For those who struggle to read from graphics, here's the wording in plain text: "After a year off in 2025 and a period of silence, organisers of recent SVPCA have met with other interested parties to discuss future symposia, including provisional plans for a meeting in late August or early September 2026. More details to follow very soon."

News on #SVPCA, a (mostly) UK-based annual meeting devoted to vertebrate palaeontology. Things have been quiet about the meeting for the last 18 months, but a team of us are working to pick up where we left off. More details to follow ASAP, hopefully very soon.

#FossilFriday #paleontology #fossil

this is the latest AI booster talking point “we don’t know if LLMs are alive because we don’t really understand the human brain” this is NONSENSE. We understand how LLMs work, we know what they are doing and what they are not doing. How human brains or hands or feet work is not relevant!

Now the actual military has to dress like it’s not the military cuz federal law enforcement agencies dress too much like the military

Palantir was a warning sign.

Keir Starmer choosing to hand our data and security to US tech companies is an outrageous failure of judgment.

All in the name of "investment." What about national security?

A lot of people seem to think that "common sense" prevails over education (and science)...
#education #science

Here's a link to a conversation on this:
ecoevo.social/@drmambobob/...

I know rejection is common in academia but every application takes so much energy and time that every rejection is a literal waste of all that expended energy that doesn't get rewarded.
#academia

If you can use existing tools and skill set to accomplish something effectively, then there’s no point in learning new skills and tools unless they let you do something you can’t do.
#skills #datascience

Richard donated a tonne of fossils to Lincoln while I was there. That single-handedly increased our teaching collection by multiple-folds. He was very generous and always keen to help younger people learn.

In shock to hear that Richard Forrest passed this morning. What a guy. I've met few people as enthusiastic about fossils. He had a whole life, whole career, outside of the academic world but made huge contributions to scholarship. And was so kind and welcoming to everyone. RIP.

Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus scavenges a dead pterosaur

A gloomy image of the elasmosaur Albertonectes foraging in the deep sea.

"Plesiosaurus" macrocephalus, a species known only from a famous but poorly studied juvenile specimen, and its possible parent: a mature rhomaelosaurid.

Elasmosaurid Thalassomedon surfaces to take a breath. This image shows what you may have actually seen from a boat while marine reptile watching, once we consider the physics of how plesiosaurs moved and floated.

All plesiosaurs today for #FossilFriday, in tribute to our departed friend Richard Forrest.

Just learned that Richard Forrest, one of the pillars of British vert palaeo, has passed away unexpectedly. Richard was such a friendly, welcoming person, an expert on British marine reptiles, and the unofficial custodian of SVPCA. We spent many hours chatting in various pubs. He will be missed.

#FossilFriday a magnificent Iguanodon dinosaur skull from the Bernissart collection in Brussels. The prominent arch is the palpebral made up of two bones in Iguanodon presumably to protect the eye as it foraged through spiky Early Cretaceous plants or maybe it acted as a sunshade in those hot times.

Palaeontology in Public Since the establishment of concepts of deep time in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, palaeontology has been one of the most high-profile sciences. Dinosaurs, mammoths, human ancesto...

Last year I published a chapter with @richardfallon.bsky.social comparing Conan Doyle's Lost World with Crichton's Jurassic Park and the parallels between the two.

Yesterday we were awarded 'Doylean Honors' from the Arthur Conan Doyle Society for our scholarship. acdsociety.com/Honors/Honor...

Naming a police officer is not doxxing. We aren’t supposed to have secret police in America.

Raptor's Nest (He/Him) (@drmambobob@ecoevo.social) Attached: 4 images Look what I got! #zoology #toys

I love terrestrial isopods!
ecoevo.social/@drmambobob/...

A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe - Nature New results indicate that rhabdodontids and the previously described Ajkaceratops are actually distinctive European ceratopsians, a group better known from Asia and North America.

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...

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 ⤵️

Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of Reading on Fi... PhD Project - Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of...

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on the phylogenetics and evolution of felids!

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on evolution and environmental changes in Polystira!
blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

Still time to apply for this PhD studentship on the evolution of dragonflies!
blogs.reading.ac.uk/crocus-dla/c...

"because AI is being crammed into everything, I could be using it at any time, it's hard to avoid!" should make you angry, not make you go "welp guess I gotta accept AI now"

In the process of transitioning away from Adobe and MS Office, exactly because of this sort of crap.

Most people confuse subject expertise with instantaneous encyclopaedic recollection. If that’s what an expert is, then yes, LLMs can definitely replace experts. But thats not what subject expertise is.

As an educator I’m baffled why we’re being told LLMs are good tools for studying…reviewing the literature and summarising key information is a core set of skills that you should have as a graduate level subject expert.

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research:

they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

Yes, this is exactly what happened to me. I lost more time checking and verifying than doing it myself, so I quit

I am highlighting a bunch of examples of people genuinely trying to use LLMs and genuinely not finding them very useful to illustrate that this really isn’t just a “rabid AI haters who’ve never actually tried it” conversation

Looking for a PhD in palaeontology or associated fields? Just a heads up that we have a list of opportunities on the @thepalass.bsky.social website:

palass.org/phd-opportun...

⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky

(If you're advertising one, you can add it to our listings too: palass.org/form/webform... )