Exhausted - and in some cases dead - Atlantic puffins have been washing up around the UK recently after storms have left them weak and unable to feed. If you find a puffin: ✍️Log your sighting on iNaturalist: buff.ly/sMJmnVF 🚑If it’s alive, contact a local veterinary practice who can advise you

A reminder: today is the only day of the year when you can legally buy the ingredients for #pancakes

SVP Diversity Committee co-chair here. Feel free to dm me your thoughts. I’m working with DivComm and some other committees on an action plan and I’d love to know what you want to happen and what would make you feel safer, reassured, and welcome.

Speaking as someone who was involved in the sexual selection argument referred to here, along with @tetzoo.bsky.social and @davehone.bsky.social, I reckon Horner got thoroughly and convincingly panned. One of my main takeaways was how little actual biology some of these senior palaeo guys know... 🧪

This might be a good opportunity to link to my first ever publication, in which we test Padian and Horner's 'species recognition' hypothesis (something they never bothered doing) in ceratopsians and found no evidence for it. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

The new computational model for jaw mechanics in piranhas is called PiranhaLever, available for download on my GitHub github.com/mwestneat/Pi.... Along with various other models for biomechanics and morphometrics. All Mac apps, install the dmg and skirt your security demon 😎

Oh

“Shawn the Prawn” is a fossilised prawn in the marble floor of Australia’s Parliament House.

I found this fossil vertebra on the floor of a hotel spa in Egypt! #urbangeology

Study on the diversification of jaw shape in pelagiarian/scombriform fishes led by @knapprew.bsky.social out in Evolution Letters as Editor's Choice. Gorgeous trichiuroid render by co-author @sternarchella.bsky.social nabbed the cover! Open access: academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

Delighted that our article on pelagiarian mandible evolution has made the cover of @evolletters.bsky.social!

The egrets are off to bed! Another perfect evening on the #Egyptian Red Sea coast.

Just saw a post with George Clinton citing the Beatles as his favorite band, which reminded me of this quote he once gave me

Lunchtime #bittern at London Wetland Centre and a better shot of a cousin. @wwtworldwide.bsky.social @everyheron.bsky.social

As it's #FossilFriday, why not share this wonderful artwork of objectively the best group of #dinosaurs?

This shot of a heron passing across the aptly named Heron Pond in Bushy Park is one of my favourites from a magical early morning shoot last week. I love the silhouette effect and the mystical atmosphere created by the morning mist and reflections in the water.❤️ @theroyalparks.bsky.social

🔥🇪🇺 “Europeans enjoy more free time than Americans, a higher life expectancy and lower levels of inequality – all with roughly comparable productivity. Whichever way you look at it, this is a significantly superior economic performance.”

🔍Home PhD opportunity with funding to start in October 2026: "Integrating environmental DNA into national biodiversity datasets to explain drivers of biodiversity loss" 🧬📊🐛🌳🪿supervised by me, Charlie Outhwaite (ZSL) and Eleni Matechou (School of Mathematical Sciences, QMUL).

All Reform councils to raise taxes despite campaign pledges Who would have guessed www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

This tweet was deleted while he was in the press conference announcing he was defecting!

The Cardiff Lions do an annual Drag Rugby charity match for children’s charities and it’s as beautiful as you imagined

These roles are now live! 🚨 Come join the @palaeoverse.bsky.social team at @es-ucl.bsky.social. Research Software Engineer: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... Community Engagement Coordinator: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/... Closing date: 18-Jan-2026

Some excellent work by Susie and colleagues, and some fantastic ceratopsian news (for those who partake)!

I just stumbled upon featherbase, a database of feather pictures from a bunch of bird species.🪶 So pretty! www.featherbase.info/zh/home

This is really cool, it's a display of all the bugs found on a single tree. #Invertebrate

Avian cranial evolution is influenced by shape interactions between hard and soft tissue traits #ProcB #OpenAccess #Evolution @knapprew.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

A Dutch worker went viral after explaining to their American boss that they have a life outside work.

Right. My students working two part time jobs and/or having an hour and a half commute to uni because they have to live at home due to the cost of student accommodation lack drive and vigour. Sure thing, Peter. The UK Govt still haven't a clue about the realities of universities today.

Calling all model makers, 3D scanners, anatomists, digital dissecters❗️❗️❗️ I'm the organiser of the symposium "Digital Resilience: Immortalising biodiversity through 3D anatomical models". Most of my network on here have incredible work that I'd love to see, so submit an abstract! Open 7th Jan 😁

It's a frigid day in #Colchester today, and the pair of #Peregrines on Jumbo are doing a much better job of enduring the cold than I managed! #birds #birdsofbluesky

Annual reminder that the world didn't crash on Y2K because countless people put in countless hours of work to ensure computer systems were updated to handle the date switch from 1999 to 2000. It was a real problem that a huge group effort fixed.

Colchester, site of the UK's only recorded earthquake fatality

Hello #PortfolioDay! I'm Rebecca, a science and medical illustrator who loves birds and other feathered creatures 🐡🪶🧪

it's Christmas Eve but it's also the 16 year anniversary of the time an art historian for the Hungarian National Gallery spotted a long lost painting while watching Stuart Little with his 3-year-old daughter, recognizing it in the movie set

Looking for a PhD in palaeontology or associated fields? Just a heads up that we have a list of opportunities on the @thepalass.bsky.social website: palass.org/phd-opportun... ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky (If you're advertising one, you can add it to our listings too: palass.org/form/webform... )

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

The story of Farage and Putin, told by British-Ukrainian soldier Shaun Pinner on a destroyed apartment block in Kyiv.

Had a productive day yesterday and I'm now the proud owner of a substantial amount of ragù Knappolitana!

If you need a little digital reconnection to the pulse of the living Earth, here are about 200 sandhill cranes winging south over Atlanta this afternoon. Their voices have echoed across this continent for at least 5 million years. Hopefully 5 million more

Absolutely shocking. We're offering an overall award of £10k for information that leads to a conviction in these cases. We need to make raptor persecution a thing of the past.

You wait ages for a paper, and two come along (almost) at once! This is the first publication from the project we're currently working on, where we're investigating the relationship between different regions of the avian head. 1/n royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Whose rock is it? A standoff between a Great Egret and a Snowy Egret. #photography #naturephotography #wildlifephotography #thelittlethings

This is a wonderful thread. Years of working in retail has taught me that the customer is rarely, if ever, right.

🎉It's here!🎉 This year's annual roundup of new species described by @nhm-london.bsky.social's curators, researchers and scientific associates! We've got butterflies! We've got wasps! We've even got the odd dinosaur as I know people like those. Check it out! 🐝🧪🦕

this field biologist does a great job highlighting the insidiousness of AI editing these one-click AI edit buttons are incredibly appealing to many photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, and are framed as innocuous this is worth sharing and educating people about

Great news! We can now publish full details of our timetable for our Annual #Symposium on Th 19Feb2026 in London, celebrating #UCL200 and focusing on #Anatomy: Past, Present & Future. Please order your FREE ticket and obtain further info: tinyurl.com/UCL200Anatom... @ucllifesciences.bsky.social

The K/Pg extinction created a buffet for open-ocean fishes. A new paper shows that Pelagiaria underwent an adaptive radiation following the extinction based on new jaw shapes to fill the vacuum @knapprew.bsky.social @evoswami.bsky.social @sternarchella.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...