This is excellent advice for all first time presenters … also, the quality of your talk will not impact your future career - that comes down to your CV & skills overall, not your ability to perform on the platform. So, if you slip up a bit don’t sweat it - most of the audience won’t realise anyway 🤷🏻‍♂️

My students have set up a petition to persuade the University of Nottingham not to close our Plant Biology BSc course c.org/VPhzVVrHPS Please consider signing

Remember, our official hashtag structure is *year* then "SVP". You can also find our full social media guidelines here: vertpaleo.org/social-media... #2025SVP

Travelling to #2025SVP? Weather looks like a mixed bag, typical for November in England. Unlikely to be particularly cold, but some rain guaranteed. Bring an umbrella 🙂.

Scientific visualisation is a speciality of mine. Illustrations, graphic design, motion graphics. Got lots of capacity. Get in touch via DM or my website (link below👇). #SciArt

Just one week until Birmingham welcomes #SVP2025 #2025SVP: first field trip leaves next Sunday!

Very sad to hear of the passing of Dougie Ross. I had the pleasure of spending an hour or so chatting about dinosaur footprints and thyreophorans when we visited the museum at Staffin on Skye a couple of years ago. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The piece I wrote for The Microbiologist just got published! www.the-microbiologist.com/features/mic...

Blast from the past: Old digital flyer from the early 2010s showcasing some off the palaeo and sci vis work I'd done over the years as a freelancer. Much water passed under the bridge since then, but I'm still available for hire! #scivis #sciart

New paper just out on the histology of Liaoningosaurus where we demonstrate that these tiny animals are all one year old or less www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I can remember the first time I saw a thin section under a microscope. I was fascinated by the science and struck by the beauty of the sections. I couldn't wait to see thin sections of dinosaur bone, so had my own slides made from rolled fragments picked up on IOW beaches. #palaeontology

Alright? Going to #SVP2025 in Birmingham? Make yourself at home with a bit of Brummie lingo on your tee-shirt! Bostin! Alternatively, bag a cool palaeo-related tee and impress your friends and peers. Link to my RedBubble shop in the comments 👇

From the day job: The monitoring of Prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels is a vital tool in screening for prostate cancer. In this shot PSA is about to leave a cell in the prostate gland and head into the bloodstream. Cinema 4D, After Effects, zBrush, Logic X. #SciVis #SciArt

Palaeo jobs alert!! General manager and curator of Dinosaur Isle Museum!! Dinosaur Isle houses the most important dinosaur collection in the UK outside of the national collection. It would be *really fantastic* to get a palaeontologist into this role: www.iow.gov.uk/jobs/detail/...

Alright? Going to #SVP2025 in Birmingham? Make yourself at home with a bit of Brummie lingo on your tee-shirt! Bostin! Alternatively, bag a cool palaeo-related tee and impress your friends and peers. Link to my RedBubble shop in the comments 👇

PaleoStu's Movie Reviews: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. When does a movie become art? This Thai film moves at a gentle pace and invites the viewer to drift along with the narrative. Superb sound design. Sensitive, thoughtful filmaking that lingers in the mind. Recommended. 8/10

I create scientific illustrations and animations. Hire me. Here's my reel 👇 #SciArt stuartponddesign.com/reel-1

On this day in 2012 we were at the SVP icebreaker at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. A terrific museum and a great meeting. The field trip to NC and Virginia was superb. We also visited the Great Smoky Mountains after the meeting. Great trip! #FossilFriday

DAY III of the Creation was Carboniferous coal swamps, according to James Bateman, who by 1862 had built an elaborate geological gallery at his home Biddulph Grange. Cast of a 300 million year old Ulodendron fossil, a stem of a giant clubmoss tree bearing large round scars. #FossilFriday ⚒🌏🌱🧪🌿🔬

Here's a T. Rex bored to death trying to bite their own tail. My partner asked me to animate it in stop motion, after she watched a video about the very important topic of "could T. Rex chew its own tail like a dog". The puppet is still a work in progress 🦖

I specialise in scientific illustrations, motion graphics, animations and graphic design. Get in touch!

Great article on the Oxfordshire sauropod trackway, with contributions from @dremmanicholls.bsky.social, Prof. Kirsty Edgar and @peterfalkingham.com, who also made the excellent animation. Check out the overhead shot too - very cool 🦕 www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

A heads up that I'm talking at @NewScientist Live this weekend (Sunday 19th October) about my book, King Tyrant: A Natural History of Tyrannosaurus rex. Details, tickets etc. can be found here: live.newscientist.com/nsl-london-2... #dinosaur #fossils #scicomm #paleontology #books

The release of the BBC story on this year’s dinosaur track excavation at Dewars Farm means I can finally post these team photos. Thanks so much to quarry manager Mark Stanway & all his team at Smiths Bletchington for being utterly amazing & supporting our work at the site.

