First 10k race in six years today at Wolverhampton, together with my little brother. Started & ended inside Molineux stadium. Pleased with 40.02 but gutted not to be three seconds faster!

Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences & the University of Warsaw invite participats for paleontological excavations, in July-August. Accommodation and meals are provided. The digs uncover Triassic vertebrates in Polish Silesia. Details in thread 🧵

How can this go on for another 3 years?

Yet another line of evidence that natural history #museums are the best museums: 7.3 million people visited @nhm-london.bsky.social last year, an all-time record for any UK museum or gallery. Natural history museums play a huge role in our relationship with nature www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

Interested in hearing more about dinosaur research at Birmingham, including the "Dinosaur Highway" and the "punk rock dinosaur"? Join @profaliceroberts.bsky.social me & @kirstymedgar.bsky.social online on Thursday 7 May, 6pm. www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/bring... www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K88...

JOB CLAXON: Imaging Assistant @nhm-london.bsky.social . Permanent role. Would be good for someone with CT experience! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

We talked about this incredible new lagerstatten in the latest #FossilFiles podcast. You can listen to Rob's take on it here youtube.com/@palaeo_sans... or wherever you get your podcasts @thefossilfiles.bsky.social

Absolutely delighted to have been awarded a one-year research fellowship from @leverhulme.ac.uk. This provides me an amazing opportunity to re-immerse myself in research after six years absorbed in senior leadership roles within the College of Life & Environmental Sciences at Birmingham.

“Kemi Badenoch's spokesman denies she is ashamed of British animals” is a pretty hilarious sentence.

Example 342 for why you shouldn’t publish in Scientific Reports.

If a researcher chooses to publish all their papers in MDPI journals it’s pretty clear that they don’t care about research quality or the peer review process.

Ooo look it's me in February's The Week Junior!

This is very good: “Keir may have been a disappointment as prime minister domestically. But it doesn’t bear thinking about the state we’d be in if Kemi or Farage were in Downing Street right now.” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I had a really interesting and inspiring day @unibirmingham.bsky.social 's Earth Heritage Network event. So nice to see friends and colleagues and hear about their work in this area. Thanks Kirsty, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and Faye for launching this initiative!

Just finished watching Mackenzie Crook’s new show Small Prophets. An utter, utter joy throughout, just like The Detectorists before it.

Was the solution to palaeo mysteries hidden right in front of our faces? High powered X-ray analyses of Silurian 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 fossils reveals cryptic 👁️ & 🦴 of early vertebrates, whilst new discoveries in Cretaceous 🇭🇺 find the missing European ceratopsians. Find out more in this week's new episode!

This week we cover Fossil Files' own papers, 1st by @fossilyarns.bsky.social & @fossilrob.bsky.social, 2nd by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social, @richardjbutler.bsky.social @stevebrusatte.bsky.social and others, out now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts www.youtube.com/watch?v=RriR...

Really sad news. Hans worked on an incredible diversity of vertebrate groups but in particular made huge contributions to our understanding of the Triassic.

Finally, some sight of the elusive sun & a dry day. Spent it on the Stiperstones.

Been following this all through 2025. Think of the $$$ not spent by this may people. Some estimate $50 Billion. Probably a combination of people not wanting to come here & less disposable income for others.

Crazy story. I’m travelling to Canada twice this year. Under other circumstances both trips might have been to the US, but it’s difficult to see when I will next travel there. Canada is amazing though! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Yes. I was paid £2.20/hour to work long shifts on a supermarket checkout, working just as hard as those older than me. Even in the late 90s that felt exploitative. Higher youth minimum wage today is surely a good thing.

A new species of Spinosaurus is cool & all that but what I’d really love to see Sereno describe is that Kayenta heterodontosaurid species first mentioned in a paper 41 years ago.

More terrible news for the embattled UK higher education sector.

I've decided to revise and update one of my most important and popular blogposts "How do I become a paleontologist?". I still get asked this every few weeks so having a new version of this post to share is so useful to put people on track. archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/h...

