Professor Joe Felsenstein FRS is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. After initially working on population genetics theory of recombination, of migration, and of speciation, his main focus has been on phylogenetic inference. #RSFellows https://royalsociety.org/people/joseph-felsenstein-38106/

Say hi to Praearcturus gigas. This Devonian arthropod from Britain's identity had been in dispute for ages, but a new study reinterpreted it as a giant scorpion. Though the fossil is fragmentary, the estimated size is about 1 meter long. This is one bug you want to ride into battle. #Art #SciArt

Who here among us does not love a gigantic amphibious or aquatic Early Devonian predatory scorpion? Kudos to @arthropoda-curator.bsky.social & colleagues on their unraveling the identity of Praearcturus gigas, & here's to hoping someone, someday finds its tracks & other trace fossils, too. 🧪🪨⚒️🦂

Thrilled to finally share our new paper on giant scorpions from the Early Devonian! Behold Praearcturus gigas! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/S54Y6Y...

brontoscorpio found dead in a ditch onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Great title 🫡 🧪

What time is it? It’s #Cheliceratime & #Fossilfriday! Today, the only trigonotarbid from the Southern Hemisphere, Gondwanarachne argentinensis! All the basic infos are here but if you want to learn more, there’s more below!⬇️🧵 #trigonotarbid #carboniferous #paleoart #sciart #bugsky #invert 1/4

📣 Introducing MorphSim: an R package for simulating discrete morphological data along phylogenetic trees, built for fossil-inclusive phylogenetics, with all the complexity of real morphological data baked in 🪨🌿 besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Magnicornaspis garwoodi (Mag-Knee-Corn-Ass-Piss | Gar-Wood-Eye) "Garwood's Large-Horned Shield"

🚨NEW STUDY DROP🚨 New corcoraniid is described as, Magnicornaspis garwoodi, from the lt Cambrian Rivière-du-Loup Formation of Quebec, Canada. It's another piece of evidence that the Furongian Gap may be an artifact of preservation, and not extinction.

🦐 Research News‼️What does the fossil record of chelicerates in the Furongian look like? Research led by Russell Bicknell shows that it might be more diverse than we thought. Meet Magnicornaspis garwoodi the newest Cambrian critter. Article: rdcu.be/flerZ

I'm giving a talk this July at Life & Planet on my recent work on some mysterious Proterozoic fossils I've been working on (see image) plus there's a full 3 days of great talks and posters #Geology #Paleontology #FossilFriday lifeandplanet.com/programme/

Tom Gray is amazing at this sort of thing. An impassioned speech to the Ivors Academy. Inspiring stuff.

Trans people deserve youth. Trans people deserve old age.

I've been thinking a lot about the death of friendship lately. "Somewhere between “Let’s catch up soon” and “Sorry, life has been hectic”, adult friendship became one of the most emotionally significant and least discussed losses of modern life." timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/civil-...

New preprint. I've been chewing on why bacteria have pangenomes for years. Most species carry a distributed gene pool far larger than any one genome holds. E. coli has ~163,000 rare genes across the species. Each individual cell carries about 5,000. Why? A 🧵👇

Got to circle the wagons of truth and beauty to keep off the related threats of AI and fascism. Hunker down.

Beautiful new preprint from Antonio and Andres on the evolution of eye loss in spiders! Find the full thread below for details on unequal losses across parallel visual systems, possible regains of eyes, 1000s of surveyed species, ecological and developmental clues, and a gratuitous dinosaur emoji 🦕

Mechanisms of Late Ordovician and Late Devonian ME: "These transient P surges align with biodiversity loss, widespread anoxia, and seawater temperature declines, suggesting a link between P flux, ocean anoxia, and global climate shifts," www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 ⚒️ #EvoBio #Paleobio #Geology

Worrying that this requires a whole article and is not simply the default position for academics… there is no shortcut to learning and research, at least none that has any lasting value. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Bailey Bridge, Manchester, 1912, painting by Pierre Adolphe Valette, 1876-1942 (Manchester Art Gallery).

When Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it. Anyway: fund basic research.

WINNERS 🏆💜 We couldn’t be prouder of our incredible team for winning University Challenge! This win marks a special milestone. With five victories, we’re the most successful university in the history of the competition, joint with Imperial College London. Well done team 👏🏆

We know that there are many C++ users across the University but did you know that there was also a user group for anyone using C++ in their research?

