Laura Cooper
@transitionalform.bsky.social
📤 690
📥 410
📝 85
Postdoc investigating the plants of the past at the University of Edinburgh
pinned post!
Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage
2 months ago
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Daniel Villar
about 9 hours ago
Excellent article from
@gsoh31.bsky.social
on how management consultancy (a parasitic industry at the best of times) is aiding and hastening the destructions of UKHE
www.ft.com/content/5032...
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Management consultants are ruining UK universities
Relentless off-the-peg commercial rewiring has undermined British higher education
https://www.ft.com/content/5032f1bd-7196-4636-82b6-16ed040f99f1
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Rosemary Mosco
2 days ago
I posted about this on my Facebook page, but I'm heartbroken about the God Squad's recent decision to allow oil and gas companies to harm Rice's Whales. You can learn more about these whales here:
www.ourgulfwhale.org
add a skeleton here at some point
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Anne-Laure D 🌿
2 days ago
Unfurling fern for
#FernFriday
, eclipsed by bright flowers of purple toothwort (Lathrea clandestina), who parasites the roots of surrounding trees 🌿
#botany
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Paul Byrne
2 days ago
This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
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Matthew Cobb
3 days ago
At last! Ediacarans and Cambrian animals in the same site! Amazing!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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The dawn of the Phanerozoic: A transitional fauna from the late Ediacaran of Southwest China
Animal diversification across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition was a crucial event in Earth history, fundamentally altering our planet and its biosphere. However, Ediacaran fossil assemblages show li...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu2291
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Velodus✨
4 days ago
Jonathan the Tortoise, who did NOT die
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Daniel Villar
4 days ago
Thrilled to see a leading journal run a special issue on null results — good practice for science, and especially important for conservation where what works should matter more than whether it makes a splashy and positive paper
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Erin E. Saupe
6 days ago
‼️🚨 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.
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Job Details
https://my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form?p_company=10&p_internal_external=E&p_display_in_irish=N&p_process_type=&p_applicant_no=&p_form_profile_detail=&p_display_apply_ind=Y&p_refresh_search=Y&p_recruitment_id=185737
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Dr Susannah Lydon
6 days ago
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
🌍⚒️🌱🧪🔬
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Job Vacancy at the University of Nottingham: Research Fellow (Mesozoic Palaeobotany & ecophysiology) (Fixed term)
Applications are invited for a Research Fellow to join the University of Nottingham at the Sutton Bonington Campus working as part of a team to deliver a project awarded by Leverhulme Trust to understand plant performance and climate feedback...
https://jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=SCI784126
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Chris Thorogood
8 days ago
We sequenced the genome of 'desert ginseng' (Cistanche deserticola) - a leafless parasitic plant that gave up photosynthesis - and found it lost huge chunks of its own genome…but started stealing genes from its host! Thanks to my collaborators Prof Huang + her talented team👏🏻
lnkd.in/evF5iU9G
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This would be a great way go show Prototaxites ascending to heaven when it went extinct (RIP)
add a skeleton here at some point
9 days ago
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Gergely Orosz
9 days ago
If you use GitHub (especially if you pay for it!!) consider doing this *immediately* Settings -> Privacy -> Disallow GitHub to train their models on your code. GitHub opted *everyone* into training. No matter if you pay for the service (like I do). WTH
github.com/settings/cop...
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Eduardo Valdés-Hevia 👁️
9 days ago
LET'S GOOO!!! Scientists just announced that they brought Trilobites back! After aeons of slumber, it's time to give them back the world they rightfully deserve :) That's why they're releasing a few million out into the wild!
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Dr. Todd L. Green
9 days ago
🚨NEW SCIENCE ALERT!🚨Read our new, open-access publication in Scientific Reports (
@nature.com
) describing
#biofluorescence
in
#cassowary
casques! Very excited to unveil this after keeping it secret for 5 years⬇️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
NYITCOM
@akiopteryx.bsky.social
@jonathanberman.bsky.social
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The Public Domain Review
9 days ago
One of many wonderful full-page watercolour illustrations in a 16th-century edition of Pedanius Dioscorides’s work on herbal medicine, De Materia Medica (ca. 80 AD). More here:
publicdomainreview.org/collection/w...
