CIPRES is shutting down at the end of June: www.phylo.org .
It's been such a good resource for the phylogenetics community. Thanks to #NSF and Simons for funding it and for all the people who have worked to grow and sustain this for so long.
Callan holds a big bread-slice-sized chunk of selenite gypsum up in front of the Sun
Rather a large crystal of gypsum... ⚒️
There are currently 6 permanent full time history jobs in the whole UK. 500+ PhDs being produced a year - not all of whom will want to pursue an academic year but likely most, and of course years will stack up onto each other. What a sector.
📣 EvolDir is now managed by @eseb.bsky.social!
We are delighted to be taking the reins and express our gratitude to both Brian Golding who began this service to the community in the mid-1980s and to @rdmpage.bsky.social who ran this account until now 👏
You can now find evoldir here: evoldir.net
Heading out for my first ever US book tour! 🇺🇸 Seattle, Bozeman, St.Louis, Boston: see you soon!
The Story of Birds officially is released one week from today. Let’s go!!!
“I used AI to combine the data from two excel lists and then send emails to people who were on one list but not another. Saved me so much time.”
My brother in academia, you just fucking discovered mail merge. Welcome to early nineties computing.
two views of the holotype skull of the brazilian spinosaurid irritator challengeri
guess who's going home at last 🎉 #IrritatorBelongstoBR #DecoloniseScience
Photograph of a view up a concrete staircase with black metal cannisters, at the top of which is a huge agglomeration of fossil ammonites
A museum display of two mounted Plateosaurus (bipedal long-knecked dinosaurs), with more fossil bones at their feet. In the background are two paintings of the animals in life
A side in view of a big Liopleurodon skeleton in a museum- a skeleton of a marine reptile, with lomg jaws with sharp teeth and big flippers
A face on view of a Gorgonopsid skeleton, with open jaws showing its big teeth
In Tübingen this week, and encountered some fossil agglomerations, and long-necked and toothy beasts, in the university palaeontology collections
There's a new dinosaur (model) at the Museum! Meet Microraptor gui. Since 2005, Museum Preparator Jason Brougham worked with Mark Norell, inaugural Macaulay Curator in the Museum’s Division of Paleontology, on modeling this amazing animal.
birds: they will never email you. and that’s a promise.
Did you say glacier-compressed wood ? 🧊
Typical ovoid cross section of a glacier-borne subfossil wood! 🌲
A warning: with The Story of Birds coming soon, I'm going to be very annoying with constant PR & marketing posts. Even more annoying than usual.
In an effort to blunt the narcissism, here are some books from other writers (yes they exist) that I've greatly enjoyed recently!
Given we had Velociraptor Awareness Day. Did you know, many species of famous theropods were named after Polish women in palaeontology. Velociraptor osmolskae & Citipati osmolskae are named after Halszka Osmólska, a Mongolian dinosaur expert, responsible for describing Deinocheirus and Gallimimus.
Two black chicken-like birds with white beaks and red eyes and yellow-green lobed feet as standing in the snow looking uncomfortable. Each one is holding up a foot.
A black chicken-like birds with white beak and red eyes and yellow-green lobed feet is walking across the snow.
Three black chicken-like birds with white beaks and red eyes and yellow-green lobed feet are standing in the snow. One in the background is pecking at something in the snow and the two in the foreground are walking gingerly across the white ground.
American Coots have started arriving and… good thing those giant, lobed feet are also pretty decent snowshoes 😂
#birds
This is a very interesting small Jurassic diorama from the Royal Ontario Museum. Obviously very old, but I find it oddly intriguing, from what's actually happening to the colors/textures/lighting.
Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts
Sea Turtle (superfamily Chelonioidea): Thank you to Ieva Slare of Beach4Art and your highly talented family of 4 from Devon, UK for stunning Wildlife Artwork highlighting Sustainability by using natural materials and raising funds for charity through calendars! #turtle #seaturtle #beach4art #nature
Sun, J., de la Torre, I. & Bibi, F. No evidence that hominin dispersal across Eurasia was part of a wider turnover in mammal distributions. Nat Commun 17, 3575 (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s414...
