Paul Barrett will be hosting a technical talk at #DinoConUK 2026 about Zimbabwe’s dinosaur heritage and new fieldwork that has yielded surprising results.
Paul is Head of Fossil Vertebrates & Palaeoanthropology at the Natural History Museum, London. He has published nearly 250 scientific papers.
We can use this microscope combined with our new tissue clearing & imaging protocol to capture data like this (SOX9-expressing cells in an alligator embryo). Image by @lnwilson.bsky.social
A large lightsheet microscope on a table in a lab
The newest member of the lab, the Choros lightsheet microscope from @miltenyibiotec.bsky.social. The largest lightsheet on the market, we can rapidly image entire late-stage embryos in extremely high (cell-level) resolution. Many thanks to Princeton's Dept. of Geosciences for funding the purchase!
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....
On the left: A chronologically calibrated cladogram illustrating the diversity of growth rates among pseudosuchians, based on osteohistological data On the right: at the top a complete transverse section through a femur of Tarjadia ruthae, illustrating the internal structure of the bone (scale bar at bottom left is 2 mm). Underneath is an enlargement of the area outlined by the upper white rectangle, showing the zonal bone (labelled ZB), an internal circumfernetial layer (ICL) and the external fundamental system (EFS, which is further enlarged on the right of the image). The main part of the image is shown in plane-polarized light at the top and coloured by the addition of a second, crossed polarizer at the bottom. The enlargment image has two scale bars at the bottom, the one on the left (for the main image) is 500 microns, the one on the right (for the enlargement of the EFS) is 250 microns. Blue rectangle in the bottom right corner is the cover of the journal Palaeontology.
More diverse than expected: osteohistology of non-crocodylomorph Pseudosuchia from the Triassic of South America onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
A pair of white dinosaur skeleton casts in red matrix with long curved necks. These are Khaan mckennaii, named for both the Mongolian term for ruler and for former AMNH curator Malcolm McKenna
A long low skull with recurved blade-like teeth belonging to Velociraptor, accompanied by a reconstruction of this bird like dinosaur showing a covering of feathers on its body Velociraptor mongoliensis skull DINosAuR Lived 80 million years ago | Collected at the Flaming Cliffs, 1995 Museum scientists discovered the first known Velociraptor fossil in the Gobi in 1923. These relatively small, carnivorous dinosaurs used their wickedly sharp claws and teeth to capture prey such as mammals, lizards and young dinosaurs. 3D print of Institute of Geology, Mongolia IGM 100/982 AMNH FARB 34118 ZHAO Chuang/PNSO pl
The nest of a small troodontid theropod with eggs and the skeleton of a hatchling • Byronosaurus jaffei nest and hatchling oUR Lived 80 million years ago | Collected at Ukhaa Tolgod, 1995 The eggs and tiny, just-hatched standing on end, indicating they dinosaur in this nest belong to a type were deliberately positioned, and of small, feathered dinosaur called a a fully grown tooth found in one troodontid. The nest offers evidence of the already hatched eggs suggests
A cast specimen of a baby Protoceratops Protoceratops andrewsi DINOSAUR Lived 80 million years ago | Collected at Ukhaa Tolgod, 1997 Protoceratops were sheep-sized, plant-eating dinosaurs. This fossil is a baby-it does not yet have any fancy frills or horns on its skull. Those grew in as Protoceratops entered adulthood, when they may have been used for protection, to attract a mate or in fights for dominance. 3D print of Institute of Geology, Mongolia IGM 100/10020 AMNH FARB 34117
#FossilFriday some casts of the incredible dinosaur fossils from the Gobi Desert in the AMNH’s new ‘Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs’ exhibit honoring our late curator Dr. Mark Norell, and his decades of work in the Gobi with Dr. Mike Novacek and many more.
A title slide of a talk, “exploring the evolution and development of complex tissues in reptiles: integrating classic and cutting-edge techniques”
Postdoc @aaronhgriffing.bsky.social showing off some cool new methods and data at the NYC Miltenyi lightsheet microscope users symposium
A photo of a projected title slide for NERVES (Northeast Regional Vertebrate Evolution Symposium)
Excited to attend NERVES at NYIT today!
The dawn of the Phanerozoic: A transitional fauna from the late Ediacaran of Southwest China | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Presenting some of my work on reptile evo devo to the Hirasawa group
Members of the Hirasawa group (left) and Griffin lab (right) eating fresh tuna
A Buddhist temple and pear blossom trees in downtown Tokyo
A sign for the Evolutionary Morphology Laboratory featuring an alligator embryo
Just got back from an amazing trip to Japan with the @griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social to work on evo-devo-paleo collaborations with the Hirasawa group at UTokyo
A group of people sitting around a table with a large piece of fish
Two people manipulating hagfish eggs
A penguin embryo in a tube
Last week we had an incredible time visiting the lab of Tatsuya Hirasawa, with whom we're collaborating as part of a joint Princeton-UTokyo grant. Seeing hagfish eggs, learning new techniques, and exchanging ideas and planning new projects. Can't wait for our next visit!
