Yesterday at PKU and today at GMC… just great! Still missing the Geological University of China and the National Museum of Natural History of Beijing for some choristoderes – because no amount of weirdos is enough!

Yesterday we opened “Triassic Life — Dawn of the age of reptiles” at Museum am Löwentor, Stuttgart. The show tracks life’s rebound after the end Permian mass extinction ~252 million years ago. 📷: Maximilian Schwarz

So today I saw Sinosauropteryx at the Geological Museum of China… I was not expecting and it was like a dream come true. Everything is beautiful about this fossil: the preservation, the pose. I almost chose it as my first tattoo, but I went with Archaeopteryx instead and it remais close to my heart

About marine reptiles, I’m glad I decided to treat several groups separately for my analysis… I already can see differences among them and it will be an improvement to my data matrix

In other news, yesterday I submitted what I hope is the last version of my manuscript and today another important manuscript that I was heavily involved was also submitted. Fingers crossed for both!

Things have been busy, Rudolf’s departure, sickness and holiday disrupted my pre-trip schedule. But all is fine now; my trip to China went well and today is my last day in Wuhan. Things have been incredibly productive and I’m learning more and more about aquatic reptiles.

Today I lost my buddy. I think it were 14 years well lived, over half of which with me after my mom had health issues that prevented her to take care of hiim properly. I hope I was able to give him the best life possible. He will be missed.

Our latest paper, now how to conciliate apparently discrepant evolutionary rate patterns in squamates, but which may well apply to any study system with Stephanie Pierce and @7brumas.bsky.social #macroevolution academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

living a nightmare called "re-scored two characters for two taxa and that completely messed up tree topology"

When I arrived from Grenoble, I left the fossils in the museum and decided to go straight home without unpacking them. Today I was planning to take off but I was too paranoid whether the fossils were fine, so I came and unpacked them: they’re great and now I’m heading back home cuz I’m so tired

Cool photo from last night 😍

So, all done here in Grenoble. Last night of experiments ran well, despite some disruptions earlier yesterday. We had to repack and reposition one of the fossils for a better scan of the dentary but holy damn was that worth it!

My synchrotron scan keeps crashing. We still have some buffer time to finish all experiments necessary but I have missed half a shift already. This is really unfortunate.

I sent nothing less than 7 emails regarding my visit to China in the past hour and a half. Not even lunchtime yet and I'm mentally gone already.... my head hurts

#2025SVP #SVP2025 Note: "Your poster should be formatted in portrait (vertical) orientation and not larger than 234 cm/92 inches in height x 95 cm/37 inches in width." vertpaleo.org/poster-prese... .

The amount of people to contact when visiting collections in China can feel overwhelming. I mean, it is in part my fault, as I didn't realise there were THAT MANY different institutions with fossil collections there (mostly marine stuff, which is all new to me).

It’s easy to complain about German trains… my journey started 10 minutes later. But I wasn’t expecting a delay in France!

Early registration (and the best possible rates) still open for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting 2025 in Birmingham, but it closes on Thursday. Register now if you haven't already! #SVP2025 #2025SVP vertpaleo.org/2025-registr...

Checking a CT scan for which I was not present… it looks beautiful but unfortunately not enough. Amazing how scanning goes… there are three articulated scleral ossicles that one can see with the naked eye, but they don’t show up in the scans. Other plates seem to be present so it may not all be lost

Today was all about sorting out the data from the previous days, trying to tackle some bureaucracies that were on hold and preparing for the ESRF next week. So tired!

Leaving Zürich after three amazing days in the collections of PIMUZ! It was so good, I discussed and learnt a lot about early marine reptiles anatomy! I also shared some thoughts on projects going there at the moment and plans for future collaborations. Visiting collections is so much fun!

Hey yo, did you guys see the new rhynchocephalian around?? I shared my thoughts here! :) www.science.org/content/arti...

