Mitchell Riegler

A single partial antler shed of an extinct Irish elk is larger than the entire skull plus antlers of a white-tailed deer. While @FloridaMuseum vert paleo mostly houses FL fossils, we also acquire donations, including this one collected from the Netherlands #FossilFriday

The snake fossil record usually only includes vertebrae, but the @floridamuseum haile site of central Florida has produced several articulated colubrid vertebrae, such as the column in my hands. Another was just CT scanned. Can you guess why there are two colors? #FossilFriday

Check out @ManyTinyTeeth Mitchell Riegler's #2020SVP poster on Quaternary Cave Deposits of Jamaica: Regional Squamate Extirpation and First Record of Anuran Extinction in the Greater Antilles. Can you guess the fossils from the 'Guess Who' box in the poster?!

People are always like: "Ugghh, just another lizard fossil." Hurts me, my dudes. 😔

The Bloch Lab hard at work CT scanning, post-processing, and studying scanned fossil specimens on this lovely #FossilFriday @jibloch @renarducci @ManyTinyTeeth

Guess what we found buried at Montbrook?! A mole! This right jaw with 3 pretty worn molars was found following the screenwashing and picking process but was originally collected in a matrix bag by volunteer, Dean Warner.

In celebration of #DarwinDay, here is a rostrum of the bullfinch, Melopyrrha sp., collected in 1965 from late Pleistocene deposits in the Cayman Islands. These finches are endemic to the Caribbean and feed mostly on seeds, small fruits, flower nectar, and insects. @FloridaMuseum

A #FossilFriday mystery story… “What is this fossil?”, asked an unassuming undergrad picking through microvertebrates from Jamaica today. Everyone got a look through the scope and many ideas were thrown around. Fossil empanada?

@FloridaMuseum @jibloch @DrScanley @renarducci @ManyTinyTeeth @PaleoPirlo @zigthehuman We jumped in the van and raced to the offsite storage. We began looking earnestly through Jamaican specimen cabinets until… “We found it” from team frog.

@FloridaMuseum @jibloch @DrScanley @renarducci @ManyTinyTeeth @PaleoPirlo @zigthehuman It’s a partial angulosplenial (upper) of the tree frog, Osteopilus, compared to a more complete one (middle) from the same locality in Jamaica. Those empanada look-alikes are compared to a more typical angulosplenial (lower) of the rain frog, Eleutherodactylus. #FossilFriday

This bat petrosal (inner ear bone) was just discovered while sorting through fossil owl pellet matrix from Portland Cave, Jamaica (originally collected in 1953). Check out the exceptional 3D preservation of the semicircular canals! #FossilFriday @FloridaMuseum

Mastodon (cone-shaped cusps for crushing vegetation) vs. mammoth (flat teeth for grazing/grinding grasses) #FossilFriday @FloridaMuseum more info > twilightbeasts.org/2014/07/14/the… @TwilightBeasts

Happy #MuseumSelfieDay from Vertebrate Paleontology @FloridaMuseum and the mylodont ground sloth, hell pig, gomphothere, 6-horned pronghorn, sling-shot horn protoceratid>bit.ly/2TnqKxT, and the American alligator>bit.ly/2RxoRMD

Astragalus of the giant ground sloth, Eremotherium (left, bit.ly/2NeUJEq), compared to that of the shovel-tusked elephant-relative, Amebelodon (right, bit.ly/2tRTBiT) @FloridaMuseum #FossilFriday

It's #FossilFriday and we're looking back at the Vero Canal Site discovered in 1913 near Vero Beach, #Florida. Many exciting #fossils were found at this site, including the holotype skulls of Tapirus veroensis & Canis dirus. But there's more: floridamuseum.ufl.edu/florida-verteb…

Happy New Year! @FloridaMuseum #FossilFriday #Specimen2020 is a 4-5 Ma partial dental plate of the large eagle ray, Aetomylaeus. Collected in 1955 from Bone Valley Fm tinyurl.com/wr23rmt UF-VP specimen numbers will soon exceed 485000!

Excited for #SICB2020 in Austin? Come and check out our tooth-inspired Symposium (S3) Biology at the Cusp: Teeth as a Model Phenotype for Integrating Developmental Genomics, Biomechanics, and Ecology. Saturday 4th Jan, 8am - 330pm.🦷🔬 🦈🦖🐁🦎🦇🐡@SICBtweets @aigverte

Walruses in Florida?! 5 mya this freaking huge tusk belonged to the walrus, Ontocetus emmonsi. The tusk is an ever-growing modified upper canine #ToothTuesday Check out the species description of this now-extinct walrus bit.ly/2YY2fYC written by @swidlansky

Body armor from a giant armadillo-like pampathere who lived in Florida ~2 million yrs ago. They had 3 bands of overlapping osteoderms which made the shell flexible. @FloridaMuseum @BlochLab #FossilFriday

The Sungazer (Smaug giganteus) is objectively one of the worlds coolest lizards: it has crazy amounts armor, a spiky club tail and sharp head spikes that help it anchor itself into its burrow when attacked. skfb.ly/6OMKI