For #FossilFriday, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who shared my letter. Ultimately I hoped to have many people read it and get people thinking and talking about these issues that effect many in our field. Had lots of constructive conversations and will continue to push for safety for all!

I’d love to have some sort of virtual option. Right now I’m mostly inspired by what sicb is doing: having a brown bag talk once a month. I’d love to keep the SVP community connected all year round and allow everyone to participate. I’d also love to hear other ideas.

Regarding potential virtual paleontology meetings. (I built and ran the 2023 SVP virtual meeting.)

It was pretty amazing hearing all the meaningless platitudes from the SVP president of only holding meetings where their membership can feel safe, then turn around and host it in fucking Ohio.

Hey @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social This letter here fully articulates the major problems with the annual meeting right now (there are others to be sure; but these are the big ones now). I would urge you all to consider this proposal. And think about the anecdotes presented; they were not cool…

A succinct and important message to the 2026 SVP Meeting this year! The United States has created dangerous environments for the LGBTQIA+ community, foreign travel, and Science in general. Not everyone has a safety net - Let's work to ensure that everyone has a safe way to continue participating!

No one should have to compromise their safety for their career, and vice versa. @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social needs to add an online option.

Mira is one of the founders of PalaeoPoems. We presented at @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social years ago in Toronto and it gave us a real platform to talk about the project. An online option will give that chance to even more early career researchers!

Today, for the safety of all SVP members, I request with this open letter that the @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social provides an online option for this year's annual meeting. Myself and many others no longer feel it is safe to travel to and within the USA. Please share the letter everywhere you can!

A few weeks ago CBC reporter Sheena Goodyear reached out to me for comment on the new Spinosaurus paper. I said I couldn’t, because of Epstein connection Nathan Myhrvold’s involvement with it. We got to talking about how paleontology - especially dinosaur research- remains hostile to women. 🧪

TMP 1980.023.0004, a Corythosaurus intermedius skeleton left in the ground in Dinosaur Provincial Park. Despite being seen by thousands of visitors to the Park, this specimen and the rocks that preserve it have some surprising secrets to tell still. Stay tuned! #FossilFriday

New records of osteolepiforms, dipnoans (lungfish), onychodonts, and placoderms from Manitoba. #ManitobaFossils #CanadaFossils cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/...

New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Proof of my precognition, my guess last night for the next fire starter was "dog". Lo and behold.

I love making new friends!

Result from the Joggins Formation #paleostream! This Canadian site is an absolute classic and even if you are not familiar with its name you probably know at least one of its major players...

I have nothing of substance to add re: the condemnation of paleo associations with Epstein, but as the initiator of one of the more recent high-profile SVP ethics cases who spent months going through their process, I have some thoughts re: SVP's handling of ethics cases/reports. A thread 🧵:

Is @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social being serious here? No, the presence of a name on an email doesn't establish wrongdoing. But the *content* of those emails is what so many members, including myself, are outraged about. This response does nothing but further degrade my confidence in SVP leadership

It’s tangential to his relationship with Epstein, but remember Jack Horner rose to fame by claim jumping Marion Brandvold. She found Egg Mountain and the baby Maiasaura, loaned them to Jack, and had to sue to get them back - returned in 2004.

Jack Horner being in the Epstein files is not something I had on my bingo card for 2026.... Horner seemingly visited Epstein's ranch multiple times, including apparently with a student.

A rare view of the charming, crooked smile of Black Beauty's original skull at the Tyrrell Museum. #FossilFriday

Gotta say this whole sand thing is pretty funny. One thing Plait was adamant on is he thinks lay folks don't define sand as a size category. But they do! Regular people will tell you if a beach is sandy or gravely, because they see and feel the different grain size.

When you think of fossils you probably think of dinosaur bones, mammoth tusks, or corals and shells. You probably don't think of eyes, guts, and nervous systems, but in some rare cases these soft tissues have been fossilized too! Check out some examples in this video with Dr. Joe Moysiuk.

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

Proud to announce two models I painted went on display at the Manitoba Museum for their "Weird Wonders" from the dawn of complex life display! I got to paint Stanleycaris and Cambroraster. Sadly forgot to take close ups of the finished models, so the close ups are WIPs. Go see them at the museum!

Proud to say I won the T.E. Bolton Award for best student presentation at the Canadian Paleontological Conference tonight!