Shaken to hear Mark Norell passed—good friend, trusted colleague, giant in our field. Coincidentally, I got the news as I was working on my talk for the Intl. Symp. on Asian Dinosaurs in Fukui later this month. Here's my slide on Mark’s impact on Asian dinosaur science. It hurt to add 1957–2025. 😥

I’m in Zürich for a few days and I spent the morning discussing marine reptile anatomy and I feel I have learnt a lot, but also that my brain is very tired… and this is just day one!

Earlier today I submitted comments to a magazine for an upcoming paper. Exciting things coming this week :D

Happy Brazilian Biologist’s day! 🥳

What's up? I'll tell you What's Up, Bluesky! A NEW EPISODE OF THE FOSSIL FILES, THAT'S WHAT! And it's on nothing less than the Triassic punk, Mirasaura. Listen here and on all your favourite podcast platforms: fossils.libsyn.com/mirasaura-tr...

10am, just arrived at the office. child sick during the night, a couple of stool accidents... my doctor appointment this morning, then off to drugstore and pharmacy for some medicine for her. and I spilled coffee on me AGAIN. not really my week huh

Hello from after the summer holidays! Yesterday was mostly about bureaucracy... my next collections visits are shaping up! And along with one of them, possibly some collaborations emergng already... gotta love collections visits :D

A sad #FossilFriday with the news that legendary Mongolian dinosaur paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold passed away yesterday at the age of 90. I'm honored to have shaken his hand and more so to have coauthored with him twice, on Tarbosaurus and on Avimimus. R.I.P. Dr. Barsbold. 🦖

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

Me and my most recent manuscript (4 years and counting; hopefully it’ll see the light of the day at some point this year)

And even though I am technically on holidays, today I went for a few hours to work for two meetings… my winter semester will be VERY busy, I didn’t really have an option. But it was good to coordinate some of that work today, it calms me down a little bit

Today I got the news that our symposium proposal was so successful, with so many high-quality submissions, that we were given not only one, but two sessions! It will be a day full of Triassic :D

Besides the manuscript review, I've also been juggling another (huge) manuscript, my trip to China, preparation for three scanning experiments, and several other minor things. I am so tired! In fall, I hope to be able to focus on two other manuscripts and on my own matrix.

Revised manuscript version submitted! I'm so glad this turn is over just in time for summer vacations. This took a month and a half longer than expected, but I decided to do it on my own pace given the circunstances (conference, fildwork, and some health-related personal issues)....

New profile pic from the field in Poland :D

An open letter has been launched today (27/7/25) for members of the UK academic community (academics and other university staff) to sign, to press the UK Home Office to facilitate safe passage out of Gaza for 40+ students with offers for UK universities. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

yesterday i finished braincase, inner ear and encephalon descriptions (better late than never) and at the same time results for the paleobiology analysis are in! now to make sense of all of this... prospects are good though :D

these days have been snake days and oh boy aren't they weird... and i thought turtles were aliens! i think the competition is fierce here.

It is finally out! Welcome the new Triassic weirdo, the drepanosaur Mirasaura! Hunge congrats to all my colleagues here at the SMNS and beyond! 🤩

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel of revision... after cleaning, reorganizing, expanding and better substantiating part of my discussion, there is only some extra analyses to make as requested. I hope to re-submit in early August. Almost there!

I’m terrible at self-promotion! 😅 I forgot to send a friendly reminder before my talk… it all went fine, I’m very happy with the result :)

Great start to #EAVP22 today! My talk is tomorrow at the Krzysztofory Palace (Rynek Główny 35) at 9:30am! :D

My talk in EAVP will be on Wednesday 02.07.2025 at the Krzysztofory Palace (Rynek Główny 35) at 9:30am! Come see me talk about Prolacerta paleoneurology and paleobiology! :D

Our re-description of the Protorosaurus skull is finally out! 🥳 Very happy to have been part of this! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

for my own reference: I have addressed gammatical and formatting comments from reviewers and other minor clarifications, as well as extended anatomical comparisons. I now have to re-write two entire sections. I have done it in some isolated sentences but I have to actually re-shape the whole thing

ONG these preliminary results 😍

Since yesterday afternoon in Granoble. The city is very cute and has some wild stratigraphy

omg can't believe FIJI allowed me to overwrite a file without asking 😭