#wearestemsquad

Happy #SharkWeek! Yes, we MUST start our week off with Carcharocles (or Otodus depending on taxonomy!?) megalodon! A C. megalodon (Yes, we shorten the name, like T.rex!) tooth is one of the few objects that you can hold in your hand that strikes fear, fascination, & mortality into your very being. See this gorgeous illustration? Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American biologist and geologist is particularly known for his contributions to ichthyological classification, including extinct species. This C. megalodon drawing from his publication, Les Poissons Fossiles (2nd 📷), illustrated by Austrian artist Joseph Dinkel, depicts every line, detail & serration on the shark's tooth. Early scientific illustrations as detailed as these are still extremely important, especially because specimens can become deteriorated or lost over time. If you are interested in this illustration (and MORE) from Les Poissons Fossiles, check out @biodivlibrary. Though C. megalodon is very, VERY extinct (YES, VERY MUCH DEAD!), its legacy lives on through science, illustrations, & our imagination. Megalodon 📷: mine Illustration 📷: mine Megalodon jaw photo: Wikipedia #wearestemsquad #womeninstem #louisagassiz #sciart #megalodon #sharks #drawing #scicomm #wearescience #tooth #fossil #museummonday (at Cleveland Museum of Natural History)

The most important thing with studying isn't the stationery you use or how neat your notes are; it's how well you learn. Sometimes it even takes failing a few times to learn something and that's perfectly fine. Vector calculus, tensors and everything associated with it took me two and a half years to understand the basics but now I finally do and the struggle was worth it. #studyspo #studyinspiration #motivation #studymotivation #workhard #studyblr #studygram #maths #physics #astrophysics #STEM #womeninSTEM #wearestemsquad #inspiration #tuesdayinspiration #studying #studyinghard (at Cape Town, Western Cape)

DUNK! DON'T EAT THE FLOWERS! There's a wedding at the Museum tonight and these HUGE arthrodire fish will eat just about anything! Time to get the spray bottle. Fun fact: Angiosperms (flowering plants) wouldn't evolve for another 100 million years during the Early Cretaceous Period. #fossilfriday #arthrodire #dunkleosteus #cleveland #cle #fossil #friday #fishyfriday #museumlife #notashark #bouquet #museumwedding #wedding #flower #whenyouworkatamuseum #wearestemsquad (at Cleveland Museum of Natural History)

HAPPY #FossilFriday! Look at this GORGEOUS specimen! Allow me to gush. [LONG POST!] Anhanguera santannae (AMNH22555) is one of the BEST preserved pterosaur fossils in the world and we have been lucky enough to have it at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for the last several months. It is SO rare to get this quality of preservation in the fossil record. Why? Taphonomy: the study of what happens to an organism after death. You have to die in the right time in the right place and then lie undisturbed for millions (MILLIONS!) of years until a bipedal ape finds you, digs you up and tries to makes sense of you. Paleontologists really are superheroes when you think about it. This pterosaur and many other beautifully preserved three-dimensional fossils have been found in carbonate concretions in the Romualdo Member of the Santana Formation (Araripe Basin, northeastern Brazil). Some 25 species of fossil fishes have often been found with stomach contents preserved, helping paleontologists to better study predator–prey relationships. Pterosaurs, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, crocodylomorphs, plants, and even dinosaurs have been found here. Limestone accretions formed nodules around dead organisms, preserving soft and hard parts of their anatomy. These nodules are then taken to a lab and etched away with acid, revealing beautiful bone inside. The American Museum of Natural History (@amnh) creates traveling exhibitions of incredible quality (we've had several now!) and I can't wait to see what they have in store for the future! 📷 1-4: mine 📷 5: Pinheiro 2017 from https://peerj.com/articles/3285/ #pterosaurs #anhanguera #museum #naturalhistorymuseum #science #cle #fossil #fridayfeeling #notadinosaur #wearestemsquad #wearescience #scicomm #amnh #cleveland