I was thrilled to help to excavate more of this huge Oxfordshire dinosaur track site earlier this year. The BBC's new article has a ton of fantastic images and graphics that bring the tracks to life, including a moment where a sauropod paused to... do something?

We cover a lot of ground in this one: the ethics of publishing on Myanmar amber, article retraction, and whether Rob has any credibility. It's a good one. Give it a listen 👇

For #FossilFriday some iguanodontian dorsal vertebrae with ossified tendons which would have formed a crisscross pattern. First appeared Late Jurassic associated with increased mass and quadrupedality. From #IsleofWight in the collections of @nhm-london.bsky.social.

In advance of the publication of my new book with @markwitton.bsky.social, "Spinosaur Tales" (Nov 6th), for #FossilFriday, here's a nice close up of a tooth of Baryonyx sitting in the jaw of the holotype. More spinosaur goodness coming in the next weeks as I desperately try to promote the book.

For #FossilFriday a chance to shake hands with the #IsleofWight dinosaur Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis.

#Fossil Files podcast fans!! Today sees the release of Fossil Fails II: The tiny dinosaur with the massive flaw... Get our take on that whole Oculudentavis thing - available now on libsyn and wherever you get your podcasts! @thefossilfiles.bsky.social fossils.libsyn.com/fossil-fails...

Need science visuals? Graphic design? Scientific illustration? Motion graphics? I do those! Get in touch and let's discuss how we can work together to communicate your research. I can create visual assets for journals, social media, print, meetings or outreach. Website here: stuartponddesign.com

Ah damn. A hero of reason with her fierce intelligence, humility and ability to communicate the science. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

For #FossilFriday a posterior view of the braincase of the Early Cretaceous fish-eating spinosaurid dinosaur Baryonyx walkeri. In the collections of @nhm-london.bsky.social. First discovered in Barremian aged Smokejacks brick pit Surrey by collector William Walker in 1983. Time flies!

Using my new thylacine sewing pattern I have created another lifesize thylacine plushie! This big friend is available over here: www.palaeoplushies.com/shop/thylaci...

Some great jobs in evolutionary morphology / palaeo now available @sunyofficial.bsky.social: apply.interfolio.com/172502 and apply.interfolio.com/172517

Two weeks working at the ESI in Joburg, one paper on another new Zimbabwean dino about to be submitted, another on a potentially new South African dino well on the way, two new grant ideas to work on, prelim work done on other projects. Amazing how much you can get done without meetings ...

JOBS JOBS JOBS! Stony Brook are advertising two assistant professorships in vertebrate palaeo/evolution, one focused on (in the words of the SVP programme) NOT DINOSAURS and the other on evolutionary neurology: apply.interfolio.com/172502 apply.interfolio.com/172517

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...

Walking through the woods and heard hammering, the source being this Nuthatch that was in the process of successfully extracting an acorn lodged in the bark of a mature Ash tree, presumably by one of the very vocal and industrious jays that were about at the time. #birding

For #FossilFriday, contemplating trace fossils made just after "The Fall" (the end-Cretaceous meteorite impact) preserved in <66 million-year-old sediments in central Colorado, while finishing a research article with @denvermuseumns.bsky.social colleagues on these survivors' traces. 🧪🐾

Species interaction over millions of years. Limpets sheltering in a dinosaur footprint seen at the impressive Triassic track site at the Bendricks, Barri, Cymru. #FossilFriday

Scientific illustrations? I create those! Simple or complex, 2D or 3D, for any subject illustrations can communicate complex research, processes and concepts effectively. Plus scope for re-usage across a range of channels of delivery. Get in touch! #SciArt

Last week in Nature: ooo look at my spiky dino. This week in Nature: EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT BIOLOGY IS WRONG www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The beautifully preserved skeleton of the Kimmeridgian theropod Juravenator from Germany, as seen at Jura-Museum Eichstätt. #FossilFriday

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...

I've got plenty of capacity so if you, your clients and or institution need any scientific visualisation, graphic design or motion graphic work then get in touch!

Heads up for #SVP2025 attendees: I'm running a day-long workshop about UK #paleoart on Nov 11th (the day before the meeting). Essentially a mini-conference, it's a day of talks on UK palaeoart history, conservation and current projects, as well as... 1/3

Rather chuffed to have been awarded first prize in two photography categories at our village show today. Alan Garner fans might know the location of the colour photo.

I absolutely love this story by @jamesashway.bsky.social on he background about how we found Spicomellus

If you don't have access to Nature, but would like to read our paper on the new specimen of #Spicomellus, you can read it online at this link with no subscription: rdcu.be/eCJK3