Sifra Bijl nails her thesis "Step into the Synchrotron Light: Microanatomy and Evolutionary Adaptations of the Appendicular Skeleton of Palaeozoic Sarcopterygians" to the wall. The "Spikning" is a tradition for PhD students once they are ready to defend their thesis, as Sifra will on June 12th.

To celebrate the 100th birthday of the greatest living natural history broadcaster: a fantastic rap collage by Arthur Newton, the son of two of my closest friends from university days. Enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4m1...

Last week was a blast at Uppsala. I gave a seminar talk, chatted to so many brilliant palaeos, and enjoyed the Swedish Valborg festival that welcomes Spring. One of the highlights of the PhD journey. Huge thanks to @perahlberg.bsky.social @captain-colosteid.bsky.social and others not on bluesky

Annual update on the Mars Expedition: No Tetrapods yet. We can neither confirm nor deny the presence of Tripods.

Out now in Contributions from me and @gilespalaeo.bsky.social, a deep dive into an early member of the sturgeon and paddlefish lineage. Bear with me, but there’s a long backstory highlighting uncertainty about the anatomy of living species and how well-studied fossils can still yield new insights.

Thrilled to have been a part of this project and the accompanying (but slightly younger and much bigger) Megamastax. The osteichthyan stem group is coming into focus!🧪

Megamastax, a mighty chew from the Silurian - paper in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This paper carries a special satisfaction for me. Years ago, Donglei Chen and I discovered small tooth-bearing elements in Silurian vertebrate micro-residues (obtained by dissolving rock in acid) of the stem osteichthyans Andreolepis and Lophosteus. We worked out that they must be the inner dental

The second reports a tiny (~3 cm) articulated fish from the early Silurian. The material is challenging, but it is unquestionably a bony fish. Fittingly named Eosteus, it co-occurs with the oldest articulated jawed fishes and cements the antiquity of osteichthyans. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.

Following on from our post yesterday, we are honoured to announce that we will be hosting the 19th International Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates (ISELV) meeting here in Uppsala in 2027! #ISELV #ISELV19 #ISELVUppsala #fossilfriday

This February, the Uppsala team attended and presented at the 18th ISELV in Berrechid, Morocco, sharing our research with the global early vertebrate community #ISELV18 @iselv18.bsky.social

#ISELV18 was incredible, even the parts that weren't early vertebrates related! #morocco #fossils

Vanavond in het 8 uur journaal over ons nieuwe onderzoek waarin wij ontdekten dat mosasauriërs ook in rivieren voorkwamen! #aardwetenschappen #paleontologie #mosasaurus @vuamsterdam.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social @ndgspaleo.bsky.social @perahlberg.bsky.social @boydpaleo.bsky.social

Here it is! The #news of the week comes from two of our PIs, Mattias Jakobsson & the #humanevolution program, #UppsalaUniversity. Congratulations! www.uu.se/en/news/2025... #humanpast #genetics #Africa #AncientSouthernAfricans

Go my Bothriolepis... This year's fish pecan pie! Bothriolepis was a peculiar-looking placoderm from the Devonian period or the Paleozoic. It had two long pointed pectoral fins and silly little eyes on top of its head. #fossil #fish #paleontology #bothriolepis

The hidden pattern of the primary teeth in an ancestral ray-finned fish provides a clue to how the strange lungfish dentition could have evolved simply by modifying the growth mode of bone. More information in this newly published piece from @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....

A team from our lab recently joined fieldwork organised by the University of Latvia, helping to excavate fossils from the Devonian, including armoured fish (Placoderms) and early tetrapods in western Latvia. #fossilfriday #paleontology

"It is by love alone that we understand anything" -The birth of Bran, James Stephens A new study comes from the questions you love to ask. My question "How do vertebral building blocks come together to make different anatomies?" inspired this project ❤️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Could a slab of ancient Australian rock rewrite everything we thought we knew about the origin of land-dwelling vertebrates? @perahlberg.bsky.social , @evobiouppsala.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social , discusses: faculti.net/earliest-amn... #natural sciences

Could a slab of ancient Australian rock rewrite everything we thought we knew about the origin of land-dwelling vertebrates? @perahlberg.bsky.social , @evobiouppsala.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social , discusses: faculti.net/earliest-amn... #natural sciences

‼️To all early vertebrate enthusiasts‼️ The 18th International Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates #ISELV will be held in Berrechid, Morocco on 3-8 February 2026! 🐟🦈🦎🦴 We look forward to hosting you there! For more info, see our website (link in bio) #fish #vertebrate #palaeontology #fossils

Back in Sweden to receive my diploma at the Uppsala University doctoral conferment ceremony, followed by a reception at Gustavianium and banquet at the Castle was incredibly special. I think it is only now dawning on me that I really did it, I really am Dr Melanie During.

