Cutting lines or even whole departments is the frontal assault on higher ed, but another low key war of attrition is the slow accumulation of grinding, meaningless additional tasks concerning syllabus templates, learning outcomes, institutional pablum, and ever more intricate evaluation hoops.

Why such a long face? In our new paper, we quantified dinosaur skull geometry and proportions and tested their functional impact. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... (Artwork by Andy Frazer @dragonsofwales.bsky.social) 1/5

Check out Andy’s excellent reconstructions of jawless fish for our latest exhibition @lapworthmuseum.bsky.social!

Honoured to have contributed to a new paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Mario Bronzati and lots of excellent and brainy (yes, pun intended) colleagues, showing that pterosaurs and birds evolved flight-capable brains but in different ways. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thinking about #dinosaurs? Didn't get a chance to celebrate their 200th birthday last year? Well, our Temporary #Exhibition curated by @palaeostephan.bsky.social has now gone virtual! Find 'Bringing dinosaurs back to life: 200 years of research' on our Virtual #Museum: ow.ly/Ryt550XvLCA

#SVP2025 was finally an opportunity to show the excellent reconstructions of Dysalotosaurus created by @dragonsofwales.bsky.social

If you are attending #SVP2025 #2025SVP make sure to visit the stall of the @lapworthmuseum.bsky.social for some exclusive merchandise featuring some jawless fish designs!

Feeding Without Jaws opens this Wednesday! Our temporary #exhibition tells the immersive story of our ancestors, jawless fish. Find out about why these ancient fish have fascinated palaeontologists, & what new discoveries have been made about them. www.birmingham.ac.uk...#exhibition #LapworthRocks

Attending #2025SVP #SVP2025? Interested in Palaeozoic fish and temnospondyls, dinosaurs old and new, sabre-tooth cats, biomechanics, biogeography, museum ethics, etc? Don't look any further, the Lautenschlager Lab got you covered - thanks to a lot of hard work by students, post-docs and colleagues!

Very happy to have contributed two papers to this Special Issue on Sabertooths:

As we see so often in research, bullies and abusers do terrible things while everyone who could stop them wrings their hands and gives free speech platitudes just so they don't have to act with unity and strength. This is just another example of academic inequalities and harms writ large. Appalling

He should have been expelled. This is way more than policing opinions. - Inciting violence at far right rallies - Interfering in government affairs - Destroying health and science infrastructures - Ensuring thousands will die Abusers, excused and enabled by craven others, always grow in power.

Until a few weeks ago I knew next to nothing about early Devonian jawless fish. To be honest, I still know shamefully little about them. But I’m currently illustrating a bunch of them, and have become utterly fascinated by these extraordinary little freaks. Anyway, just saying 🤷‍♂️

Is it really *that hard* to say that it is totally morally wrong to say to people who have come here legally, worked, paid taxes, built their lives here, contributed to Britain, that they have to fuck off now, rather than "unfunded".

That feeling of desperately wanting your elected government to loudly call out racism & far right violent extremists... And nothing. Labour so afraid to lose power, it has forgotten both how to use it & that with power comes responsibility. As America gets ever darker, too little light here.

Expect more silence from the Royal Society in the face of their most notorious fellow advocating for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of a country he is neither a citizen nor a resident of (yet he is a fellow of their most prestigious learned society).

@palaeostephan.bsky.social - you might enjoy this one. 😉

Should All Earth Scientists Be Vegan? Watch our full discussion with Earth Scientist & Geophysicist Chris MacAskill from Viva Longevity on the PBN YouTube channel 📺🌱

Megalosaurus: an illustration for an exhibition last year at Lapworth Museum to mark 200 years since it was officially described.

The Prime Minister imitating Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech is sickening. That speech fuelled decades of racism and division. Echoing it today is a disgrace. It adds to anti-migrant rhetoric that puts lives at risk. Shame on you, Keir Starmer.

You are a "citizen of nowhere", they said. A "queue-jumper", they said. Now I am a "squalid chapter", they say. A risk as I might make this an "island of strangers", they say. I am "pulling the country apart", they say.

Nice write-up of our Rancor study: www.iflscience.com/is-a-bone-a-...

