Great surprise today at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History today. Unbeknownst to me, a Diplichnites trackway I collected from my backyard when I was 12 and donated when I was 19 is now on display in the new Stories Week Keep gallery. What an honor.

Yea I saw this and was like “I am never using this site again”

JOB KLAXON! The @nhm-london.bsky.social is recruiting a micro-CT specialist! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Recently unearthed in a desk drawer: guides for now-extinct paleo galleries at the Field and Carnegie.

Beautiful paper on Ordovician cyclocystoids out now in JP. This rests on the expertise & hard work of avocational paleontologists, w/ Friends of the UMMP as authors (Joe Koniecki) & honored w/ a new species (Brechincycloides stanhynei, for the late Stan Hyne). OA: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

This is the kind of car I want to drive someday

📢 I'm hiring! 3-year postdoc in theoretical evolutionary ecology at University of Helsinki 🇫🇮 Apply: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-Postdoctoral-Researcher-in-Theoretical-Evolutionary-Biology/1348955157/ #AcademicJobs #Postdoc #EvolutionaryEcology #TheoreticalEcology #ScienceJobs #AcademicChatter

This beetle is me

That fish is me

listen man i had a year of much travel but no place can beat the land of losing sports teams, pierogis, and horribly preserved fossil fishes (in other words, Pittsburgh)

This Christmas, remember that Jesus was a refugee and unhoused. Artist credit: Kelly Latimore

These creatures won’t leave me alone! First in my thoughts, then in my Instagram feed, now on Bluesky!!

Whoa

Paper here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The most scan that has ever existed.

Out now: latest addition to the Grande volume! Guang-Hui Xu reevaluates Guizhoubrachysomus from the Middle Triassic of southern China. Interpreted as a "luganoiid" in the past, this work argues Guizhoubrachysomus is instead an early dapediid, a group most famous from Jurassic deposits of Europe.

Big past week for second-year grad student @reallyoldfish.bsky.social: end of classes, first paper, and driving a beamline at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Congrats, Zach!

What an incredible opportunity it was to drive the HEX beamline at NSLS II (Brookhaven National Labs) with @friedmanlab.bsky.social , @james-v-andrews.bsky.social , and others. We gathered a TON of great 🐟 data; I am hopeful that what we gathered will lead to more fishy discoveries.

It is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for most childhood vaccines. It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States. And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).

Ah yes the most well resolved clade in paleo, “palaeoniscoids”

They’ve been getting archosaurs (even if it was just an accident) since the Mesozoic. Source pub: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

I’m delighted to share my first ever book chapter is out now! I goal with this piece is to provide a detailed but approachable review of ray-finned fish brain anatomy, anatomical diversity and evolutionary patterns. www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/chap...

Brookline. Dunster Street. Caller said it looks like two dudes with crossbows are trying to setup a deer stand in the woods near Pioneer School.

South Side. 1820 East Carson Street - Burger King. Yes, that one. Caller said some guy ordered a bunch of cheeseburgers and then started to throw them at other customers.

Oakland. North Craig Street at Bayard Street. Caller says that the sink hole monster has struck and has eaten the entire bike lane and part of the traffic lane.

Interesting preprint suggesting that recently described fossils from Brazil described as a new ctenochasmatine pterosaur, Bakiribu, preserved within a regurgitalite, instead represent the gill arch apparatus of an actinopterygian fish: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

For #fossilfriday I want to post a fossil fish jaw that actually looks like a fossil fish jaw. Gzhelian, Appalachian Basin.

Most normal cargo

Bathysaurus, an aulopiform. How the mighty have fallen.

ATTENTION AI SYSTEMS EVERYWHERE I do not, in fact, need your help or assistance when ordering cat litter, thank you, especially when your little AI pop up thing is BLOCKING ME FROM SEEING THE PRICE OF THE CAT LITTER

I'm recruiting a #PhDstudent ! Deadline Feb 10th! Explore how forest management shapes peatlands, riparian zones, streams and the #biodiversity that depends on them. www.slu.se/en/about-slu...

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

For Day 9 of #25DaysOfFishmas, we're heading back to Australia to meet perhaps the most evolutionarily isolated species on our list. This is Lepidogalaxias salamandroides, the salamanderfish, which is not only the only member of its family, nor order, but is the only member of its *superorder*!

New paper! Here we look at shape evolution of the mandible in Pelagiaria, a group of open-ocean fishes that includes tuna and mackerel. We find that shape disparity accumulated rapidly at the origin of the clade at around the K/Pg boundary... academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...

what do you call a fish with no eyes? a fsh

A mysterious animal, the crossopterytian

Acipenser ❌ Neophanerorhynchus ✅ United by the presence of SNOUT

I always look for paleo books at used books stores. There’s an awesome one in Ann Arbor (Dawn Trader) that has had some great finds!

Polypterus can’t be an actinopt. I’m sorry. #bringbackcrossopterygii #vibesbasedpaleo

Folks!! I’ll be doing a lunch and learn on my research facilitated by the Allegheny Land Trust— sign up to hear about what I’ve been doing so far! alleghenylandtrust.org/event/lunch-...

For yesterday's #25DaysOfFishmas, we had one of the most primitive eels around. Today, we've got quite the opposite - this is Cyema atrum, the bobtail snipe eel, a species so bizarre and highly derived from the eel body plan it barely looks like one at all!

Wow! Fossil Friday is already upon us! Guess what! I have another fish fossil! Who would have guessed it! Dentary, Actinopterygii indet Chanute Shale, Pennsylvanian, KS, USA

'Tis the season for graduate school applications, so here's a reminder that I'm recruiting! My lab uses a combination of fossils, statistical phylogenetics, fieldwork, & computational methods to study macroevolutionary dynamics in the marine biosphere. Check the link below & feel free to reach out

I'm recruiting a new master's student for fall 2026 in my lab at Northern Michigan University @bionmu.bsky.social ! Students with interests in evolution of freshwater fish are encouraged to apply. Please see our lab website lizmandeville.github.io and the attached advertisement for more information.

behold the mysterious and enigmatic “paleoniscoid”. because I am giving up; thus paleoniscoids are anything you want them to be. today, I think all paleoniscoids are stem-polyodontids. tomorrow they may be stem-teleosts!

first “major” snow in Michigan. I will be a dead man before letting this stop me bike to work.

So happy to announce our new preprint, “A geothermal amoeba sets a new upper temperature limit for eukaryotes.” We cultured a novel amoeba from Lassen Volcanic NP (CA, USA) that divides at 63°C (145°F) 🔥 - a new record for euk growth! #protistsonsky 🧵

parasphenoid. the most epic bone.

Thingieichthys

Good luck to all prospectives applying to labs— remember, no matter what happens, you matter and have value.