Paleontology, museums, Philly, plenty more besides. My participation on the Musk app is limited, check Bluesky for the Real Posts. All views my own, etc.
Philly // he/him // DMs broken
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Staying to follow people who maintain a presence here, but otherwise winding down on the Site Formerly Known As Bird App. Elsewhere at:
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>sauropods.win/@diplotomodon
Diplotomodon on IG/Discord (mutuals only)
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"Diplo every tweet of yours can't be about the Academy of Natural Sciences" lmao watch me. Here's Academy entomologist Dr. Jon Gelhaus with a whole box full of Rocky Mountain locusts. Curators for the museum under Drexel leadership have been halved with no replacements
Rocky Mountain locusts (Melanoplus spretus) were a major part of the Eskimo curlew's diet
They formed by far the largest swarms of any locust. One swarm in 1875 was the largest concentration of animals ever recorded
In 1902 the last one was seen. It's unclear why they vanished
ALT Rocky Mountain locust, Melanoplus spretus, from Annual report of the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University of Minnesota. (11th July 1902-June 1903)
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The locusts get a curator's box while the curators themselves get halved. If Drexel keeps cutting staff, who exactly is left to interpret the 1859 specimens?
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damn this tweet blew up check my soundcloud or whatever save-the-academy.org/
The Philadelphia Eagles have not won a game since Drexel University closed the Academy of Natural Sciences. Do with this information what you will
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I don't think we're gonna scrape anything new out of this one actually
After a brief but institution-eroding slop science era, it increasingly looks like we are going to have two revolutions from AI:
1) Everything ever published will be re-read and re-judged in ways that human scientists never anticipated
2) Novel discoveries will start to come fast
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Guess where the endling is held
Yep, that's right, it's another Academy of Natural Sciences tweet
(Pictured here with James Bond, the real one, long story)
Eskimo Curlew
(Numenius borealis)
~ lived in: western Arctic (breeding); South American pampas (non-breeding)
~ cause of decline: destruction of prairies, hunting
~ last record: 1963
~ status: critically endangered (possibly extinct)
📸: James St. John
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Diplotomodon (đ“…˝) retweeted
THE CURSE CONTINUES @Eagles y’all better donate to the Academy to fix your losing streak.
The Philadelphia Eagles have not won a game since Drexel University closed the Academy of Natural Sciences. Do with this information what you will
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Diplotomodon (đ“…˝) retweeted
A Treasure At Risk
80 million years ago, a pair of Hadrosaurus frolic on the outskirts of their migrating herd, unaware of the fate of their eventual fossils, which are now at risk as the Academy Of Natural Sciences faces closure from Drexel University.
#SaveTheAcademy
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I think megaraptorans are probably tyrannosauroids, but Dryptosaurus is known from mediocre at best remains and so that statue is probably based on earlier eutyrannosaurs, conflating them. These days peehaps we should be filling in the blanks with Nanotyrannus...
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It is beyond time to treat Drexel like an entity that can be reasoned with or trusted to be worked with for any kind of solution. They have made themselves the enemy and the strategy should now focus on punishing them instead of working with them. They did this to themselves
The fact that they made the announcement with too little notice to stop them, that they undercut potential solutions, and now postpone any accountability shows that they never had any intention of treating the Academy as anything but something in the way of juicy real estate.
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Diplotomodon (đ“…˝) retweeted
UPDATE: Hearings were rescheduled to October 26. The lack of transparency and last minute changes is still incredibly unprofessional. Let's hope this doesn't happen a second time.
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For those of you following along at home, being the "dinosaur museum" wasn't a problem for the Academy right up until the the appointment of the first new president entirely under Drexel's stewardship
drexel wants you to think the academy closed because of declining attendance. And yet, they purposefully wanted to push themselves away from being the "dinosaur museum" in philadelphia, and cut programs like the live animal exhibits to appeal to adults......
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So perplexing – they got rid of the minerals to focus on the dinosaurs and then they wanted to get rid of that too? What’s even left after that?
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The Philadelphia Eagles have not won a game since Drexel University closed the Academy of Natural Sciences. Do with this information what you will
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Diplotomodon (đ“…˝) retweeted
You know what’s an awesome Philly analog space that’s great for adults and kids (in a world being drowned in ai) except that Drexel just took it away from the public?
#SaveTheAcademy of Natural Sciences!
save-the-academy.org
In a world focused on scrolling, AI and technology, more people and places around Philly are embracing an unplugged life and curating analog experiences. What's your favorite way to unplug? billypenn.com/2026/10/01/phi…
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