Size Disparity in Putative Primate Adaptive Radiations and Other Mammalian Clades - Scott - 2026 - American Journal of Biological Anthropology - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Possible track of a hunting pterosaur
Jung, J., Kim, K.S., Xing, L. et al. New large pterosaur tracks from Korea and their implications on terrestrial behavior. Sci Rep 16, 12363 (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Drawing showing the biodiversity from the Permian of Mallorca, in particular from the Port des Canonge Formation. From left to right, and from top to bottom: - Shoot and tree of a plant, possibly Feysia sp. - Storm clouds bring pouring rain to a river valley at the end of the dry season - Conchostracans similar to Triops (representing the ichnogenus Cruziana) move through the bottom of a pool - A mother varanopid and her offspring (representing the ichnogenus Dromopus) rest on a branch - A roachoid insect comes out from a burrow (representing the ichnofossil Palaeophycus tubularis) - Tramuntanasaurus tiai eating some horsetails - Early synapsids of different types (representing the ichnigenus Dimetropus) gather at a waterhole in the dry season - A gorgonopsian tries to catch a Tramuntanasaurus, with the latter escaping by shedding its tail - A large moradisaurine walks through a lush riverside in the rainy season. Smaller reptiles and insects appear nearby
🌲Permian Mallorca🐾🦎
During the Permian period Mallorca was located on the Equator and was not an island, but part of the mainland. Some terrestrial creatures are known from that time, mostly from the tracks they left behind
#paleoart #Permian #Mallorca
🧵Thread for additional explanation
New early dinosaur from the Coelophysis quarry! Many, many congratulations to Simba on this publication, which is based on his undergrad work, and which he presented at our 200 years of the dinosaurs conf in 2024!
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
I said this yesterday but today we get Ptychotherates bucculentus, a new Herrerasaurian from GRCQ, and a formal name Morphoraptota for the North American Herrerasaurian Clade! Ghost Ranch Coelophysis Quarry is so much more than just Coelophysis!
a life reconstruction of 3 isodapedon, with a proterochampsid in the background
a figure from the paper showing the phylogenetic position of isodapedon, and just as interestingly, strongly suggesting that hyperodapedon is a paraphyletic assemblage, and that only the type species (h. gordoni) should be considered valid
new rhynchosaur named 🥳 a warm welcome to isodapedon varzealis, described by schiefelbein et al. from the santa maria formation of late triassic brazil!
royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...
(art by caio fantini)
Top right: Photograph of two jaw bones with a one cent Euro coin for scale. The bones are a fragment of a mandible of Galanthis baskini from Las Casiones (small, darker specimen, above) and a complete mandible of the extant species Mustela nivalis (lesser weasel; lighter coloured specimen below). Image: Alberto Valenciano. Top left: blue rectangle is a cover image from the journal Palaeontology. Bottom: Illustration of body mass along the branches of the tip-dated Bayesian MCC tree, showing the ancestral body mass for each clade; illustrated specimens (not to scale): Lutra lutra, MNCN-3666; Vormela peregusna, IVPP-OV519; Zdanskyictis minimus, PMU-21788; Mustela putorius, MNCN-3846; Mustela nivalis, MNCN-14416; Mustela erminea, MNCN-14372; Neogale vison, MNCN-14417; Galanthis baskini, KS-9a; Martes americana, FMNH-51372.
Oldest evidence of a weasel reveals a Miocene origin of the Mustelinae (Mammalia, Carnivora) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @morphobank.bsky.social
Slender fossil jaw bone in a foam lined box sitting on a wooden table.
Black slab of rock in a translucent box. An orange and black scalebar is to the side of the rock, which is covered with dark impressions of disarticulated bones.
Some UMMP embolomeres for #FossilFriday: Archeria jaw from the Permian of Archer Co., TX and archeriid bits from the Carboniferous of Linton, OH.
For #fossilfriday I have the holotype of Kalops monophrys, CM 27372. Kalops is a classic “palaeoniscoid” from Bear Gulch , a Mississippian lagerstätte in central Montana. While squished, it’s undeniably a gorgeous fossil.
I made a good call coming to the Academy of Natural Sciences today, actually
Join us this #FossilFriday where we will talk to Dr. Cary Woodruff about the largest dinosaurs to ever live 🦕.
🗓 Friday, April 10
🕛 9 a.m. MST, 11 a.m. EST
Great for families, K-12 classes, college students, homeschoolers, and more!
🔗 Zoom- FREE: tinyurl.com/MORFossilFri...
Alexey V. Lopatin & Alexander O. Averianov (2026)
Multituberculate mammals from the Upper Cretaceous Nemegt Formation of Mongolia
Cretaceous Research 106407
doi: doi.org/10.1016/j.cr...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