Local views also pretty good

For #FossilFriday, since I'm in the field with second year undergrads in Scotland, here is a lovely fossil plant root we found in Upper Carboniferous sediments. Plus a coral, and some amazing bioturbation on the underside of a bed! ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

This #FossilFriday we @camzoology.bsky.social are in our first year Evolution undergrad fieldcourse @fieldstudiesc.bsky.social Dale Fort including the fabulous Marloe Sands Silurian Fossil site 😍

A 500-million-year-old fossil of an early relative of spiders, scorpions, and mites offers insights into how this group of arthropods, called chelicerates, evolved. It has clear claws, and is among earliest known example of this feature in chelicerates: spklr.io/63329EysAT #Palaeontology

A research fellow post combining MESOZOIC PALAEOBOTANY and plant ecophysiology here at Nottingham with Barry Lomax. Fixed term to March 2029. Please spread the word! jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx... #paleobotany #plantscijobs 🌍⚒️🌱🧪🔬

‼️🚨 Job Alert ‼️ 🚨 Two Post Doc Opportunities: PDRA in Macroecology / Paleobiology my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... PDRA in Extinction & Conservation / Paleobiology my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Any questions, please get in touch! Closing date May 1st.

Just been approached by Huel to see if I'll be part of their paid influencer campaign. I don't think they're quite across what I do for a living. (FWIW, and in the interests of having influence, I regard Huel as a soul destroying, miserable product and the death of all that is worth living for.)

I will only find true inner harmony though, when I figure out how the crap to identify a facet at the edge of the eye algorithmically in 3D space without a surface to follow. It feels like it should be easy, but every time I think of something I then require a bodge to make it work. 🧪⚒️

This is *such* exciting science and richly deserved! Can't wait to see what comes - congrats @laurensr.bsky.social @cambriannelids.bsky.social and Gil Ju Lee.

So excited to have received an #HFSPResearchGrant to study trilobite eyes with Luke Parry @oxuniearthsci.bsky.social and Gil Ju Lee (Pusan National University)!🥳 I'll be recruiting a postdoc @bristolbiosci.bsky.social - if 3D data, optical modelling, and fossils tickle your interest, stay tuned!

I heard there was a secret cord that David kept in his cable hoard but he can never find it when he needs it

⚠️Honouring Andy Currant: A 40 Year Legacy in Science and Curation 🔸Join the Natural History Museum, London in celebrating the life and work of Andy Currant (1952–2026), their long-serving Curator of Fossil Mammals ⬇️ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/honouring-...

My 2 favorite papers on this subject: M. Foote (1996): Models of morphological diversification. (book chapter in Evolutionary Paleobiology edited by Jablonski et al.) and @omearabrian.bsky.social et al. (2006). Testing for different rates of continuous trait evolution using likelihood. Evolution

Think you know the Jurassic period? Think again. 🌊 Announcing our new exhibition, Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep, opening 22 May 2026. Find out more info and book your early bird tickets here: brnw.ch/21x0MBt

Eocene belemnites?! *Fascinating* identification of these in Hungarian marine rocks. Would be curious to hear from those who know the clade better than I do.

What time is it? It’s #Cheliceratime ! For this entry we're talking about a phalangiotarbid from the carboniferous, Mesotarbus peteri! All the basic infos are here but if you want to learn more, there’s more below!⬇️ #arthropod #carboniferous #arachnid #paleoart #sciart #bugsky #invert 1/4

Really looking forward to this exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery, from 14 March: Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whats-on/exh...

It's 1983 and something weird is happening in your neighborhood #horror #80s #synthwave

ICAL are ON TOUR! We’re taking part in FunLabs at the Trafford Centre all weekend, chatting fossils, biomolecules and bones with anyone who comes by. Big thanks to the @thepalass.bsky.social engagement grant for giving us the funds to improve our resources (and buy a trolly which is awesome!) 🙌

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

📢 Including fossil tips in your phylogeny can double your continuous trait model fitting accuracy! Updated preprint out now on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X27... with @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social @macroecoevoale.bsky.social and @bethanyjallen.bsky.social

A court decided that we're allowed to say publicly that the German dairy billionaire Theo Müller is a supporter of the far-right AFD party. We're also allowed, of course, to consciously purchase dairy products that don't carry Müller's name and avoid buying those that do.

Terrible news that Hans-Dieter Sues has died. Way too young. Hans (on the right) & Sasha Averianov (left) invited me to study Timurlengia with them. I'll always appreciate it. Hans was eminent, always nice and cheerful to me, a man of ethics and faith. RIP.

"My observations are necessarily imperfect, but they afford the development of new analytical methods a more competent scientist may find useful for their research, and to arrive at absolutely breathtaking and irrefutable conclusions, which I in my ignorance of mathematics must leave to others."