New study out in JSP! 🐢 Sarda & Maniel unveil a new species of Elkanemys (Pelomedusoides) from the Turonian–Coniacian of Patagonia, Argentina, with phylogenetic analysis showing Elkanemys to be a member of Podocnemidoidae: buff.ly/QYAl9UX #PaleoSky #Fossils #Turtles #Pleurodira buff.ly/AIl42yY

Just got minor reviews on my first paper featuring something Permian 🤩

Wonder what’s in here? If you’re at #2025SVP and would like to know, drop my by Friday poster in the Turts and Crocs space, board B301. I will be presenting my graduate research on Pan-Cheloniids, including revealing a new morphotype of Cenozoic sea turtle that lived surprisingly recently.

Article collection: JSP Landmark Papers in Vertebrate Palaeontology www.tandfonline.com/journals/tjs... In honour of the 85th Annual SVP Meeting, this special collection highlights landmark studies that present comprehensive systematic frameworks for a diverse range of vertebrate groups #2025SVP

#2025SVP ! If you want to get an idea of the major steps of 🐢turtle🐢 evolution, come to see my talk on Friday, Nov 14, 8:30 AM, Hall 8. My student Guilherme Hermanson talks just before me (8:15). 4 years of macroevolutionary research on turtles went into our talks, covering many unpublished results.

In honour of the 85th Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology 2025, we have assembled a collection of landmark vertebrate palaeontology papers published by JSP First up: A new phylogeny of ichthyosaurs by B.C. Moon buff.ly/0XLPtMf #2025SVP #Paleosky @moononthebones.bsky.social #NHM

This looks so cool! Can’t wait to see it in person :) will the exhibit be traveling afterwards?

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/...

First paper accepted with new affiliation - exciting 🐢🤩

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

So excited to see our paper on #phylogenetics and #morphometrics integrated with feeding #ecology in the surgeonfishes by @linnealungstrom.bsky.social get posted, her first in a series on their incredibly cool biology. 🐟🦑🧪🌎🌿

We have a new paper out! Turtle ancestors evolved a shell—but what else? We found that an unique rostral vasculature was also obtained gradually along the lineage, and that one of the earliest turtles Proganochelys likely retained a mostly ancestral state!🐢 sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Christian Foth @mfnberlin.bsky.social is offering a 3-year PhD position in the DfG project "Postnatal Ontogenetic Patterns within Avialae (Dinosauria, Theropoda)", and he asked me to circulate this announcement 👇 Please share widely! jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/e...

JOBS JOBS JOBS! Stony Brook are advertising two assistant professorships in vertebrate palaeo/evolution, one focused on (in the words of the SVP programme) NOT DINOSAURS and the other on evolutionary neurology: apply.interfolio.com/172502 apply.interfolio.com/172517

Join us! We are hiring a new #curator at the #AMNH in #Vertebrate #Zoology careers.amnh.org/postings/4600 #academicjobs #tenuretrack

‼️ PAPER ALERT ‼️ We describe a new German ichthyosaur species: Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, from Upper Toarcian layers of Mistelgau (Bavaria). 🇩🇪 👉 Published in Fossil Record with @feikosaur.bsky.social , Jelle Heijne & Nicole Klein. Check the full article here: fr.pensoft.net/article/1542...

Wowzers. A _ton_ of cool talks by amazing people available on @palaeoverse.bsky.social palaeoverse.org/lectures 🧪

For #FossilFriday, here is the holotype of Pistosaurus longaevus (UMO BT-682) from the collections of the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken in Bayreuth. I’ve removed the specimen from exhibits to have it photographed for a research project.

I am extremely happy to see that our review on fossil tip-dating is out in early view in Systematic Biology! A huge thanks to all the authors of this massive project (@heckeberg.bsky.social, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social, Gustavo Darlim, and @hoehna.bsky.social)! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

News @ Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken (UMO) in Bayreuth: new ichthyosaur, Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, named today after UMO's prime excavation site, the Jurassic clay pit Mistelgau. @olorotitan.bsky.social beautifully reconstructed the to-be fossil on a belemnite battleground typical for the locality.

Gesucht zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt: Ausstellungskurator*in (m/w/d). E 13 TV-L, zunächst befristet auf drei Jahre mit der Option auf eine dauerhafte Übernahme Bewerbungsfrist: 19.10.2025 ➡️ https://t1p.de/smj6o #Job #Jobs #JobAd #Stellen #Kulturjobs #Museumsjobs #Stellenangebot #Stuttgart

Glad to see “Turts” session is not parallel to Romer Prize session, which is usually my highlight at SVP (and certainly was in 2019 during the last one I managed to attend)

New from #BiologyLetters: Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses buff.ly/abJm5Zv | #Evolution #Palaeontology #Taxonomy

Did you know..? Turtle phylogeny implies that land tortoises evolved from an aquatic ancestor, which is rare in amniotes 🐢 The earliest turtles may have been aquatic or terrestrial, we don't know for sure! Read more by Schoch & Sues (2017): buff.ly/NZFn0gl @sirjoscha.bsky.social #PaleoSky #Fossils

Nice. Let’s hope this stops people from the common practise of printing a whole paper with 28 figures on a billboard sized landscape paper… but let’s face it - chances are it will be chaos.

