Suchomimus in blue and Irritator in orange as scale comparisons

Suchomimus in blue and Irritator in orange as scale comparisons

Suchomimus

Suchomimus

Spinosaurids are as enigmatic as they are diverse, Suchomimus at perhaps 11 metres was the largest known member of the Baryonychinae, while Irritator at around 6 metres is regarded as the smallest of the Spinosauridae.

More WIP on displays for next months @dinoconuk.bsky.social charity auction 🏴‍☠️🦖

A grey T-shirt, with a simple black print on the front. The print includes one of my pencil sketches of a T. rex, and beneath it a “No AI” logo, along with the words “No to AI-Generated Dinosaurs. Keep Palaeoart Human”

Thought I’d get myself a T-shirt printed for DinoCon next month, so people know who I am. Putting my name on it seemed a bit naff, so I did this instead. I think it’s very “me”. 🤷‍♂️

Walking with dinosaurs: Mystery of Pachyrhinosaurus mass grave in Canada - BBC News A group of researchers have come to Pipestone Creek in Canada to figure out why thousands of dinosaurs are buried here.

A closer look at one of the featured digsites in Walking with Dinosaurs - Pipestone Creek! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Teeth first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient fish, fossil scans find Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure—and yes, pain—as we bite and chew ...

New paper from the lab: Our teeth arose as sensory organs on the outside of the body of ancient jawless fish.!! Congrats to Yara Haridy and the team!
Background and video: phys.org/news/2025-05...
Open Access Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
News and Views: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Our report on employment is out in Paleobiology
(They did let us append that the paper was accepted before the election/changes to NSF and other granting agencies)

Employment in paleontology: status and trends in the United States | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I am very pleased to announce that my first scientific paper & first author paper, has just been published !

Rise of the King: Gondwanan Origins and Evolution of Megaraptoran Dinosaurs

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Rise of the king: Gondwanan origins and evolution of megaraptoran dinosaurs | Royal Society Open Science Late Cretaceous Earth was dominated by theropods such as tyrannosauroids and megaraptorans; however, it is unclear how these clades diversified and grew to massive proportions. This study aimed to con...

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Congratulations to my good friend @stevoallain.bsky.social for his new paper on Palaeontology, it’s deliciously open access and concerns tyrannosauroids and megaraptorans in terms of origin, size and distribution. Love you my friend and proud of you! 🦖🖤

Smiling bearded rogue, dimpled of cheek, glad in Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, holding a Allosaurus patch

Large scale animatronic Allosaurus from the early 90’s

Replica of Big Al at the wonderful Lapworth Museum

Allosaurus with a taste for sea food by the wonderful Steve White

The @iknowdino.bsky.social reward just arrived, & I’ve been a backer of this wonderful podcast for many years! Allosaurus is iconic, from Dinamation, Lapworth Museums Big Al, to a stunning graduation commission for my good friend @dinomaster.bsky.social via the mighty @sharkbitesteve.bsky.social 🖤🦖

The structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record in North America Dean et al. examine the fossil record of North American dinosaurs prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Estimates of detection probability from occupancy models decrease prior to the extinction...

🚨 I'm super happy to announce that our new paper is finally out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🚨

We used the ecological approach of occupancy modelling to investigate the structure of the dinosaur fossil record prior to the K/Pg mass extinction!

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Your Friends The Titanosaurs: Chadititan calvoi No sooner do I finish one titanosaur post when another new one shows up for its turn in the spotlight. Our latest guest, Chadititan calvoi ...

equatorialminnesota.blogspot.com/2025/03/your...

We have a rich fossil heritage on the south coast, marine reptiles, dinosaurs, the first humans on these islands... And everything in between. Come and find out about it at our new exhibition, running from April 4th to June 1st.
godshousetower.org.uk/eventer/exhi...
@unisouthampton.bsky.social

Tickets are available to buy now! 🦖🦕🥳

www.dinocon.co.uk/tickets

#DinoConUK #Devon #Exeter #Dinosaur #Convention #Event #UniversityOfExeter

Two Tyrannosaurus wrestle by biting one another ON THEIR MOTHERHUBBIN' FACES. They lean towards the right of the image, the further animal trying to wrench its jaws out of the bite of the closer. One foot of each animal is off the ground, and the tail of the closer individual arcs upwards. Dust and debris scatter as they stagger around the clearing. Behind them is a nice, pleasant day with blue skies and shady trees; the sort of place you might picnic if it weren't for the threat of two 8-tonne reptiles trampling you while they settled their differences. The experience is similar to being in some city parks.

