🚨New Pub!🚨Understanding the Westphalo-Stephanian ichthyofaunal turnover with the contribution of the Vaulnaveys-le-Bas locality (Isère, France)🐟🇫🇷by Gonçalves et al.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🐟🧪
Upcoming book on the complexities and implications of pain in fishes by Ila France Porcher. Can't wait to read it! #fishsci #fishwelfare
ilafranceporcher.wixsite.com/so/71PoUcu0J...
Watercolor painting of a Copper Band Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus. These fish form long-term monogamous pairs. I’m painting one reef fish per day for 100 days with the hope of building a community. It’s about how art becomes connection. If you love the ocean, curiosity is enough. 🐠
100 Days of Reef Fish
Beautiful Reef Fish 3/10: Copper Band Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus. These fish form long-term monogamous pairs.
Thanks again, Uncle Scotter, @dinosaucerous.bsky.social for the suggestion.
#sciart #marinelife #coralreefs #dothe100daysproject
If Females Could Get Pregnant, There’d Be An Abortion Clinic On Every Coral By Triton Corsair
Commentary: If Females Could Get Pregnant, There’d Be An Abortion Clinic On Every Coral https://theonion.com/if-females-could-get-pregnant-thered-be-an-abortion-clinic-on-every-coral/
A warped "fish eye" view of the Silurian, with plants on land above (as well as... er... some kind of giant mushroomy things) and marine invertebrates below.
...and a visit to the lands and seas of the Silurian. These were a ton of fun to work on and represent my biggest set of 2D works to date. I've yet to see them printed in person, but maybe one day. Lots of discussion about how they came to be in my Patreon post.
A large predatory dinosaur, Allosaurus, breaks into a run alongside a shallow pond. Turtles and pterosaurs are seen in the foreground around the allosaur's feet, and stegosaurs and sauropods occur in the far distance. Ferns, cycadophytes and conifers comprise the vegetation.
A gloomy scene of Cambrian life. A field of tower-like sponges creates a set of obstacles for an all-star cast of Cambrian critters to swim and climb around, including anomalocarids, trilobites, lots of wormy things and the bizarre Opabinia.
Flying animals of the Yixian Formation: pterosaurs, birds, and insects compete for airspace over mountains and ginkgo treetops.
Deposits of the Cleveland Shale and the fossil animals they contain: among several species of Devonian sharks is the famous Dunkleosteus. Palaeontologists work to discover new fossils at the base of the cliff.
At #Patreon, I've been discussing my 2024 #paleoart murals for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History: www.patreon.com/markwitton. They include a life-size Allosaurus, Cambrian faunas, Yixian pterosaurs, birds and insects, Cleveland Shale strata and fishes...
#FossilFriday #sciart #paleontology
#FossilFriday Verbeekiella australis, among the last of the Palaeozoic ‘horn corals’ belonging to the class Rugosa, from the Permian of Timor. The function of the unusual axial structure is unclear according to my colleague Brian Rosen.
Because I know you all care as much about early diverging chondrosteans as I do:
deepblue.lib.umich.edu/items/b06e41...
![Comic. [Two people looking at a board with apparent formula (3.1.3.1)/(3.1.2.1)] PERSON: Do mammologists think these are hard? I mean, this one just evaluates to 3/2. [caption] Mathematicians encounter dental formulas](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreiekjipovc32c7swnmikuv7iwyhcbd4glxlhzsvh4v5hmmoa6hx54q@jpeg)
Comic. [Two people looking at a board with apparent formula (3.1.3.1)/(3.1.2.1)] PERSON: Do mammologists think these are hard? I mean, this one just evaluates to 3/2. [caption] Mathematicians encounter dental formulas
Dental Formulas
xkcd.com/3213/
No two Paratilapia have the same spot pattern, like finger prints, the size, color and distribution of blotches is unique to the individual. The pattern changes with age. Paratilapia is the least understood genus in the cichlid world, posing a steep learning curve but so rewarding to see fully grown
Close-up of a fish eye, displaying iridescent colors with green, blue, and silver hues against a speckled skin background. The eye's circular pupil is surrounded by a vibrant, reflective iris, and delicate fish scales are visible on the periphery.
