New from #BiologyLetters: Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses buff.ly/abJm5Zv | #Evolution #Palaeontology #Taxonomy

The @nhmdk.bsky.social is offering a #PhD position in collections-based taxonomic or similar research, ideally focused on 'dark taxa' occurring in Denmark. The call is a broad one. Get in touch with a relevant curator if you're interested! 🧪🐝🪰💐🪱 candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

I am opposed to AI products and services because of the extra power they require... IN A CLIMATE CRISIS. I am opposed to AI results - texts and illustrations - because they've been created unethically, via theft and non-consensual use of the work of others. Share if you agree.

Out today in Nature is the most exciting dinosaur paper I've ever been involved in - led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social we describe a partial skeleton of the UTTERLY BIZARRE Spicomellus from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco, the oldest known ankylosaur. (1/x) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chat. What are the ground rules for taking & posting pictures on social media of accessioned specimens in museum collections. IMO museum collections are (should be) public & accessible. Given many don't have digital repositories it's better to showcase the material on social platforms.

Dingoes are NOT domestic dogs, and we show why in theconversation.com/dingoes-are-... @aunz.theconversation.com. Research www.publish.csiro.au/AM/AM24052 published today in Australian Mammalogy (@ausmammals.bsky.social) and led by @drcairns.bsky.social.

Yesterday I co-presented a Meet the Scientist at the @nhm-london.bsky.social: we talked about the giant ground sloth Mylodon (or Neomylodon) skin the museum received from F. P. Moreno in 1899. Thanks to @neilfadams.bsky.social, we had the actual specimen. Turns out it's real big!

Want to watch me talk about reassessing the size of the thylacine? Here are two conference talks, coming at it from very slightly different angles: youtu.be/JGoZYKV9pLc?... youtu.be/7Xg9PWCDAi0?... #evobio #Mammals #paleontology 🧪

Ink drawing of a Sthenurus stirlingi (short-faced kangaroo) Using very helpful reference notes by @dsrovinsky.bsky.social This is part of a set of drawings; to figure out which pose I’m going to do for the final commissioned piece. #paleoart

Five years ago, my second PhD paper came out: doi.org/10.1098/rspb... In it, I looked at the body mass of the recently extinct thylacine (aka Tasmanian tiger) & found that it was only about half as big as popularly thought. Let's revisit the paper, & see where we are today. 🧪🧵 #evobio #Mammals

TWENTY HOURS LEFT IN THE ENDLINGS KICKSTARTER!! www.kickstarter.com/projects/com...

Want to do a PhD on White Sharks using high-powered imaging to analyse form and function of their teeth and jaws? You will work with me and the dream team @charlie-huveneers.bsky.social @meyer-sci.bsky.social @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social & #SARDI at Flinders Uni 🦈🦷🦴 Interested? Get in touch!

Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. has called off nearly $500 million in grants and contracts aimed at advancing mRNA vaccine development. This technology, first deployed during the Covid19 pandemic, allows vaccines to be produced rapidly and adapted as viruses evolve. His brain worms are getting worse!

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

Want to present your work at the upcoming Conference of #Australasian #Vertebrate #Evolution, #Palaeontology and #Systematics (CAVEPS) 2025 in Adelaide (Australia) this November? Make sure you submit your abstract by the end of this month! www.caveps.org

Are you an early-career biologist or ecologist who would benefit from an invited seminar? Would you like to come to UMaine next fall or spring to give a talk? Leave a brief comment with some info about what you do. I'm co-hosting our seminar series again, and am filling out our rosters.

Better version of the meme.

My current board. Been through a lot of iterations, and this has been a total re-build after moving overseas. Still not 100% with it and it's missing some essentials (tremolo, reverb, etc... ), but I'm getting closer to 'ok'.

#academicsky question! i have some papers i started in my PhD and continued to work on throughout my two postdocs and now am finishing up in my faculty position. what's the current best practices on affiliations in a case like that? all of them? just the PhD? PhD + current?

The rankings of Danish bachelor's degree applications have been announced. There is not a single natural science in the top 25. As an associate professor of Vertebrate Zoology at Denmark's largest university, this really surprised me. 🧪🧵 1/12 www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, Marvel

My close friend @bethverityart.bsky.social is auctioning off some original thylacine sketches and it’s an awesome opportunity to get some beautiful art!! www.ebay.co.uk/itm/30636136...

Just had these two beauties delivered! Can’t wait to get into them. Now to decide which gets read first… @davehone.bsky.social @markwitton.bsky.social

Is anyone else experiencing constant failure to upload on MorphoSource, or is it just me?

Corinna After two weeks of work, I've brought this thylacine to life. She's slightly smaller than life-size. The paper measures 36 inches by 24. I hope to get better photos taken before framing. I'm open to serious offers on the original. #thylacine #tasmaniantiger #SciArt 🐡

so where are we publishing natural history notes these days? the first place we submitted rejected without additional review as too brief, so not sure if we try to find a different home for it or just maybe do a preprint?

Get your CVs updated. Zoology Department, University of Otago is hiring a Lecturer in Evolutionary Ecology! @zoologyotago.bsky.social otago.taleo.net/careersectio...

