Shape of different eggs drawn to the same size: A–G, nonavian theropod dinosaur eggs (A–B, Macroelongatoolithus; C, Elongatoolithus; D, Oviraptoridae; E, Citipati; F, Segnosaurus; G, Troodon); H, Sankofa, the new Montsec egg type; I–P, avian eggs (I, unnamed fossil egg from Bajo de la Carpa Formation, Neuque´n, Argentina, attributed to an Enantiornite bird by Schweitzer et al. 2002). J–P, modern birds: J, Aepyornis; K, condor; L, swan; M, murre; N, lesser scaup; O, red-tailed hawk; P, hen). Scale bar represents 1 cm.

Preliminary results of the analysis of the egg morphospace, based on the four shape parameters c0–c3 of the egg morphospace from Barta and Szekely (1997). The 16 eggs from Figure 7 are distributed in a 3D graphic according to their three principal components (PC1–PC3, explaining 95.4 per cent of the total variance; see Table 3). Note the sharp difference of the eggshape- component distribution between modern birds and nonavian theropod dinosaurs. The new Montsec egg type (Sankofa pyrenaica oogen. nov. oosp. nov.) fits between both shape groups, as well as the Enantiornitine bird egg from the late Cretaceosus Bajo-de-la- Carpa Fm, Argentina (Schweitzer et al. 2002).

Oldie but Goldie.
Interesting study which reveals the morphospace of dinosaur eggs, including shape contrasts between non-avian dinosaur eggs and the bird eggs.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Putative trophic structure of the Chaohu Fauna (Spathian, Early Triassic), briefly compared with that of the latest Smithian fish faunas

Summary of coprolite morphotypes identified from the Chaohu Fauna, Majiashan, Chaohu, China.

When fossil shite speaks up:
"The coprolite record reveals a multi-tiered trophic structure in which marine reptiles had already occupied meso- and apex consumer roles by the Early Triassic."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Wikipedia page about the Laotian rock rat

One of the craziest discoveries of a new 'living fossil' and Lazarus taxon - Laotian rock rat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laotian... the last member of Diatomyidae. Survived in the isolated mountain pockets.
And here is fun video about it: youtube.com/shorts/sZI3Z...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Paleogeographic maps of the European and African coastlines along the western Tethys Ocean during the late Early Cretaceous

Biological mechanisms of geodispersal in dinosaurs:
"hadrosaurs and titanosaurs could..complete the journey, particularly under favorable conditions such as low sea levels, stepping-stone islands, and higher fat reserves"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #Macroecology

Important consequences for understanding not only current oversold climate-biodiversity loss-possible human extinction event, but also the events of the deep past too.

What is more interesting, the effect are latitude-heterogenous, where signs of nutrient increase change.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Hey ⚒️ geo folks:
Can anyone recommend a geobiologist who might be interested in discussing foundational/methodological issues in co-evolution of life & environment, from #paleobio to #geobio with historians & philosophers of science at MBL this summer?

Thirteen landmarks plotted for each specimen

Principal component (PC) 1 plotted against PC 2 using Procrustes coordinates. Restricted only to large specimens. A, Transennella conradina (upper 25%), B, Abra segmentum (upper 25%), C, Chamelea gallina (upper 25%).

A very interesting study, which shows that the parasite infestation significantly distorts and expands the morphospace of bivalves. Essentially ecological-interaction mediated neutral and maladaptive ecophenotypy.
doi.org/10.1017/pab....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Skeletal restoration of Gongshuilong fanwei gen. et sp. nov. Scale bar - 1 m.

Paleontology just gives weirdness and unveils the non-analogue worlds.
New giant sail-backed saurolophine dinosaur from China Gongshuilong fanwei.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Fabulous animation and cinematography of the prehistoric life by the "Dead Sound" studio.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Given its relatively small size, and little potential threat to human-sized mammals, we justifiably instead can call it the "Slight-concern bird" 😀
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Box and-whisker plot showing length of all individual scolecodonts (μm, logarithmic scale) over time in the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous; with Devonian data separated by stage, including the Kellwasser Events (KWE) (n = 797). KWE.

The Lilliput Effect in benthic worms during the Kellwasser Event. The next question, what this systemic decrease in size across taxa means for the evolution and the generation of diversity?
doi.org/10.1017/pab....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

It once lived, then got eaten, and got through the intestines, and then become precious through the ages of fossilization. The legendary coprolite.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

The gravestone of the Carl Linnaeus in the Uppsala Cathedral. It is made of Ordovician limestone. Here I've found several cephalopods. According to Alexander Pohl these are: i) a lituitid Ancistroceras; ii) endoceratid; and iii) orthoceratid.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Ordovician fossils

Ordovician fossils

Ordovician fossils

Ordovician ichnofossils

I would guess that the Stockholm Airport on it's floors has the largest collection of polished slabs with Ordovician faunas, traces fossils and especially orthocone cephalopods! Hundreds and hundreds of acres 1/2
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Comparison of species richness curves and environmental proxies.

High-resolution quantitative stratigraphical study shows the heterogenous extinction responses of foraminifera, with benthics being struck hard and collapsing fast.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

Graphical representation of the current database landscape and a possible idealized scenario for the structure of the palaeobiological database landscape.

Table 2 | A roadmap to sustainable funding

We can learn unimaginable amount of things bout the history of life, climate, geosystems and the processes of evolution from the fossil record. But we need strong database curation and financing infrastructure.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Diversification and body mass evolution in Octodontoidea and Chinchilloidea.

Craniodental disparity in Chinchilloidea (blue) and Octodontoidea (orange).

More of the evidence showing that the megaclimate is fundamentally shaping diversity and disparity:
"Subsequent Neogene and Quaternary extinctions erased much of this variation, reversing a ~30 million-year trend of greater body mass disparity"
doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Limusoceras japonicum gen. et comb. nov. (Yabe, 1904) from the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group, Vancouver Island. A–C, RBCM.EH2014.049.0025, Trent River Formation, Hamm Road/Highway 19 roadcut, extrapolated earliest two helical volutions with grey silhouettes illustrating schematized morphology of initial gyroconic stage, lateral and umbilical views, and left septal hemisuture at Wh = 7 mm. D–G, CDM 162, Trent River Formation, Trent River, two and one-half helical volutions with retroversal section, apertural, right lateral, umbilical and left lateral views. Scale bar = 1 cm.

Artist’s rendition of hypothetical life orientations of species of Limusoceras gen. nov. A, Limusoceras traski gen. et sp. nov. B, Limusoceras japonicum gen. et comb. nov. (Yabe, 1904). C, Limusoceras neojaponicum gen. et sp. nov. Artistic renditions by Connie Resch.

Great to see finally published by Misha Whittingham @deathandtaxa.bsky.social the magnum opus on the heteromorph ammonites of the Vancouver Island! With new genera and species.
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Polycotylus latipinnis in the jaws of Xiphactinus

Sea dragon in the jaws of a fish:
"Finding embedded teeth, while rare, removes this ambiguity. Here we describe a tooth embedded in a mid-cervical vertebra of a subadult plesiosaur, Polycotylus latipinnis"
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Eocene belemnites from Hungary You have to enable JavaScript in your browser's settings in order to use the eReader.

Belemnite survival into the Eocene?
#paleobio #cephalopods 🧪🦑

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

As many things of the Meso-Cenozoic the origins of cowries starts in the Triassic to Jurassic 👇
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Schematic design for each analysed morphotype (from Rozada et al. 2024) with one example from the locality Angeac- Charente (left)and the potential producers (right)

Fossilization patterns of the dung, the formation of coprolites:
" Rapid hardening of the coprolite margin by permineralisation enhanced reducing conditions in the centre of the coprolite, favouring precipitation of sulphide minerals."
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Reproduction of multicellular organisms emerges as an exaptation of their ecology
"...our results show that developmental regulation evolves through co-option of ecological interactions during the transition to multicellularity."
CC: @svalver.bsky.social
🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio

Weird and wonderful world of the early Mesozoic
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

"Stem tetrapod" from the Early Permian. You can think about it as a "living fossil" holdover from the earliest Carboniferous. But as Jason and others explain it was specialized in its dentition, completely weird and possibly was herbivorous!
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

The image shows a life reconstruction of the biggest Silurian vertebrate, Megamastax amblyodus. Art Credit: NICE PaleoVislab, IVPP.

The oldest-known articulated bony fish and an early example of teeth from a bony fish have been detected in a collection of fossils from China, dating back to the Silurian period (around 444 to 419 million years ago). The findings are reported in Nature. go.nature.com/4smXMeD 🧪 #paleobio

'Time scales and gaps' - The River Reporter Much of our understanding of Earth’s past is derived from stratigraphic records exposed in rock outcrops or recovered from drilled cores. These records span immense time intervals, from thousands …

A popular article about our recent study on the nature of measurement gaps and their scaling in empirical chronologies.
www.riverreporter.com/stories/time...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

The squids was the "soft-bodied thing" Pluridens imelaki ate. Starting from the Cenomanian, squids started their numerical dominance over other forms of cephalopods. They became the sea-food for large pelagic animals.
doi.org/10.1126/scie...

🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Wow, osteichthyan from the early Silurian (Telychian, 436 Ma):
"Phylogenetic analysis places Megamastax within the osteichthyan stem, near the
osteichthyan crown-group node"
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Summary of inverse thermal histories of cratonic interiors in the context of Earth systems evolution

The extreme unevenness in the completeness of the stratigraphic, and by implication fossil, record is formed by many processes. Apparently the most profound gap— the Great Unconformity, is driven by tectonics.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio