Reconstructed skull of Eunotosaurus africanus, an early reptile from the Permian of southern Africa. 🐢 Long hypothesized to be an ancient ancestor of turtles, recent work led by @semifossorial.bsky.social shows this curious creature is instead a 'turtleized' millerettid. (1/🧵) #FossilFriday

I feel like this is going to be a constant narrative for a while now

A fossil thought to be key to turtle evolution turns out to be something else - which clarifies where our shelly friends came from. Today’s free newsletter is out (short article + my latest writing + upcoming events + ear perks from the week).

Cetacea

Thanks to researchers at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, ISU, and their colleagues around the globe, we’ve got the answer to a question perplexing paleontologists for years: What exactly is a turtle? More at www.isu.edu/news/2026-sp.... @gondwannabe.bsky.social #idahostateucose #STEM

Here's some of what i was commissioned for this study! Skeletal reconstruction of Protorosaurus, a rather plesiomorphic archosauromorph (with completely unique caudal vertebrae though) And the bizarre, basal turtle relative: Pappochelys:

A very important open access study (doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.…) led by @semifossorial.bsky.social on the ancestry of turtles was published! Eunotosaurus' similarities are just a case of evolutionary convergence, & pantestudines might have a close relationship to sauropterygians within archosauromorpha

Our paper on turtle origins is finally out in Current Biology, with two major implications for our understanding of reptile evolution 🐢 #Paleontology #Turtles #Evolution www.cell.com/current-biol...

The resemblance is uncanny! What a perfect name for this awesome fish. 🐟🧪

Result from the Zechstein sea #paleostream! This famous deposit from the late Permian of Central Europe (mostly Germany) has a special place in paleontology history and incidentally has a locality not even a km from where I sit right now.

And with the tiniest little scleral ring I ever did see 🥹

🎨 "Karoo Life in the late Middle Permian", by Maggie Lambert-Newman 📄 Bordy & Groenewald (2026): "The Karoo Supergroup: Modern insights from the ancient archive of Gondwana" doi.org/10.25131/saj...

Eunotosaurus has a plesiomorphic inner ear shape & few distinct traits that could link it to turtles specifically. Our dataset shows inner ear shapes contain phylogenetic signal, but also many shapes that likely evolved convergently. @olorotitan.bsky.social created this beautiful reconstruction

New paper: we describe the inner ear anatomy of Eunotosaurus africanus, based on a specimen that has not been published previously. Open access @journalsystpal.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cambrian on my mind #sciart

Berlin Archaeopteryx pilgrimage complete 🪶 @mfnberlin.bsky.social

🦕 A new species of baby dinosaur discovered from South Korea's Aphae Island has been named after one of the country's most beloved cartoon characters: Dooly. 🔗 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭: blog.pensoft.net/.../fossil-x... ➡️ 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲: fr.pensoft.net/article/1781...

Thought I'd do a thread of some of my favorite #paleoart - inspired by watching an old Skeleton Crew podcast episode "Sinopteroberries" - uncertain pterosaur, possibly Nemicolopterus, but probably a juvenile Sinopterus enjoying some red podocarp berries (John Conway) #sciart

Fossil evidence suggests Sonselasuchus cedrus, an ancient crocodile relative, transitioned from walking on four legs as a juvenile to bipedal locomotion in adulthood during the Late Triassic. doi.org/hbrtbx

Results from the #paleostream! Arctognathus with Arctops, Tanyka, Nannippus (with giant puffer fish) and Caninosaurus.

Contribute to PhyloPic—researchers use it a lot! www.phylopic.org/images/6a38b...

Scientists find 2 marsupial species, thought to have gone extinct 6,000 years ago, living in the forests of New Guinea www.livescience.com/animals/land...

New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Sketch: dacentrurine and stegosaurine stegosaurs coexisting in the Morrison Formation

Just published: A very unusual fish, described here as a new genus and species of loach, and the first groundwater-dwelling fish reported from Northeast India. Meet 𝑮𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒌 𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒂𝒏𝒂! Open access article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Did some work for Dr. Dan Ksepka on some neat fossil birds. Nice to see the creative way the team that just published this paper put these two together.

"I believe In evolution, except for the whole Triassic period"

Hooray for clever scientific names inspired by Greek mythology! ✨ Very cool specimen with exciting implications. 🐦

New paper alert! 🚨🥳 New lepidosauromorphs from Germany! This paper was 80% ready when Laura was born a couple weeks in advance.. since then it has been a good bit expanded, thanks to exchanges with colleagues at conferences and during review 😊 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs xkcd.com/3204/

Haolong dongi, amazing new spiny (yes,really) iguanodontian from early cretaceous china #sciart

Result from the Joggins Formation #paleostream! This Canadian site is an absolute classic and even if you are not familiar with its name you probably know at least one of its major players...

Alickmeron Sen & Ray, 2025 is an objective junior synonym of Alwalkeria Chatterjee & Creisler, 1994 @slvrhwk.bsky.social @ijreid.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Early Arthropods xkcd.com/3199/

First paper of 2026 is out for #FossilFriday, and the first of probably several ornithischian papers over the next interval. Here my coauthors and I describe some tantalizing bits that suggest that ornithischian diversity in the Morrison Formation is higher than previously recognized.

Very excited to share Scyllacerta creanae, a new Permian stem-reptile from South Africa known from an aggregation of several individuals. This specimen provides unprecedented detail regarding the anatomy of the early reptile skull. 🦎 (1/🧵)

This #FossilFriday we are pleased to have published the new younginid taxon Scyllacerta from the late Permian of South Africa 🇿🇦 This beautiful aggregation has the holotype and has been in the literature for 30 years as “juvenile Youngina”. Photo taken before scanning at the @esrf.fr

Introducing a new Permian reptile: Scyllacerta creanae With a tympanic fossa on the quadrate and no lower temporal bar, Scyllacerta challenges long-standing ideas about when-and-how hearing evolved in reptiles 🦎👂 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/pala...

The origin of the tympanic fossa in reptiles revealed by a late Permian neodiapsid: new species Scyllacerta creanae onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #FossilFriday @semifossorial.bsky.social @morphobank.bsky.social

Got encouraged to do one of these lol #Portfolioday #paleoart I love pretty scenery and accurately depicting animals in their enviroments!!! :P

Well this is as done as it's going to get. Tiliqua frangens, a megafauna skink from pleiocene and pleistocene australia with large pointy scales feeding on spring wildflowers. #palaeoart #palaeoart #reptile #lizard

"Scylla and Charybdis" 🦀

#2025SVP was a hit for Idaho and the IMNH, with a big showing for Peecook Lab members past and present! @garyonyx-mcgoy.bsky.social @slvrhwk.bsky.social @zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social @paleorob.bsky.social @idahostateucose.bsky.social

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sauropods xkcd.com/3185/

After four months and 36 illustrations, I present the final Kem Kem chart – a look at of one of the most incredible ecosystems the world has ever seen. Short thread below! #sciart #paleoart

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Excited to announce that my second manuscript, “Fossilised Melanosomes Reveal Colour Patterning in A Sauropod Dinosaur” has been published in @royalsociety.org !! Diplodocus scales are complex and diverse, and it turns out their color patterning was even more so. A 🧵🦕 1/26

“Dragging a ladder through long rows of bookshelves can be exhausting. It’s much more efficient to have a co-worker who’s able to reach the top shelves on their own or at least give you a boost climbing up.” #miragaia #stegosaur #dinosaur #paleoart #library #librarian #books

New species of jewel-babbler, the hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia), described based on individuals pictured in camera trap photos: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🪶🧪 (📷Woxvold et al.)