Great spotlight on our recent @currentbiology.bsky.social paper! www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)01167-4

Rutgers is looking for a vertebrate paleontologist: www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?...

Showing off the @ummnh.bsky.social Fish Collection for ID Day! #TeamFish

Great paleo showing at today's ID Day at the U-M Museum of Natural History!

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.

So excited and grateful to receive R24 NOA from NIH ORIP to create an integrated #zebrafish omics, histology and microCT 3D atlas! Looking forward to an exciting work with Dr. Postlethwait of U of Oregon, who is the co-PI of the grant.

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.

Another fish gig!

This is the only "complete" crinoid in my collection, from holdfast to crown. It's easy to see why they are sometimes called sea lilies, even though they are animals related to starfish and sand dollars. This is Abatocrinus gallatinensis from the Mississippian Lodgepole Fm of MT. #FossilFriday

New in @science.org, meet Acronichthys maccagnoi, a new species from Late Creatacous Canada that changes what we know about the origins and evolution of one of the most successful fish groups on Earth.

Check out this rare faculty-curator position at OU:

If any of you fine folks are planetarians in (or want to be in) mid-Michigan, the Abrams Planetarium is hiring a full-time-staff position for the first time in 11 years!! Come work with the astro, scicomm, and informal ed folks at MSU!! 🔭 🧪 (reskeets welcome) careers.msu.edu/jobs/educati...

And giving tours is definitely one of the highlights of this gig.

Our paper on perceptions of punctuated equilibrium - including suggestions for how to teach about this essential evolutionary concept - is now available online! doi.org/10.1017/pab....

New paper alert!!!🚨 in our new study we find that Antarctic icefishes added a new module in their skulls during their adaptive radiation special shout out to @mayaranevesbio.bsky.social who led this project! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hello #fish 🐟 🐠 researchers and PIs of tomorrow! We would be excited to sponsor you for an Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) Presidential #Postdoc Fellowship application @michiganstateu.bsky.social. Application deadline is Nov 10, so get in touch soom! #EndlessFishMostBeautiful

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid ended the dinosaurs But their disappearance didn’t just change life, it changed the land Without them, forests spread, rivers stabilized, and Earth’s landscapes flipped We’re the ecosystem engineers now What world will we leave behind? 🧪 buff.ly/4KhsAJk

Two new species of African suckermouth catfishes just dropped! Say hello to #Chiloglanis kinsuka from the lower #Congo River at the Kinsuka rapids below Pool Malebo, and #Chiloglanis wagenia, from the Wagenia Falls at Kisangani, more than 1600 km upstream.🐟🧪 digitallibrary.amnh.org/items/3ad0dd...

OK, head above water briefly and can say a few things about a paper that came out a few weeks ago in @royalsocietypublishing.org on Platysomus and kin.

Something is FISHY 🐟 around here...and it's our latest episode with Dr. Kerin Claeson! Learn how Disney World inspired her to become a paleontologist, what causes salmon to change so drastically during spawning, and so much MORE. 🔊 Listen to Episode #90 now! www.paleonerds.com/podcast/keri...

Great set of presentations on summer collections projects from paleo grad students at today's museum seminar. These grumpy quotes turned up by Tariq Abdul Kareem in former curators' correspondence were a crowd favorite.

Hoplostethus mediterraneus – the Mediterranean slimehead (Trachichthyidae). Remarkably, slimeheads have been documented to live for over 230 years. This specimen is KU 42748 from the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. 🦑🌊

On #FossilFriday I am proud to share a new discovery - a skull of a large extinct relative of king and emperor penguins. @atennyson.bsky.social, Daniel Thomas, Felix Marx, and I report this magnificent skull in Journal of Paleontology: https:// bit.ly/4ne3HQV

Living sharks have innumerable tiny scales, but their earliest relatives somehow grew larger bony plates. In our new Biology Letters @royalsocietypublishing.org, we work try and out how, arguing they grew by fusing and remodelling spines and scales. doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

I am extremely happy to see that our review on fossil tip-dating is out in early view in Systematic Biology! A huge thanks to all the authors of this massive project (@heckeberg.bsky.social, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social, Gustavo Darlim, and @hoehna.bsky.social)! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

A new study shows that the earliest gobioid fishes were coral-reef associated dwarfs. Results suggest that dwarf gobies achieved ecological success early in gobioid evolution, arising through convergent evolution across different lineages🐟 Read more: buff.ly/GVMpJaF #Fossilfish #PaleoSky #Evolution

Who is looking for grad students for next year? I have a group of highly-motivated, aspiring scientists in paleontology, evolution, and ecology who would love some leads on programs.

👀

Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Computational Ecology and/or Evolution @columbiauniversity.bsky.social. Deadline to apply September 30. Reach out if you have questions. apply.interfolio.com/172496

UPDATE: The 2025-2026 list of faculty and postdoc positions in ecology and evolutionary biology is out! Be sure to check out this active and helpful community run resources! docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

This is an undescribed lungfish tooth plate from the Devonian Genshaw Fm. near Alpena, Michigan. It's such a strange piece. Most fish material from this area has a bluish tint which you can see near the bottom. #FossilFriday

Saurodon wishes you all a very happy #FossilFriday! This was one of the very first specimens I found in 2024 and the looooong fish was nearly complete, from tip of the tail all the way to the pointy triangular predentary bone on the tip of the lower jaw. 🧪🐟

IOB "We assembled & vetted a dataset of 203 characters, which were then scored for a phylogenetically diverse range of 75 extant avian #taxa & incorporated into #phylogenetic analyses..." read doi.org/10.1093/iob/... @albertonykus.bsky.social et al #avian #ornithology #morphological #fossils

📯Collection manager position in the Natural History Museum of Basel 🇨🇭 Collection: "invertebrate" fossils Location: maps.app.goo.gl/Svd1o2M333av... Workload: 70% of full-time Description and application page: stellenmarkt.bs.ch/kbs/job/deta...

Out today in @commsearth.nature.com from some of my newest colleagues at UMMP: evidence that the extinction of dinosaurs led to fundamental shifts in terrestrial environments, and that this signal is recorded in facies shifts tied to the K-Pg boundary: www.nature.com/articles/s43...

My review of the evidence (morphological, embryological and molecular) for the deuterostomes clade is now available. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

There’s an interesting series of 5 free online paleobotany lectures via the Oxford University Botanic Garden this autumn. You can book all 5 lectures here (scroll down webpage to ‘Get your tickets now’ button) www.obga.ox.ac.uk/event/dr-san... #paleobotany

Unboxed some more fun stuff for the exhibit this week.

This discovery is highlighted in the U-M Museum of Natural History. Although Beck's pivotal specimen isn't displayed, you can see this giant Archaeopteris trunk (UMMP 13837)--my favorite fossil in the gallery.

Although the sequences have been published before, it's always fun to see the U-M Museum of Paleontology collection code appearing at terminals of a molecular phylogeny.

I am recruiting a PhD student this application cycle to explore questions on the evolution of morphological variation and phylogenetics. I'm especially seeking folks interested in fossil marine inverts. Please reach out to me if interested! Portal opens Nov. 1 eeb.utoronto.ca/education/gr...

Ohio State is searching for an entomologist at the Associate/Full level! osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/j...

A new fossil of the Leatherback Turtle from Alabama just dropped! #FossilFriday bioone.org/journals/Pal...

Past is Prologue: CT scan models of a fossil (Eocoelopoma curvatum) and a living (Scomberomorus cavalla) scombrid fish separated by ~50 million years of evolution.

UMMP 57588: specimen showing the Late Devonian genera Archaeopteris (fronds) and Callixylon (trunks, branches) belonged to the same plant. This critical discovery by UMMP curator Charles Beck illuminated the structure of trees contributing to some of the planet's most ancient forests. #FossilFriday

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

🚨JOB ALERT🚨 We (JSG @ UT Austin) are looking for an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) or Associate Professor (tenured) in Sedimentary Geosciences More details here: apply.interfolio.com/173688 Or ask me!

Devon knows how they made it so teeny: the fossil of a very small rhynchocephalian from the Triassic of Devon, UK, is the oldest known lepidosaur and sheds light on the early history of this important and species-rich tetrapod group. @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Gut contents: the trace fossils that answer the question "What was for dinner?", even if dinner was 180 million years ago. 🧪

Please repost! We have a second biomechanics faculty position! This is an open rank clinical-track position in sports biomechanics at the University of Michigan. This is a largely teaching-focused position and we have outstanding resources to support teaching and student learning. #BiomechSky