For #valentinesday and #FossilFriday, here's Tyrannosaurus engaging in face biting, a behaviour evidenced from numerous tooth gouges and puncture wounds in their skulls. Among living species, face biting is strongly correlated with the onset of sexual maturity, so this image is love-adjacent, sorta.

Darwin wrote: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."

Let's celebrate #DarwinDay by reminding ourselves that everyone has moments when they feel worse for wear.

Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell in 1861:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."

www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-L...

So, hang in there, #academicsky!
🧪

Pencil drawing of an Iguanodon, a large herbivorous dinosaur with a heavy, beaked, ungulate-like head and large distinctive 'thumb' claws on its hands.

#Iguanodon was formally named 200 years ago today in 1825. The second dinosaur to be named after Megalosaurus, and one of three genera originally used to define Dinosauria.

Me next to an old “kangaroo” stance Bernissart Iguanodon cast mount at the Sedgwick Museum at Cambridge.

A modern Iguanodon on all fours (likely still a facultative quadruped) from better myology and anatomical studies and mass analysis at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt.

Life sized Iguanodon thumb spike cast at the Natural History Museum of London. On the meme, “talk dumb, get the thumb”

Happy 200th birthday #Iguanodon!

Despite being the first dinosaurs to ever be discovered, it was the second dinosaur to be described and named.

This iconic ornithopod was quite wide spread across Europe. It boasts a large thumb spike likely for grasping plant and could be used to defend itself.

A coloured painting, depicting two Iguanodon in a forested environment. The Iguanodon are bipdel and very scaly, with iguana-like crested heads. One is walking in the foreground in a determined manner, with thumb-spikes outstretched, and in the background one is stretching up to eat leaves from a tree, with a prehensile tongue gripping the branches.

Happy 200th Birthday Iguanodon!

Very much a fan of your early-20th century look depicted by Gerhard Heilmann, with prehensile tongue and power-walk

Watercolour and pencil sketch showing a Cretaceous landscape as understood in 1833. A lizard-like Iguanodon is shown at left alongside a large palm tree, its tail whirling over rolling hills in the distance. A meandering river bisects the scene, with other animals along its banks. These are, from the top down, a swimming plesiosaur in the stream, a monitor lizard-like Megalosaurus, stork-like birds, the spiky Hylaeosaurus, another swimming plesiosaur, a somewhat dog-like crocodile, and two turtles. The right side of the image shows fern-like plants, reeds and more palm trees.

Iguanodon was named 200 years ago today, so here's (AFAIK) the first time it appeared in #paleoart: an 1833 watercolour/pencil study "Reptiles Restored, the Remains of Which Are To Be Found in a Fossil State in Tilgate Forest, Sussex" by George Scharf. That's Iguanodon on the left. #Sciart thread...

Osteohistology of the unusually fast‐growing theropod dinosaur Ceratosaurus We report the histology of multiple elements attributed to four individuals of Ceratosaurus. We find that the histology and growth models corroborate previous reports of rapid tissue growth in the ge...

Sombathy, R., O’Connor, P.M. & D’Emic, M.D. (2025) Osteohistology of the unusually fast-growing theropod dinosaur Ceratosaurus. Journal of Anatomy, 00, 1–25. Available from: doi.org/10.1111/joa....

A text-heavy poster detailing what we might predict about the life appearance of the medium-large predatory dinosaur Megalosaurus. Various reconstructions abound, with a timeline of historic interpretations on the left, the oldest known life reconstruction of Megalosaurus in the top right, and my own reconstructions in the middle and bottom.

