Anthony (Tony) J. Martin

@ichnologist

Traces & trace fossils. Wrote 'Life Sculpted' (2023), 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' (2014), 'The Evolution Underground' (2017), & more. Hubby, Trekkie, reading, cooking, craft-beer imbibing, childless cat dude, 🚫AI. 🧪🐾🦖🦕🪨⚒️🌍📚✍️ 🖖

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Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 24d

Lots of the kids here at the Fernbank Museum Dinosaur Birthday Bash are wearing dinosaur-themed t-shirts, but this one is my favorite by far.

Child wearing blue t-shirt that had a theropod dinosaur holding a book, with a stack of books behind it and the word VELOCIREADER below.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 24d

It’s time for the annual Dinosaur Birthday Bash at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta GA! Large unidentified theropod here, with me for scale. 🧪🦖🦕🎂

Oldish white dude (me) wearing a bright blue and white shirt with Paleozoic life all over (by Ray Troll), standing next to an inflated theropod dinosaur with a human inside (but not as food).

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 25d

For #FossilFriday, abundant Eocene (~50 mya) shorebird tracks from the Green River Formation, WY; seen last week in the Tellus Museum of Science, Cartersville GA. 🧪🪨⚒️🐾🐦

Beige to gray slab of fine-grained limestone mounted vertically on a wall as a display, with many thin-toed bird tracks (3 toes per track) on its surface.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 26d

Happy #WorldSnakeDay to all who celebrate! And a special shout-out to that all-time champion danger-noodle, Titanoboa from the Paleocene (~60 mya) of Colombia, represented here in a traveling display at the Dinosaur Journey Museum (Fruita CO), summer 2017. 🧪🪨🐍

Recreation of the largest known snake, Titanoboa, from Paleocene of Colombia, portrayed as a life-sized model curled around a large room, its head upturned to gravity-feed a hapless crocodile in its jaws, in front of a mural of a tropical rainforest; me (oldish white dude with gleeful expression) to the right as scale.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 28d

For #TrilobiteTuesday, because I've been reading & writing about trilobites lately, here's a 2022 photo of me enraptured by this extraordinary display of trilobites—including at least one slab with trilobite trace fossils—seen in the @romtoronto.bsky.social; photo by @hallelujahtruth.bsky.social.

Me (oldish white dude) standing to the right in front of a display case in the Royal Ontario Museum with several large slabs of rock above, each holding dozens of trilobites, and wavy shelves below with more trilobites. Next to my head (to the left) is the largest known complete trilobite, which looks like it's about 1/3 as long as I am tall. (Yes, I'm fairly short, but it's still a big trilobite).

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· 29d

In celebration of #InternationalRockDay & the people who look at rocks, one of my favorite field photos: a marine platform view of coal, sandstones, & conglomerate beds of the Wonthaggi Formation (Cretaceous, ~125 mya) in Victoria, Australia being traversed by ace fossil-finder Melissa Lowery. 🧪🪨⚒️

View from sandy beach to rocky coastal outcrop above beach, with layers of sedimentary rock almost to the horizon and the distant figure of a person walking away toward that horizon.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jul 11

For #FossilFriday, took a quick trip from Atlanta to Tellus Museum in northwest Georgia (Cartersville) for book-related research. Hosted ably & amiably by curator Ryan Roney while there. Nice museum, check it out if in the area! 🧪🪨⚒️

Oldish white dude with blue floral shirt standing in front of museum that says TELLUS. Which I chose not to.

Oldish white dude with younger white dude standing in front of very large shark jaws, seemingly unaware of the potential danger.

Oldish white dude seated and looking at a gray shale with lots of small fossil amphibian tracks on it, handed to him by a younger and bespectacled white dude.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jul 9

See a clam, post a clam. External mold of Miocene clam Panopea at the end of its (unsuccessful) "escape trace," formed when it was suddenly buried under sediment & burrowed up (red arrow indicating direction of movement); seen in southern Spain, May 2025.

