A recap of my recent ISELV conference trip in Morocco.

An Increase in Animal Diversity was Facilitated by Ecologically‐Driven Brain Complexity Throughout the Cambrian The Brain-First Hypothesis suggests that the Cambrian transition from animals with simple body plans and simple brains to more complex animals was driven by a selection for brains with increased neur...

New paper published! Another of my "sabbatical papers" - a series of papers that evolved and matured through discussions with colleagues while I was on a six month roaming sabbatical a couple of years ago. This one discusses the #Cambrian #explosion.
1/6

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

April 20, 1798, birthday of Canadian geologist William Edmond Logan.
Becoming fascinated with geology while studying & working in Scotland, he later became the 1st director of the Geological Survey of #Canada. After 20 years of work he published his monumental "The Geology of Canada" (1863)

#FossilFriday Space, the final frontier. Branching cyclostome bryozoan battling it out for living space with two cheilostome bryozoans on a shell from the Early Pleistocene Nukumaru Limestone, Whanganui Basin, New Zealand.

A bedding surface with lots of little holes (gas bubbles formed beneath a microbial mat) and a pointy ended frond of Arborea spinosa with a large disc (bottom) and a above us a bushy/tree-shaped frond of Primocandelabrum, also with basal holdfast disc

I’ve been a bit remiss with #FossilFriday (teaching palaeontology for the first time since 2005).
The ground is thawing here and we have had a couple of field days already so here is a newly uncovered A. spinosa and a Primocandelabrum sp. to enjoy from our #Ediacaran #InnerMeadow lagerstatte.

Fossil Unboxing! Crinoids YouTube video by Manitoba Museum

It's time for a fossil unboxing! During field work last year, our palaeontology field team uncovered a huge block of ancient sea floor, teaming with fossil lifeforms.

In this video join @cambrojoe.bsky.social in removing the fossil's protective plaster jacket: youtube.com/shorts/eb3EE...

POSSIBLE RESEARCH TOPICS

If you are interested in macroevolution, macroecology, fossil record, stratigraphy and stuff, please consider applying for the 2026 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA PF) grant this year in my lab.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/hosting...

#FossilFriday‼️🐳 Jaw with serrated teeth of the late Eocene (~35 Mya) whale Zygorhiza kochii from southern Alabama. This is a smaller whale species than the giant Alabama state fossil, the whale Basilosaurus cetoides. UA Museums Research & Collections paleontology collection. Collector: Mark Uhen

#FossilFriday‼️🐳 Jaw with serrated teeth of the late Eocene (~35 Mya) whale Zygorhiza kochii from southern Alabama. This is a smaller whale species than the giant Alabama state fossil, the whale Basilosaurus cetoides. UA Museums Research & Collections paleontology collection. Collector: Mark Uhen

April 6, 1821, publication date of two prehistoric reptiles - the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus - by paleontologist William Conybeare
...

Mosura fentoni

Day 1 drawing Extinct Aquatic Creatures as part of Ngabuburit activities during Ramadhan.

Our palaeontology and geology collections include approximately 35,000 specimens, which makes storing them no simple feat! Space and protection of the specimens is considered, with the final storage taking various forms, including support jackets, vials, microscope slides, and boxes. #FossilFriday

This #FossilFriday: where it all began! As a child, I regularly collected Cambrian trilobites at Manuels River with my older brothers. That eventually led me to becoming a palaeontologist and science educator, two roles I dearly love to this day. ❤️

Two plots showing genus-level diversity of conulariids through time. The top plot (with a sketch of a conulariid in the top left corner) shows changing diversity of numbers of genera from the Ediacaran on the left, through a peak in the Late Ordovician, with a decline towards the end Triassic on the right. Black line and data points use the range through metric; orange line and points use the sampled in bin metric. The lower plot as the same time scale but shows range-based sampling completeness for conulariid genera.

And then there were none: decrease of origination & the decline of Conulariida onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #PapersinPalaeontology #FossilFriday

Welcome back to #FossilFriday

Here is section of limestone full of brachiopods shells. There are at least 3 different types of brachiopods species featured here. This includes Cincinnetina, Glyptorthis and Rafinesquina. This comes from the Upper Ordovician Liberty Formation from Cincinnati, Ohio.

A photo of a fossilized trilobite. The animal is oblong and multi-segmented, and somewhat resembles a horseshoe crab.

This Trilobite Tuesday, let’s head to Oklahoma’s Henryhouse Formation. The mid-sized trilobite Anasobella asper, pictured here, is among the rarest found at this site. No more than a dozen complete, articulated examples of this 1.2-in- (3-cm-) long Silurian cheirurid have ever been uncovered.

