Scientist Spotted 🦏 Advait Jukar, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology here at the Museum, quoted in a National Geographic article about woolly rhino tissue recovered from the stomachs of mummified wolf puppies in northeastern Siberia: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti... 🐺🐺

Thanks to @jcchacond.bsky.social and Sólveig Guðjónsdóttir for chatting with me about their new paper with @lovedalen.bsky.social. Also appreciate Laura Epp and @amjukar.bsky.social for putting the findings in context! The actual paper is a fascinating read: academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

Direct our link to our new paper on the oldest cremation pyre in Africa: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Tldr; sex differences in M/F height is a spandrel…

Really excited to have the new issue of Paleobiology @paleosoc.bsky.social out celebrating the 50th anniversary of #punctuatedequilibria #macroevolution #paleobiology #palaeontology #paleontology @nilese.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Here is our introductory paper to the Paleobiology special volume @paleosoc.bsky.social celebrating the 50th anniversary of #punctuatedequilibria #macroevolution #paleobiology #palaeontology #paleontology @nilese.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Exactly, but its argument in favor of #Deextinction is itself a logical fallacy; yes, “ecosystems respond to what organisms do, not to how precisely their DNA mirrors the past” but… 🧪 www.columnist24.com/science/8397...

ACTUAL GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: The Paleontological Research Institution and the Museum of the Earth have made it through the crisis! Thanks to everyone who shared or donated-every donation mattered! Please share the good news just as widely!⚒️🧪🦑 Together we did #savePRI www.ithaca.com/news/ithaca/...

Going to try to be resilient in 2026, like the ammonites in Denmark that survived the dinosaur-killing asteroid and limped on for another ~100,000 years www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🐘 The land and sea mammals of Middle America and the West Indies.. Chicago: Field Columbian Museum, 1904.. [Source]

A wonderful reminder from physicist and author Sean M. Carroll. 📖

🦌 Wild animals of North America Washington, D.C., The National geographical society[c1918] [Source]

The Ecological Register now features an interactive mapping tool that lets you find ecological and palaeontological survey data. You can search using Latin names, English names, and time interval names. Click on a link and you can download all the surveys. The home page lists major data sets.

Last Thursday @palaeoverse.bsky.social I shared some of our recent projects, exploring the application of phylogenetic methods and the exciting new wave of Bayesian diversification models. #paleobiology #paleontology #macroevolution youtu.be/vd-E4E6iFNg?...

My new Gould paper is out today in Paleobiology (OA)! It is, in effect, a synthesis of some of my historical work on Stephen Jay Gould’s early career, which explores the curious position of punctuated equilibria in his early vision for evolutionary paleontology www.extinctblog.org/palaeonews/2...

Really great to see people quantifying morphological variation across the range of an extant taxon. I saw another paper recently about variation in extant iguanas. It gives us a baseline for what to expect in fossil species academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Pretty good rule of thumb

I am not sorry. This is simply true. Academics should be able to write fluently and express themselves clearly and academics should do their own work. It’s literally our job. It’s what we trained until 22nd grade to do. This is a simple observation that should require no explanation or defense.

Cool new paper documenting intraspecific variation in the skeleton of Iguana. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... Would love to see more like it. There are recent examples of paleos naming new taxa that could have benefited from this sort of assessment of morphological variation.

What a terrible loss it will be if PRI shuts its doors for good www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/s...

The most complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth unearthed in Michigan is to be found in the Museum of Natural History, Andrews University. The museum's located in Price Hall, named for young-Earth creationist George McCready Price (who's discussed at length in my book doncha know) #FossilFriday

This is a tremendous opportunity for anyone interested in conservation science and policy! DM me if you have any questions!

🦏 The Badland formations of the Black Hills region Rapid City, S.D.[The Daily Journal]1910. [Source]

Bruce Collette is a national treasure!🐟

I'm glad to share my M.Sc thesis about the extinct Levantine #hartebeest , now published and #openaccess ! Link following 🧵 The hartebeest is a staple antelope of eastern and southern African savannahs. However, the species had a far wider past distribution 1/13

Was on the BBC talking about cool extinct megacritters and science in Florida! Check it out!