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Natalie Cooper
11 days ago
Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here:
nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/
. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us
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Phylogenetic Comparative Methods
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods
https://nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/
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Vojta Hybl
17 days ago
It’s publication day for my debut book Rocks! 🪨 It is available in many lovely independent booksellers and all the usual bookshops too. Or online here:
geni.us/Rocks
#geology
#SciArt
#naturebooks
#illustration
@quartobooksuk.bsky.social
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beetle moses
19 days ago
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Hady George
about 1 month ago
I’ll start to regularly post photos of Lebanese fossils alongside links to charities supporting the thousands displaced in this war. Even the smallest donations can save lives Fossils on display at Memory of Time, Jbeil, and you can donate here:
gofund.me/24a3cee49
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Laura Cooper
Natalia Jagielska (娜塔莉)
18 days ago
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Paleontology has an Epstein problem. Women in the field say it's a symptom of a deeper misogyny | CBC Radio
The names of hundreds of scientists have appeared in the Epstein files, including prominent dinosaur researchers. As the paleontology community reckons with the fallout of these revelations, women in ...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/epstein-sciences-paleontology-9.7128103
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Andrej Spiridonov
18 days ago
We can learn unimaginable amount of things bout the history of life, climate, geosystems and the processes of evolution from the fossil record. But we need strong database curation and financing infrastructure.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪 ⚒️
#Geology
#Paleobio
#EvoBio
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Scottish Geology Trust
about 1 month ago
Event submissions for the Scottish Geology Festival 2026 are OPEN! This year's theme is 300 Years of Deep Time to celebrate the Tercentenary of Scotland's most famous geologist James Hutton. If you have an idea for an event - we'd love to hear from you!
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Nature
19 days ago
A simple celebratory post about completing my PhD went viral for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how I managed the backlash and used the attention to promote my research, says Juliet Turner
go.nature.com/4sQu3uX
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How I turned online misogyny about my PhD into momentum for my career
A simple celebratory post about completing my PhD went viral for all the wrong reasons. Here’s how I managed the backlash and used the attention to promote my research.
https://go.nature.com/4sQu3uX
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Sandy Hetherington
24 days ago
Huge congratulations to the newest Dr from the lab - Dr
@sannie-zishanfu.bsky.social
@instmolplantsci.bsky.social
!!! A special thanks to Jacob Suissa for making the trip over from the US! It’s been great spending the last couple of days chatting about all things ferns and lycophytes 🌿
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Andrej Spiridonov
25 days ago
Fossilization patterns of the dung, the formation of coprolites: " Rapid hardening of the coprolite margin by permineralisation enhanced reducing conditions in the centre of the coprolite, favouring precipitation of sulphide minerals."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️
#Geology
#Paleobio
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Laura Cooper
Natalia Jagielska (娜塔莉)
28 days ago
Happy International Women's Day 💐 Did you know, for every 7 men in palaeontology, there are ~3 women. Women make up 25-35% of global vertebrate palaeontological publishing output. And are most likely to study mammals, while men, reptiles.
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Julianne Zelda Kiely 🌿Commissions open🌿
30 days ago
I have another
#paleobotany
restoration guide for this
#FossilFriday
. This time, it's Kimuriella densifolia, a whole plant bennettitalean from the Late
#Jurassic
of Japan. This plant is composed of three organ taxa: Williamsonia, Zamites, and Weltrichia.
#paleoart
#sciart
#botany
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Anne-Laure D 🌿
about 1 month ago
Of course the best fossils are always ✨Paleozoic plants✨ This is a polished section of a Psaronius tree fern from the early Permian (~290 million years) of the Czech Republic 🌿⛏️ We can see the root mantle (R) and the base of several leaves (arrows). Happy
#FossilFriday
&
#FernFriday
!
#paleobotany
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮
about 1 month ago
Why tenured academics and administrators insist that using this technology is unproblematic and just how the future should work with none of our input is baffling to me. Feels like a modern cargo cult.
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Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud
Mainstream chatbots presented varying levels of resistance to deliberate requests for fabrication, study finds.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00595-9
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J Pardo
about 1 month ago
New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
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Jeff, Stopping by Woods
about 1 month ago
A Physcia sp lichen on a poplar tree. NWT, Canada. photo covers about 6cm, left to right.
#lichen
#fungi
#fungifriends
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Thibaut Brunet
about 1 month ago
Final version
@nature.com
of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first
@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social
preprint (which we've kept updating). A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)
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Bryan Gee
about 1 month ago
Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen,
@fishfetisher.bsky.social
suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by
@daveyfwright.bsky.social
- I got bored after work and now I have (some) data! 🧵👇
#FossilFriday
#CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated
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Carl Zimmer
about 1 month ago
Neanderthals, modern humans, and the rules of attraction. Here's my story on a tantalizing study on mating preferences as far back as 250,000 years ago. Gift link:
nyti.ms/4bcNzvy
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Alex Wild
about 1 month ago
Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.
