Excited that my paper on a Jurassic fish with teeth on its nose is now out! Shoutout to my co-authors Ben Kligman and Maranda Stricklin, who is another all-star undergraduate mentee. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
Another recording from the Paleo 2026 symposium has been posted! Learn about recent research on placoderms (early armoured fishes like Dunkleosteus) with Dr. Melina Jobbins of the University of Manitoba!
youtu.be/uP6ta7MP1ZY
#palaeontology #paleontology #fossils #fish #placoderms #alberta
Photograph of the head of the model of the extinct reptile Mesosaurus. It has a long, crocodile-like snout and needle-like teeth. It has a surprised expression.
Shocking.
NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology LIGHTNING TALKS: 9:15 - 10:30 AM EDT Focus on the collective: what can our community do in a time of uncertainty? PROTHAMA MANNA, CLEMSON UNIV. MOHAMED NOOR, DUKE UNIVERSITY RUTH SHAW, UNIV. OF MINNESOTA JOSEPH GRAVES, NC A&T STATE UNIV. SCOTT EDWARDS, HARVARD UNIV. EMILY JOSEPHS, MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. ALISON DAVIS RABOSKY, UNIV. OF MICHIGAN WORKSHOP & BREAKOUTS: 11 - 12:30 PM EDT Focus on the individual: how scientists can respond constructively, creatively, and sustainably in the face of instability NELIA VIVEIROS, UNIV. OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS
👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium:
Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology
Pls RT to help get the word out!
Nothing if not consistent.
Poster advertising seminar talk. Picture of Matt appears on the left side. Right side shows talk title ("Drawing back the curtain: the dawn of modern marine fish diversity"), speaker name, venue, and time.
Three paleontologists standing in front of trees.
Had a great visit to Auburn University for a joint seminar in Biosciences and Geosciences! Able to catch up with Michigan paleo alums (and current Auburn lecturers) Meg Veitch and John Fronimos. Thanks to Jon Armbruster for the invitation!
Large bones in a box with a scalebar.
Large bones in a box with a scalebar.
Large bones in a box with a scalebar.
Assorted parts of the paratype of the giant Late Cretaceous coelacanth Megalocoelacanthus dobiei (AUMP 3834) from the Mooreville Formation of Alabama #FossilFriday
Toothy flatfish face in a jar. The specimen is faded to a yellowish shade.
Happy Friday from Psettodes, the living sister lineage to all other flatfishes. Specimen at Auburn University Museum of Natural History.
WANTED: Lead Collections Manager. Smithsonian NMNH Botany is looking for a Supervisory Museum Specialist to manage the United States National Herbarium and a top-notch collections team. For more information, visit USAJOBS (www.usajobs.gov/job/864499200). Applications due in two weeks (1 May 2026).
Paper print-off held in front of laptop. Part has muli-panel figures showing aspects of fish jaws, based on CT models rendered in gray. They are covered with labels and leader lines.
So many Carboniferous fish jaws (28!) to look at and think about on my way to Atlanta. The most rewarding in-flight entertainment, courtesy of @reallyoldfish.bsky.social!
bifrost: an R package for scalable inference of phylogenetic shifts in multivariate evolutionary dynamics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...
We get feedback from surveys about what people learned during this event. Happy to see someone appreciate how strong a pufferfish's jaw can be!
Results from the #paleostream!
Don Juan (still unnamed rat fish relative), Muttaburrasaurus, Lystrosaurus (baby) and Bakonydraco!
‼️NEW ANGLERFISH PAPER! 🐟🎣
So excited to share the final part of my Master’s research! We explore the bizarre tacklebox of anglerfish lures and show how these fishes evolved different ways to attract prey and maybe even mates in the deep sea. 🧪🦑🌊🦇🦀
Open access paper link: doi.org/10.1643/i202...
New paper out with @cichlidnick.bsky.social and Peter C. Wainwright. We show that different habitats impact fish diversification. Habitats with a complex benthos show increased diversification rates across ray-finned fishes.
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
A last graphical treat before the semester concludes.
2,599 applicants offered NSF GRFP awards! Congrats to all the NSF GRFP award winners and recipients of honorable mention. https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList
Massive and important positive news...
#NSF #GRFP awards are out.
2,599 awards!
+
1,440 Honorable Mentions.
A significant boost from last year.
Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)!
& many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible.
www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...
Here the result of the Escuminac Formation #paleostream!
These deposits from the Devonian of Canada offer a glimpse into a coastal fish community with some absolute bangers and historical favorites. But it doesn't come without it challenges.
over 100 m tall. But of course focus is here on the shallows.
When it comes to the research history of these deposits we can go back to Medieval times. Salt and metals have been mined from the Zechstein for centuries and the good preservation of many fishes and others fossils...
Result from the Zechstein sea #paleostream! This famous deposit from the late Permian of Central Europe (mostly Germany) has a special place in paleontology history and incidentally has a locality not even a km from where I sit right now.
Heart-shaped echinoderm fossil with a single long appendage-like stalk composed of segments. It is in a grey slab of rock with brachiopod fragments. A red diamond sticker is on the slab. Some typed text is visible behind the rock, on the specimen label in the tray.
Just for fun: the rhombiferan echinoderm Amecystis laevis from the Ordovician of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (UMMP IP 56240).
Interior of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History.
Table with 3d printed fish jaws and posters
Science outreach day at the UM Museum of Natural History! Come by and learn about fish jaws.
Poster for a spoof academic lecture. Title reads "The Macroevolution of Cereal Mascots: A lecture by Dr. Matt Friedman." Cropped circles show pictures of Darwin and Matt; these flank the title. Below, a variety of colorful cereal mascots are shown, with a quote from Origin: ". . . endless forms most beautiful have been, and are being, evolved." The time and venue is listed at the bottom of the poster: Thursday, April 9th, 8:30 pm Biological Science Building.
Poster for spoof academic talk. Several lines of text are shown against a cream background: 8:30PM THURSDAY, APRIL 9TH A SPOONFUL OF KNOWLEDGE RM 1010 BSB World-reknown paleontologist, Dr. Matt Friedman, will be giving an exclusive lecture on the macroevolution of cereal mascots. If you don't know what that is, you should come. If you already know what that is, you should still come. We will be providing cereal, milk, bowls, and spoons as usual, but byob, byom, byoc, and byos is encouraged! Two images are shown at the bottom of the poster. The first is a cartoon-like illustration of a stack of books topped with a bowl of cereal bearing the Cereal Club logo. The second shows the classic illustrated sequence of human evolution, with the modern human's face topped with the Cereal Club logo.
Last night, it was my honor to deliver the inaugural "Spoonful of Knowledge" lecture for the U-M Cereal Club. I gave an updated version of a talk on cereal mascot evolution put together in the last year of my PhD, longer ago than I care to admit. Poster credit: Cereal Club Instagram.
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.
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.
“Fintastic” finds from the Davis Fishes Lab at @stcloudstate.bsky.social and led by @scsualumni.bsky.social Alex Maile, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas @kueebgso.bsky.social
So I guess I'm 50.
For my birthday, I would love to see at least 50 people share their favorite fossil. It can be something you found, saw in a museum or just your favorite from a book/paper.
This is one of my favorites. Gennaeocrinus mourantae from the Devonian Arkona formation of Ontario.
Colleague just asked how we determine species assignment in fossils without DNA. "Welcome to the wonderful world of morphology" I say, to their abject horror.
Close-up image short, triangular teeth emerging from a fossil jaw bone.
Toothy.
#MolluscMonday Bivalve borings in a fragment of a fallen marble column from the ruined Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli, Italy. The temple was famously figured by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology (1830).