My poster on the life appearance of Megalosaurus, as presented at SVPCA 2024. A paper on this, and the history of M. reconstructions, is currently in the system and should (hopefully!) be published later this year. Posting this in the interim as a poss. useful #paleoart reference. #Sciart #dinosaur

Poster advertising the launch event for Chris Manias (editor), Palaeontology in Public (UCL Press, 2025). It contains the following text: Online Book Launch Tuesday 18 February, 18:00-19:30 (UK Time) on Zoom Chaired by Adrian Currie Responses from Mike Benton, Riley Black, Natalia Jagielska and Alison Laurence And discussion with some of the chapter authors. Register at: https://forms.office.com/e/gpWburvZPk There is also an image of the book cover. This features the text "Palaeontology in Public: Popular Science, Lost Creatures and Deep Time. Edited by Chris Manias." The cover image depicts a large long-necked Sauropod dinosaur, modelled after the famous animation "Gertie the Dinosaur" in a park, with a city skyline in the background. A range of humans are standing around Gertie, pointing at and admiring her. There is also a man in a ringmaster outfit standing on Gertie's shoulder.

We'll be having the online launch for Palaeontology in Public on Tue 18 Feb 18:00-19:30 UK-time

It will feature comments from Mike Benton, Riley Black, Natalia Jagielska and Alison Laurence, & discussion with some of the chapter authors

More info & signup link here: forms.office.com/e/gpWburvZPk

The newly described carcharodontosaur - #Tameryraptor markgrafi, looks a bit as if an Allosaurus wants to cosplay Ceratosaurus.

A lab with skeletal material

A woman with an ammonite on a beach

A woman looking at a T. rex skull in a museum

A man preparing a fossil reptile

So, you want to be a palaeontologist and study prehistoric life, but don't know where to start?

Maybe you worry you're not good enough? That you can't do field work? Or you can't afford it?

Let me take you through different options for making it in the field 👇(🧵)

UK's biggest ever dinosaur footprint trackways unearthed About 200 footprints made by dinosaurs 166 million years ago have been unearthed in a quarry in Oxfordshire.

Happy New Year! The UK's biggest ever dinosaur track site has been discovered, with @richardjbutler.bsky.social:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A. Danison et al. (2024)
Chimerism in specimens referred to Saurophaganax maximus reveals a new species of Allosaurus (Dinosauria, Theropoda)
Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology 12(1): 81-114
doi: doi.org/10.18435/vam...
journals.library.ualberta.ca/vamp/index.p...

About that Saurophaganax paper Newly out in VAMP: Danison, Andy D., Wedel, Mathew J., Barta, Daniel E., Woodward, Holly N., Flora, Holley M., Lee, Andrew H., and Snively, Eric. 2024. Chimerism of specimens referred to Saurophaga…

Great description of the work by Danison et al. 2024, the status of #Saurophaganax, and the scientific method at work: testing hypotheses, retesting later with more data, and knowing a hypothesis could be tested again in the future.
svpow.com/2024/12/22/a...

East Sussex: Dinosaur teeth discovered in Bexhill A new study says a discovery at Ashdown Brickworks helped unearth a community of dinosaurs.

Published today ... our study of predatory dinosaur diversity in the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Group of the Wealden. New data on one of the oldest Cretaceous dinosaur assemblages, revealing new spinosaurid, tyrannosauroid and dromaeosaurid lineages ... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #dinosaurs

For the 165th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, here are two theropod dinosaurs—T. rex & a hummingbird. Despite all the differences, T. rex is more closely related evolutionarily to this hummingbird than T. rex is to, say, Allosaurus! Still blows my mind! 🦖 More... 1/2

Image of the world showing fossil occurrences recorded in the Paleobiology Database as coloured dots with a geological timescale at the bottom

The Paleobiology Database has landed on Bluesky! ✨

Here we'll be posting database updates, new publications and all things fossil-data-related 🌍🐚

Be sure to check out our website for more info on how to contribute to and use PBDB data as well as loads of other resources! 🦕📊

paleobiodb.org

Bluesky is emerging as the new platform for science - Mike Young Academy Scientific Twitter is about to find its true successor. And it is not X. This, our latest release, shows that the Bluesky network of scientists is growing — and growing.

A mapping of how Bluesky is becoming the new Scientific Twitter

mikeyoungacademy.dk/bluesky-is-e...