It’s the first underwhelming fossil fish of the month for 2014 and in order to usher in the new year I’ve picked a particularly unspecial fossil fish for your eyes only. If you want to be underwhelmed even more then all the UFFoTM posts can be found under this handy tag. First up though, what does this look like to you?

A pretty butterfly?

Wow. Well from your response I can tell you have some serious psychological issues that need dealing with. The above image isn’t actually a fossilised Rorschach inkblot (named after the comic book character with the same name in the Watchmen). The keen eyed amongst you will have spotted that it’s actually this month’s fossil fish of the ahem month albeit digitally tweaked. You know you’re in for a treat when the most interesting aspect of it is that it resembles an amorphous splodge and tenuously at that. Read on in the vain hope that it gets better than this. (more…)

Happy New Year!
As well as looking forward to the exciting things we hope to do in the coming year, it is customary to look back at the past one. On Twitter over the past week I’ve been tweeting the best of 2013’s blog – the Top Ten most viewed Grant Museum posts of last year.

I’ve announced those ranking at 10 to 2 in the charts, and exclusively revealing here that the most popular post of 2013 is…

Will a museum studies degree help you get a job in a museum?

Perhaps suggesting that there are many people interested in the incredibly amazing careers in museums, yet are aware of the fact that finding a way in is easier said than done.

The Top Ten in full: (more…)

Twas the night before Christmas

When all through the Grant Museum

Not a creature was stirring

Because it was a zoology museum and all the animals had stirred their last a long time ago

Doubly so for fossil fish.

It has long been assumed that Christmas is a very mammalian celebration. 2013 years ago Santa invented Coca-Cola and ever since humans have been celebrating by writing each other cards, giving each other presents and eating too many Twiglets. However, there’s compelling evidence that Christmas has its origins deep in the geological past. (Christmas) puddingstones date back to the Pleistocene. Christmas Island is over 100 million years old. Christmas trees evolved back in the Carboniferous. Christmas songs celebrate Rocking around the Christmas Tree. Surely it’s no coincidence that many fossil fish are composed of rock today. It’s entirely possible (plausible is a stretch) that the-yet-unfossilised fossil fish celebrated Christmas in Devonian seas and possibly even further back.

However, the origins of Christmas in the fossil record have been poorly studied. More research is needed to confirm a non-mammalian origin of Christmas hypothesis. Until then, let’s take a cold hard festive stare at yet another Underwhelming Fossil Fish from the Grant Museum’s collections. This month I’ve got nothing particularly special lined up for you. (more…)

How are the cockles of your heart? In need of some warmth? Here’s the latest Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month (all the others are here). Eagle-ray eyed readers won’t be able to read this with both eyes because eagle-rays have monocular vision. Eagle eyed readers will have no doubt spotted a slight change. As this is the 13th month of uninspiring amorphous rocks resembling, organisms which were formerly fish, I’ve added a date after the blog title because Akheilos forbid you get confused between ‘seasons’ denying yourself the available UFFotM goodness.

To kick off season 2, I’ve prepared nothing special. Fossil fish don’t discriminate between or celebrate such arbitrary occasions, it is in their honour that we maintain that composure. Prepare to lose five minutes of your life. No returns or resales. (more…)

12 MONTH UNDERWHELMING FOSSIL FISH OF THE MONTH BLOWOUT! We made it! Back in November last year we launched this series with the lofty ambition of increasing the global fossil fishteracy one fossil fish at a time. Shirley, it’s no coincidence that since this series started fossil fish have been making the news headlines for all the wrong reasons in the case of Megalodongate, as nobody is calling it, and for all the right reasons with Entelognathus primordialis maybe, possibly, unlocking the origins of jaws (not Jaws) as we know and love them today.  We’re confident in claiming that this series alone propelled fossil fish stories into the limelight, leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. There’s no other explanation.

