Where are all the field studies? This ⬇️ important but rather depressing paper describes how conducting, & crucially initiating, field studies is becoming harder & rarer. A short 🧵 (and a call for more fieldwork) www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

Tahlia Pollock @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social has an amazing new study integrating 3D shape, biomechanics, and optimality modelling, helps explain why so many mammals evolve sabre teeth: functional optimality was a key driver behind the repeated evolution of extreme sabre-tooth morphologies.

Fascinating…

Looking for reviewers before Christmas

Eugenia, P.M., Bona, P., Siroski, P. and Chinsamy, A. (2025), Analyzing the Life History of Caimans: The Growth Dynamics of Caiman latirostris From an Osteohistological Approach. Journal of Morphology, 286: e70010. doi.org/10.1002/jmor...

Spent the afternoon helping my students prepare for a big day tomorrow. The first day of sampling for our AHA-funded project starts at 7:30am tomorrow!!!

#artadventcalendar x #fossilfriday Valenictus sheperdi, an extinct tusked (but otherwise toothless) walrus from the Pliocene Purisima Formation of northern California - here shown cruising along an early rocky shore habitat. We named this earlier this year. 🐡🐬🦑🦖

10 anuran species x 4 muscles (3D diceCT scan data) x 40 to 168 fibres/muscle = a monumental study of form and function in frog legs by Leavey et al. WOW!! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#artadventcalendar day 18: Life restoration of the 17-18 myo fossil walrus Pelagiarctos from southern California, with a photograph of the mandible overlain - walruses were still quite sea lion like at the time. Graphite and digital, 8x10", 2012. #sciart #paleoart #paleontology 🐡🐋🦖

Amy M. Balanoff (2024) Dinosaur palaeoneurology: an evolving science Biology Letters 20(12): 20240472 doi: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Natalia Jagielska Thomas G Kaye Michael B Habib Tatsuya Hirasawa Michael Pittman (2024) New soft tissue data of pterosaur tail vane reveals sophisticated, dynamic tensioning usage and expands its evolutionary origins eLife 13:RP100673. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Our new paper announcing a freely available database of 3D scans of primate skeletal material--a major effort led by Sergio Almécija & his team at the American Museum of Natural History. 🧪 🏺 #paleosky #anatomy #primates #anthropology #morphology #zoology #paleoanthropology #openscience

🚨 New Paper Alert 🚨 We put decades of effort in collecting this massive dataset on movement and diving behaviour of northern elephant seals and now we make it available! 🦭🦑🌎 Check it out here 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨New postdoc positions available: we are looking for 2 postdoctoral researchers to join a large, collaborative effort to document, describe, and investigate the biodiversity of tiny, cryptobenthic fishes in the Indo-Pacific 🤏🐠🧪. More details: fishandfunctions.com/join%F0%9F%9... Please repost 🦑🧪

Do you need a salamander phylogeny? You're in luck! We put together the largest salamander phylogeny to date based on molecular markers and used more fossil calibrations than any other currently available trees. 765 salamander species! Check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Realizing that I’ve basically become by dad… same beard, same sorts of glasses, same corny jokes… miss you dad (can you tell which ones are me?)

Quick sketch I did as a request from patron Flouder who suggested I sketched the Late Jurassic mammaliform Castorocauda lutrasimilis #paleoart #sciart #sketch

Awesome image showing how birds can be so smart despite having small brains — more neurons packed into that small space (Olkowicz et al. 2016: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....)

Over 30 prominent scientists call for a ban on the creation of a "mirror cell"--a microbe made of molecules that are mirror images of their natural forms. It could cause a mind-boggling global disaster. Here's my story [gift link] 🧪https://nyti.ms/3OUCXp6

The birth of fruit fly's central nervous system imaged with multicolor #adaptive #lightsheet microscopy. The microscope self-aligns to a signal that appears during imaging. www.nature.com/articles/nbt...

Biomass of living mammals, compared! I knew the world was mostly humans and cows but I'm pleasantly surprised that baleen whales are a visible chunk due to pure size, rather than numbers. Original paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (This was on other sites but I haven't seen it here with alt text)

This is the face of a shark! I've stained the mineralised tissues to show that their teeth and scales are both made of the same enamel-like material 🦈 🦷 🧪

Just after thanksgiving I went to Fire Island Wilderness Visitor Center, and besides a beautiful sunset, had a visit with an old friend, Balaenoptera physalus #whales #longisland #fireisland

New croc paper alert! 🐊🚨 In this new study led by my friend and colleague Thiago Fachini, we reassessed the cranial morphology and phylogenetic position of Barreirosuchus franciscoi, a peirosaurian from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New snake renderings from CT scan data, created using our recently published SmARTR photorealistic pipeline! 🐍 Our manuscript is now in its final published form: doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

📖Published📖 In our new Application article, Papadopoulou et al. present the swaRmverse package, an R package for the comparative analysis of collective motion 🌎 🧪 Find out more here👇 https://buff.ly/3CSAEQW

🧪 See the full list of speakers who will be presenting at our #biologists100 conference. https://100yearsconference.biologists.com/programme/speakers 📅 We welcome abstract submissions for both oral and poster presentations by 13 December 2024. #SciSky

Not an African safari - Trafalgar Square with hippos, elephants and lions ~120,000 years ago..Postcard from the British Geological Survey

I’m recruiting a PhD student for my new group at Stockholm University! The project will be focused on in vivo modeling epigenetic drivers of craniofacial tissue shaping. If interested, message me a CV

Are you interested in some analytical training in paleobiology and a grad student? Then apply for a place in the Summer School 2025! The call is open as of today. More info can be found here: www.paleosynthesis.nat.fau.de/index.php/ap...

Hmm.. feels right

Incredibly cool work by @kevinhatala.bsky.social et al.!! 👣

A paper in Nature reports on the use of fossilized samples of faeces and vomit to reconstruct the rise of the dinosaurs to become the dominant players in Earth’s ancient ecosystems. https://go.nature.com/412c4af 🧪

Phylogenetic comparative analysis of suspensory adaptations in primates https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39591816/

Functional and phylogenetic signals in the pectoral girdle of Thalattosuchia and Dyrosauridae (Crocodylomorpha) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39587815/

#SICB2025 workshop registration is now live!!! If want to learn how to take your specimen and turn it into accessible and reusable data then check out our workshop. You can register here (www.xcdsystem.com/sicb/program...) if you're registered for the conference. @nocturnetwork.bsky.social

Are you working on palaeontological projects in Latin America? Then, you should consider presenting at the 12th Latin American Congress of Palaeontology. === XII Latin American Congress of Paleontology 📆March 3-7, 2025 📍BUAP, Puebla, Mexico sites.google.com/view/xii-clp...

Exploring the potential of dental calculus to shed light on past human migrations in Oceania www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stockholm is looking for a senior curator in paleontology! Come be my neighbor! Stockholm is a lovely city! recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...

Excited about the manuscript coming from our recent study presented at AHA www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1...

One of the many perks of working on Desmostylia is the abundance of derpy reconstructions. This is among the derpiest… 😍

New paper! For all of you working with 3d scans (e.g. micro-CT, MRI), check out SPROUT, a rapid open-source tool for generating segmented and parcellated data, meaning your scans are separated into the individual elements without any manual labelling or training. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Testing hypotheses of skull function with comparative finite element analysis: three methods reveal contrasting results https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.20.624579v1

I thought #fluorescencefriday would be a good opportunity for my first post here. Here are some crazy actin dynamics imaged with TIRF

Happy #FluorescenceFriday ! Let's celebrate with a colorful image of a developing ventral spinal cord of a 🐣 embryo. #neuroscience #microscopy

Bottosaurus harlani was a late Cretaceous/early Paleocene (~65 million yrs. old) crocodilian related to modern caimans. Some researchers believe their unusual rounded teeth were used for crushing their prey. This mandible (lower jaw) was found in Gloucester Co., NJ #FossilFriday

Our department of Anatomy at NYITCOM (formerly known as NYCOM) is hiring a postdoc!! Please consider applying and spread the word. Teach anatomy in the fall, research all the rest of the year, for 3 years! careers-nyit.icims.com/jobs/3786/po...

For this #FossilFriday, the early #Triassic owenettid Saurodektes kitchingorum from South Africa. This taxon (and other procolophonoids) were some of the only reptilian survivors of the End Permian #Extinction. Was it because they were burrowing? Bonus: There are fossil millipedes (: