Chris Widga
Director of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at Penn State. Here for museums, fossils, not-fossils, and geo-nerdom. Sucker for good jazz. Personal account. #museums #paleontology #geology #scicomm #naturalhistory
- I feel like this is the last 2 decades in any paleo- zoo- discipline.
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- Can confirm, @arctomet.bsky.social DOES get this excited about mammoths too.
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- Reposted by Chris WidgaFinal pdf of our paper on the 3D body plan of the early tetrapod Ichthyostega and comparative morphology with other extant and extinct taxa, showing how "front-dominated" appendages are ancient, and much more: www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
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- Very very interesting...there are many things we still don't know. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Chris WidgaTrailer-type video for the new @mkepublicmuseum.bsky.social, now renamed the Nature and Culture Museum of Wisconsin. I'm rooting for them to pull this off! www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKYu...
- This has been a week of Fridays. Everyday, I feel like it is Friday--only to discover that I must get up in the morning and do it all over again....
- @drlauraguertin.bsky.social does such great work. #scicomm quilts are fantastic!
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- Reposted by Chris WidgaThe Royal Ontario Museum is hiring a new collections manager! Please spread the word. Collections Specialist 2: Fossils (Vertebrate Paleontology) - Royal Ontario Museum - Careers t.co/CTtfs3MBMB
- Putting this here so I remember it for the VP course I need to design over the summer.
- AFSCME and ALA successfully get an injunction against efforts to shutter IMLS (I know, so many acronyms). Support your unions! Time and time again, they go to bat for cultural institutions. apnews.com/article/inst...
- An absolute unit of a gomphothere. Actually, I like that, the gomphothere unit. As in, I'll take 1 "gomphothere" of your finest lager please. #fossilfriday #dmns
- One of the perks of living where we do, I get to stare at this mountain at the end of a long week, who is indifferent to the current state of human affairs. #mtnittany
- I can't unsee this. OTOH...these are my people.
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- Reposted by Chris WidgaCheck out our Museums & Display collection, with FREE and #OpenAccess research such as: How digital museums place sovereignty in the hands of descendent communities The ethics of displaying human remains Restitution and repatriation & more! 🏺 MuseumsBluesky www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by Chris WidgaHello! Leaf it to Us is a podcast about the science of plants and their importance to us humans! Leaf it to Us is a descendant of @commondescentpod.bsky.social. They don't talk enough about plants, so we have BRANCHED off and said "Leaf it to Us!"
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- La Prele site in Wyoming gives us Pleistocene mammoths and needles. Something poetic in that. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
- Some gompho-crazy for your day.
- Oh, nice! Vertebrate Fossils of Louisiana is out! Congrats to all who celebrate! (mostly thinking about fellow probo person Connor White, who is NOT on #paleosky). repository.lsu.edu/spmns/5/
- Ooo. Gnarly.
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- Saw some of the tiniest elephants today in the Denver Museum collections. A bitty mastodon chin tusk from Snowmass (complete w/enamel cap), and a cutie baby mammoth jaw.
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- Reposted by Chris WidgaAmong the thousands of dire wolf specimens at La Brea #TarPits is this 𝘈𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘺𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘶𝘴 lower jaw. Known as “The Endling”—the last known #direwolf fossil on Earth—this fossil is dated to be approximately 13,082 years old. See the fossil now on view in our Fossil Lab!
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- Clearly I need more monumental wildlife sculpture in my workplace. #saadenver2025
- Filling this away to look up later. Must add to health and safety talk...
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- Would we use the the hype generated by a mega-pr campaign about an extinct carnivore to highlight student achievements? Absolutely. Follow @taphonomenon.bsky.social to keep up with Ethan. www.psu.edu/news/earth-a...
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- ...as I always expected, material scientists are living the future. (Fun things to think about in this post)
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- Putting this here to see how many of you are paying attention. Actually quite a bit of detail on the "bizness" side of de-extinction. www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/16/1...
- Hynerpeton needs love too. (This effort has my complete and un-bending support...) Pennsylvania students push to change state fossil to Hynerpeton Source: WNEP search.app/3Wq8T Shared via the Google App
- All part of a good day looking at historic mystery mammoth bones (and maybe mastodon, and dinosaur?) at Bethany College WV.
- Yes. This is an elephant skull perched atop a very small pedestal. #thingsyoucantunsee
- Reposted by Chris WidgaColossal made designer Canis, not dire wolves. So what was Aenocyon dirus really like? I dig in at NatGeo with insights (and puns) from @ashinonyx.bsky.social, @widga.bsky.social, and @tarpits.org’s Emily Lindsey.
- Reposted by Chris WidgaThe first image is a beautiful illustration by the talented artist @orribec.bsky.social. Long ago in ancient northern China, during the Neogene Period. During the dry season, with no trees in sight, a single amebelodontid proboscidean called Platybelodon grangeri is searching hard for a place to
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- Not to pile onto your #direwolf doom-scrolling too much, but we just introduced a few new Aenocyon records to the world. These are the first records for Iowa! We also described dire wolves from Peccary Cave, AR. peerj.com/articles/192... #paleosky 🦣🐺🧪
- Reposted by Chris WidgaLosing the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) would be an act of monumental neglect. I made a video about what’s at risk, and how orgs like @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social and the American Alliance of Museums need us to help advocate for these critical places. youtu.be/fYLC-KWy-Ks?...
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- Reposted by Chris WidgaWhat kind of labour gets recognised, when we think about minerals in museums? Who do we involve in recovering and telling their stories? Helpful prompts from @ellietheelement.bsky.social in @originalgcg.bsky.social EDI symposium this morning, relevant to our thinking @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social
- Reposted by Chris WidgaIf you want to see dire wolves, the place to go is LA’s La Brea asphalt seep. Thousands of individuals were trapped and preserved there, a view of populations over time and unique moments. The collection even includes a broken, healed, Aenocyon dirus baculum from what was surely a dire moment. 🧪
- Reposted by Chris Widga10-week graduate STUDENT FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITY at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History! See more info at : www.facebook.com/SIInvertebra... OR download info here
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- How did I miss this?!?
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