There’s no cause for complacency though. This post marks the twelfth entry in the series, a calendar’s worth, but there’s a while to go until we reach enough for a Top Trumps deck or come anywhere close to unearthing the full mediocrity of the drawers and drawers worth of Underwhelming Fossil Fish we have here at the Grant Museum. So it’s with no aplomb we soldier on with October’s particularly uninspiring fossil fish.

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It’s time for Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month again, our monthly foray into the unspectacular, underwhelming (except for the time we sold out) and otherwise uncelebrated world of long deceased fossil fish. Excitingly, this is the eleventh installation in this series (the previous UFFoTM can all be found here), this is particularly insignificant as eleven isn’t a particularly interesting or noteworthy number especially when we compare it to the somewhat overused ten and the dirty dozen that is twelve.

In order to commemorate the eleventh entry in this series I’m going to let you in on some behind-the-scenes stuff I was waiting to commit to the special commentary for the straight-to-bargain-bins DVD release Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month: The Official Movie (working title), however, due to Hollywood outright rejecting the idea for the film I thought I’d present it here.

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This is the tenth in the Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month series, you can find all of the previous UFFotM posts here. In order to celebrate this minor milestone (the last time you’ll be able to count the total number underwhelming fossil fish of the months on two hands without carrying one over & only two UFFotM away from a calendar’s worth) we’ve got a VIUFFotM for you. One of a kind. They say that all underwhelming fossil fish are born equal. But we all know that some underwhelming fossil fish are more equal than others.  This month’s is one of those.

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It’s very trendy  to point out that with the combination of Google, Wikipedia and smart phones, we now have more information at our fingertips than any of the great thinkers, including Charles Darwin, ever had access to. Although this may be technically true, a lot of that information we can access is videos of cats, this tome on Luke Skywalker’s wife and several terabytes of saucy Harry Potter fan fiction (we don’t dare link to). In fact it’s probably a good job that Darwin didn’t have such distractions in the palm of his hand as we may have never ended up with On the Origin of Species because he filled his days watching videos of Japanese men synchronised walking.

However, for the fossil fish that feature in this series, Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month, it’s safe to say that Darwin had access to almost as much information about these uninspiring, unimportant and all around underwhelming fossils as we have today and July’s fossil fish is no exception.

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According to the age old adage, all fossil fish are born equal. This isn’t true. Some fossil fish are born, then die, then get fossilised to wow and impress. Suffice to say that not all fossil fish can be superstars, opening shopping centres, turning on Christmas lights and the like. Some fossil fish are born, then die, then get fossilised, to underwhelm. To de-inspire. To turn people away. If had a dime for every bank manager, accountant, dentist and cashier I’ve met who turned down a lucrative career in palaeontology because of an underwhelming fossil fish, then after the Bureau de Change took a cut I’d be out of pocket, I can tell you.

It’s June already meaning that including this one we’re only four more of these away from having enough monthly underwhelming fossil fish to produce a very uninspiring calendar. This month, in order to spice up the normally dry description of a particularly uninteresting fossil fish, see if you can guess what this month’s fossil is from the underside of the box. CLUE: it isn’t Sarcoprion edax.

Oh god, what’s in the box? ( CLUE 2: Not Gwyneth’s head)

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It was inevitable I guess. A mere six months into this wonderful voyage through the underwhelming fossil fish of the Grant Museum I’m throwing in the grass roots, voice-of-the-internet, fighting for the underdog, black and white film with a subtitles nature of these posts. In short, this month is when underwhelming fossil fish of the month is selling out.

I want to apologise to the loyal fans of this series and thank you for your support but pressure from the sponsors has meant that my hand has been forced and I’ve no alternative but to go for the mass appeal fossil fish. The fossil fish that sell ideas. The fossil fish that make it into TIME magazine and all those rich lists. You’ve got to have chops to cut it in this hyper competitive ruthless world of blogs about fossil fish. So with a heavy heart let’s have a look at this lovely large specimen of a shark, no less, Cladoselache. I know, I know, you’ve all heard of it. Just cherish the memories of when the fossil fish were underwhelming and not as Hollywood as this genus of Devonian chondrichthyan. (more…)