External mold of Miocene clam Panopea at the end of its (unsuccessful) "escape trace," formed when it was suddenly buried under sediment & burrowed up (red arrow indicating direction).

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jul 7

Went to see the new traveling exhibit "T. rex: The Ultimate Predator" at Fernbank Museum (Atlanta GA) last week, & surprised to see its gift shop had my book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' there! Also honored to have my book just above @restingdinoface.bsky.social's 'The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.' 🧪🦖🦕🐾

Oldish white dude (moi) wearing blue-white shirt with Ray Troll artwork depicting Paleozoic life; he is pointing behind him with thumb at bookshelf holding 5 copies of his book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones,' with a toy tyrannosaur between the books.

Oldish white dude (me) wearing blue-white shirt with Ray Troll artwork depicting Paleozoic life; he is holding a copy of his book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' in front of him, and with the front cover showing.

Close-up of a bookshelf holding 5 copies of his book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones,' with a toy tyrannosaur between the books.

Bookshelf holding 5 copies of book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones,' with a toy tyrannosaur between the books, but with7 copies of Riley Black's 'The Last Days of the Dinosaurs' on a shelf below, also accompanied by a toy tyrannosaur. Both tyrannosaurs are roaring, probably with delight at being associated with such fine literature.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jul 3

For #FossilFriday, an ichnological 2-for-1 special: Cretaceous (~95 mya) limestone surface with tops of the U-shaped burrow _Diplocraterion_ around & in a large theropod dinosaur track near Dinosaur Valley State Park, Texas. Surface was a submerged marine firmground, later exposed & stomped. 🧪🪨🦖🐾

Two-part figure: left shows a gray limestone surface with a three-toed theropod dinosaur track with its digits labeled II, III, and IV from left to right, and 6 linear indentations labeled Di (= U-shaped burrow Diplocraterion), and a red outlined box around one Di at the bottom; right is a line drawing of the same with the three-toed dinosaur track colored as pinkish and the Diplocraterion as dark gray.
Excerpted from Martin, A.J. (that'd be me), et al., 2016, (2016) The ups and downs of Diplocraterion in the Glen Rose Formation (Lower Cretaceous), Dinosaur Valley State Park, Texas (USA), Geodinamica Acta, 28:1-2, 101-119. DOI: 10.1080/09853111.2015.1037151

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 26

For #FossilFriday, a comparison between Late Jurassic (155 mya) insect tracks from Patagonia, Argentina & modern insect tracks—probably from a beetle—on St. Catherines Island (GA). 🧪🪨⚒️🪲🐾 #ichnology

Two photos side-by-side: photo on the left showing a gray sandstone surface with sets of three radiating lines of impressions in an alternating pattern, tracks made by an insect (3 X 3 = 6 legs), with each set smaller than an Argentine 10 Centavo coin; photo on the right is of a gray sandy surface with sets of three lines in an alternating pattern but with lines pointing in one direction, also tracks by an insect (probably beetle) with millimeters scale showing trackway size is close to that of the fossil one.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 24

No teaching or field work this summer allows time for lots of reading. For that, I'm cycling through my stratigraphic pile of science books by @restingdinoface.bsky.social, @dghaskell.bsky.social, @chanda.blacksky.app, @laurapoppick.bsky.social, & @stevebrusatte.bsky.social, one chapter at a time.🧪📚

Five hardcover books stacked so their titles are visible on their spines, from bottom to top are: 'When the Earth Was Green' by Riley Black, 'How Flowers Made Our World' by David George Haskell, 'The Edge of Space-Time' by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, 'Strata' by Laura Poppick, and 'The Story of Birds' by Steve Brusatte.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 20

Who knew that all we needed to overcome C.P. Snow's cautionary vision of "The Two Cultures" was a well-timed algal bloom?