A translucent fish with a large eye and fan-like fins swims against a dark background. Its body is iridescent with hints of purple and silver.
Oh my! What big eyes you have!
Juvenile bluefin driftfish can be found near the surface, where large eyes help them navigate and spot small prey. As adults, bluefin driftfish venture to deeper waters to find food and avoid predation, where their large eyes improve their ability to detect prey.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Lead by Jeremy McCormack of @goetheuni.bsky.social, and with a miniscule contribution from me, we present geochemical evidence that sharks were marine apex predators since at least the Late Cretaceous. 🐟🦈🧪 #paleobiology #geochemistry
Like-Follow-Subscribe for more really dumb geology jokes
Miss these little buggers.
The second reports a tiny (~3 cm) articulated fish from the early Silurian. The material is challenging, but it is unquestionably a bony fish. Fittingly named Eosteus, it co-occurs with the oldest articulated jawed fishes and cements the antiquity of osteichthyans.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The first revisits Megamastax, a late Silurian fish described in 2014 as a sarcopt based on isolated jaws. Remarkable new cranial material shows it is a stem osteichthyan, providing our most detailed picture of a bony fish branching before the sarcopt/actinopt split. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Cover of the journal Nature, featuring the head of a large fish with its mouth open. A smaller fish is swimming into its mouth. The cover reads "Caught in Time: Early fossils shed light on the origins of bony fish."
Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.
As Peter Moyle wrote: "Humans are not the pinnacle of evolutionary progress but only an aberrant side branch of fish evolution."
Description of the type specimen of Cheirodopsis geikiei, a Carboniferous ray-finned fish, calling it "Imperfect fish, wanting paired and caudal fins"
Calling myself an imperfect fish from now on....
Poposaurus running simulations starting to get better than utterly ridiculous. Now just ridiculous.
New paper out from @hoehna.bsky.social Lab, led by the brilliant @bjorntko.bsky.social! We applied the Pesto software (Kopperud & Höhna, 2025) to look at lineage-specific shifts in diversification rate on large, densely-sampled phylogenies across the Tree of Life doi.org/10.1093/evle...
Snails have this really cool structure called a radula that they used to scrape hard surfaces for food. It's quite entertaining to watch 😅
A map shows the locations of BTO satellite tagged Cuckoos in Africa. The headshots of four Cuckoos appear in circular frames around the map, alongside the wording: First Cuckoo Update for 2026.
1/ And they’re off! 📢 Our BTO satellite-tagged Cuckoos are on the move! 🌍
Follow their migrations via our interactive map ➡️ www.bto.org/cuckoos #Ornithology 🪶
Coral City after dark stays beefin with these two French grunts mouthing off 😮😮 #frenchgrunts #grunt #mouthfight #coralcityafterdark #coralcitycamera
Short video of this pair with the male in breeding dress. 🐟 #fishkeeping
Congo Tetras can be an aggressive species, especially the males. I'll forgive them when they have this nice color.
#aquariumfish #fish #fishtanksofinstagram #aquariumlife #aquariumhobby #aquarium #animal #animalphotography #animallovers #shrimp #shrimptank
A fish swimming in front of a reef. It has large scales with an orange belly, and the green scales on its back have dark blue centres. The upper face is green with pink lines; the bottom of its head is light blue, with dark blue diagonal lines on the lower gill cover. There is a bright green patch on the tail although it's hard to see the shape as the tail is folded. #UnderwaterPhotography #WildlifePhotography #Wildlife
Wrasses can be surprisingly hard to identify. You'd think the distinctive colours would make it straightforward... but there are a LOT of them, and some are fairly similar, and their colours can vary.
This is (I think) a Linedcheek Wrasse (Oxycheilinus digramma). Pic from Anilao.
#MarineLife 🐟🌿
While the French were establishing a settlement in New Orleans and Blackbeard was killed off the Outer Banks of NC in 1718, a printer and bookseller in Amsterdam was producing a wondrous book on Indonesian fishes of which only 16 known copies survive today. 🐠 #SciArt