If your work involves Big Palaeo Data, you should be *begging* people to publish little local studies of new observational data, jfc. Without that you have absolutely bupkiss. I say this as someone with a foot in both camps:

A 164.7 cm #rhino horn from #Yakutia sheds light on woolly rhinoceros morphology, longevity, and sexual dimorphism zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #permafrost #palaeoecology @davehone.bsky.social @amcell.bsky.social @elissazcameron.bsky.social @conservresearch.bsky.social

We need to be more honest about the nature of the job market with students, and one way of doing that is by showing them the data. Turns out, we also need better data collection on (at least US) paleo careers www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Every field needs this kind of info so students—esp first gen PhD’ers—can go in knowing what’s up. Might it depress applications? Yes. Might applicants be less diverse? Yep. But until those already in power fix the system, ppl need to know how bad it is.

"We found no evidence of migratory behavior in species that exhibit this behavior today. Ancient foragers likely hunted prey that were available year-round, consistent with zooarchaeological and genetic evidence for reduced mobility at the end of the Pleistocene." 🏺🧪🦣

BEHOLD the GARgantuan Alligator Gar!!! This is the largest Alligator Gar I’ve encountered; at over 7 feet 10 inches (240 cm) and approximately 55 inches in girth, its weight is estimated at 300 pounds (136 kg)! A true river monster, among the largest caught, tagged and safely released! #GarWeek

Central Asian radiation of modern large-mammal faunas in Miocene | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🦕 The dinosaurs of North America /. Washington, Govt. Print. Off., 1896.. [Source]

Turns out #hippos 🦛 lived in Europe much more recently than we thought! Fossil & genetic evidence from Germany shows they roamed 50,000–31,000 years ago, right in the middle of the last #iceage 🥶🌨️ Same species as today’s African hippos, thriving during warmer periods. 🦣🧪🧬

Remembering Mark Norell, the palaeontologist whose discoveries helped to demonstrate that birds are living dinosaurs. go.nature.com/433ddyk

L is for... Lithograph! A lithograph is a stone with an image drawn out in a greasy material, and the surrounding stone is etched out to create a water-receptive surface. The ink will only adhere to the drawing, allowing for printing of an image, as shown here in Breaking Ground.

🦣 The Mastodon giganteus of North America /. Boston: J. Wilson, 1852.. [Source]

Calcium Isotopes Correlate With Baleen Whale Feeding Ecology - Martin - Marine Mammal Science - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

what type of work does PRI do anyway? Scholars at PRI work on conservation paleobiology (using paleo techniques to address conservation issues), Macroevolution, Paleoclimatology, modern and paleo marine biology, and Science Education #Geoscience ⚒️🦑🧪

We lost Mark Norell today. Dinosaur hunter extraordinaire. The coolest dude alive. My PhD supervisor. Wherever you are, raise a glass of your favorite lager or single malt, as it is what Mark would want.

🐐 Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London London: Academic Press, [etc.], 1833-1965. [Source]

Jim was an incredible ecologist. I own several of his books, and cite his research reguarly. www.butlernature.com/2025/08/20/j...

It’s Fossil Friday, so let’s get a leg up on the weekend with these colossal limbs! Snapped ~1899, this archival photo from the Museum’s digital collections depicts a Museum preparator standing beside the fossilized limbs of dinosaurs discovered in Wyoming.

🦣 Report upon the extinct Vertebrata obtained in New Mexico by parties of the expedition of 1874. Washington, D.C., 1877 [Source]

🦖📢 Call for Papers! The Anatomical Record Special Issue: South Asian Paleobiology 🌏 ✨ Theme: Fossil vertebrates & evolution on a drifting continent 📅 LOI: Oct 1, 2025 | 📝 Manuscript: Dec 1, 2025 #Paleontology #Evolution #CallForPapers anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/as...

We have redefined Dolphin Taxonomy 🐬 5 former Lagenorhynchus species have been reassigned to the new/revived and redefined genera: Aethalodelphis, Leucopleurus & Cephalorhynchus #marinemammalresearch #globalecology #marineecology #cetaceans #research #genetics #science 🐋🌱🧪🌐🌏

The history of late Quaternary-to recent European bisons: "The abundance of European bison specimens responded negatively to the extent of forest cover, including Holocene cycles." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.

🦣 New discoveries at Mammoth Site USA: 2 foot elements— “predigit” & fused sesamoids—found 1st time in extinct elephants. Long known in modern elephants they reveal ancient adaptations for supporting massive land giants Gardner et al anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #FossilFriday