Out Now in Nature! Amniote tracks from Australia push the timeline for terrestiality back 35 to 40 million years, with implications for our understanding of tetrapod evolution. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's out! We describe probable reptile tracks from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia. This pushes the amniote record back by some 35-40 million years and implies that the tetrapod crown group originated deep in the Late Devonian. The paper is Open Access. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fossilized claw prints thought to belong to an amniote, an early relative of reptiles, have been found on a slab of rock from Australia dated to about 356 million years ago. The findings in @nature.com, suggest the origin of amniotes is earlier than expected: #fossil

When it comes to understanding when animals first walked on land, finding footprints of animals that literally pressed their feet into the ground absolutely holds the key. Congratulations to all authors including my former supervisor: @perahlberg.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Biology PhD school asked me to write a blog post about my research, now it’s up and I can go back to staring at fish www.uu.se/en/departmen...

#StGeorge and the Pterodactyl (1873), by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins of @cpdinosaurs.bsky.social fame, to illustrate his suggestion that #dragon 🐲 legends may have been inspired by encounters with living pterosaurs #StGeorgesDay Not sure how the octopus fits in 🐙

We are pleased to announce the opening of our new Tomography Support Center, now available for all @uu.se employees and students. We welcome collaborations with anyone interested in using microCT and synchrotron scanning. Learn more here: www.uu.se/institution/...

PeerJ Congratulates Elsa Leflaëc & Victor López Rojas - Award winners at The 5th Palaeontological Virtual Congress Learn more about their research on the PeerJ blog bit.ly/42EHFPA #5thPVC #Palaeontology @palaeovc.bsky.social

We have a new preprint! Mapping and analyzing nearly 5,000 full mitogenomes across Africa. First major update on mtDNA distribution since Salas et al. 2002, "The making of the African mtDNA landscape." Congrats to Imke Lankheet and thanks to all collaborators! 📄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It is #WorldAquaticAnimalDay today! While fish are far from the only ones hanging out in the water, we're having a look at some of the dried specimens in our collection, and what they are still teaching us. Check out the secrets hidden within our collections here: www.linnean.org/news...

Update from our expedition to Mars: No new early Tetrapods.

It is a very happy #fossilfriday as I sent back a revised manuscript last night, a years-in-the-making review that is the reason I find my phone full of pictures like this every time I've been to a museum: "Asiatosuchus" depressifrons anterior cervical vertebrae (sans proatlas)

It is #TaxonomistAppreciationDay today! A big day for Carl Linnaeus, who we happen to care about (just a little.) 100 years before Darwin's evolutionary theory was published, Linnaeus was classifying animals based on shared traits. He created #SystemaNaturae in 1735, and we still use it to this day!

New paper released! Chapter 5 of my PhD, co-led by Jordan Matelsky. Among other techniques I spend a great deal of time studying fossils using X-ray or soecifically synchrotron radiation techniques, similar to the methods used in radiology at hospitals to make internal injuries visible.

#paleo science!!! We built ML fossil segmentation tools to save paleontologists time and money. Everything is online and open-source! Amazing collab with @melanieduring.com + @kordinglab.bsky.social @perahlberg.bsky.social at @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social @upenn.edu @jhuapl.bsky.social @jhu.edu @ki.se!

#FossilFriday Everyone's favorite tristichopterid sarcopterygian, Eusthenopteron! At the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

One of my scientific heroes!

One of America’s first female scientific illustrators, Orra White Hitchcock (1796 – 1863), wife of Edward Hitchcock, the President of Amherst College. She made educational illustrations and teaching material.

Continuing the International Day of Women in Science. Mary Ann Woodhouse (Mantell)(1795-1869) self taught artist who illustrated hundreds of plates and specimens for Gideon Mantell, helping with discovery & description of the Iguanadon, one of the first dinosaurs (celebrating 200 year anniversary!)

Happy international women in science day! I say happy, but I hope we all realize we will have to fight a lot harder sgain to earn our place in science. The rise of fascism is leading to dramatic cuts in science, and specifically wants us to serve as housewives again.

It's #internationaldayofwomenandgirlsinscience . It's an especially stressful time for many early career scientists as programs in the US are cut and hampered, but we deserve to be celebrated too. There are so many of us out in the world doing awesome work. Here's to all of you!

A new paper for the new year 📰 How can we visualize changes in chemical composition of fossil teeth and scales? @matthewbc.bsky.social and colleagues discuss in: peerj.com/articles/187... #Palaeontology #biogeochemistry

Looking to read more this year? Why not start with my new article published today in @Peerj on how we can tell if original minerals are preserved in fossils. #paleontology #biogeochemistry peerj.com/articles/187...

The current cover of Nature spotlights the new paper on reconstructing food webs and the rise of dinosaurs through coprolites, by Qvarnstrom et al (ft. @grzegorzniedz.bsky.social and @perahlberg.bsky.social). Read more at: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fossil poo and puke show how dinosaurs took over the world. Slowly, over 10s of millions of years, as they ate new plants & bugs. Not a joke! It's innovative new work, published in Nature, led by pal & former postdoc Martin Qvarnstrom My thoughts @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/s...

We got the cover! @grzegorzniedz.bsky.social 🧪

Welcome to Bluesky, @grzegorzniedz.bsky.social! One to follow if you are interested in palaeontology, especially tetrapod faunas of the Triassic and early Jurassic.🧪