Curious about the role of cranial sutures during headbutting behaviors in bovids? Join me for a discussion today at 2:45 in B110/111 at #SICB2026

Live The CVN lab will be performing a headbutting livestream “LAN party” to educate about what we do and raise funds for student travel. The event will take place on December 9th 2025, from …

Why are we counting headbutts on our livestream? First, we want to understand this behavior. But also, we're a neurodegeneration lab, so we want to know if goats give themselves brain injury. We have their brains, and we want to combine that data with behavior... 🧪
NicoleAckermans.com/live

Educational livestream. December 9th 7am to 7pm CST

The CVN lab is officially hosting a ~12h educational livestream next Tuesday!
It'll be like a data-collection LAN (lamb?) party where we will count as many headbutts as possible! Tune in for goats facts and to learn about our research! We are taking topic suggestions 🧪
nicoleackermans.com/live/

Modern crocodiles traded skull strength for streamlining as they adapted to water, study shows Crocodiles were not always the aquatic predators we know today. Living crocodiles evolved from ancient lineages that were equally at home on land as in water.

Fossil and digital evidence indicate modern crocodiles evolved flatter, weaker skulls for improved swimming, trading bite strength for streamlining as they adapted from land to water environments. doi.org/g9955t

Full res media slides here:

alabama.box.com/s/2pxv5wojtd...

Thanks to my co-authors @emilyrayfield.bsky.social, Jen Bright, and John Cunningham, Sandra Tavares, Ismar de Souza Carvalho, Fabiano lori and Fresia Ricardi-Branco.

Many thanks to @paleovidal.bsky.social for the paleo art

@bristolpalaeo.bsky.social

Our new paper in @royalsocietypublishing.org is out now

We show that modern crocodiles evolved flatter and weaker skulls from domed ancestors to adapt to life in water, trading skull strength for streamlining 🐊

Read here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

#Paleontology #Crocodiles #Evolution

Now there are three sassy heads in the CVN lab!

A goat skull model on a computer

Hi-Tech goat things are happening in the CVN lab! 👀

Constraints and adaptations in crocodyliform skull evolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07....

A golden retriever sits at a computer screen

how's work going in your lab over the summer?

our lab:

‘Real’ #LiquidGlass wallpaper
Beach wave #ShotoniPhone 13 Pro Max using @halideapp.bsky.social
#WWDC2025 #iOS26

Late post, but l'm happy to announce that I started a postdoc in Jan at the CVN lab with @nicoleackermans.bsky.social at UA, studying the biomechanics of headbutting in goat skulls to understand how they dissipate stress from repeated impact, and its link to neurodegeneration.

Figure showing diverse datasets analysed with SPROUT, including a skink skeleton, aardvark skull, human heart, concrete block, and foraminifera.

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...

Do you use 3D imaging like CT or MRI for research, teaching, outreach, or art? Check out our new article featuring a detailed workflow for producing 3D cinematic renderings―from tissue-level to whole-organism details―with stunning realism! doi.org/10.1016/j.is... @helsinkiuni.bsky.social