Well, well, well. Look what was spotted a week before it hit shelves at my local Barnes and Noble.

Bone microanatomy and weight-bearing adaptations in the giant proboscidean Deinotherium giganteum (Kaup, 1829) Bone anatomy reflects the mechanical and functional constraints to which the skeleton is subjected. In graviportal taxa, the primary constraint is gravity, requiring specific adaptations in bone struc...

New paper out in Geodiversitas! 🦣🦴
Ever wonder what the inside of Deinotherium giganteum looks like? Find out about it here:
geodiversitas.com/48/7
Big thanks to the Budapest HNHM for providing access to this unique material! With Prof. Mihaly Gasparik & @segesdimartin.bsky.social

a man in sunglasses says they don t stop coming and they don t stop coming and ALT: a man in sunglasses says they don t stop coming and they don t stop coming and

You'll never be able to stop us because:

Oof one day ill finish this. Mammuthus columbi

Commission for @tyrannonerd.bsky.social

Speculative primitive spinosaurid

inspired by megalosaurids and Monolophosaurus

Colors based in Potamites montanicola suggested by my friend @cascoclauda.bsky.social as usual c:

#paleoart for @edgescience.bsky.social !!

Results from the #paleostream!
Don Juan (still unnamed rat fish relative), Muttaburrasaurus, Lystrosaurus (baby) and Bakonydraco!

Homotherium hadarensis ambushing unfortunate Australopithecus afarensis #Sciart

an adult Brachiosaurus walks past the camera, only its two front legs are visible, a green juvenile is camoflagued amongst the foliage in the foreground Brachiosaurus is one of the most famous sauropods (typically large long-necked dinosaurs) that is typically reconstructed with its more complete relative: Giraffatitan, the juvenile in the foreground is based on the specimen SMA 0009 (nicknamed Toni) which might not be Brachiosaurus

a Centrosaurus with a deformed nasal horn and left epioccipitals faces head on with the camera, only some short shrubbery separating the two. the nasal horn is split in two with the right side reduced to a stub while the left side is growing out of control to the left of the animal. the left epioccipitals have the same number as the right side indicating that this is a genetic deformity where multiple epioccipitals have developed as the "wrong" kind, the second most epioccipital has recently punctured though the parietal frill fenestra and scabbed blood is seen around the wound Centrosaurus is a kind of ceratopsian dinosaur (frilled and horned dinosaurs) that typically has a pair of epioccipitals at the top of the frill which point downwards, with the next pair creating a hooked shape. this deformity where epioccipitals are "pulled" upwards along the frill and develop in an atypical way has been observed in other ceratopsians but not Centrosaurus

a Rauisuchus quickly adopts a bipedal stance (using its tail as a third limb for balance) while my sona stands behind it and gestures towards it while looking at the camera. three abstract boxy shapes are in the background Rauisuchus is the namesake for the paraphyletic grade "Rauisuchia" which include members like Postosuchus. it was a quadrupedal and fully terrestrial ancestor of crocodiles that had a large brow ridge, most likely to help shade its eyes from the sun

a Muttaburrasaurus takes a drink during the day, blurry rock formations can be seen in the background Muttaburrasaurus is one of the most well known australian dinosaurs, recently the holotype was reinterpreted, the depictions where the nose was large and continuous is based on a misinterpretation of the material, in actuality the bony crest curves downwards before the end of the mouth making the jaw end in a point rather than a blunt end similar to ceratopsian beaks. here i chose to not reconstruct it with the typical nose balloons, and in their place put a fleshy comb, i speculate that the extra space in the nose was for sound amplification and gave them chicken-like wattle earlobes to help dampen the volume of their speculated loud calls. a recent paper has placed it within the clade Elasmaria as opposed to a hadrosaur-line iguanodont, its new cranial anatomy matches the group very well at a glance

here's what we sketched during this week's #Paleostream flocking:

Brachiosaurus, Centrosaurus, Rauisuchus, and Muttaburrasaurus

#AusPalaeo

Just a reminder that we have yet to find feathers for *any* Hell Creek theropod, even for the ones that are likely to have them. All we have are scales.

Consider me intrested.