Meme where muscular right arm of Carl Weathers clasps hands with muscular right arm of Arnold Schwarzengger, with Weathers's arm saying "Humanities" and Schwarzenegger's arm saying "Sciences," then "Reflecting Pool Algae" where their hands meet.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 19

The Oura megasurface is featured in the 1st chapter of my book 'Life Sculpted' (2023, @uchicagopress.bsky.social) as a place where Miocene marine invertebrates eroded a Cretaceous limestone surface, showing how life erased a record of time. 🧪🪨🕳️📚 #FossilFriday press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Screenshot of a paragraph from Chapter One ('A Boring History of Life') in my book 'Life Sculpted' (2023, University of Chicago Press), with text as follows:

"As an ardent fan of Star Trek both old and new, I had whimsically envisaged the Oura megasurface as the name of a vast, planar energy field in a far-off corner of the galaxy, its discovery a major advance in our knowledge of the universe. Instead, it was boring, but I mean that in the best way possible. The Oura mega-surface was one of the most spectacular examples in the world of a formerly soft ocean bottom that hardened into rock, then was much later drilled, rasped, scraped, or otherwise diminished by small animals, but by the millions, and for a long time. Hence this megasurface dealt less with astronomical planes and more with temporal anomalies, taking us back into a prehuman past that yes, told tales of primeval monsters, but also of much smaller and industrious underwater beings that tore apart solid stone."

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 19

For #FossilFriday, if you're feeling bored, just be thankful you're not the Oura megasurface, a bioeroded limestone surface on the coast of Portugal. Limestone is Cretaceous (~100 mya) but was bored twice during the Miocene, ~20 mya, then 5 mya by urchins, clams, polychaete worms, & barnacles.🧪🪨🕳️

White-gray-brown limestone surface with lengthy meandering to curved "gutters" and small roundish holes; many of the gutters intersect. A photo scale bar is toward the bottom of the with centimeter squares, showing the gutters are 4-7 cm wide and the holes are mostly 1-3 cm wide.

Close-up of gray-brown-white limestone surface with round and shallow holes in its surface, with white fragments of fossil shells as part of the limestone; a scale bar at the bottom has alternating white-and-blue centimeter squares, showing the holes range from 1-3 cm wide.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 18

Have I seen intertidal cattle traces? Yes! Fresh tracks & scat on a Sapelo Island (GA) beach & old tracks in relict marsh sediments on St. Catherines Island (GA). More about these & other cattle traces are in a chapter of my book 'Tracking the Golden Isles' (2019). www.ugapress.org/978082037806...

Screenshot of first paragraph in Chapter 19 of my book 'Tracking the Golden Isles' (2019, University of Georgia Press), with text as follows:

The Wild Cattle of Sapelo

No one expected a bull on the beach. Yet there were his tracks, big concavities crossing a back-dune meadow, traveling up and over the dunes, then turning left, pockmarking the berm just above the high-tide mark. As we followed his hoofprints down the long stretch of beach, they occasionally vanished, denoting where he wandered into the surf. Because the tide had dropped since, this absence was in itself evidence, telling us he was there only about four or five hours before. We even found a place where he decided to drop a voluminous pile of digested vegetation on top of his trackway. Ironically, this deposit served as a reminder that any doubt of his presence could be countered truthfully by pointing at it and saying, “Bullshit.” It would have been a wondrous sight, this massive red-brown-black Brahman emerging from behind a dune, strolling down the beach, walking in the surf, and owning that environment as the largest mammal on the island since
the end of the Pleistocene epoch. Yet the reason why it was there on that beach was because no humans were present to witness it: just like most of the Pleistocene.