Manitoba Museum Student Associate and Mitacs Fellow Urgon Snider’s Master’s thesis research is on microfossils. He’ll be working dissolving ancient rocks, extracting tiny fossils, and mounting them for our collections, expanding our understanding of 450-million-year-old ecosystems! #FossilFriday

Did ceratopsian (horned) & ankylosaur (armored) dinosaurs walk together? Newly discovered dinosaur tracksite in Dinosaur Provincial Park (Alberta CA) suggests they did, similar to modern multi-species herds. News item includes comments by Yours Truly. 🧪🦖🐾 P.S. Quite a day for cool fossil finds!

New research that Dr. Paul Durkin, one of my supervisors, worked on!

Here it is! Please welcome the AMAZING Mirasaura grauvogeli, a NEW MARVELOUS Drepanosaur published in NATURE today! This astonishing reptile lived during the Middle Triassic in Europe and it possessed an amazing crest made of plume-like structures! I was commissioned to bring it to life #paleoart

Look at this perfect Triassic friend. Mirasaura was a "monkey lizard" with a prominent sail on its back that wasn't really like scales or feathers. Studying these fossils also revealed that the enigma Longisquama is a drepanosaur with a fan, too. I'll tell you more at @smithsonianmag.bsky.social

Really cool stuff, and I'm not just saying that because it shares my name!

This is very cool! A new placoderm (armoured) fish from the Devonian, the age of fishes: Elmosteus lundarensis. It was found in the Interlake region of Manitoba. And no, it's not named for Elmo. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

#FossilFriday - explore the stunning armoured plates of a 390-million-year-old placoderm fish fossil from Manitoba! 🐟 Image shows the central and postorbital plates of Elmosteus lundarensis gen. et comb. nov. Read the full study by Jobbins et al. (2025): buff.ly/g6sEO4A #PaleoSky #Fossils #NHM

New paper day! Phil Bell led a great study on some *INSANELY COOL* titanosaur tracks our expedition found in Mongolia. The scales in particular are extra awesome - they're like little pyramids, and they *may* have helped with scratch digging and/or walking on sandy surfaces!

A new paper of mine just came out in the Journal of Anatomy! Learn more about Conoryctes and why the insides of its bones are important on my website. Or, check out the open-access paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Digging into the rise of mammals gregfunston.com/2025/07/14/d...

Today, I mourn the loss of the forest I spent my youth exploring on the edges of Thompson, Manitoba. Cut down to prevent forest fires from potentially jumping the river and destroying the city. 1/4

I want there to be places for trans paleontologists beyond the student and volunteer level. I want us to have access to more than labor that principally benefits curators and profs. Students I meet now, I want to see as leaders in the field before I’m subject to taphonomic agents.

Recently got to see the always incredible Borealopelta markmitchelli in its new display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum! #FossilFriday

Very nice dromaeosaur claw found by the Tyrrell Museum crew in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta this week. #FossilFriday

Had another great season in Dinosaur Provincial Park looking at bones and bentonite. Expect to see some really exciting results from this soon 👀!

Love Ruby Crowned Kinglets, one of my favourite early spring migrants here in Manitoba. This one was so curious about what I was doing!

Colossal made designer Canis, not dire wolves. So what was Aenocyon dirus really like? I dig in at NatGeo with insights (and puns) from @ashinonyx.bsky.social, @widga.bsky.social, and @tarpits.org’s Emily Lindsey.

Making myself visible on this Transgender Day of Visibility as a now publicly out trans woman! Some people have known about my transition for a while now, but if you didn't, I go by Mira or M (as a nickname) and use she/her pronouns. Excited for my journey to live as my authentic self!

I promised to tell the backstory of the world's biggest #trilobite, so here's our 1998 discovery & excavation of the holotype of Isotelus rex. Length as recovered ~68 cm; original length ~72 cm. U. Ordovician, nr Churchill, MB 🇨🇦 Now on display in the @manitobamuseum.bsky.social #TrilobiteTuesday

Officially a PhD Candidate now!

Ever wonder what snow in the swamp would look like? This is 5 miles into the Louisiana swamps in the Atchafalaya basin... it's unreal... having lived down there for the first 28 years of my life, we never saw anything like this. Smashed records. Curtesy of Garrett Roberts.

Foraminifera from the Campanian Foremost Formation of Alberta for #FossilFriday. This figure comes from my paper published last week. The species found suggest marginal marine environments preserved in the formation experienced differences in oxygen and nutrient levels spacially and over time.

Today the main paper from my MSc was published! It focuses on the palaeoenvironments preserved in the Campanian Foremost Formation in Southern Alberta. pubs.geoscienceworld.org/sepm/palaios...