Have you heard of Michał Piotr Boym? A Pole, born in Lwow (1612), died in Guanxi. Considered to be the first European Natural History Researcher in China. Responsible for creating the first map of China, coining the word "flora" and introducing Europe to fruit such as lychee 🧵

Unfortunately, this is ‘the standard’ when writing about an animal’s size, especially their mass. It’s really frustrating. And still lying.

Everyone drop what you are doing (unless it's holding a baby or a cat or a baby cat) and check these out right here. Look at that silly roo, strutting around like they're Tony Maneroo. I love it.

I really like xenarthrans, yet I've published comparatively little on them at Tet Zoo. Aiming to change that this year, and we start with #ARMADILLOS, specifically long-nosed ones, specifically hairy long-nosed ones .... tetzoo.com/blog/2025/4/... #mammals #TetZoo #Xenarthra

Updated 🧪 #paleoart reconstruction of the #fossil #mammals short-faced kangaroo Simosthenurus occidentalis, after sitting with and incorporating some feedback. Still very uncertain about the reconstruction, but it's a start. I really wish for a detailed study of the group to happen!

Update on the Green Waterhole Cave #fossil #mammals kangaroo Simosthenurus occidentalis #paleoart skeleton recon. @zieglertn.bsky.social @toothygrinart.bsky.social @p-hazael.bsky.social @isaacarkerr.bsky.social 🧪thoughts welcome - any comments?

Thrilled to share my second PhD paper with @tomezard.bsky.social & @evoswami.bsky.social focused on the application of landmark-free geometric morphometrics! 🎉 Excited to contribute to advancing shape analysis techniques in biology. Check it out here: doi.org/10.1186/s128...

Once again I am trying to understand the bonkers #fossil kangaroo Simosthenurus occidentalis, using pics of the incredible Green Waterhole Cave specimen @ South Australian Museum. #paleoart , kangaroo, #mammals peeps! Wanna start a 🧪🧵discussion on sthenurine roos here? How does this roo do?

🚨New publication alert!🚨 A big one! It might just be my *biggest* one: doi.org/10.1093/iob/... IMPORTANT THREAD! From the moment Dave Blackburn set me loose at the Florida Museum, I had a marvelous time using diffusible iodine-based contrast-enhanced CT (diceCT) to create anatomical datasets 🧪1/6

alright i have my laptop, guess i'm livetweeting the dire wolf preprint. so a quick reminder: this is not yet peer-reviewed, so there's some different expectations re: quality. also let's be clear, i'm a hella biased reader, bc i don't trust the hype they're courting

G'day folks I've got some online talks lined up this coming month for Australian heritage festival I'll be speaking with Adele Pentland and Sally Hurst in three online talks - where we've dug, palaeontology questions, and why Australovenator is the best thing out of Australia since VB 😉

This is wild!

Common developmental origins of beak and snout shapes in theropods: www.cell.com/iscience/ful... 🪶🧪 (📷Garland et al.)

Looks like it's OK to share parts of my new Scientific American #paleoart. The theme is "old vs. new" restorations of #dinosaur horns and armour: cue stereotyped past and progressive modern takes on Borealopelta, Stegosaurus and Triceratops. Full artworks: www.scientificamerican.com/article/dino...

Absolutely. I am out of science/research because there is no money for it in Australia, and so no labs, no positions. Even though I’m a USA citizen too, I was NOT moving back there (even before) so… I know many, many ECRs here that are similarly leaking out of a suddenly hole-filled system.

Hello friends! CAVEPS (#Conference on #Australian #Vertebrate #Evolution #Palaeontology & #Systematics) to be held in Adelaide Nov 24-30th 2025 first circular is out! If you haven't received it via email you may not be on our mailing list, but access it here: drive.google.com/file/d/1Xm1w...

Just finished my third reading of @davehone.bsky.social “The Future of Dinosaurs“. This is probably the best book on palaeobiology I have ever read. Every section essentially is a primer on research lab construction, and every page a PhD thesis in waiting. An exceptional book. #paleobio #fossil

Out now with Transactions of @royalsocietysa.bsky.social: #fossil #research from friends & colleagues describing an interesting #palaeofauna from the oft-forgotten but (as they demonstrate) biogeographically important Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Have a look! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Christmas Island Rat (Rattus macleari) probably went extinct in the earliest 20th Century. This study 👇 used it as a case study to see just how good an edited copy of an extinct animal's genome could be made - kind of a 'best case scenario' 🧪 #mammals #evobio 📷 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003602

Are we standardising FEA models wrong? Is it a bit of garbage in, garbage out? A new study suggests so, and sets out three protocols for standardising the FEA models with respect to what the heck you are actually looking at. #evobio #Mammals 🧪 journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

They’ve only waited 120Ma. A new glimpse into theropod diversity from Early Cretaceous Australia: megaraptorids, an unenlagiine, and for the first time, carcharodontosaurians. Read it here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Artwork by Jonathan Metzger. 1/10

I am currently dealing with some of the most perplexingly frustrating reviewer comments I’ve ever had. It makes me glad that this is probably the last paper I’ll be a major author on.