Pretty grim reading on the future for UK academia: blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

🚨 IPC7 registration is OPEN! 🚨 ⏰ Early Bird rates available until 31 August. Save your spot and start planning your IPC7 experience! 🔗 Submit your abstract 👉 www.ipc7.site

Congrats to Ewan Bodenham @stephanspiekman.bsky.social @tweetisaurus.bsky.social Paul Upchurch & @pdmannion.bsky.social on describing Galahadosuchus, a new crocodylomorph from Triassic Gloucestershire. Reconstruction: @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The Stuttgart Natural History Museum is offering a postdoc position (m/f/d) in Temnospondyl Geochemistry E 13 TV-L, 100 %, 2 years Application deadline: March 8th, 2026 ➡ Further information: https://t1p.de/nwrfi

Is there any Winter Olympics sport that doesn't look like all the participants are hell-bent on a short life?

Roger Benson sent me some amazing CT segmentations of one of the recent fossils found by our team in the Middle Jurassic of Skye & they are incredibly exciting. This is why it is worth being a palaeontologist: the utter joy of the new and unexpected discovery.

VOLUNTEER ON A DINOSAUR DIG: We run one of the only free dinosaur digs in the USA. We work public land and the fossils go in our public museum, forever. It's hard work, but we find some cool things. If this sounds like you, we're taking applications. Link in comms. #dinosaurs

Scientists are concerned that curiosity-driven research is set to be further cut back after three research councils confirmed they have paused funding opportunities. @jgro-the.bsky.social reports #academicsky #researchfunding https://ow.ly/lpvO50Y67ku

Yesterday, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social visited us @smnstuttgart.bsky.social to talk about her amazing work on Spicomellus, which had everything that makes palaeo great: unexpected discoveries, fieldwork, prep work, bizarre anatomy, CT scanning, you name it

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

I wrote this yesterday about the hero city of Minneapolis www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOW...

Yesterday was a cold day for a visit to a very muddy Oxfordshire quarry to look at dinosaur footprints.

Join us online via Zoom on Fri 6th Feb at 19.00 GMT for our next free talk when @dremmanicholls.bsky.social of @morethanadodo.bsky.social will deliver 'Tales from a Geological Curator' Members and non-members must register in advance: non-members email [email protected] for details

In the forthcoming Morrison Formation special issue of the NMMNS Bulletin, Steve Holland and I examined whether we could identify ecological gradients in the Morrison Fm. We can't, and we think this is due to sampling. Download a copy here: naturalhistorymuseum-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/person...

Hmmmm. Looks like @tweetisaurus.bsky.social was right and I might actually be a northerner.

And again from @plos.org. This time I am invited to review a paper on urbanisation in China. These are the tactics of a predatory publisher with minimal editorial standards.

This is a really great paper, with a big boost from new fossils for Ajkaceratops. European ceratopsians are weird--and a ceratopsian identity is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence. Some thoughts / notes...

I guess that if you suggest that people might have been misclassifying their dinosaur species incorrectly for decades you should expect some outraged responses 😀

Relatives of Triceratops have never been found in Europe – until now. New research reveals that many rhabdodontid dinosaurs might actually be ceratopsians after all - rewriting what we know about Cretaceous Europe! Find out all about these dinosaurs 👇 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

A hidden diversity of European ceratopsian dinosaurs emerges blinking into the light @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Super excited to have been part of this Nature paper which provides key new evidence for horned dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe. This is the second first author Nature paper for the amazing @tweetisaurus.bsky.social in under six months! And both on ornithischians!

New material of Ajkaceratops cements its identity as a ceratopsian, but adds a new wrinkle. It turns out that many european ornithischians previously classified as iguanodontians may actually be ceratopsians! New paper by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social et al., that I provided art for (link in reply).

A shake-up of the dinosaur family tree! Rhabdodontids are not ornithopods. They are ceratopsians. There were horned dinosaurs in Europe! As shown by a new fossil of Ajkaceratops from Hungary! Check out our new study, led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social ⤵️

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Next Tuesday evening I'm giving an online seminar on Spicomellus for our funders, the British Institute of Libyan and Northern African Studies. It's free and anyone can come! Sign up here if you're interested us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...