Never forget that Charles Darwin wrote an absolutely incredible book called The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, where he noted that worms "have played a more important part in the history of the world than most persons would at first suppose." 🪱🧪

Had an absolute blast speaking at the #LymeRegis #FossilFestival today as part of the student talks series! I spoke about weird fossil echinoderms, recent research showing that #starfish are all head no trunk and shared some of my own research, thanks to all who came along! 😊

Micro-CT reveals host-controlled symbiosis of the Jurassic serpulid–hydroid association doi.org/10.1111/pala... @WileyEcology

the only character creation sliders that matter #InvertebrateShitposting

Ha ha. I'm sure this is just me but man, do these Ophioplinthus (?) from 4118 meters in the South Pacific look at AWFUL lot like the "starfish" Pokemon?? #echinoday #ophiuroids

I really enjoyed working on this series with @franzanth.bsky.social all about snails and why they are awesome fossil and living critters.

Rugose coral video is done! Full video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwkM... #SciArt #paleoart #3dAnimation #coral #reef

This is what a timelapse of sleeping seals looks like. Seals can hold their breath for up to 19 minutes and even nap underwater. While sleeping, they sink and periodically swim to the surface to breathe. Original post

Happy Easter, to those that celebrate! May your baskets be as bountiful as the daily egg production of Mnemiopsis leidyi (averages of ~10,000+ per day) #CtenophoreFunFacts 🪼🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚 (1/35) 😉

hundreds of titiwai (glow worms) in the waimapihi tonight 🙂

📢 Including fossil tips in your phylogeny can double your continuous trait model fitting accuracy! Updated preprint out now on @ecoevorxiv.bsky.social. 🔗 doi.org/10.32942/X27... with @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social @macroecoevoale.bsky.social and @bethanyjallen.bsky.social

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

Not fussed about Spinosaurs, but I do like PCAs. I do not like this PCA

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

First footage coming through of the new Rubik's Cube World Record of 2.76 seconds. They'll be higher quality footage from Teodor's on desk camera soon but just look how happy Teodor is! As a Cubing parent this properly warms my cockles. #SpeedCubing #HappySunday www.instagram.com/reel/DUf06UD...

If you want to the nice TLDR of our new paper check out Rob’s great thread on it!

OH WOW! A whole web page DEVOTED to SPONGE SPICULE Imagery ! #porifera #spongeThursday www.spicules.org

These things lived on the deep sea bed. So I tried to make it look like the critter was being viewed by a deep sea rover, while also showing the sediment cross section so we can see the hold fast. #SciArt

On the first day of Christmas (in about 2014), @duckswabber.bsky.social gave to me - a partridge in a pear tree. Happy Christmas everyone!

On the 3rd day of fossils, my true love gave to me... 3 cyclocystoids! I wouldn't be surprised if you've never heard of a cyclocystoid. They are one of the rarest fossil echinoderms and related to starfish and sea urchins. They are small and fall apart quickly after death. 1/x #12DaysofFossils

Such an amazing set of exciting fossils from Sirius Passet. Excited to read all about them in more detail when published! 🪱

Really enjoyed my first @thepalass.bsky.social annual meeting! Thank you to all the lovely people that I met for making it a great time. I'm delighted to have been awarded a poster prize for my work on annelid locomotion. Congratulations to the other prize winners, including @lej-palaeo.bsky.social!

Thank you @thepalass.bsky.social for a great conference and awarding me a prize for my poster on the results of the first chapter of my PhD! And congrats to @harrysavage.bsky.social and the other three recipients of poster prizes for their amazing work #PalAss25

Will AI replace palaeontologists? Can we use AI to find, classify, and interpret fossils? 🤖🦖🐚 New episode of @thefossilfiles.bsky.social looks at just that for #FossilFriday

Lophophorata is monophyletic! Super excited to see this work out in Current Biology - we sequenced a phoronid genome and used shared chromosome fusions to confirm the monophyly of Lophophorata. A big team effort from the Luo Lab @yjluo.bsky.social! More here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1m3mV3QW8S...

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Perhaps the best find from Japan so far - sakebambaspis!

