Dave Rodland

Deeply grateful for the server who made a point to ask about food allergies, and then followed up with the cooks, because hot damn, some cuisines just want to kill me.

I dunno. There's some great science to be done between the Kellwasser and Hangenberg events.

And it's a far better scene than, say, the Griesbachian, or first few years of the Danian.

That's how they getcha.

Early tetrapod trackways on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

Evening plans mean no long threads for #FossilFriday... gotta unleash my inner stem-tetrapod, and make tracks! 🐾🧪⚒️

Please tell that to Aset.

Tell that to Aset.

If you pickle her on land, it's not marine biology anymore ... it gets you into the Epstein files.

Really, for marine taxonomy purposes, you want to pickle the holotype.

This isn't getting any better, is it?

That's a whole different kink you're thinking of! 🤣

Taxidermy, my friend. Taxidermy.

Yeah, I remember an estimate from the '90s suggesting they could curl 400lbs or so, if they had a decent grip on the dumbbells.

I have no useful input regarding the rotation angle though.

Check the beak.

You think he's bad, wait 'til you try getting a good taxonomic assignment for Ariel or Ursula.

Apparently they got the link fixed? Now it works. Thank you for posting it.

Late '90s me was very protective of my right to go off grid for extended periods and I exercised that right through my postdoc years in Europe.

Didn't bother to tell anyone I was buggering off to a tiny seaside village in England to watch a friend sing in a musical the week before I came home 😆

Yeah. I never had SAR called in, but I spent my MS fieldwork in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana calling home once a week just to let 'em know I was still alive.

That sends me back to grad school....

I get a 404 page not found on the link. Did it get pulled down?

I have fond memories of dodging the little jumpers across my field sites in Colorado. I don't care that they're sharp and stabby, they're my friends. Have you met my friends?

Sharp and stabby.

Have you *seen* how much of their body volume they can produce in mucus???

And then there's the cannibalism. And the sex. And the murdering death roll out of Tremors.

I don't think the publishing world is ready for the full book treatment, but an invert vignette collection...

This whole 🧵🤣

Naticids could really use the Riley Black treatment.

I mean, as I recall, the Night King hadn't been introduced in the books yet by the end of Dance.

Which means Arya doesn't have a target, and you're left with Daeny lighting up the night all prophetic-like.

Honestly, I liked how well the burning of King's Landing checked off boxes. That end tho.

I love the random rhynchonellid!

It's so much better than in my mother's day. And still so far to go. But we can't abandon what they started.

Academia has needed this for years. We've tried fixing it from inside, and watched the powers that own it tear it down rather than tolerate our ideals.

We have a whole damn infrastructure full of talented scholars, researchers and educators ready to go, and no viable system to support them.

I did enjoy Albuquerque. I spent a summer at UNM doing lab work, shooting shells with lasers. It's a very walkable city, and was cheap at the time. Good bookstores. Interesting tattoo shop storefronts. Surprisingly good aquarium and zoo. But ... beige!

New Mexico: it's a Four Corner state, it should be good, right?

Why is everything beige?

No, seriously. Who messed with the damn color saturation? I wanna have words. With a rock pick.

Look at this! <squints> You can't tell the grass from the rocks. What is this, Nevada?
Where's my damn cholla?

Colorado: <squints> ok, yes, we still have most of the appropriate rocks, but there's a lot more greenery making 'em harder to see. But they've also done more interesting things with the rocks, so we'll let it fly.

Wait a second ... <reaches I-25> y'all cheaped out. It's just Kansas from here.

Arizona: see Utah, but theres this big ol' gash running through the one corner. It's actually better with rain, the scattered storms give a proper sense of scale. I appreciate the artistic flourishes of cinder cones and lava spilling into the canyon, and deeper greens in the forests.

Ok, my NM experiences mostly involved field trips or long drives passing through, with summer lab work in grad school visiting UNM.

My perspectives on each of the Four Corners:

Utah: Canyons, rocks and pinnacles in a glorious assortment of reds, yellows and whites, garnished lightly with green.