This year's @geosociety.bsky.social annual meeting had a theme session titled 'Coprolite Happens,' & in my talk I showed a slide of this coprolite-in-a-coprolite, then followed it with a 'Knives Out' gif of Daniel Craig/Benoit Blanc with a similarly expressed revelation on donut holes.

It's nice to be really seen this gift giving season:

I got to chat with Robert Sansom about the reptile decomposition research when I was at #2025SVP this last month. Here's the full podcast of The Fossil Files from the meeting, which includes my bit: fossils.libsyn.com/rotting-croc...

Mosasaurs, the giant marine reptiles that roamed the Earth more than 66 million years ago, didn’t just live in the sea. Our new research shows that they could thrive in freshwater too! Let’s dive into what we’ve discovered. #Paleontology #Mosasaurs

a sebecid and a dyrosaurid squabble over a delicious turtle #paleoart

Science Christmas The Upturned Microscope

Does having my research made into weird AI slop where "I" am portrayed by an uncanny valley Jane Goodall (and her clone, and also 3 cloned grad students) mean I have "arrived" as a scientist?

The jumble of bones looked like porridge. It turned out to be a new species of pterosaur preserved in prehistoric vomit, the latest fossil find extracted from dinosaur excretions. I’ll tell you more in my latest for NatGeo. 🧪

Do better. (There, I just put more effort into writing the above response than anyone involved with the "writing," "reviewing," or "editing" of this "paper.")

For this week's #FossilFriday, here's a specimen which brought tears to my eyes — the original Megalosaurus dentary, first dinosaur fossil ever scientifically described, way back in 1824

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: American Alligator American Crocodile Spectacled Caiman West African Crocodile And then, because I broke my 🐊 streak: Killer Whale

Hey @erinbiba.bsky.social I hope this finds you

The dinosaur sacrifice is complete:

You’ll be visited by 3 spirits The three spirits

Every year around Thanksgiving, I see tons of grad students post heartbreaking messages on social media about how their loved ones don’t understand or support their decision to study what seems like something pointless or silly. Perhaps my American Scientist essay can help! 🧪🌎🦑 #SciComm

Just in case my U.S. followers need to track down a turkey for Thanksgiving, here's a helpful guide in a November 2012 blog post by Yours Truly, with insights on the behavioral ecology of wild turkeys on a Georgia-coast barrier island (Cumberland). 🧪🦃🐾 www.georgialifetraces.com/2012/11/20/t...

I made an infographic for this very reason! Every year I encourage my viewers to print it out for their Thanksgiving turkey dinner, Christmas goose feast, Boxing Day budgie buffet, or any other ritual when people gather to dismember bird carcasses. I'm not a meat eater, but I try not to judge

I told my students the same, and that they should use @arctomet.bsky.social's helpfully labeled diagram to steer the Thanksgiving-dinner conversation back to something that really matters, such as theropod evolutionary lineages. 🧪🦃🦖

My recommendation to my students tomorrow is that if they get stuck in an uncomfortable Thanksgiving conversation with family, just start manually tearing apart the turkey to show off the theropod synapomorphies. I promise that will derail whatever the previous topic was.

News from Episode 231: The oldest known fossil croc eggs, from Australia

New seasonal paleontology positions available for Dinosaur National Monument, Petrified Forest National Park and Fossil Butte National Monument. Apply soon, they close after they receive a certain number of apps! #NPSpaleo #PaleoJobs www.usajobs.gov/job/850816000 www.usajobs.gov/job/850816700

First they push 24% of rangers out the door, and tell us we can’t hire anyone to backfill those positions. Then, they tell us to fill those positions with seasonal (temporary) rangers—the positions in the NPS with the least protections.

New paper on the notosuchian Eremosuchus by @piginatutu.bsky.social, co-authored by myself and @pdmannion.bsky.social among others out now!! We even find some cool evidence of replacement teeth in the dentary! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The mommy guilt presents from my recent conference travel were a hit.

Happy #FossilFriday! This is the preserved scale pattern (MOR 790) from a long-necked #sauropod #dinosaur found in the #Jurassic #Morrison Formation of #Montana. Fossils like this one can provide a clearer view of what these animals looked like when they were alive.

