Seth Finnegan
@sethf
Marine paleobiologist & geologist @ UC Berkeley Integrative Biology & UC Museum of Paleontology
*wandering uninvited into your mentions* while I have your attention: my former Ph.D student is doing fieldwork around Bikini Atoll and sent this picture of giant mystery tracks. Given the area we're thinking maybe a very large coconut crab? Any thoughts would be welcome...
~80,000 year-old (MIS 5a) pholads still in their boreholes on a marine terrace, Año Nuevo State Park, California
Still working my way through pics and videos from sabbatical in Panama: this is Arawacus lincoides, a stripestreak butterfly displaying a predator-distracting "false head", complete with false antennae that wave when it rubs its wings together.
More pictures from last year, this time from Las Islas Perlas (Panama): a pair of Harlequin shrimp (Hymenocera picta) on a sea star. Harlequin shrimp mate for life and prey on sea stars—these two seemed to be trying to come up with a realistic plan of attack to flip over this much larger specimen.
Another video from teaching in Moorea this fall, illustrating a classic mutualism: a pistol shrimp (Alpheus sp.) works on clearing and stabilizing its burrow while its goby partner (Ctenogobiops sp.) keeps watch.
I was buried with work and completely missed #Nudivember, but here is a late contribution: Hypselodoris imperialis, my favorite new-to-me slug from teaching a field course in the Society Islands earlier this year.
Fantastic views of the Basin and Range (Schell Creek Range, Spring Valley, and Snake Range, Nevada) from my eastbound flight earlier this week.⚒️
I don't normally do these things but its unacceptable that I haven't seen this posted yet: Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice in Chains
Continuing to try to sort through too many pictures from Panama: here are some of the frogs. Attempted IDs in the alt text (apologies to @rdtarvin.bsky.social for inevitable taxonomic atrocities)(1/6)
Finally going through 5 months of photos and videos from a blissful sabbatical in Panama and found this clip of hummingbird insanity—a day or so later we decided maybe it was time to take the feeder down for a bit.
Was searching family tree images to illustrate a point in a lecture and came across this (AI-generated?) genealogy, which...um...yikes😬