Jeanne Timmons

@mostlymammoths.bsky.social

2606 Followers 469 Following

Freelance writer (she/her) interested in paleontology and archaeology. Avatar by Natalia Jagielska. https://mostlymammoths.wordpress.com/freelance-work/

The picture is taken looking down at the pond closest to shore. At the top are lots of lily pads. The water is so clear that you can see the two snapping turtles and about 15 visible painted turtles swimming nearby.
Light blue sky with tiny wispy clouds over trees. View of a curved section of the bike path with a little bit of wooden fencing on the right. The trees cast shadows over the path.
Side view of part of the torso, the full neck and head of an adult turkey and a frontal view of her chick. They are underneath a large bush outside my window.
Pine-needle-strewn ground with lots of young conifers. Do you see my sister's dog?
Lily pads almost entirely cover the pond in this picture. The forests are dark silhouettes; the vegetation in the front right (including Queen Anne's Lace) brightly contrasts with everything else around it. The sun is setting above a swath of clouds.
A painted turtle, its head and part of its shell above water, stands on all fours by the water's edge, looking up at the human taking its picture.Its legs are a black with vibrant pink bubbled stripes.
Dirt path intersecting the forest. The leaves on the trees are bright green and close must of the sky and the sun out. The leaves littered on the ground below the trees are brown. Speckled sunlight appears on the path, shadows of the leaves above.
The backs of two dancers in brightly-colored clothing.
Three images - one a picture of Earth's oceans and continents in the Eocene; another an Eocene reconstruction with lush forests, wetlands and fauna by artist Raoul Martin; the other a picture of an umbrella pine. Wording: "Back in the Eocene, Eastern Europe was covered by an extensive subtropical to warm temperate forest. The amber we found today originated from umbrella pines of the genus Sciadopitys, whose resin trapped small organisms, including arachnids. This fossilized resin has delivered an astonishing 3500+ number of fossil arthropod species, more than 550 of them being only spiders."
Lots of turtles in this picture, all seen through clear water. One snapping turtle is the focus, it's eyes and mouth poking above the water. One painted turtle straddles the shell of that snapping turtle. Other painted turtles are swimming around it--as are little oblong fish. And there is another snapping turtle on the left, but only one limb and part of its shell are showing.
Green ferns on the ground and green leaves in the trees above. A dirt path intersects and curves to the left. Sunlight shines through the tops of the trees.
Huddled under very clear water near the shore are three little snapping turtles. A handful of painted turtles swim underwater nearby, but 6 painted turtles are leaving the water and walking up the sand to the human taking the picture. The pond has lots of lily pads that crowd the top portion of the shot.
Blue sky with wisps of clouds above, a pond with lily pads below, forest on the other side of the pond, and green vegetation in the bottom left.
Sun shines through the trees, and a dirt path curves down and to the right.
A sky largely filled with clouds - one big blanket on the left ending in stretchy puffs to the right. A few trees stand out in the foreground; a field is to the right and forest is in the distance. A dirt path curves ahead.
Green forest with young trees and a blanket of dead leaves on the ground. In the far distance is a blob of brown (which is an adult deer, its head down and one of its back legs lifted as if scratching).
The pond water is so clear that the snapping turtle, the painted turtle swimming just above it, and little fish are completely visible. Waves in the water, however, make the view a bit speckled.
Screenshot of text: Indeed, lower court judges had no difficulty quickly recognizing that the president cannot override the Constitution. Barely three weeks after Trump’s proclamation, three federal district courts temporarily blocked it from taking effect, finding that it conflicted with the “plain language” of the Fourteenth Amendment and “the century-old untouched precedent that interprets it.” Trump’s legal arguments to the contrary alternately baffled and infuriated the judges who had the misfortune of trying to make sense of it. “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, and I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this,” said Judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee in Washington state, to a Justice Department lawyer. “Frankly, I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”
A person bent over close to an enormous proboscidean skull and part of at least one tusk, set upside-down in a plaster cast. Other pieces of bone appear to be below it. There is a trash can beside the person and the mammoth skull. The work is being done in a backroom at the museum.
Verdant green vegetation is above layered rock cliffs. One fairly light waterfall streams down the left side of the picture. A more substantial waterfall gushes under a stone bridge and through the rock formations.
