What do we want? Fossil databases! 🐚🦕 When do we want them? Forever! 🗓️ Nice new paper highlighting how academic funding systems and digital architecture need to change, to ensure we can protect and sustain our precious fossil data 📚 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ever wanted to know what the fossil record of trackways can tell us about past life? Well look no further than this excellent review paper in Palaeontology by the one & only @peterfalkingham.com and the legendary Stephen Gatesy: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I wrote a piece for @theconversation.com about the top dinosaur discoveries of 2025, featuring Zavacephale, Istiorachis, Spicomellus, Nanotyrannus and Huayracursor. Research from @tweetisaurus.bsky.social @valdosaurus.bsky.social, Lindsay Zanno and more: theconversation.com/the-best-din...

Our first follow up from the Science paper: New paper on tooth morphology in the Grippia Bonebed - the oldest and most diverse Mesozoic marine tetrapod ecosystem. Paper open access here: njg.geologi.no/publications...

Yes, you CAN go back in time! This StoryMap allows readers to experience several hundred million years of Earth history in just minutes with a scroll-driven animation. Happy GIS Day too! ow.ly/ZjFV50XsVbc Want to know how the team did it? ow.ly/gC3k50XsVQY ⚒️ 🧪 #gischat #geogsky #geogchat 🌎 🌍 🌏

Then we have the Triassic symposium in the room with the massive screen... @elsa-panciroli.bsky.social, @stephanspiekman.bsky.social, and @davfoff.bsky.social shown here..

Save Geology at the University of Leicester

I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees! yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/ Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches. Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.

An Edinburgh family photo at the @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social meeting. Soon after we lost my PhD advisor Mark Norell, it was special to be surrounded by the students and postdocs I’ve supervised!

Check out this #CORDIScovery podcast on how we study extinct animals, ecosystem and evolution in deep time. I greatly enjoyed learning and discussing our EU funded projects: #ECODIV, #DINODAWN, #MAPAS with @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social and Sara Varela!

#CORDIScovery podcast about my #DAWNDINOS Triassic-Jurassic archosaur locomotor biomechanics project, @davfoff.bsky.social's #ECODIV mass extinction/diversity/ecosystems project, Prof. Sara Varela's #MAPAS climate/biogeography/macroevolution project. Nice synergy! cordis.europa.eu/article/id/4...

Pre-SVP Exploring the Jurassic Coast field trip with amazing group of people led by @kirstymedgar.bsky.social & @davfoff.bsky.social. We explored classic fossil, geological and historical sights, fossil hunting and had a full British culinary and weather experience! #SVP2025 #2025SVP

The first #SVP2025 #2025SVP field trip has left, with @kirstymedgar.bsky.social & @davfoff.bsky.social leading a group to the Jurassic Coast of Dorset! I guess it’s too late to have second thoughts about hosting this conference now…

New @nhm-london.bsky.social 5-day course on integrative biodiversity discovery! Learn how to collect specimens, obtain genomic data, and interpret biodiversity using cutting edge phylogenomic analysis. It's free, and aimed at early career researchers: www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/...

We've lost Dugie Ross, truly one of the best people I have ever known. He reported the first Scottish dinosaurs, made the Isle of Skye into Scotland's Dinosaur Island, welcomed so many of us onto his island, into his home and family.

We have lost the pillar of Scottish vertebrate palaeontology, Dugie Ross. The man that found & named Dearc. He made the science resonate locally, in his native language, on his native soil, while allowing it to grow globally. He embodied the best of science. Immeasurable loss.

👇👇👇!!!

A fascinating article by BBC News about the Dewars Farm Quarry dinosaur trackway excavation by scientists from across the UK and Oxford University Museum of Natural History, including some fabulous computer generated animation. Great stuff! www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

A phenomenal paleontologist and a pleasure to talk to at SVP conferences. Mark will be missed.

#Fossil Files podcast fans!! Today sees the release of Fossil Fails II: The tiny dinosaur with the massive flaw... Get our take on that whole Oculudentavis thing - available now on libsyn and wherever you get your podcasts! @thefossilfiles.bsky.social fossils.libsyn.com/fossil-fails...

If you attend or work at a university in the UK, chances are you know someone who is on Indefinite Leave to Remain. Please consider what the recent attacks on ILR from both Reform and Labour are doing to those people you probably know.

