Happy Juneteenth! But for me it’s never really that happy. Every year this day comes and I’m overloaded with happiness and sadness. Is Juneteenth a day of celebration or grieving? It‘s really hard being African American in paleontology, especially in my field of study... It’s quite lonely.

New in @science.org ...since our first discoveries of early tetrapods, they have been thought of as "amphibians" characterized by aquatic larvae. But is this true? For the first time, we report exceptional fossils of stem tetrapod babies that upend this paradigm. 1/n www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New at Tetrapod Zoology .... The Amphiuma Head and Skull tetzoo.com/blog/2026/6/... #amphibians #salamanders #herpetology

New (fragmentary) fossils extend the record of salamandrids (newts and allies) into the Cretaceous of Europe. Not a shocker given their close relatives also have Cretaceous records, but good to see, regardless. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Absolutely overjoyed to share our new paper describing the oldest occurrence of soft-tissue preservation in crinoid echinoderms and their ecological significance 🧪

featuring art by @serpenillus.bsky.social and skeletals by @literallymiguel.bsky.social, an explosive new paper by @semifossorial.bsky.social et al. finds that testudines are archosauromorphs 🐢 it also recovers eunotosaurus within millerettidae

New paper. Modern hagfishes (Myxiniformes) have radically reduced eyes. When did these reductions happen, and how? Leveraging the diverse hagfish fauna from Mazon Creek, we show this happened gradually in animals occupying shallow marine environments royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

A few years back, we described Gaiasia, a giant stem tetrapod from the early Permian of Namibia. This summer we're going back, looking for the rest of Gaiasia's ecosystem. Stay tuned!

Something we are missing in this discussion of LLM-generated text is that scientific papers are not a dispassionate report of data and results. They are an arguments for the unique evidentiary value of specific datasets or analyses among the wide range of data and analyses already available.

Intraskeletal variability in osteohistology and growth record in a single individual of Sclerocephalus nobilis (Temnospondyli; Early Permian) royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Last week was a blast at Uppsala. I gave a seminar talk, chatted to so many brilliant palaeos, and enjoyed the Swedish Valborg festival that welcomes Spring. One of the highlights of the PhD journey. Huge thanks to @perahlberg.bsky.social @captain-colosteid.bsky.social and others not on bluesky

siiick

I am so unbelievably proud to present 8 years of hard work: the worlds oldest octopus is not an octopus... Pohlsepia is actually a really rotten Nautiloid (but oldest soft tissue nautiloid ever found!). 🐙❌ royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Calling all archaeologists with expertise in British stone tools! These two just turned up among my father-in-law’s house contents. Unfortunately no provenance data. The narrow one is quite thick, diamond-shaped in cross-section, and the flat end appears to be broken.

"We're going for our families, we're going for humanity" Artemis II has launched. Follow us for coverage throughout the 10-day mission go.nature.com/4c4ib1G

🚨New species alert! 🚨 Meet Tanyka amnicola – a 275-million-year-old animal from Brazil with twisted jaws and sideways-facing teeth! Find out more about this strange species 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

This paper carries a special satisfaction for me. Years ago, Donglei Chen and I discovered small tooth-bearing elements in Silurian vertebrate micro-residues (obtained by dissolving rock in acid) of the stem osteichthyans Andreolepis and Lophosteus. We worked out that they must be the inner dental

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...

The Voyageurs Wolf Project of Northern Minnesota tags & documents grey wolf ecology & behavior: www.voyageurswolfproject.org The video you see here is confirmatory proof: Wolves. Love. Blueberries. As much as 83% of a wolf's calories in summer months comes from eating berries.

New paper with @cisneros.bsky.social and others. We report the first pelycosaur-grade synapsid fossils from South America, which happen to also be the oldest synapsids from Gondwana. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Lots of bittersweet feelings tonight… tomorrow I will be in Uppsala… and the day after that I start my PhD.

New paper published this past week!

Ja!!! Skål på Sverige!!!

Heja, Sverige!!! 🏒🇸🇪

Melanie and her freshwater mosasaur on the Dutch evening news! 🧪

Saint Lucy’s Day, 13 December, means baking ‘lussekatter’ - ‘Lucy’s Cats’ - which are soft, sweet saffron buns made into shapes the significance of which is lost in antiquity. Just out of the oven! I wish 🦋 had smell-o-vision.

Blast off!

In the early Devonian #lungfishes — now considered "living fossils" — were all the rage! A new #fish from China attests to this early diversification. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Yesterday I picked up a fun Swedish language (Svenska) book that has been surprisingly useful and enjoyable to read. This evening my new phone case came in the mail. The rest of this evening will involve writing, segmenting, drawing and an old fashioned.

Albrecht, J., Bocherens, H., Hobson, K.A. et al. Dynamic omnivory shapes the functional role of large carnivores under global change. Nat Commun 16, 10896 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Vague update via images, but a new chapter begins next year under Prof. Per Ahlberg. Jag är inte rädd... Jag föddes för att göra det här

Re‐evaluation of a soft crested Edmontosaurin, with implications for hadrosaurid life appearance and diversity - Sharpe - The Anatomical Record - Wiley Online Library anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for Centuriavis lioae, a 10 million year old fossil relative of turkeys. It was a lot of fun describing this stunning specimen with Catherine Early, Kate Dzikiewicz, and Amy Balanoff. The fossil is named after our amazing museum colleague Suzanne Lio.

THE MAN BEHIND THE SCIENCE: ERIK STENSIÖ, SWEDEN’S 20th CENTURY DOYEN OF THE STOCKHOLM SCHOOL

Appendicular morphology of Mesenosaurus efremovi and the earliest occurrence of a calcaneal tuberosity

Functional anatomy, jaw mechanisms, and feeding behavior of Dunkleosteus terrelli (Placodermi, Arthrodira) - Engelman - The Anatomical Record - Wiley Online Library anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Check out this new paper in Systematic Biology! Aside from the author list including leaders in the field who happen to be some of my favorite scientists, this paper discusses * both * phylogeny inference incorporating continuous characters AND dicynodont evolution. How cool is that? 🧪

NEW pub in @science.org 🥳 Is it sponges (panels A & B) or comb jellies (C & D) that root the animal tree of life? For over 15 years, #phylogenomic studies have been divided. We provide new evidence suggesting that... 🔗: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The giant salamanders (Cryptobranchidae): Part B. Biogeography, ecology and reproduction

Wonderful tribute to Mark Norell by Peter Makovicky, Jim Clark, and Steve Brusatte: Mark Norell (1957–2025): Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

Hey, readers, thanks so much! Picador US's trade paperback reprint of City of Saints & Madmen is now in an eighth printing? This was my break-out book back in 2002 and it's amazing to see it still reaching new readers over two decades later!