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I got a tour of the aquifer from David Jeffery (mentioned here) last week. He's got extensive experience with the petroleum industry - the last full time geology prof at Marietta - and deep concerns about potential impacts on the aquifer. We're going to have a fun semester.

Going to kick off #FossilFriday with a widowmaker: a kettle bottom, the stump of a lycopod found embedded in the roof of an underground coal mine. Its tapered shape and lack of tensile strength meant it could pop out of the ceiling with ease, posing significant risk to miners. 🧪⚒️🌴

I have meant to make the pilgrimage to Marietta College to see the largest known piece of the New Concord meteorite for years. This chunk of space rock (L6 chondrite, legacy of the Ordovician meteorite event) has a freaking history. This piece, unfortunately, will not sit on my desk. Damn it.

#TrilobiteTuesday is also #TraceFossilTuesday with a lovely pair of overlapping traces: the trilobite resting trace Rusophycus appears to capture the moment it slurped a burrowing worm out ofvthe mud like spaghetti. ⚒️🧪

If you didn't love them enough already, there's at least one species documented to live and hunt cooperatively in matriarchal family groups!

Mood.

It me.

This sounds like the kind of shop stories @laurasita.bsky.social used to send from McMurdo, except less creepy, more plausible, and with a substantially lower number of Lovecraftian eldritch horrors.

Something boring for #MolluskMonday ... the predatory gastropod Cyclonema and some of its victims, the brachiopod Rafinesquina. 🧪⚒️🐌