Sumrall LabGroup

Finally found a brittle star (2 plates) in the Coon Creek material. The preservation is amazing. The plates have no calcite cements and are still white! #FossilFriday #Cretaceous #echinoderms

@UglyFossils @hannahdactylus Need I say more about this lizard maggot cloaca volcano?

@Sumrall_Lab looking at @hannahdactylus's decomposition experiment:

@hannahdactylus and me, looking at her decomposition experiment:

Looking for brittle star ossicles in the Cretaceous Coon Creek Fm. famed for outstanding preservation. No brittle stars - yet - but the echinoderm preservation is stunning. This is a fragment of a heart urchin and the stereom is not per mineralized.#Echinoderms #FossilFriday

“Study guide” when the subject you’re studying is “The entire tree of life.”

Awesome paper just out by #UglyFossils and others on a fantastic dinosaur mummy. Enjoy! journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

It’s only 45 years until our 100th anniversary!

An artifact from the first Friends of the #Echinoderms meeting in the new format. It was a great success. Thanks to all of the fantastic people who helped organize the event and looking forwards to many more in the future.

Just in case you were wondering if any invertebrates have vertebrae, here you go. This is a vertebral element from the #ophiuroid Ophiura. These are fused ossicles (note the suture along the midline) that core the arms #Echinodermata

Linda and I rescued a Fish Crow tangled in fishing line. Luckily we had nail clippers in the car. Interestingly, several other crows were there apparently trying to help it. It was one stressed out bird but flew away just fine.

We had an unusual visitor to the area in Anderson Co., TN yesterday, an Anhinga. This bird looks a lot like a cormorant but has a different bill shape, lots of white plumes on the back and wings and a much longer tail. While common along the coast, they rarely get up here.

Not a fossil, though I did find it on a Permian outcrop among the brachiopods and crinoid stems. Reminds me of my childhood in Phoenix. Passing over to the Mississippi Valley today.

Made it to Oklahoma … cystis. Quick stop in the Bromide Formation for paracrinoid fun. Collected some bulk material too. Off to the lower Pennsylvanian around Gore, OK

Finishing up the Texas leg of field work. We collected a lot of bulk samples to wash for brittle star microfossils. I find it a bit disturbing to not be able to see what we are looking for in the field but the fancies seem good. Thanks to Pete Holterhoff!

More Eocene along the Brazos River (the brachiopod-shaped fossil is a clam) then to the coast to study the infaunal brittle star Microphiopholis atra. This ophiuroid has extremely long arms and a tiny disk

Looking for fossil brittle star ossicles in the Eocene Weches Fm. This is the first research fossil hunting I have ever done in the #Cenozoic.

Just starting two weeks of field work with Nick Smith. On our way to Texas had dinner with ⁦@UTK_EPS⁩ alum Mike DeAngelis in Little Rock at “Big Orange Burgers” then a walk at the #BigDamBridge

I had a paper come out today with Samuel Zamora, Imran A. Rahman, Adam P. Gibson and Jeffrey R. Thompson looking at a new #Cambrian #edrioasteroid that lacks calcified plating of the interambulacra. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

The echinoid is Lepidesthes, note the lantern at 9:00, and the edrioasteroid is Hypsiclavus, note the anal pyramid at the top and the mouth on the bottom. Sorry it’s up side down. Love ‘em

Fair warning. This is the kind of shenanigans one has to put up with when working with @UglyFossils

@Sumrall_Lab and I took some students out to collect #fossils for their term-long research assignment today near Berea, Kentucky. (It's a #taphonomy project!)