You walk past them everyday. They literally grow on trees, buildings, and rocks. These two literally landed on my driveway. What ARE they? A #lichen (LIE-Ken) is a combination of algae living among filaments of multiple fungi in a symbiotic relationship because...who wouldn't want to live with FUNGI? (BA-DUMP-SHH) Lichen: ✅Evolved 400+ million years ago ✅Are food for reindeer 🎅 ✅Grow SLOW. Rhizocarpon geographicum grows extremely slowly and can reach an age of over 1000 years! ✅Are used by scientists to show changes in the environment (they absorb pollution!) This is called lichen biomonitoring. ✅Slowly destroy rocks by producing chemicals and expanding/contracting. This is called biological weathering. I know Instagram is terrible for links, but check out this article by @edyong209 for a fun read: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/ #scicomm #wearestemsquad #science #iamanaturalist #fungi #symbiosis #ohio #getoutside #explore #themoreyouknow

The amazing Dr. Eugenia Leone Gold's book, She Found Fossils about women in #paleontology, is now available on Amazon in both English and Spanish! I'm in it along with other incredible paleontologists! Get yours now! . #wearestemsquad #womeninpaleontology #woneninpaleo #fossils #womeninscience #stem #womeninstem #stemwomen #holidaygifts #gift #christmas #paleontology #scicomm #scied #museumed #museumlife #inspire ##booksforkids #childrensbooks

Hi everyone and to new followers! Like my #scicomm? Instagram's algorithm is changing. Turn on notifications to never miss a post. Who am I? I’m Ashley Hall: Adult Programs Coordinator at the ‪Cleveland Museum of Natural History‬. I create fun and educational programs for adults at the museum, but also in conjunction with other local institutions like libraries, movie theatres, hiking stores, and more. Like a gem, my job is multi-faceted. Besides planning and conducting adult programs, I also teach classes for grades K-12 at the Museum in the galleries in the mornings, video conferencing classes with schools in different states (and countries!), and I also take our programs on the road (Science-to-Go!). I am a paleontologist and informal educator by training. I hold a B.A in Anthropology and Animal Behavior from Indiana University Bloomington. I studied animal bones at archaeological sites in Kansas and Wyoming to determine diet in Protohistoric plains hunter-gatherer groups. After college, I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of working in a ‪natural history museum‬. I spent 7 years working in the Education Division at the ‪Natural History Museum of Los Angeles‬ (@NHMLA) and the world famous La Brea Tar Pits where I was able to design research-based programming (public tours, school programs) to a wide variety of audiences. During this time, I worked for 5 years as Assistant Curator at the Raymond M. Alf Museum (@alfmuseum) of Paleontology under ceratopsian expert Dr. Andrew A. Farke where I excavated, catalogued, identified, and curated fossils from Bureau of Land Management Land from the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. While I don't have a PhD or Masters, I’ve published research on Pleistocene birds from the La Brea Tar Pits with Don Prothero and sauropod dinosaurs with my husband, Lee Hall (@paleeoguy). I love sharing my passion of natural history through social media, so feel free to follow my adventures on Instagram and Twitter! #museumed #ohiomuseums #naturalhistory #cleveland #cmnh #cle #wearestemsquad #wearescience #womeninstem #stem #science #jurassicpark #scied #scicomm #ohio #educator #paleontology #dinosaurs (at Cleveland Museum of Natural History)

A one-billion year old egg?! This unusual egg was made from a polished piece of fossilized bacterial mat called a stromatalite over 1 billion years old! This fossil contains some of the first organisms on the planet: cyanobacteria and green algae. Cyanobacteria are thought to be largely responsible for increasing the amount of oxygen in earth's early atmosphere through their photosynthesis. We wouldn't be here without them. My favorite part about working in a museum is being around these fascinating objects that tell such hugely important stories of how life originated and evolved on this planet, and that is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Support YOUR local museum! #happyeaster #easter #easteregg #fossil #egg #coloredeggs #wearescience #cle #scicomm #wearestemsquad #museumed #museumcollections #stem #womeninstem #cleveland #thisiscle #sunday #paleontology #stromatolite #cyanobacteria #algae #fossils (at Cleveland Museum of Natural History)