Why is life the way it is? It was a pleasure to share a stage with Nick Lane, @mamaphysikerin.bsky.social, and Cait MacPhee yesterday evening for the @royalsoced.bsky.social seminar event preceding Nick Lane's Gifford Lecture. You can watch the recording here: #astrobiology #evolution #biochemistry

The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.

Quote of the Day, as found in "Comparative Vertebrate and Human Anatomy: Ecology, Evolution, and Function" pressbooks.palni.org/comparativev... Check it out - looks great! #EndlessFishMostBeautiful

New palaeo-PhD opportunity! Will you be the one to figure out the anatomy and function of fossil jawless fish? Come join the team! Application Deadline August 22nd, funding for UK student only (sorry) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

~just to add~ This approach was reproduced by Dr Phil Wilby in 2009 on a Callovian ink sack. The accompanying photoshoot (📸: Phil Yeomans) is iconic.

One of my favourite #MaryAnning facts™️ is that she would discover fossil cephalopod 🐙 fossils with preserved ink sacks, concoct a dangerous chemical slime to turn them back into gloopy ink, and then use her Jurassic ink to draw exquisite illustrations of the vertebrate fossils she found. Meta.

Excellent case where specimen based research and methodological innovation results in cardinal revision of dominants of marine biomass in the Late Cretaceous. Squids were diverse and dominant over other cephalopods and fish! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio

Now published in @agu.org Geophysical Research Letters! What happens to marine archaea when they’re hungry? And what does that mean for the TEX₈₆ paleothermometer? Full paper here: doi.org/10.1029/2025... Thanks to my coauthors and mentors for their support — and stay tuned, more is coming!

✨ Excited to share our new paper! ✨ Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition doi.org/10.1098/rsos... @royalsocietypublishing.org @rosspanderson.bsky.social @kelleypaleolab.bsky.social

Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀

Very powerful preprint just went live discussing the different forms of colonialism that act on Mexican palaeo research and how the actions of science can result in political instability and violence. Is our fossil research hurting others? egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

Take a look at my group's new paper on distinguishing biological and non-biological tubules of iron-oxide, led by Melanie Podbielski. Yes, the title is a Star Trek reference...

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

Delighted to share that from mid-August, I’ll be joining @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social School of GeoSciences as a PDRA studying bacterial taphonomy with @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Bryne Ngwenya! - this silicified stromatolite isn’t a specimen I’ll be studying, but is a suitably bacterial photo 🧫🦠

Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Using XCT, we got really cool images of a buried zebrafish decaying. You can see the gases build up, escape, and the body cavity collapse - without disturbing the experiment! Sometime you even see them pop and rupture - stinky work but awesome to understand fossils 🐟☠️⚰️ dx.doi.org/10.1111/pala...

New entry into the sponge/ctenophore debate.... Have the chromosome fusions separating ctenophores from all other animals been given too much weight? Beautifully clearly written paper covering complex arguments from @rcply.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less https://go.nature.com/4jLPDwi

This #FossilFriday our paper on the Slopey G surface at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. Both the E and G surfaces outcrop at two different places 1 kilometres apart which means we can compare how ecological dynamics change over large spatial scales.

Delighted to share our paper on data equity in #palaeobiology as part of Paleobiology's 50th anniversary issue 🥳 We look at how palaeo data is collected, stored, curated & shared, and how equity in these processes is crucial for our field's future (1/n) 🧪⚒️ doi.org/10.1017/pab....

NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume... Download what you need asap and send comments to: [email protected]

Last day of the IRATE workshop in Erlangen. See the happy faces! Looks like everybody had a good time and hopefully fruitful discussions... can't wait to see the outcomes published ^^ (no pressure at all ;))

If anyone needs a multi-disciplinary Raman & FTIR expert starting in early 2026, let me know!

Fantastic news that 'Sue', the weird 444 million year old inside out arthropod, is finally published! Named after Sarah's mum, I remember this fossil sitting on a desk at all of my PhD supervisory meetings - so proud of Sarah for persevering - 20 years of study!!! www.itv.com/news/central...

Just read a great paper by McMahon et al. 2025, "Remarkable fossils on unremarkable bedding planes? The role of true substrates in the fossil record of the Ediacaran macrobiota" @philvixseboxse.bsky.social #Ediacaran #Palaeontology Check it out: www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Next up is @philvixseboxse.bsky.social former DTE member talking about his PhD work @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social with Alex Liu and colleagues

This is the official account of The Palaeontological Association (#ThePalAss) on Bluesky. Our association was founded in 1957 to promote the study of #palaeontology and its allied sciences. Learn more: www.palass.org We hope to find old and new friends here!

On this Give Miami Day we are proud to unveil the world’s longest running underwater timelapse, starting May 1st 2023 and running 569 days through November 20th, 2024 🪸 Support 🪸: www.givemiamiday.org/organization...

Fully funded PhD up for grabs: Evolution following genome duplication (in animals and plants) with Dan MacQueen and Alex Twyford in Edinburgh. Apply by December 16, 2024. Open to applicants worldwide www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Interested in a PhD understanding the community dynamics of hard and soft corals in Okinwawa reefs with @JDReimer @EGMitchell @DrManica using newly methodologies for the analyses of community ecology & 3D model reconstruction? www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/2025-26-proj...

Hello folks! I currently have two PhDs advertised: with Andrea Manica investigating the eco-evolutionary dynamics of Ediacaran early animal communities www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/2025-26-proj...

Migrating back to the good place... and speaking of good places, why not consider coming to the University of Southampton to do a PhD in coral reef palaeoecology??! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Our article 🐌 "Phylogeny of the longest existing gastropod clade (Pleurotomariida) reconstructed with Bayesian and parsimony methods and its implications on gastropod shell characters" 🐚 authored by me, S. Höhna & A. Nützel is published 🥳 A long #MolluscMonday 🧵😎 doi.org/10.1080/1477...

For those of you who care but can be forgetful, I highly recommend turning on this setting:

Delighted to report that the first paper of my PhD is out in Lethaia! 🥳 In it, we describe a new protocol for stabilization of taphonomic experiments via solvent replacement, using some Ediacaran-style decay experiments as a case study. 🪼🦠🧫 doi.org/10.18261/let...

🚨🚨🚨 9 days left!! 🚨🚨🚨 To apply for this fully funded PhD studentship studying the geochemistry of biominerals! biomin.esc.cam.ac.uk/job/biomin/l...

Interested in biomechanics, burrowing or inverts? Come work with @cambriannelids.bsky.social @fossilrob.bsky.social me, and others - we're advertising a 4 year postdoctoral position on the biomechanics of animal burrowing and the Cambrian explosion. www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai... 🧪 ⚒️ 🐙