If this plan is implemented, it will cripple British universities and health care, and tear apart families. All 'skilled' immigrants will require £60k salary & cannot use NHS. Permanent residence will be scrapped entirely. Citizenship made insanely hard. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Huge thanks to @palaeopercs.bsky.social for inviting and hosting me! If you missed my talk on Tuesday, you can now catch up via their YouTube channel 👇 www.youtube.com/watch?v=x19X...

Here is our newest paper just published in Scientific Reports TODAY about the biology of Early Triassic ichthyosaurs from Spitsbergen www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I absolutely love this story by @jamesashway.bsky.social on he background about how we found Spicomellus

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!!

It’s finally out! Our work addressing the origins of reptiles is published in PCJ! peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.... We use novel info gleaned from the scan data of dozens of stem reptiles to substantially revise our understanding of early reptile evolution #paleontology #herpetology

Out today in Nature is the most exciting dinosaur paper I've ever been involved in - led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social we describe a partial skeleton of the UTTERLY BIZARRE Spicomellus from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco, the oldest known ankylosaur. (1/x) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Are you a palaeontologist doing exciting, novel research on the systematics of extinct organisms? Consider submitting to @journalsystpal.bsky.social. UNLIKE SOME OTHER VERTEBRATE PALAEO JOURNALS, initial submission is format-free and we accept manuscripts of any length. We are also Q1....

Interested in inferring biodiversity in deep time? 📈📉 Check out our new R package DeepDiveR, led by @rebeccasaurus.bsky.social and now published in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social, helping you to prepare datasets for machine learning inference with DeepDive 🤿 doi.org/10.1111/2041...

📢 deeptime: an R package that facilitates highly customizable and reproducible visualizations of data over geological time intervals 🔗 doi.org/10.1080/2096... Fully #openaccess in @bigearthdata1.bsky.social with insight about deeptime📦 development and code examples! #rstats #geology #paleontology

Alaska N. Schubul, Adam D. Marsh & Ben T. Kligman (2025) A diverse assemblage of tanystropheid archosauromorphs from the continental interior of Late Triassic Pangea includes a new taxon (Akidostropheus oligos gen. et sp. nov.) Palaeodiversity 18(1): 99-125 bioone.org/journals/Pal...

New study reveals surprising jaw diversity in early ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii)! Using XCT, researchers analyzed mandibles of 19 Devonian species—showing considerable variation in size, structure, and teeth. Research by Ben Igielman et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New Comparative Anatomy Textbook! Completely free to read and open access! doi.org/10.59319/YHF...

SVP PRESIDENT'S TOWN HALL MEETING Traveling to Birmingham for the Annual Meeting Hi Everyone SVP members are invited to a SVP Town Hall meeting on 5 Aug. The topic: "Traveling to Birmingham for the Annual Meeting". Check SVP email for the link! Interested nonmembers - contact me directly for link.

If you were unable to attend, all of the materials for the workshop are freely accessible on our website: workshop.palaeoverse.org

I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41... Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎

Registration is now open for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting 2025 in Birmingham! Register now for the best possible rates! #SVP2025 #2025SVP vertpaleo.org/2025-registr...

Brief summary of what I’ve been working on through my MSCA Fellowship at the @unibirmingham.bsky.social @richardjbutler.bsky.social (and Virginia Tech) @EUresearchResults @CORDIS_EU cordis.europa.eu/article/id/4...

Those in need of entertainment this #FossilFriday might be interested in our new podcast @thefossilfiles.bsky.social wherein Susie and I gossip about new palaeo discoveries

After a very long wait, we finally have a named Chinle pterosaur! Say hello to Eotephradactylus!

Very excited to say that we are seeking an Assistant Curator to join our entomology team! 😁🪲 For full details on this 2 year fixed-term post, head to our website: ➡️ careers.nms.ac.uk/job/727783 #Entomology #InsectCollection #EntoJobs #MuseumJobs

I'm so excited to share my latest paper out now! How did the ancestors of mammals make the switch from sprawling to upright, taking over the world in the process? Spoiler alert; it's complicated! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Nice article on our new little dino, Enigmacursor mollyborthwickae, named today by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social and me, and to be unveiled in a new permanent display @nhm-london.bsky.social tomorrow: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New paper led by Tash Prescott - we applied equations for speed, etc that are commonly used on #dinosaur tracks to tracks made by living birds we could watch and time. TLDR: equations aren't even nearly close. Animals moving freely on compliant substrates very different to steady-state lab data

Richard Bambach will always be remembered as a champion of functional-ecological way of thinking in macroevolution. Way before the modern trend in analyzing functional diversity. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio