It's been 66 days since agents killed Alex Pretti. DHS has body-cam footage. They haven't released it. 66 days and counting. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Timbisha (“Death Valley National Park”), home of the Timbisha Shoshone.

In Chicago this week visiting the Field Museum collections to scan some fossils of carnivorous mammals with PhD student Melvin Vankelst 😍 🦝 🐻 🦁 🦦

New lab paper, this time on phocid limb morphometrics! Lead by former EDDyLab postdoc Dr. Leonard Dewaele, with @narimanechatar.bsky.social, Prof. Mark Uhen, master student Jacques Klassen, and yours truly anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Interested in the shape variation of phocid long bones? Check out our new study led by Leonard Dewaele in @anatrecord.bsky.social 🦴Using 3DGM, we show that long bones capture variation between subfamilies but fail at species level, calling for caution in fossil taxonomy doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

Check out this new JGE paper by Kobayashi et al. (Including @taorminalepore.bsky.social, I'm not sure if others are on bsky) Neurodivergent perspectives in geoscience: Reflections from the development of paleontology museum educational materials ⚒️🧪 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🧠🧪🧵1/37 Our new paper on how pinniped (seal and sea lion) brains evolved to unlock vocal plasticity is this week's @science.org cover. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Dogs evolved to eat your leftovers! Comparing dog & wolf genomes revealed dogs have up to 30 EXTRA copies of the amylase gene (AMY2B) that helps digest starch. This is a key genomic signature of living alongside humans & table scraps for thousands of years 🐕 www.nature.com/articles/nat... #2026MMM

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

They found him. He died. Another murder by our immigration goon squads

Our BioSci library did this Valentine’s themed mystery book feature at the front desk, where you can unwrap a secret valentine book to check out if the keywords catch your eye. I couldn’t resist this one, which seems to be edited by none other than @arctomet.bsky.social!

The fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) is what arrives when you order a puma off of Wish. They're the largest apex predator on Madagascar, where they act to control the local lemur population. They're the 'big cat' equivalent in family Eupleridae, which is a sister taxon to the mongoose family.

Humbled to see my work and opinion included in this study, alongside some of the best female paleoichthyologists across continents. Our resilience is written in the fossil record 💪🐟🐠🐡 www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Happy Lunar New Year! Before the fire horse, there was the ‘high horse’: our team’s closest encounter with this year’s zodiac animal was studying one of the highest elevation three-toed horse fossils back in 2012. #LunarNewYear #丙午马年 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

SVP Diversity Committee co-chair here. Feel free to dm me your thoughts. I’m working with DivComm and some other committees on an action plan and I’d love to know what you want to happen and what would make you feel safer, reassured, and welcome.

(1) Long 🧵 Time. Today we learned that paleontologist Jack Horner (the same guy who helped give us "Jurassic Park") is in the Epstein Files. As a paleontologist, I feel compelled to say something because this touches my field and I want to make my stance clear on this...

New paper out: The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation with @fossildetective.bsky.social, @bigfacecats.bsky.social, Curtis Congreve & @jonhendricks.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44... 🦑⚒️

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

I‘ve been a woman in paleontology far too long to be surprised by this shit.

Stella Carlson is a face painter & children's entertainer. She's also an American hero. If you can, watch the entire CNN segment. It made me cry to see such a courageous & eloquent patriot. Do your part: Call Congress & tell them to ABOLISH ICE! 19% of even Republicans agree. 202-224-3121

If you’re interested in extinction risk, please check out our new paper in @science.org led by my former PhD student Cooper: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

fascinating specimens with exciting implications for the conservation of the critically endangered asiatic cheetah! www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Come check out back-to-back Law lab talks today in the Shape and Climate session (room B112)! 10:15am - Long fuse evolution of carnivoran skeletal phenomes 13:30am - Endocranial shape variation in relation to climate in primates #SICB2026 @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social

Academia friendly peer-reviewed journals in EEB: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

It’s a wrap for my vertebrate morphology class. Students surveyed the vertebrate fossil record, functional anatomy, phylogenetic comparative methods, geometric morphometrics, scientific writing, + more! A doubly meaningful experience for me because I took this class as an undergrad 24 years ago! 💙💛🐻

Our reviewed preprint @elife.bsky.social: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction doi.org/10.7554/eLif... The research team will undertake revisions based on the initial reviews to further strengthen the evidence underlying our work! #paleontology #mammals

Study on the ‘origin story’ of carnivoran skeletal diversity from our NSF project led by @chrislaw.bsky.social, now officially published. Two climatically volatile time periods seemed to have facilitated phenomic diversification at two different taxonomic levels! See Chris’ 🧵for more details. 🦴🐻🐶🐱🦦

It's with heavy hearts that we share that Claude, our beloved albino alligator, has passed away at the age of 30. Claude brought joy to millions of people at the Academy and across the world during his 17 year tenure. We will miss him dearly. 🤍

The @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social Annual Meeting #2025SVP was an absolute blast! Great to reconnect with European colleagues this year, and to hang out with EDDy Lab folks again. I presented some of our ongoing work on #teeth #biomechanics. Stay tuned, more toothy madness on the way! 🦷

While the range of physical diversity dogs show is often thought to be the result of intense breeding over the last 200 years, a new Science study suggests domestic dogs began developing their distinctive forms thousands of years before humans started shaping modern breeds. https://scim.ag/4nVRhNq

Maybe the explosion of diversity among dogs didn't really start in the Victorian era! "Now, a new analysis of canine skulls spanning the last 50,000 years suggests that even early dogs came in an array of shapes and sizes." #dogs #bioarchaeology #archaeology #anthropology

Safe travels all #2025SVP folks! En route to Birmingham via London…and who am I to argue with the NHM’s kids pack swag? 😁

Fascinating new study from @arctomet.bsky.social about how differences in parental care (or lack thereof) between Mesozoic dinosaurs and Cenozoic mammals might potentially affect interpretations of species diversity and trophic abundance in ancient communities. 🦖🧪

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

New PhD preprint! We studied the effects of habitat and multi-stage life cycles on salamander limb bones! Aquatic and terrestrial spp. have divergent morphs + semi-aquatic and multi-phasic spp. do their own thing + decoupled external and internal shape promote diversity. 🧪🦎 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

New Collection Study Grants for students and postdocs to come visit the @burkemuseum.bsky.social! Applications due 12/15/25. www.burkemuseum.org/collections-...

Interested in preregistration and registered reports? Historical Biology supports both! My new editorial on these developments: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We’d also like to highlight research conducted with fossils from this locality by international scholars who are utilizing new technology like 3D scanning which allows us to work with fossils in new ways and have a digital record that increases accessibility to these fossils.

Celebrating #NationalFossilDay with a new paper describing specimens of the most whimsical of weasel relatives, leptarctine ("slender bear") mustelids, from the collections of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social. Their teeth are so much fun to look at! 🦷 doi.org/10.5070/P9.4... (Cover image by P. Holroyd)

SVP members, please check your email for a copy of the message below that includes the link to access to the October 15 town hall hosted by SVP President @stuartsumida.bsky.social. We look forward to seeing you there!

Hi Bluesky, I need your help. Please share broadly: We have an EXCELLENT job opening. We are looking for a non-Brazilian visiting scholar who specializes in Genomics applied to animal evolution, biogeography, and/or biodiversity. This is a one-year contract that can be extended for up to 4 years.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about #bat turbinals, in our most recent paper – check it out! anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

We're excited to share a new Special Issue on sabretooth taxa, broadly defined. From defining what makes a sabertooth/tusk to exploring fossil taxa and saber function. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19328494... Volume edited by Hartstone-Rose, Werdelin & Pollock

Excavated from the Pisces Point locality of Scollard Formation in Alberta, Canada, ~67 million years old, Acronichthys maccognoi, newly reported in @science.org, was recovered from ancient water body that flipped seasonally between fast-flowing channels and quiet, still pools.

🚨We're hiring! The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is seeking a tenure-track split position as Assistant Curator of Ichthyology and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. Please retweet & share with colleagues! 🐟🐠🧪 Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/174674

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🐟

The Univ. of Nebraska’s Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences has established a webpage soliciting the community’s help in saving their program. Their hearing in front of campus admin is next Friday, Oct 10th. Please consider sharing why they’re essential! eas.unl.edu/save-earth-a...

New preprint: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction. #Paleontology #Mammals #Extinction www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... TLDR: S. China mammals diversified dentally, tracked environment, then leveled up bite mechanics all within the first 10 m.y. post K-Pg.

Studying wrist and ankle bones for fossil id and found it amusing how carpals have wired names like magnum and unciform but tarsals have tired names like cuneiform 1, 2, 3. Like they ran out of cool names for bones by the time they got to feet 😆

Two new papers on fossil carnivorans. Old collections continue to offer new insights! @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social & IVPP Late Miocene immigrant carnivorans in California... www.vertpala.ac.cn/EN/10.19615/... Eco-functional divergence of Crocuta and Pachycrocuta... www.vertpala.ac.cn/EN/10.19615/...