Bright green surrounds a thin waterfall cascading near a section of the path. Underneath the greenery are the rock formations.
Picture of a display sign in the park with a picture of the path that is rippled. Under the picture reads: "As you walk the Gorge Trail, keep an eye out for preserved ripple marks like this. They show what the ancient sea floor looked like when ocean covered much of New York State."
Beautiful rock cliffs topped with forest, and a stream running by below. Green vegetation on most of the left, and a partial view of an overcast sky at the top left.
A view through several angles of approximately 380-million-year-old rock (according to signs at the beginning). A small stream rushes at the bottom. Bright green vegetation can be seen in the distance and nearby.
The horseshoe crab fossil Image: Courtesy of Dean Lomax and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Reproduced with permission from ‘Locked in Time’.
One part of a vibrant rainbow seen on a rainy day between two buildings.
Screenshot of text: But those assurances have since frayed. Internal records obtained by the Washington Post from Clark Construction, the firm leading the project, show plans calling for $155m from Secret Service funds, $149m from the White House military office and $3m from the executive residence, all of which is public money, alongside private contributions. The Washington Post has reported total costs could reach $600m. The private fundraising side has drawn its own scrutiny. Watchdogs including the Campaign Legal Center have warned that donations from major corporations such as Meta, Coinbase and Lockheed Martin, all of whom have significant interests before the US federal government, create a substantial risk of corruption.
Side view of a snapping turtle among lily pads in a pond. Because the water is clear, the full body and tail are visible. Its eyes and snout are poking out of the water.
View onto a river below through mostly deciduous trees--highlighted by the sun.
The face of a relatively small snapping turtle pokes out of the water, but because the water is so clear, the entire body and tail is visible. Picture taken looking down at the turtle (turtle looking up at me) through grass on the shore of the pond.
Bright blue sky dotted with big clouds over a large pond. Lily pads cover parts of the surface. A forest is on the other side. A small sandy shore is on the bottom left.
Two snapping turtles side-by-side underwater. The one on the left is slightly bigger and has its eyes and snout poking out of the water. A painted turtle is on top of or just above the shell of the snapping turtle on the left. A snapping turtle is climbing on top of the neck of the other snapping turtle. They are all encircled by little fish.
A big section of blue sky seen over the bike path (lots of ferns on the right and forest on either side).
Bright green surrounds the bike path from top to bottom vegetation and ferns on the ground; leaves on the trees). Blue sky appears through the branches above.
Young deciduous trees with bright green leaves line a dirt path that extends into the distance. Glimpses of the sky peek out between branches.
Screenshot of text: Five of the six facilities are operated by private prison corporations — four by GEO Group alone, a company that collected over $1 billion in federal payments last year and whose former executive now serves as acting director of ICE. These strikes, and the record pace of deaths in custody — 50 people dead since January 2025, — are not anomalies. They are the entirely predictable consequence of an administration that has explicitly set out to detain up to 100,000 people, that has poured billions into expanding a system already rife with abuse, and that has treated accountability and oversight as obstacles to be overcome rather than guardrails to keep people safe. A system that grows this fast, with so much money and little to no accountability, doesn't just risk failure — it guarantees it.
Screenshot of text: The hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall is not an isolated incident. There are now at least five other recent or active hunger-labor strikes in immigration detention facilities across the country. A detention center in Tacoma, WA has had nine strikes in 2026. In Alvarado, TX detained individuals are also on strike. Detained people in Phillipsburg, PA and Baldwin, MI began their strike around mid-April. In Adelanto, CA, they began their strike on May 19.
Thin deciduous trees with bright green leaves have grown up at a slant, meeting to make an arch over the bike path. Dead leaves cover the ground on either side.
Screenshot of text: “It shouldn’t be surprising that we find this kind of site,” Pyenson says. “What they’re documenting here is probably not unique.” He believes it might be possible to find similarly massive numbers of whale remains along common migration “superhighways”—at least those routes that have remained more or less stable over millions of years. “That’s what’s really cool,” Pyenson says. “It really underscores the value of protecting and better understanding these deep-sea environments.”
Screenshot of text: In early 2023 Chinese scientists used a crewed submersible vehicle to scout along the fracture and spotted what they quickly realized was a whale fossil at some 23,000 feet (7,000 meters) below the surface. Over the course of some 30 additional dives, the researchers discovered an incredible array of whale remains, as well as traces of the animals’ activity at most of the sites they explored.