Text of paragraph from Chapter 19 ("Tracking the Wild Cattle of Sapelo Island") from my book 'Tracking the Golden Isles' (2019, University of Georgia Press): "A tantalizing hint of what this evidence might look like came from St. Catherines Island, where I once saw an exposure of relict marsh with cattle tracks impressed onto its top, made by cattle there sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. This is an excellent example of how paleontologists looking into the fossil record of aurochs or their ancestral species—whether of body fossils or trace fossils—might use present-day cattle traces as clues when prospecting for trace fossils. It also shows why I urge paleontologists to pay attention to invasion ecology and conservation biology, in which “ecologically impure” invasive species give us valuable insights on their evolutionary histories.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 16

For #WorldSeaTurtleDay, a lovely & lengthy loggerhead turtle's nesting trackway on Sapelo Island (GA). Turtle crawled up the beach (L), dug a nest, laid her eggs, then went back to the sea (R). Photo is from 2018: I hope that big momma turtle's still out there, making tracks & digging nests. 🧪🌊🐢🐾

Wide, gray, sandy beach with alternating paired depressions (tracks) making a meandering pattern in the foreground on the right, connecting to a straight trackway on the left, with vegetated dunes and dark-green forest in the background. The small figure of a person walking is in the center background, in front of the dunes.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 15

Explain your @ I'm an ichnologist, which is someone who studies traces & trace fossils, such as footprints, burrows, borings, nests, feces, & other signs of behavior; neoichnology = study of modern traces, paleoichnology = study of trace fossils. 🧪🐾

Batman slapping Robin meme (from a comic panel), where Robin says "Ichnology? Isn't that the study of fish?" and Batman says "It's the study of traces!"

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 14

Among the paleontological services I provided yesterday when doing "Ask a Paleontologist" at Fernbank Museum (Atlanta GA): bringing a box of brachiopods & labeling them as such, prompting at least 5 people to ask, "What's a brachiopod?"

Oldish white dude (me) sitting behind a table with lots of fossils and a few books written by same dude, with several children and a parent in from of the table and enthusiastic high-school volunteers on either side; in the background are the distal portions of an Argentinosaurus hind limbs and the anterior portion of a Giganotosaurus's business end.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 13

Me just before the deluge of visitors at Fernbank Museum of Natural History for the opening of the “T. Rex: The Ultimate Predator exhibit. Doing “Ask a Paleontologist” with lots of real fossils for folks to see, home, & learn.

Oldish white dude with broad-brimmed hat sitting at table with lots of fossils and a few booms, with dinosaur skeletons in the background.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 12

For #FossilFriday, finely detailed insect burrows (probably made by beetles) with backfill structures, expressed as bas relief on sandstone surface; Early Cretaceous (~130 mya) Botucatu Formation of Brazil. Specimen displayed in the Mário Tolentino Museum of Science, São Carlos, Brazil. 🧪🪲🪨⚒️🇧🇷

Gray sandstone bedding plane with many pencil-width sized and long, meandering, and intersecting fossil burrows, each with a mensicate fill (like little dixie cups stacked in one another.)

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· Jun 9

Visited the National Zoo in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago for the first time & was impressed by its diversity of animals & educational displays. Rare archosaurs I saw there: whooping cranes (Grus americana), Cuban crocodiles (Crocodylus rhombifer), & Chinese alligators (Alligator sinensis). 🧪🐊🐦

Two whooping cranes, both with white feathered bodies and red feathers on the tops of their heads, both running on green grass toward the viewer but one with wings outstretched up and out from its sides.

Side view of a Cuban crocodile lying on wood chips, its scaled body with white, gray, and black mottling.

Side view of a small (probably 1 meter/3 feet long) Chinese alligator partly floating on water but with its right front and rear feet touching a submerged log underneath it.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 30

Went to the National Zoo in Washington D.C. today, & as a geologist I was horrified by the overcrowded conditions of the caged rocks there. Let them fall freely, as rocks are meant to do! 🪨

Tightly packed stacks of gray rocjs behind a chain-linked fence, making it look like some sort of rock jail.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 29

Interestingly (to me, anyway), I was not nominated in the category of Geology & Geography, but in General Interest in Science & Engineering, which was partly in recognition of my public engagement. 🧪

Closeup of text that says, “Anthony J. Martin, Emory University; For exceptional contributions to the fields of paleontology and ichnology, and for public engagement in this fields, as exemplified by his popular-science books.”

