Fossil of ancient crustacean gathering reveals new insights into their lives
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2025/march/fossil-ancient-crustacean-gathering-reveals-new-insights-into-their-lives.html

Gregarious behaviour in #Carboniferous cyclidan #crustaceans https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0734

"With legs emerging from underneath rounded shells, #cyclidans looked not unlike an underwater beetle. Earliest species were a few mm in size and form #fossils that look like a tiny bunch of grapes. Over millions of years they evolved larger species, and by the #Triassic they were about as wide as a human hand"

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Some zooms into my "Primeval Clevedon Bay" painting (2022), depicting fish, crinoids, othrocones, corals, gastropods, and brachiopods in an Early Carboniferous shallow sea. This painting was the first winner of the Marsh Palaeoart Award.

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Here's a second painting of the Severn Estuary, this time during the Early Carboniferous. Called "Primeval Clevedon Bay," it features fish, crinoids, othrocones, corals, gastropods, and brachiopods. This painting was the first winner of the Marsh Palaeoart Award.

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Last post for my life-size Megeneura (70cm wingspan, 2017); packaging and shipping a delicate model to the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, was nooooot easy.

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

For Fossil Friday, some photos of my life-size Megeneura model (2017), for the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt (70cm wingspan).

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Front view of my life-size Megeneura model (70cm wingspan), for the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt (2017). It would have been a fearsome predator with a nasty bite and loud wings!

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

I've built multiple life-size Megeneura models over the years, this one, for the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, was the first at the full 70cm wingspan (2017).

El Melanedaphodon hovaneci fue un edafosaurido, es decir, perteneció a los antiguamente llamados pelicosaurios, conocidos por su vela dorsal. Vivió en el Carbonífero tardío y habría consumido plantas duras, pero no le habría hecho ascos a algunos animales. Henry Sutherland Sharpe #carbonifero #carboniferous

Beautiful cover of the latest issue of the Science Advances journal, featuring a fossil of Arthropleura, the largest arthropod of all time.

https://www.science.org/toc/sciadv/10/41

Scientists recreate the head of this ancient 9-foot-long bug
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-scientists-biggest-bug-earth.html

Head anatomy and #phylogenomics show the #Carboniferous giant #Arthropleura belonged to a millipede-centipede group https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp6362

"The giant bug's topper was a round bulb with two short bell-shaped antennae, two protruding eyes like a crab, and a rather small mouth adapted for grinding leaves and bark"

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

Some illustrations of a Carboniferous landscape through climate change, for the National Museum Scotland. 1) Desert. 2) Flood. 3) Drought. 4) Marsh. 5) Forest. 6) Forest fire.

Ancient reef-building #stromatoporoids dodged #extinction—at least temporarily
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-ancient-reef-stromatoporoids-dodged-extinction.html

Post-Devonian re-emergence and demise of stromatoporoids as major reef-builders on a #Carboniferous Panthalassan seamount https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/doi/10.1130/G52420.1/646596/Post-Devonian-re-emergence-and-demise-of

"ancient reef-building sponge-like organisms called #stromatoporoids survived the Late #Devonian #MassExtinction event and continued to thrive as major reef-builders long after their presumed extinction"

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2013 I built 23 scale and life-size models for MUSE Science Museum, in Trento, Italy. Here's an enlarged Hylonomus, a reptile that lived about 318 million years ago (Carboniferous).

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2013 I built 23 scale and life-size models for MUSE Science Museum, in Trento, Italy. Here's a bit of Archaeopteris foliage, from the Late Devonian and Early Carboniferous.

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2013 I built 23 scale and life-size models for MUSE Science Museum, in Trento, Italy. Here's a modestly sized Meganeura, from the Carboniferous.

Spiny legged 308-million-year-old arachnid discovered in the #MazonCreek locality
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-spiny-legged-million-year-arachnid.html paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/remarkable-spiny-arachnid-from-the-pennsylvanian-mazon-creek-lagerstatte-illinois/0E1B32BAFCAEA067018EF9BF349F8B81

"More than 300 million years ago, all sorts of #arachnids crawled around the #Carboniferous coal #forests of North America and Europe. These included familiar ones... But there were also quite bizarre arachnids belonging to now #extinct groups. Even among these strange species now lost to time, one might have stood out for its up-armored legs"

Speculative solar system landscapes

Comment on s'est longtemps représenté le monde de Vénus, évoquant l'époque Carbonifère terrestre

/How we have long represented the world of Venus, evoking the terrestrial Carboniferous era

by Lucien Rudaux, Sur les autres mondes (1937)

I painted a Meganeura today.