🚨 Time for a #FossilFriday round up: our selection of some recent research highlights. THREAD

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

New in Trends in Ecology & Evolution: 'Earth system engineers' and the cumulative impact of organisms in deep time 🔓 #ecoevo #openaccess www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... A thread 🧵:

In this week's episode of @thefossilfiles.bsky.social, I complete loose control I think you can even pinpoint the exact moment that @tweetisaurus.bsky.social makes me laugh so hard that I burp. Tune in for 🦕🌔🐝 www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JI4...

Kimmig, J., Nanglu, K., & Jamison, P. G. (2025). A problematic soft-bodied fossil from the Cambrian (Miaolingian, Wuliuan) of Utah. Geological Magazine, 162, e37. doi.org/10.1017/S001...

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Creative use of autocorrelation in analyzing trace fossils in the Ediacaran-Cambrian explosion: "..lack of temporal correlation in the studied Ediacaran trajectories and its presence in...Cambrian trajectories, indicating time-tuned behaviours.." arxiv.org/pdf/2509.02940 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

🚨 Bonus mini-episode released today! Where do Squid come from? Susie and Rob discuss squid origins and the use of digital techniques a new paper from Imegami et al Available on Spotify, YouTube and all the usual places. Links in our bio

A new food supplement, designed to provide essential compounds found in plant pollen, could help tackle the devastating decline in honeybees 🐝 This cost-effective and sustainable solution enhances resilience without depleting natural floral resources w/ @rbgkew.bsky.social & more 👇 bit.ly/3JvRYyh

Delighted to share the peer-reviewed version of our study led by @tomlewin.bsky.social now out in Genome Biology @bmc.springernature.com! We analyzed 64 chromosome-level genomes across 15 animal phyla and found that extensive genome rearrangements are the norm in bilaterians. doi.org/10.1186/s130...

The origin of vertebrates gets a shake up as one of the first fossils of vertebrate skeleton turns out to be an invertebrate. Latest episode of @thefossilfiles.bsky.social out now, where ever you get your podcasts

A #MolluskMonday metaphor for the 21st century, in five shells. 🧪⚒️🐌 The shells are vermetid gastropods, sedentary filter feeders characterized by loosening whorls that become progressively unwound, exploring regions of Raup's theoretical mollusk morphospace no snail explored before.

OH WOW. Never seen this polychaete before- Acrocirrus validus! QUITE the mover and shaker! #wormwednesday youtu.be/HEziSG7EerI?...

Our new is episode out today! In it Susie and Rob discuss the origins of pterosaurs and how environmental changes influenced their evolution. Available now from Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts open.spotify.com/episode/32rP...

Funded PhD claxon!! Bill Sellers at University of Manchester is advertising a fully-funded PhD position on the evolution of quadrupedal gaits. Exact focus is open and *could* include fossils. Deets here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Mesquite 4.0 released! A major update — many new features, small and large (phylogenomics, visualizations, workflow management, &c). Check out the trailer video: www.mesquiteproject.org. Come discuss in our new Google Group (groups.google.com/g/mesquite-project). @bembidion.bsky.social ‬🧪 #evolbio

Delighted to share our paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social iology.bsky.social‬ with a palaeo-evo-devo perspective on the evolution of symmetry in echinoderms. Led by Steffi Woodgate with Frankie Dunn, @echinerd.bsky.social, @laurentformery.bsky.social & Sam Zamora www.cell.com/current-biol...-5

Hello! We’re a new podcast from @fossilrob.bsky.social & @tweetisaurus.bsky.social for anyone interested in the world of palaeontology! Every episode we have fun discussing & exploring recently published research Listen on the website fossils.libsyn.com, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts

A new paper in Nature Ecol & Evol by @rosafernandez.bsky.social et al. shows a #punctuated burst of genome evolution in #annelids as they transitioned from marine to land and freshwater habitats.

Another 🚨Paper alert🚨 Everything you ever wanted to know about colony development in graptolithine pterobranchs 🪸 Still much to uncover, but this sums up what we know so far. Enjoy, it is open access 😜 doi.org/10.1111/ede....

A nice find from the beach this evening - a lovely shell I didn't recognise (common piddock?) with an encrusting bryozoan colony on the external and internal surface.

If you’re looking for something fun to listen to then this is an excellent palaeo podcast to dive in to!

For #FossilFriday meet a fossil worm. Kenostrychus is a bristle worm that lived 425 million years ago, and was preserved in three dimensions in volcanic ash. What you see below is a 3D reconstruction created by grinding it away, photographing it, and creating a 3D computer model. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky