Fans want him to make their bed rock — because of his rock-hard abs and his rock-solid knowledge.
Meet Fossil Daddy–a 36-year-old, queer paleontologist from Massachusetts who’s using his platform to coach people about science and the study of fossils by utilizing popular culture to interrupt all of it down — with a healthy amount of thirst traps thrown in there, too.
Fossil Daddy, who prefers to go by his nickname as a result of safety concerns regarding his family, boasts over 195,000 followers across 4 social media platforms since he rebranded in 2020.
“I believe modern audiences have very, little or no exposure to the study of paleontology, and I feel like loads of people don’t really wish to find out about it since it goes over their heads,” the TikTok creator told The Post.
“So how are you going to bring it back all the way down to Earth in a way that they’ll understand?”
As a paleontological father figure, he won’t be sufficiently old to be their father, but his fans wish to bone their Fossil Daddy. Hoards of fossil freaks are swooning over him and his sexy semantics.
On his TikTok account, he makes fossils fun by describing them in ways that individuals can understand. In a single video, he brings the Pokémon character Kabutops to life, explaining what sort of fossils the creature is definitely based on, and describing among the character’s traits– Fossil Daddy says they’re each “dom tops.”
In one other, he tries to elucidate what the personality of a Kosmoceratops dinosaur could be like today, sharing that it was nicknamed “the horny-est dinosaur ever.” He even used an audio sound to make the animated dino say, “I got banged!”
He’s also taken the playful comparisons to YouTube, where he titled a recent video, “Prehistoric Boss Babes: The Dinosaurs and Creatures That Would Have Recruited You to an MLM Scheme!”
“It’s opened more windows and doors for me than working in academia ever did,” Fossil Daddy admitted to The Post about his social media platform.
Fossil Daddy began his science profession in marine biology in 2008, but after growing frustrated with the industry, he went back to highschool to check environmental geology shortly thereafter, which led him to a life in paleontology, something that he describes as his “very old flame.”
His fondness for fossils and environmental science began when he was little, as a baby growing up in Brockton, Mass. He explained that the road he lived on was pretty dangerous, so he would escape to the nearby woods to gather bugs, rocks, and leaves, recording all of his findings in a journal.
His interest was further catapulted when he discovered Pokémon.
“The Pokémon Omanyte, which is predicated off of very real ammonite fossils, is what really snowballed my profession, I’d say, in paleontology because as obsessed as I used to be with wild animals and plants and rocks, it was fossils that I at all times sort of got here back to,” Fossil Daddy explained.
And that zeal for Pokémon even translates into his business today. On his website, he sells what he calls “Daddy’s Balls”– fossils that he’s found during his hunts, neatly packed inside multicolored Pokémon balls.
“Once you begin learning in regards to the history of other living things, you begin to value living things,” Fossil Daddy said.
Before 2020, he had already been documenting his fossil findings on Instagram, but wasn’t really expressing his true personality– he wasn’t even showing his face. His following was mostly older “rockhounds”– individuals who wish to collect rocks– the Daddy told us.
It wasn’t until he got a disturbing comment that made him wish to turn things around.
“The comment was like, ‘I like this community, it’s one in all the queer-free places on the web, and I don’t must worry about P.O.C’s invading,’” he recalled. “And here I’m, like a queer P.O.C., a faceless queer P.O.C. at the moment. I used to be similar to ‘Huh, I want to indicate individuals who I’m.’”
In order that’s what he did– he decided to post some more risqué content, including an image where he wasn’t wearing a top– nevertheless it backfired together with his community on the time.
He went from 2,100 followers to lower than 1,300 on Instagram almost overnight, as he described the rockhounding community as a spot that’s not at all times secure for queer people since it’s traditionally been a male-dominated hobby.
Men account for 62% of those working within the environmental science field, in accordance with Zippia.
But as an alternative of taking the loss as successful to his system, he decided to rebrand as “Fossil Daddy” in an effort to reach a more area of interest audience.
This ended up working for him, and when his friend suggested that he get more comfortable making video content, he joined TikTok in 2020, and the remainder is history.
He told The Post that he desires to make his platform a secure space for each queer individuals and other people of color to discuss paleontology.
Fossil Daddy has grown a following to the purpose where he’s been recognized within the wild. When he was in Grand Rapids, MI, for a member of the family’s wedding last summer, someone spotted him wearing a maroon suit, eating Doritos and singing “The Spice Girls” around town. It was only one stop on his nationwide fossil hunt.
In his thick Boston accent, he said that this was the “craziest” experience he’s had from the app up to now.
As with every social media platform, Daddy has faced his fair proportion of trolls, especially those that don’t imagine in science or those that are creationists. Some have called him a threat to their religion or beliefs. He’s made some response videos addressing them, but told us that he doesn’t go after just anybody.
“I actually leave it to essentially the dumbest comments,” Fossil Daddy explained.
But trolls aside, he doesn’t let that stop him from going digging.
The paleontologist’s fossil hunts have taken him all all over the world, from England and Scotland to more local places in america, like Colorado and Connecticut. He says he does loads of research before he goes out on these hunts, which usually take him about per week.
“As soon as I get to the spot, I look out for the rock that I do know is the fossil bearing rocks, corresponding to limestone, sandstone, shale,” he said. “After which I take out my hammer and my tools, and I just start splitting rock.”
When Fossil Daddy is in search of dinosaur footprints nearby, like in Connecticut, he brings in a crowbar that he says is twice the length of him. He also brings saw blades in an effort to fastidiously extract the fossils that won’t come out of the rock so easily.
Considered one of his best finds features a Plesiosaur paddle bone, which he got here across when hunting on the Jurassic coast of England, right after a cliff fall. It’s his favorite because he found it within the hometown of Mary Anning, an English paleontologist who’s his childhood hero.
“Her house, or what’s now the Lyme Regis Museum, was in plain view of that site,” he described. “So I used to be like, literally, like inside viewing distance of her home once I found that. That’s that’s only a memory that I’m at all times going to treasure and that the fossil at that I’m at all times going to treasure.”
When he doesn’t use the fossils for his own personal collection or to sell on his website, he donates them to institutes and universities to be studied further.
But his ultimate goal is to open up a museum of his own that will be free for the general public to go to.
“I would like to create like a extremely healthy learning environment where everybody’s welcome,” Fossil Daddy said of his future vision.
He plans to have a whole section of the magical museum dedicated to fossils that inspired certain Pokémon, and possibly even an animation section.
Until then, he plans to maintain digging for fossils and making content, in order that he can carry on being your Daddy.