Specimens out for a visiting researcher means a bonus Thursday collections pic: jaws and palate of the Permian pelycosaur Edaphosaurus cruciger (UMMP VP 3333).

Another Thursday at the collection, so here's the holotype of the river dolphin Pomatodelphis bobengi (UMMP VP 15117) from the Miocene of Florida.

The latest must-read from @acapomorphic.bsky.social! 🕜🪾

I got to work on the Protosphyraena fin that I dug up 2 weeks ago! Looks like a weird P. nitida to me, might flip it out and prepare the other side since I dont trust this quickie gypsona jacket for long term stability

This is a Mississippian aged crinoid, Taxocrinus, from the Indian Shale Fm. of Indiana. I've collected this site a few times and found lots of blastoids. Crinoids are much less common. #FossilFriday

Great Friday morning ceremony celebrating a university-wide Candace Johnson Award for Adam Rountrey, UMMP vert paleo and paleobotany collections manager. (Held in the Ruthven Building, which looks amazing after its renovation.)

Skull of the Oligocene hornless rhino Subhyracodon (UMMP VP 22751) for #FossilFriday.

I can't stress how important it is to see this published (and others like it). Very often we hear things like, "fish endocasts are poor predictors of brain morphology", so it's really great to see people taking the time to actually test this and show the evidence. Nice work!

Out over the Atlantic and headed home after a few great days of intense fossil fishing w/ @aminff.bsky.social & @gilespalaeo.bsky.social in B'ham. Sorted some old problems and turned up some new ones. Until next time!

Striking results showing "swimming" brains in fish endocasts, demonstrating that endocasts are a poor predictor of brain morphology in ray-finned fish.

No collections day for me tomorrow since I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic in an aluminum tube. So to make up for that, I spent some time in the gallery of the lovely Lapworth Museum at the University of Birmingham.

Very well-timed publication of my most recent work at @royalsociety.org Proc B showcasing the backbone of my future research at @stonybrooku.bsky.social! There is still much to learn about ray-finned fish neurocranial evolution and the diversity of ways brain and endocasts interact in this lineage!

Ray-finned fishes are famously diverse, but we know little about their brains or cranial endocasts. @rodrigoichthys.bsky.social opens this black box with a dice-CT survey of 86 species across the actinopt tree of life. #OA in @royalsocietypublishing.org 🐟🧠 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Really happy to share I will be joining the Dept. of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University this fall as an assistant professor!! My lab will focus on ray-finned fish neurocranial evolution, integrating fossils and living species. DM if you have interest in joining my new research group!

New study clears up a longstanding taxonomic problem with tetrapodomorph fishes from Red Hill, NV, and argues that Tinirau is a tristichopterid. Congrats to Derrick Leong and @liujuan.bsky.social of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social!

Highly recommended for anyone considering PhD studies with us (Functional Anatomy and Vertebrate Evolution Laboratory) at Berkeley for Fall '27 matriculation. I will likely be looking to recruit a PhD student to join the lab (1st new addition in 7 years)!

Wait! I was wrong. One more. Congrats on wrapping up your Master's @athenavohs.bsky.social, and have a blast pursuing your PhD at CU Boulder!

There are more individuals of the deep-sea fish Cyclothone than any other vertebrate genus, maybe as many as one million billion. Distinctively ornamented ichthyoliths place the origin of Cyclothone in the greenhouse world of the early Eocene, ~55.6 Ma. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

For #FossilFriday, the underside of the skull of the phytosaur Brachysuchus megalodon from the Late Triassic of Texas (UMMP VP 14366). Collected in 1931 by a party presumably led by E. C. Case.

It's a long weekend here, so ahead of #FossilFriday here's a paleo-postcard! It shows the base of a large Callixylon #tree from the Late Devonian (>360 million years ago) of Oklahoma, on the campus of East Central University🌲⛏️ See reply for the back of the postcard & more details! #paleobotany

Penn State Biology is hiring! We have an opening for a tenure-line faculty position in plant biology - if you'd like to pursue awesome science in a supportive and interdisciplinary community of researchers, consider applying! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

I'm looking to hire a postdoc. Please share if you can!

Thursday again, so a "normal" collections day. So here are some Niobrara mosasaur bits collected on a Sternberg expedition in 1899. Complete with historical tag.