Very sad to hear Mark Norell has passed away. He was a giant in specimen-based vertebrate paleontology and an absolute legend to all of us at the AMNH. His theoretical research in phylogenetics and the fossil record was inspirational to me when I was an undergrad contemplating future research ideas

Planning on watching the ERC's webinar this Thursday 11 September? It's for grant applicants with in-depth questions on the ERC process. But, before you tune in: Make sure you know the basics 📹 bit.ly/463AbYl Get answers to some extra questions 📑 europa.eu/!y49yxF

New updated preprint! Many thanks to reviewers for their suggestions and helpful advice for improving our manuscript. Check it out if you're interested in fossils, phylogenies, and modeling morphologic evolution! 🧪

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

Excited to announce that the 1st paper from my postdoc is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! Using a large dataset of 3D preserved fossils, we explore the diversification of jaws in early bony fishes. 1/15 www.cell.com/current-biol...

The Nuremberg Zoo has mata mata (Chelus fimbriatus) turtles!! 🐢😍 I remember my first Chelus skull encounter as a major „WTF nature“ moment - so cool to see a living one at least.

Cool summary. From the paper: „Our approach (…) (i) enables testing for abrupt evolution, (ii) jointly infers the tree with the spike model, and (iii) uses the most general of clock models. When the saltative branching hypothesis is rejected, the algorithm falls back on the relaxed clock“

👋 Good-bye "Parareptilia"! Good-bye "Diapsida"! 👋

Elisabeth S. Vrba, the “Three Musketeers,” and the Expansion of Macroevolutionary Theory🧪 J. Lucas da Silva & @andrejpaleo.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1... Elisabeth Vrba Important figure in paleobiology and evolutionary theory, leaving an indelible mark on macroevolutionary research.

Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!

🚨🚨🚨!Post doc opportunity! 🚨🚨🚨 35 month post doc on niche modelling of migratory whales in my lab with Katrina Jones. Job advert below: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Please get in touch with questions!

Special points if the manuscript is on turtles 😉 Turtle works will likely end up on my desk as Associate Editor 🐢

New paper by Guilherme Hermanson & me out: we explore ontogenetic shell shape change in turtles to check if there is a size threshold at which turtles reach adult shapes. This started for a different (in prep) study & was a fun little project w preliminary data link.springer.com/article/10.1...

I am happy to announce that as of this month, I am the new director of the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken, with its >600m2 exhibit halls in the center of Bayreuth and a rich Triassic-Jurassic marine reptile collection from Muschelkalk deposits & Mistelgau alongside a rich Jurassic plant collection & more

Welcome to our new co-Editor-in-Chief Prof. Susannah Maidment Susannah is a renowned expert on the palaeobiology of bird-hipped ‘ornithischian’ dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, London 🦕Read about her amazing work: buff.ly/4AfhohB @tweetisaurus.bsky.social #Fossils #PaleoSky #Dinosaurs

Big news! Our study, just out in Nature, is a game-changer for giant ichthyosaurs! We describe the first Temnodontosaurus flipper with fossilized soft tissue, giving us a unique look at how these massive creatures used stealth while hunting in darkness. 1/7 #science #news #scicomm

‪[1/n] New paper co-lead by @emmadnn.bsky.social‬ @macroecoevoale.bsky.social‬ and I: we combined fossil occurrences, biogeography and climate modelling to investigate the origins and early evolution of pterosaurs 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Previously known partial fossil published in Nature. Unsurprisingly, the fossil is not a turtle.

Today, I submitted my habilitation at the Uni of Fribourg! I taught more than 100 hours of palaeontology & historical geology over the last years - happy to finally have gotten all requirements together…

Turtles are way (like waaay) cooler than (most) palaeos give them credit for, & we need new minds in the community - so consider applying even if turtles were not yet your thing during your previous education! Amazing datasets are already in place & Tübingen is one of the prettiest places in Germany

Nearly missed #WorldTurtleDay2025… Today I got invited to a cool turtle dig, received a turtle paper draft for comments, WhatsApped turtle pics w a colleague, made 15 turtle figs for a huge phylo MS & scheduled turtle meetings for next week. Let’s face it: everyday is turtle day (-weekends). 🐢❤️

Introducing Asmodochelys leviathan, a new giant marine turtle from the Maastrichtian of Texas! sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10.... This new 72-million-year-old species was one of the sole survivors of an extinct lineage that patrolled the gulf coast of North America near the end of the Cretaceous

Following up fr our 2024 Turtle Evolution Symposium in Fribourg (🇨🇭), Walter Joyce, Yann Rollot & I are guest-editing a collection in the Swiss Journal of Palaeontology. As the 1st papers are coming out, I'm starting this thread to update you all on turtle science. link.springer.com/collections/...

For the 1st time in years, I submitted an abstract to SVP! I reduced conference attendance a lot over the last years, but I cannot let a European SVP conference 'close' by slip... Now fingers crossed for an acceptance. Looking forward to see @richardjbutler.bsky.social et al. host #2025SVP #SVP2025