Congrats to @gwynchil.bsky.social on her first first-author publication in @paleosoc.bsky.social Paleobiology! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... - based on her undergrad thesis w/ me at Williams, Gwyn finds that tiny worm teeth(scolecodonts) get smaller across the Late Devonian extinction event

Discover, learn, and engage in the first of our Curator Conversations! @cambrojoe.bsky.social will be sharing about the latest palaeontological field work and research here at the Museum, and more!

RSVP to attend: manitobamuseum.ca/event/curator-conversati...

Better photo of the second trilobite I found in the Anti-Atlas.
The first picture didn’t show the details well, but this one makes the preservation much clearer — especially the eyes and thorax segments.
Found in the field, which makes it even more special.
#trilobite #fossil #paleontology

An image of a lecture theatre. In the foreground are the dark silhouettes of the attendees, while at the front the lecturer is glancing at the slides. The slides are projected on a large screen at the front.

A view of the poster hall. In the foreground you can see a poster titled "Algal Stromatolites". There is a line of posters extending down the hall, and the hall is packed with people looking at the posters.

An image from a workshop on placoderms. In the foreground the presenter, Dr. Melina Jobbins, is speaking to two participants about the fossil in front of them. Lots of smiles all around!

An image from the second workshop on fossil fish identification. The presenter, Dr. Julien Divay, has just been presented an APS t-shirt as thanks for presenting. He's grinning widely and looking over at Mona Trick, the symposium organizer.

Thanks to everyone who attended our Paleo 2026 symposium last weekend!

Thanks also to all of the presenters, poster presenters, workshop leaders, and volunteers for making this such an amazing weekend!

#palaeontology #paleontology #fossils #dinosaurs #alberta

Probably a dendroid graptolite.

Promotional image for Curator Conversations "Looking Forward in Deep Time: Palaeontology at the Manitoba Museum" with Dr. Joe Moysiuk, Curator of Palaeontology and Geology, on March 24, 2026 at 2:30 pm. On the right is a headshot of Dr. Moysiuk, and along the bottom are images of a trilobite fossil and off-site field work.

Discover, learn, and engage in the first of our Curator Conversations! @cambrojoe.bsky.social will be sharing about the latest palaeontological field work and research here at the Museum, and more!

RSVP to attend: manitobamuseum.ca/event/curato...

#FossilFriday

Very interesting - seems that like ammonites, some belemnites may also have survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. ☄️☠️ Unlike ammonites which only persisted a few 100 thousand years they lasted a long time - into the Eocene at least! 🤯

New records of osteolepiforms, dipnoans (lungfish), onychodonts, and placoderms from Manitoba.
#ManitobaFossils #CanadaFossils
cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/...

#TrilobiteTuesday

Here is the cephalon (head) portion of an Olenellus trilobite from the Lower Cambrian Rome shale collected in Shelby County, Alabama. Early cambrian rocks in the Southeast are poorly exposed but and hard to find fossils in. These are some of the earliest trilobites in N. America.

New Stigall Lab paper! Noel Hernandez Gomez analyzed niche stability across the Richmondian Invasion in Nashville, TN using PaleoENM--and found that Nashville and Cincinnati faunas responded differently to the same invasion event. Super interesting! authors.elsevier.com/a/1miJF_j8pCF4

Launching this month, Curator Conversations is a new speaker series bringing you face-to-face with the experts who uncover the stories of our province—and beyond.

Engage, ask questions, and see the Manitoba Museum like never before: https://vrl.link/2c

#FossilFriday A beautiful Cretaceous seastar. This fully articulated specimen of Calliderma was collected in the Chalk of England.

Diversity of tooth mineralisation patterns at the base of crown chondrichthyans Communications Biology - The study of three in situ preserved chondrichthyan tooth files reveals histological and developmental disparity at the stem of crown chondrichthyans and provides insights...

Our work on the histology and mineralization patterns of 3 Devonian chondrichthyan taxa from Morocco is finally out now! I am very happy to share this work and hope there will be more to come about early shark tooth histology!
Thanks to all my co-authors, especially Hector Botella!
rdcu.be/e34zE

Introducing the soft-bodied fossil Paleocanna tentaculum n. gen. n. sp., a tube-dwelling medusozoan. The first 3 authors are students.👏

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

It's Trilobite Tuesday! Some trilobite fossils provide extra insight about life in the Paleozoic seas—like this 430-million-year-old Arctinurus from the Rochester Shale of New York! Its 5-in- (12.7-cm-) long body is covered in brachiopod shells that hitched a ride on the trilobite's carapace.