This is horrendous but far from just a problem in German academia (albeit exacerbated by its civil servant system)! One of the problems outlined in the article is the lack of consequences and the precarity for those who have experienced abuse and bullying. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

We have a new social media feature starting: #WhatsNewWednesdays! For our first post we want to tell you about Ben Miller's #comedy show at the Museum in September! Have you ever watched a #comedian perform under a #dinosaur? Book earlybird tickets now: lapworth-comedy.even...#WhatsNewWednesdays!#comedy#comedian#dinosaur?#LapworthRocks

I'm disappointed to resign from the editorial board of @royalsocietypublishing.org @royalsociety.org journal Biology Letters. I won't give my time and labour away to an organisation that - through inaction - condones the destruction of US science by one of its own, Elon Musk FRS. 🧪⚒️

The bite force is strong with this one! Reposting our recent study by @taphonomist.bsky.social and myself investigating the biomechanics and bite of the Rancor. jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i... in @jgeekstudies.bsky.social‬ Happy May the 4th!!!! #StarWarsDay #StarWars #MayThe4thBeWithYou

Essentially *all* research and expert assessments show that this does not work. It will not counter Farage, but literally push votes towards Reform. It genuinely is impossible to overstate how profoundly stupid and strategically illiterate this decision is. You cannot out-Reform Reform.

An interesting change from reconstructing dinosaurs and other terrestrial animals... My digital restoration and reconstruction of the cyathaspid heterostracan Anglaspis heintzi from our new paper (see below). #FossilFish #DigitalReconstruction #Palaeontology

Our OA article on bite forces of Saurosuchus* with @palaeostephan.bsky.social and @richardjbutler.bsky.social (lead, Molly Fawcett) is apparently a #TopViewedArticle in The Anatomical Record *great-uncle (x20) of🐊, twice-removed anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

I may be tired and a little hoarse, but as I said again and again on the Senate floor, this is a moment where we cannot afford to be silent, when we must speak up.

We are one of the oldest geological museums in the UK. Open seven days a week, your visit is completely free of charge and provides engaging insight into our planet through time. For more information, including how to find us, please visit our website: shorturl.at/0npcu

A failure to act is not an act of political neutrality. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

New therizinosaur fossils are always exciting. But this one is particularly weird/cool having only two fingers! Some comments from me on this new find in National Geographic www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

My alma mater @columbiauniversity.bsky.social is older than the USA. Endured a Revolutionary War. A Civil War. Two World Wars. And capitulates to Trump within a few weeks. Their cowardice endangers all educators and scientists. Disgraceful, weak, and lame. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/n...

No shit. #IchbinHanna

We also think @markhamillofficial.bsky.social should have a look at our study to be prepared for any future Rancor attacks...

Check out the brilliant video abstract for our new paper put together by Thomas!

This project was so much fun! If you want to watch a video abstract - check it out here! youtu.be/C3JsBb2ZyRU

This project has started a long time ago, but in a galaxy not too far away… Happy to share this new study with @taphonomist.bsky.social looking at the functional morphology and biomechanics of the Rancor. Warning! Nerdy sci fi, palaeo & biomechanics thread following! jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i...

🚨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. 🚨 I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk. My op-ed in @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Exactly this. The @royalsociety.org had a chance to lead but has instead aligned itself with oppression and conservatism. I predict (and hope for) a #boycott. If you're a reviewer, an author, recommended for a prize... take a look at the #royalsociety and consider what it now endorses. #musk #doge

Disappointing and shameful (non-)action from the @royalsociety.org to say the least. But this makes it really easy to decide which journals not to send my next papers to and not to review for!

Today the Royal Society will meet to discuss “Fellows’ behaviour”. Without doubt the fellow they will primarily be discussing is Elon Musk. The behaviour may range from his public dissemination of unfounded conspiracy theories to his attacks on the science 🧵 1/38

💙💛🕊️

I have never seen anything as disgusting as that. Genuinely no words.

To all my fellow scientists and educators who need to hear this right now, be you student, postdoc/early career or mid-late career: What you do matters. What you do has value. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t stop. You’ve got this. ❤️

Direct evidence of mammalian predation on herbivorous dinosaurs! #FossilFriday

"Scientists should try very hard to stay politically neutral" - The situation in the US has shown us one thing, that politics won't stay neutral towards science. I appreciate that discussions may not happen on social media but the silence of the FRSs in my field regarding the below feels deafening.

The graffiti artists of Berlin are pretty on the money. (Nie wieder ist jetzt == Never again is now)