Annual update on the Mars Expedition: No Tetrapods yet. We can neither confirm nor deny the presence of Tripods.

Photograph of a fossil fish skull in right lateral view. The bone is dark brown/black against a gray matrix.

Out now in Contributions from me and @gilespalaeo.bsky.social, a deep dive into an early member of the sturgeon and paddlefish lineage. Bear with me, but there’s a long backstory highlighting uncertainty about the anatomy of living species and how well-studied fossils can still yield new insights.

Thrilled to have been a part of this project and the accompanying (but slightly younger and much bigger) Megamastax. The osteichthyan stem group is coming into focus!🧪

Largest Silurian fish illuminates the origin of osteichthyan characters - Nature New findings from articulated head and trunk material of Megamastax amblyodus yield previously unseen morphological details of a Silurian stem osteichthyan.

Megamastax, a mighty chew from the Silurian - paper in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This paper carries a special satisfaction for me. Years ago, Donglei Chen and I discovered small tooth-bearing elements in Silurian vertebrate micro-residues (obtained by dissolving rock in acid) of the stem osteichthyans Andreolepis and Lophosteus. We worked out that they must be the inner dental

The oldest articulated bony fish from the early Silurian period - Nature A tiny, articulated, near-complete osteichthyan from the early Silurian Chongqing Lagerstätte, represents the oldest osteichthyan occurrence including microfossils, and the earliest articulated remain...

The second reports a tiny (~3 cm) articulated fish from the early Silurian. The material is challenging, but it is unquestionably a bony fish. Fittingly named Eosteus, it co-occurs with the oldest articulated jawed fishes and cements the antiquity of osteichthyans.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Cover of the journal Nature, featuring the head of a large fish with its mouth open. A smaller fish is swimming into its mouth. The cover reads "Caught in Time: Early fossils shed light on the origins of bony fish."

Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.

We will be updating this page with news and further details, so please follow us to stay in the loop.

Until then; Välkommen, och vi ses alla nästa år!
#ISELV #ISELV19 #ISELVUppsala

This meeting will mark both 20 years since the last time ISELV was in Uppsala and 60 years since the very first meeting held in Stockholm in 1967.
#ISELV #ISELV19 #ISELVUppsala

Following on from our post yesterday, we are honoured to announce that we will be hosting the 19th International Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates (ISELV) meeting here in Uppsala in 2027!
#ISELV #ISELV19 #ISELVUppsala #fossilfriday

Gathering of researchers and alumni of Uppsala vertebrate paleo lab.

We also had a chance to reconnect with our broad network of alumni and collaborators, shown below, and share both memories of Uppsala and fresh ideas for projects and collaborations.
#ISELV18

The conference, co-organised by Hassan 1st University, Berrechid, and the University of Zurich, was a fantastic showcase of international research and the contributions of Morocco to that research, and we thank and congratulate the organisers for a great meeting.

This February, the Uppsala team attended and presented at the 18th ISELV in Berrechid, Morocco, sharing our research with the global early vertebrate community #ISELV18 @iselv18.bsky.social

#ISELV18 was incredible, even the parts that weren't early vertebrates related! #morocco #fossils

Vanavond in het 8 uur journaal over ons nieuwe onderzoek waarin wij ontdekten dat mosasauriërs ook in rivieren voorkwamen! #aardwetenschappen #paleontologie #mosasaurus @vuamsterdam.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social @ndgspaleo.bsky.social @perahlberg.bsky.social @boydpaleo.bsky.social

Ten-thousand-year-old genomes from southern Africa change picture of human evolution – Uppsala University

Here it is! The #news of the week comes from two of our PIs, Mattias Jakobsson & the #humanevolution program, #UppsalaUniversity. Congratulations! www.uu.se/en/news/2025... #humanpast #genetics #Africa #AncientSouthernAfricans

Go my Bothriolepis... This year's fish pecan pie! Bothriolepis was a peculiar-looking placoderm from the Devonian period or the Paleozoic. It had two long pointed pectoral fins and silly little eyes on top of its head.

#fossil #fish #paleontology #bothriolepis

The hidden pattern of the primary teeth in an ancestral ray-finned fish provides a clue to how the strange lungfish dentition could have evolved simply by modifying the growth mode of bone. More information in this newly published piece from @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social here: doi.org/10.1111/joa....

palaeontologists digging for fossils in soft sand

A team from our lab recently joined fieldwork organised by the University of Latvia, helping to excavate fossils from the Devonian, including armoured fish (Placoderms) and early tetrapods in western Latvia.

#fossilfriday #paleontology

"It is by love alone that we understand anything" -The birth of Bran, James Stephens

A new study comes from the questions you love to ask. My question "How do vertebral building blocks come together to make different anatomies?" inspired this project ❤️

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Could a slab of ancient Australian rock rewrite everything we thought we knew about the origin of land-dwelling vertebrates? @perahlberg.bsky.social , @evobiouppsala.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social , discusses: faculti.net/earliest-amn...
#natural sciences

Could a slab of ancient Australian rock rewrite everything we thought we knew about the origin of land-dwelling vertebrates? @perahlberg.bsky.social , @evobiouppsala.bsky.social @uuvertpalaeo.bsky.social , discusses: faculti.net/earliest-amn...
#natural sciences

‼️To all early vertebrate enthusiasts‼️

The 18th International Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates #ISELV will be held in Berrechid, Morocco on 3-8 February 2026! 🐟🦈🦎🦴

We look forward to hosting you there!

For more info, see our website (link in bio)

#fish #vertebrate #palaeontology #fossils

Back in Sweden to receive my diploma at the Uppsala University doctoral conferment ceremony, followed by a reception at Gustavianium and banquet at the Castle was incredibly special. I think it is only now dawning on me that I really did it, I really am Dr Melanie During.

Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution - Nature Analysis of a fossil trackway from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia shows prints of toes with claws, suggesting that the origin of amniotes was at least 35–40 million years earlier than pr...

Out Now in Nature! Amniote tracks from Australia push the timeline for terrestiality back 35 to 40 million years, with implications for our understanding of tetrapod evolution.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution - Nature Analysis of a fossil trackway from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia shows prints of toes with claws, suggesting that the origin of amniotes was at least 35–40 million years earlier than pr...

It's out! We describe probable reptile tracks from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia. This pushes the amniote record back by some 35-40 million years and implies that the tetrapod crown group originated deep in the Late Devonian. The paper is Open Access. 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution - Nature Analysis of a fossil trackway from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia shows prints of toes with claws, suggesting that the origin of amniotes was at least 35–40 million years earlier than previously thought.

Fossilized claw prints thought to belong to an amniote, an early relative of reptiles, have been found on a slab of rock from Australia dated to about 356 million years ago. The findings in @nature.com, suggest the origin of amniotes is earlier than expected:

#fossil

Earliest amniote tracks recalibrate the timeline of tetrapod evolution - Nature Analysis of a fossil trackway from the earliest Carboniferous of Australia shows prints of toes with claws, suggesting that the origin of amniotes was at least 35–40 million years earlier than pr...

When it comes to understanding when animals first walked on land, finding footprints of animals that literally pressed their feet into the ground absolutely holds the key.

Congratulations to all authors including my former supervisor: @perahlberg.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PhD blog - Uppsala University

The Biology PhD school asked me to write a blog post about my research, now it’s up and I can go back to staring at fish www.uu.se/en/departmen...

An old monochrome painting of a knight, Saint George, mounted on a horse about to clout a nearby pterosaur on the head with a mace. The setting is Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa in Scotland, with columnar basalt all around. For some reason an octopus beneath the horse also appears to be aiding the pterosaur in its fight.

#StGeorge and the Pterodactyl (1873), by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins of @cpdinosaurs.bsky.social fame, to illustrate his suggestion that #dragon 🐲 legends may have been inspired by encounters with living pterosaurs #StGeorgesDay

Not sure how the octopus fits in 🐙