Alas, this article on our reptile decomposition research does not come in a scratch-and-sniff format. However, if you'd like to see what my students, colleagues, and I have been up to with our decomposing lizards and crocodylians, here's your chance. 🧪

I slipped away from #2025SVP to visit Sea Life Birmingham and see some livelier vertebrates than my usual fossil fare.

🚨New Pub!🚨Australia’s oldest crocodylian eggshell: insights into the reproductive paleoecology of mekosuchines🐊🥚by Blas et al. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Happy #FossilFriday! #Fossils can come in a variety of colors! These are all #tyrannosaur #teeth from the Upper #Cretaceous #TwoMedicineFormation in #Montana. The different colors reflect conditions and processes that occurred after burial.

She sees dead things. @uglyfossils.bsky.social totally killed it with her talk at #2025SVP today on the decomposition of reptiles and implications for Dinosaur Mummy formation. If you missed it, be sure to find her today... as it is the last day of the conference.

I survived my #2025SVP talk (and so did the audience). I hope my decomposing reptiles didn't put anyone off their lunch.

Just one week until Birmingham welcomes #SVP2025 #2025SVP: first field trip leaves next Sunday!

Doing my final packing for #SVP2025, and luckily, we're not actually required to wear 15 pieces of flare.

To all my colleagues who are traveling to Birmingham from the US to attend #SVP2025 next week:

Dear colleagues, I know we all have #SVP2025 next week, but could you maybe not inundate me with peer review requests right now? Because I am also trying to get paper revisions sent back so I don't have to think about them while attending the conference. Sincerely, A Hypocrite

For Halloween, I dressed up as the scariest thing I could imagine. No, not the skeleton.

“The sort of basic [fossilization] question of ‘How did this thing fossilize in the first place?’ hasn’t received as much attention in the past. I think this was a really great deep dive into this one area where we do see several specimens." @uglyfossils.bsky.social

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio @bembidion.bsky.social

On @cnn.com Science, @uglyfossils.bsky.social & Yours Truly were quoted with our takes on newly interpreted clay "death mask" interpretation for preservation of Late Cretaceous dinosaur "mummies," reported in the news elsewhere yesterday. www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/s... 🧪🦖🦕🪨

New paper today in @science.org: we date the Naashoibito Member (New Mexico) to 66.4–66.0 Ma, coeval with the Hell Creek, with important remarks on pre-extinction dinosaur diversity & regionalisation in North America 🦖🦕☄1/ Art: @nataliajagielska.bsky.social 🔗 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

How to Make a 'Dinosaur Mummy' (If You Have Millions of Years, Some Microbes, and a Whole Lot of Clay) 🧪 www.scientificamerican.com/article/duck...

You didn’t think you were just getting one dinosaur article from me today, did you? In another for NatGeo, I dig into how dinosaur “mummies” are preserved - and why there are probably many more exceptional dinosaur fossils out there than we ever dreamed. 🧪

Duck-billed dinosaur fleshy midline and hooves reveal terrestrial clay-template “mummification” | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Wyoming's famed dinosaur "mummy zone" has yielded two more remarkable Edmontosaurus mummies! In a new paper, scientists describe the microbe-led process that delicately preserved these dinosaurs' scaly hides and hooves in clay. Latest for @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/s...

Decades of Drought Are Changing How Paleontologists Search for Fossils As the planet gets hotter, relics of history are receding from view by Riley Black (restingdinoface.bsky.social) www.sierraclub.org/sierra/decad...

At the empty USGS booth at GSA. More out of view on both sides

New paper on crocodylian locomotor evolution led by Masaya Iijima, w/Richard Blob & me! More erect hindlimb postures help extant gators support their weight (esp. at ankle), & how these mechanics constrained giant Deinosuchus to a slow walk at best! The paper-- www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The secret to making happy little Edmontosaurus mummy murder mittens is lots of duct tape and really loud Ladytron while waiting for adhesive to cure. My methods certainly do get results i guess.