Minnows give a wide-berth to a snappy turtle, its front paws lifting it up, its snout and eyes above the water. A painted turtle swims near the snapping turtle's head, and the ghostly image of another snapping turtle is in the top right.
Paved path curves to the right. Bright green foliage and vegetation on the right. Glimpses of the river below appear between trees. Sunlight is backlighting everything.
From paper: "Fig. 9. Comparison between tracks and trackways from Botucatu Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Brazil) and Paleozoic-Mesozoic lacertoid tracks and trackways. A. LPP. IC.0041 from the Botucatu Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Brazil). B. LPP. IC.0042 from the Botucatu Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Brazil). C. Rhynchosauroides pallini from Arenaria di Val Gardena Formation (Lopingian, Italy). Arrows indicate Rhynchosauroides tracks. D. Neosauroides koreaensis from Haman Formation (Albian-Cenomanian, South Korea). Modified from Kim et al. (2017). E. Sauripes hadongensis from Hasandong Formation (Aptian-Albian, South Korea). Modified from Lee et al. (2018). F. Manus and pes of Rhynchosauroides pallini from Arenaria di Val Gardena Formation (Lopingian, Italy). G H. Manus and pes of Sauripes hadongensis from Hasandong Formation (Aptian-Albian, South Korea). Modified from Lee et al. (2018). Scales: A. 200 mm, B. 100 mm, E. 100 mm, G–H. 10 mm."
Sun highlights the trees up ahead. Otherwise, the dirt path is shaded by all of the trees around it. There is a stretch of ferns and flowers on the left.
Dirt and gravel path edged by bright green deciduous trees that arch over it. The ground is covered in dead leaves. A section of rock is on the right side.
From paper: "Fig. 8. Fossil tree stump and roots surface in Facies A3 at Locality A. All photos are from a c.12 m2 area. The roots are consistently labelled A-C between the images to show their spatial relationships. A) Fossil stump and large root in plan-view. Ruler is 1 m. B) Closer view of fossil stump shown in A. C) Side-view of root emanating from the fossil stump. In the background, a second root (Root B) is visible in the horizon above the fossil stump. D) Plan-view of the fossil stump and two roots. Root B and Root C are in the same horizon, overlying the level of the fossil stump. The blue arrow highlights desiccation cracks. Scale bar is 25 cm. E) Circular rim of raised sediment, interpreted as probable VISS marking a former stump site. Radiating cracks (yellow arrows) provide further evidence for an obstacle in the substrate. Scale card is 8 cm."
View through a conifer on the left and deciduous trees on the right to a river with whitecaps below.
From paper: "Fig. 3. Percomorphs from Qreiya 3. (A to C) Syngnathiformes. (A) Syngnathidae (pipefishes) undet., articulated skeleton missing caudal region (MUVP 698). (B) Aulostomoidea undet., skeleton missing caudal region (MUVP 705). (C) Aulostomoidea undet., skull (MUVP 706). (D and E) Scombriformes. (D) Scombridae (†Eocoeolopomini) (mackerel, tuna, and kin) undet., articulated skeleton missing the neurocranium and the caudal fin (MUVP 708). (E) Trichiuroidea undet. (MUVP 829). (F and G) Carangiformes. (F) Menidae (moonfish) (Mene sp.), complete skeleton (MUVP 804). (G) Carangidae (jacks) undet., complete skeleton (MUVP 805). (H and I) Distinct percomorph morphotypes. (H) Percomorpha undet. Morphotype I, skull and anterior region of the body (MUVP 709). (I) Percomorpha undet. Morphotype II, skull and the anterior abdominal region (MUVP 812)."
Ripply quilted clouds over a field by the bike path. Trees in the foreground to the left.
Lily pads at the top, minnows everywhere, a clear view through the brown water of the pond, and a little painted turtle swimming toward me at the bottom.
Lots of bright green and blue in this picture (green ferns, trees and ground cover on either side of the bike path; blue sky with some clouds on the horizon)
Six pink moccasin flowers or Lady Slippers extending from a cluster of bright green leaves. They are found under enormous conifers and are growing out of ground littered with pine needles and dead leaves.