow that is reddish brown on light gray siltstone. The ocean is in the background.
A segment of the trace fossil Gyrolithes; it is a spiral-shaped burrow that is reddish brown on light gray siltstone. The ocean is in the background.
#fossilfriday The distinctive spiral burrow Gyrolithes in the Oligocene El Cien Formation of Baja California. The passageway is usually a bit more round but this was in somewhat compacted siltstone.