#Zebrafish🐟
#Pericyte
Progressive mural cell deficiencies across the lifespan in a foxf2 model of cerebral small vessel disease
#SciArt from Dr. Sarah Childs lab😍
#eLife 2026
elifesciences.org/articles/106...
Cleared wild-type 3-mpf 🐟brain
pdgfrβ (blue)
kdrl (red)
Cranial ossification in leopard geckos examined using Alizarin Red staining.
A chart illustrating ossification sequence in leopard gecko crania
New paper in @journalofanatomy.bsky.social with PAD Wise and AP Russell! We show that using morphological criteria to assign developmental stage provides more ossification sequence resolution than embryo size or developmental time (days).
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#GeckoEvoDevo
🚨 Hot off the press: Our look into of the palaeontological database landscape and its sustainability into the future.
Palaeo databases are invaluable and continue to transform our research field - but they are vulnerable... (1/6) 🧪 ⛏️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A beautiful cake with chocolate icing and strawberries
In bird embryology you occasionally get an unfertilized “dud” egg. @lnwilson.bsky.social, not wanting her emu eggs to go to waste, used a dud egg to make a beautiful cake for the lab!
For your delight and amusement, here are some dinosaur gastroliths, underneath the ribs of an Early Jurassic sauropodomorph from Zimbabwe 🦖🇿🇼
Not a big baby! My commentary in @science.org about the latest Nanotyrannus research. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Our lab is growing: we will have openings for student and staff positions throughout the year. Please visit edwards-lab.org for the most up to date job positions. I am excited to work with the department and looking forward to the months ahead!
A few new papers out recently that I'm excited to share with you!
First: How well could stem reptiles hear?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Another cool paper, glad to see it finally out:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Figuring out the range of error that exists, & factors influencing offsets, between growth marks and ontogenetic age remains a challenge for estimating growth curves from bone histo data.
More work like this is needed.
This was done with an Original Prusa XL, highly recommended
A row of painted 3D printed skulls on a table
A group of painted 3D printed skulls on a table
The Vertebrate Paleontology students did a great job 3D printing and painting skulls—look at that homology!
The discovery that Nanotyrannus is a distinct species from the T-rex indicates complex food web and interspecies interactions in the Dinosaur world. This research was funded by NSF post-doc grants, which were just archived, i.e., they're no longer available.
news.yale.edu/2025/12/04/t...
Congratulations to UMMP Associate Research Scientist Miriam Zelditch on the release of the third edition of the indispensable "Geometric Morphometrics for Biologists" (a.k.a. the green book)! #FossilFriday
Volume renderings of CT scan data of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541). The top image is mostly a left lateral view. The bottom image is a ventral view showing the caudal half of the hyoid bone preserved in place.
Additional images (all in ventral view) of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541). The top right image is from the original 1946 article by Charles Gilmore showing the full ceratobranchial hyoid bone in place. The bottom photograph (that I snapped in 2005 when I had the skull on loan for study & CT scanning) shows the caudal half of the hyoid bone preserved in place. The top left image is similar to the bottom image but is grayscale except for the hyoid bone.
The main photograph (again, that I snapped in 2005 when I had the skull on loan for study & CT scanning) shows the caudal half of the hyoid bone of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) preserved in place, but it's more of a front view. Notice the broken end of the ceratobranchial in a close-up in the inset.
#FossilFriday The awesome new article in Science by
@griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social et al. adds more evidence for the validity of Nanotyrannus by showing that the hyoid bone in the holotype has adult bone histology. Here are some more images showing the ceratobranchial bone in place in the skull. 🦖
The development of a single zebrafish retina captured on a light sheet microscope approx. every 12 hours from 1.5 days to 3.5 days after birth of the embryo. The retinal ganglion cells are labelled with Ath5:RFP (magenta) the amacrine and horizontal cells are labelled with Ptf1a:YFP (yellow) and the photoreceptors and bipolar cells are labelled with Crx:CFP (cyan). The image was created in the Norden lab at the MPI-CBG, Dresden. Credit text to Wikimedia Commons.
Development of the zebrafish retina captured on a light sheet microscope. Credit to @ichajaroslav.bsky.social. #ZebrafishZunday 🧪
Just emailed it to you!
I forgot image credit, I apologize! This is by Andrey Atuchin, courtesy the Cleveland Museum
Thanks to all our collaborators, the taggable ones are @ashpoust.bsky.social , @mfabbri.bsky.social , @rileysombathy.bsky.social ! Extra thanks to the Cleveland Museum, the Yale Peabody Museum, and the LA Natural History Museum for allowing crucial sampling of their specimens (12/12)