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🏒🫐Ashley ARTPOP🫐🏒
about 1 month ago
I’ve been talking about Alysa Liu’s story about her quitting skating only to come back and become even better because she did it for herself and this came to me in a dream…
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Andrej Spiridonov
about 1 month ago
"We describe the only known example of a three-dimensionally mineralized heart, thick-walled stomach, and bilobed liver from arthrodire placoderms, stem gnathostomes from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation in Western Australia"
www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️
#Geology
#Paleobio
#EvoBio
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Sandy Hetherington
about 1 month ago
What to learn more about the enigmatic organism Prototaxites?? Have a read of our new Quick Guide in
@currentbiology.bsky.social
It includes another great palaeo-reconstruction of the Rhynie ecosystem from
@matt-humpage.bsky.social
add a skeleton here at some point
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Jacquelyn Gill
about 1 month ago
"But he didn't know" okay, great, but did he speak out against an overtly sexist, racist power broker, or did he accept the invitations and the money? Because this culture doesn't just happen. It's created by the consent of the people who have access to those spaces.
19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...
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The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM
In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”
https://19thnews.org/2026/02/epstein-files-academic-research-women-scientists/?fbclid=IwY2xjawQJkZFleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETJocktha3VkUVpFcHVtWTkwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHp1YahRdeBDNm86ARRYFzuS7YDFZ9WVjK6qtIqBwRRw-fz2ynyPrqvXOc0LY_aem_MzB71yW0JKAcGK5K3k93qg
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www.cell.com/current-biol...
Our new quick guide to Prototaxites is out in
@currentbiology.bsky.social
!
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Prototaxites
Cooper et al. introduce Prototaxites, a mysterious extinct species that once towered over the land.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)01675-6
about 1 month ago
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Bernoid
about 2 months ago
Auriscalpium vulgare - Earpick Fungus
#FungiFriends
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Chris Thorogood
2 months ago
Slime mould seen today, steadily engulfing everything in its path, from logs to fences. Despite lacking a brain, slime moulds can solve problems such as finding the shortest path through a maze. Their abilities have been used to inform the planning of road and rail networks.
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Damon Tighe
about 2 months ago
Found a friend in the forest yesterday. Springtails are some of the most notorious mushroom eaters around and damn most of them are super cute
#mushrooms
#springtails
#macrophotography
#fungi
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Federico Lopez
about 2 months ago
📄 No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality 🐝🐜 ⬇️
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
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No evidence that haplodiploidy favors the evolution of eusociality | PNAS
The potential role of haplodiploid sex determination in promoting the evolution of altruism and eusociality has been the subject of intense debate ...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2517458123
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Jon Hawke
about 2 months ago
#WorldHippoDay
#Roman
mosaic with hippopotamus on display in Naples Archaeological Museum. This is one of the Nile mosaics found in the House of the Faun in the ancient ruined Roman city of
#Pompeii
.
#art
#AncientBlueSky
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AC Vasquez - 安娜
about 2 months ago
Keep science accessible 🧪
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The misuse of colour in science communication - Nature Communications
The accurate representation of data is essential in science communication, however, colour maps that visually distort data through uneven colour gradients or are unreadable to those with colour vision...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19160-7
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Alison Fisk
about 2 months ago
Happy
#WorldHippoDay
! 🦛❤️ To celebrate here’s a lovely naturalistic painting of a hippo on a small flake of limestone. Painted by an Egyptian artist some 3,500 years ago! 📷 The Met
www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...
#Archaeology
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iNaturalist
about 2 months ago
One very rotten deciduous log, one very observant iNaturalist community member — and a close-up world hiding in plain sight. Say hello to the white tubelet (Henningsomyces candidus). 📷 cryptomarasmius on iNaturalist 📍 United Kingdom 🔗:
www.inaturalist.org/observations...
#ObservationOfTheDay
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Omaya Dudin 𓂆 ¦🍉¦🦠¦🔬¦
10 months ago
90% of you probably don’t need to read this. But maybe some of you are curious & 10% will feel seen. Or a little less alone. This isn’t about seeking sympathy. It’s about sharing something hard to say out loud; partly to heal, partly in case someone needs to hear it too. (1/3)
tinyurl.com/DudinO
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Omaya Dudin
Interview with Omaya Dudin, who uses Ichthyosporea as models to study how and why unicellular organisms evolved multicellularity at the University of Geneva.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00444-0
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Natalia Jagielska (娜塔莉)
about 2 months ago
Bringing this back up for the International Day of Women in Science, and yes, I consider scientific art, as part of scientific process and communication 🫰
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