Interesting. We now have scales from Hell Creek caenagnathids but no feathers yet. Have these tracks been published?

It's the scales on the plantar surface of the foot in birds.

Any impressions of the podotheca?

Here's a T. Rex bored to death trying to bite their own tail. My partner asked me to animate it in stop motion, after she watched a video about the very important topic of "could T. Rex chew its own tail like a dog". The puppet is still a work in progress 🦖

Reconstructed skeleton in front view of Hadrosaurus, with its head turned towards its left.

#FossilFriday Hadrosaurus foulkii skeleton at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia

Mastodon teeth collected from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky by Lewis and Clark for President Jefferson. Photo: Justin Tweet

A massive partial skull of Bison latifrons, originally exhibited in the Peale Museum of Philadelphia and later catalogued in the collections of the American Philosophical Society

Jefferson's personal Megalodon tooth (yes, really), sent to him from South Carolina. The president's name is written across the left margin of the tooth

An illustration of the phalanges and claws of the giant ground sloth Megalonyx, originally described and named by Jefferson himself

This #FossilFriday it only seems appropriate to spotlight the collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences, oldest natural history museum in the Americas and currently in budgetary peril. 🧵 Thread to follow, with links to support the museum.

First: Thomas Jefferson's fossil collection...

Have you seen this petition yet? The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University needs your support!

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University was my core natural history museum growing up. It is also by far the nearest one to me, and the most fundamental in Philadelphia, but faces funding issues today. Please support it by signing.
c.org/7zdSm5pbqX

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University needs your support! Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?

The Academy of Natural Sciences was founded in 1812 — over 200 years ago — and it's been underfunded ever since. At a time like this when NSF budgets are being slashed and the museum is receiving little institutional support from Drexel, we deeply appreciate you spreading the word: c.org/Rkpyfx9HRN

a promotional still of moeritherium as depicted in 'walking with beasts'

a semiaquatic lifestyle for the proboscidean moeritherium appears to be confirmed by a new study on its enamel microwear by semprebon, sanders, and uttecht 🐘 vindicating its portrayal in 'walking with beasts' almost 25 years ago
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Needle Maw

ENHYDROSS: A New Mechanistic Model Supports the Trans‐Oceanic Dispersal Capability of Terrestrial Vertebrates We introduce ENHYDROSS, a new mechanistic model that uses optimal swimming speed and minimum cost of transport to estimate maximum dispersal distances and durations for vertebrates, enabling assessme...

ENHYDROSS: A New Mechanistic Model Supports the Trans‐Oceanic Dispersal Capability of Terrestrial Vertebrates - Pantelides - 2026 - Ecology and Evolution - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I am pleased to announce the discovery of Palusgnathus katzenbergi gen. et sp. nov. from the Carboniferous of Scottland. It preserves the earliest known amniote eggs showing the distinctive germ layers.

Your annual reminder that in this day and age, posting hoax paleontology (and other science) "discoveries" on April Fool's Day **will be misinterpreted by MANY people** unless the discovery is incredibly absurd.

Oxygen supply through the tracheolar–muscle system does not constrain insect gigantism - Nature New evidence suggests that diffusive oxygen transport through the tracheolar–muscle system is not the limiting factor on insect body size.

And just like that, another long-held hypothesis in paleontology bites the dust. Or at the very least unless future studies contest this one. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

First time having to work on two manuscripts at once. One is now in the oven, now to get back to prepping the other one.

After getting back into Spinosaur Tales, I was thinking "oh man, an Animal Farm reference would be so good for a header for a section on Spinosaurus terrestrial locomotion ('Four legs good, two legs bad')." Witton and Hone were reading my mind to say the least.

TLDR: Just as a lack of soft tissue preservation can skew our interpretations of reconstructing extinct animals in paleoart, it can also skew any "genetic reconstructions".

Unfortunately, we don't have any dire wolf fur to say one way or another. So, in absence of soft tissue preservation, and knowing that a lot of hybridization was going on, how do we know which genes were phenotypically expressed and which ones were not?

Now remember when Colossal claimed that dire wolves had light coats because they supposedly found genes that coded for them in their DNA, despite it contrasting with what is currently known of their environment?