Bonus day in the collection to give a tour. So here's the Middle Devonian crinoid Arthroacantha.

Congratulations to our 2026 Huxley Award recipient, Matheus Januario Lopes de Sousa, for the educational resource: “evolved: an open-source R package designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate instruction in evolutionary biology”! Read more: shorturl.at/1ZdFE@mjanua...

Great poster reception at the E. C. Case year-end celebratory event in the Museum of Paleontology!

I do my research for close to $0. Morphosource.org - free CT scans Meshlab - 3D object measurement Slicer - CT scan processing(segmentation) Morphology J- geometric morphometric analysis Zotero-citations Blender-3d object manipulation/coloring

⚠️ Upcoming workshop: Bridging Stratigraphic Palaeobiology & Phylogenetic 🤓 🕒 Open for applications until May 24 ⬇️ www.lorentzcenter.nl/site/index.p... #workshop #registration #open

Happy #fossilfriday! @hadeelsaad.bsky.social , Emily Hillan, and I spent the past week in the Appalachian Basin collecting in the Carboniferous. We found a lot of great stuff but the best thing we got was a fossil xiphosuran, Euproops! Very uncommon here. Time to organize it all!

They keep going #FossilFriday

Wow. The earliest finned octopuses from the Cretaceous were giants topping out at 7-19 meters 🤯🐙 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thursday is collections day, so here's a big ol' Coryphodon skull (UMMP VP 98530).

Exciting new development at the Research Museums Center break room.

Excited that my paper on a Jurassic fish with teeth on its nose is now out! Shoutout to my co-authors Ben Kligman and Maranda Stricklin, who is another all-star undergraduate mentee. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Another recording from the Paleo 2026 symposium has been posted! Learn about recent research on placoderms (early armoured fishes like Dunkleosteus) with Dr. Melina Jobbins of the University of Manitoba! youtu.be/uP6ta7MP1ZY #palaeontology #paleontology #fossils #fish #placoderms #alberta

Shocking.

👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium: Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology Pls RT to help get the word out!

Had a great visit to Auburn University for a joint seminar in Biosciences and Geosciences! Able to catch up with Michigan paleo alums (and current Auburn lecturers) Meg Veitch and John Fronimos. Thanks to Jon Armbruster for the invitation!

Assorted parts of the paratype of the giant Late Cretaceous coelacanth Megalocoelacanthus dobiei (AUMP 3834) from the Mooreville Formation of Alabama #FossilFriday

Happy Friday from Psettodes, the living sister lineage to all other flatfishes. Specimen at Auburn University Museum of Natural History.

WANTED: Lead Collections Manager. Smithsonian NMNH Botany is looking for a Supervisory Museum Specialist to manage the United States National Herbarium and a top-notch collections team. For more information, visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications due in two weeks (1 May 2026).

So many Carboniferous fish jaws (28!) to look at and think about on my way to Atlanta. The most rewarding in-flight entertainment, courtesy of @reallyoldfish.bsky.social!

bifrost: an R package for scalable inference of phylogenetic shifts in multivariate evolutionary dynamics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04.12.718036v1

We get feedback from surveys about what people learned during this event. Happy to see someone appreciate how strong a pufferfish's jaw can be!

Results from the #paleostream! Don Juan (still unnamed rat fish relative), Muttaburrasaurus, Lystrosaurus (baby) and Bakonydraco!

‼️NEW ANGLERFISH PAPER! 🐟🎣 So excited to share the final part of my Master’s research! We explore the bizarre tacklebox of anglerfish lures and show how these fishes evolved different ways to attract prey and maybe even mates in the deep sea. 🧪🦑🌊🦇🦀 Open access paper link: doi.org/10.1643/i202...

New paper out with @cichlidnick.bsky.social and Peter C. Wainwright. We show that different habitats impact fish diversification. Habitats with a complex benthos show increased diversification rates across ray-finned fishes. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

A last graphical treat before the semester concludes.

Massive and important positive news... #NSF #GRFP awards are out. 2,599 awards! + 1,440 Honorable Mentions. A significant boost from last year. Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)! & many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

Here the result of the Escuminac Formation #paleostream! These deposits from the Devonian of Canada offer a glimpse into a coastal fish community with some absolute bangers and historical favorites. But it doesn't come without it challenges.