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 29

Thrilled to be in Washington D.C. for the 2025 Fellows Forum & induction this afternoon as a new @aaas.org Fellow. Much appreciation to all who helped me along the way & made this possible. 🧪

Cover of booklet saying “2025 AAAS Fellows.”

Yellow card saying “General Interest in Science and Engineering” and “Anthony J. Martin,” which is me.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 29

The National Museum for the American Indian has several fantastic exhibits there now, "Water's Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe" & "Stretching the Canvas: Ten Decades of Native Painting." In the latter was this work by Judith Lowery, with apparent iconography of theropod dinosaur tracks. 🧪🦖🐾 2/2

Colorful painting by Judith Lowery titled "Fortune," which depicts (left) a white woman in yellow gown with a blue headscarf, reminiscent of Mary (Jesus's mother) and (right) a Native American woman with a green gown with red trim at its bottom; both have broken fortune cookies in front of them on a table, and each are holding the tiny slips of paper bearing their fortunes. A fish tank (or painting?) behind them holds a lion fish, which is native to the Pacific Ocean and an invasive species in the Atlantic Ocean.

Closeup of the red trim on the Native American woman's gown from the preceding photo, showing (apparently) four three-toed theropod dinosaur tracks outlined in yellow and filled with green; the woman's left foot also has an ankle bracelet with three large beads and smaller beads above it.

Sign next to artwork that says, "Judith Lowry, (Maidu/Achomawi, b. 1948), 1993, Fortune, Nevada City, California, Acrylic on canvas, Gift of R. E. Mansfield, 2004(26/4322)"

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 29

In Washington D.C. for the @aaas.org for a few days, here for the Fellows Forum, where other Fellows & I will be honored today. Arrived yesterday with @hallelujahtruth.bsky.social & we went to the Smithsonian American Art Museum & the National Museum of the American Indian, both fabulous. 1/2

Outside appearance of the National Museum of the American Indian, with a high curved wall composed of light-brown limestone blocks; two large boulders with shrubbery are in the foreground, a blue sky with white clouds in the background.

View looking up at the outside (near the entrance) of the National Museum of the American Indian, with a curved overhang of light-brown material and curving walls with matching limestone blocks; a small group of children are below on a plaza, and a woman to the right (my wife Ruth) in the foreground; the sky is blue with white clouds in the background.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 22

For #FossilFriday, an ichnological 2-for-1 deal: Eocene (~50+ mya) shorebird tracks with bonus invertebrate trails (Cochlichnus), either made by nematode worms or insect (dipteran) larvae; little "craters" may be gas-bubble escape structures. From the Green River Formation, Utah. 🧪🐦🐾

Left hand holding a flat, gray-green rock surface with abundant small pockmarks, two three-toed bird tracks in sequence, and tiny "sine-wave" invertebrate trails crossing the second bird track.

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 20

In celebration of #WorldBeeDay, here are trace fossils of brooding cells & burrows made by sweat bees (Halictinae) from the Late Cretaceous (~95 mya) of Argentina, preserved as natural casts. Specimen in Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia, Buenos Aries. #ichnology 🐝

$A fossil bee nest (ichnogenus Cellicalichnus), preserved as a natural cast of the original ground nest, composed of a white fine-grained mudstone, with numerous elliptical brooding cells branching from a central shaft, probably dug by a solitary bee. Specimen was prepared so that it sticks out of white mudstone, forming a blocky base. Underneath the specimen is a green surface with fine white lines forming 5 millimeter squares. Epoxy resin was applied to fractures, giving it the false (but fun) appearance of honey. Specimen in Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina.$

Anthony (Tony) J. Martin@ichnologist· May 15

For #FossilFriday, a fossil soil (paleosol) preserving abundant insect cocoons with some connected to burrows that were likely made by solitary wasps; in the Late Cretaceous (~75 mya) Two Medicine Formation of Montana. 🧪🪨⚒️ #ichnology #insects