It looks really good! Head big so it can ponder fish!
01.03.2026 23:10
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It looks really good! Head big so it can ponder fish!
A cast of the skeleton of Atopotarus. The skull is to the right and the ribcage and flippers are to the left, the hindlimbs are missing. The skeleton is lightly disarticulated, with the ribs splayed out; the two mandibles are somewhat askew. It is mounted on a white wall in NHM Los Angeles.
#fossilfriday A cast of the well-preserved skeleton of the middle Miocene pinniped Atopotarus courseni, a relative of the much larger Allodesmus. Discovered in 1952 in exposures of the Altamira Shale on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles; ~15-16 myo. 🐬🦖On display at @nhm.org
Modeling Ringed and Bearded Seal Future Habitats Indicates Stability, Shifts, and Refugia doi.org/10.1111/gcb.... 🧪 🦑 🌍️
From https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70150. FIGURE 10 Life reconstruction of the head of Triceratops prorsus with nasal soft tissues inferred in the present study shown. Soft tissues include the main narial nerves and blood vessels, nasal gland, nasolacrimal duct, and respiratory turbinate. Note that the nasolacrimal duct and respiratory turbinate were inferred mainly in centrosaurines. Artwork by K. Sakane. n & bv, nerves and blood vessels; ng, nasal gland; nld, nasolacrimal duct; rt, respiratory turbinate.
Excited to see this article led by @seishirotada.bsky.social out in @anatrecord.bsky.social. Triceratops and their ceratopsian kin are more than horns and frills! Check out their narial regions! doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...
It’s cold enough for walruses in New Jersey this week! But it wouldn't be the first time! During the Late Pleistocene (over 30,000 years ago) the area that is now New Jersey had walruses! We still dredge their fossils along the coast today.
Just finished updating my review on the evolution and fossil record of the eared seals (Otariidae) given the new paper that came out on the early Pleistocene Otaria josefinae from Peru 😅 #blog #paleo #paleontology 🦖🐬🧪 Read it here:
#FossilFriday The Miocene pinniped Allodesmus gracilis @nhm.org
When I first got into Doctor Who they had reruns of the 80s era on television in Aus, and Sylvestor McCoy was by far my favourite. The writing and Sylvestor's acting gave the Doctor a sense of mystery again.
Here's a fun one - colleagues did formant analysis on a harbor seal before and after he learned to modify one of his vocalizations. A growing body of work suggests Phocinae seals really do have fairly high vocal production plasticity. Wonder why...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
JOB KLAXON! The @nhm-london.bsky.social is recruiting a micro-CT specialist! jobs.nhm.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
The K/Pg extinction created a buffet for open-ocean fishes. A new paper shows that Pelagiaria underwent an adaptive radiation following the extinction based on new jaw shapes to fill the vacuum @knapprew.bsky.social @evoswami.bsky.social @sternarchella.bsky.social academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
New paper! Here we look at shape evolution of the mandible in Pelagiaria, a group of open-ocean fishes that includes tuna and mackerel. We find that shape disparity accumulated rapidly at the origin of the clade at around the K/Pg boundary... academic.oup.com/evlett/advan...
A phylogenetic tree of walruses over the past 20 million years and the geologic ranges and skull shapes of different species.
A fossil skull of the walrus Valenictus sheperdi.
A fossil skull of the walrus Dusignathus seftoni, displayed palate-up. It has two short tusks and a flat palate.
I mean we HAD plenty of species of walrus. The problem is that they're all extinct🥲 Here's a phylogeny showing what was taken from us, and photographs of the toothless walrus Valenictus sheperdi and the short-tusked walrus Dusignathus seftoni (both ~4 myo, from California)🐬🦖🧪
In my professional opinion as a marine biologist, we have too many species of wrasses, and not nearly enough species of walrus.
I will not be taking questions at this time
190 delegates attended #CAVEPS2025 in Kaurna Yarra / Adelaide this week! A big thanks from the organising committee to everyone involved for helping it be such a fabulous meeting! @megalibgwilia.bsky.social
Next time, Otago! 🇳🇿
Hey everyone! I’m excited to share that one of my thesis projects was just published in @currentbiology.bsky.social and featured on phys.org! In this paper, we use an old statistical approach developed by the US Navy in WW2 to predict the aquatic habits of various dinosaurs and marine reptiles 🦖🐊
I’ve released a tool to sketch and edit phylogenetic trees!
yawak.jp/PhyloWeaver/
Load a Newick file and intuitively add/remove/resize branches.
Useful for quick conceptual trees, extracting subtrees, or turning ideas into Newick.
Had an absolutely blast at #SVP2025. It was great to catch up with friends old and new, and see the amazing science on display! Feeling recharged (but also exhausted) and excited about research!
They did this at the Society of Marine Mammalogy conference (probably as large as SVP) and I thought it was extremely effective. (2/2).
Probably logistically difficult, but I'd like a large enough space that posters are left up the whole conference. If you miss someone, at least the poster will still be there. And then poster presenters can be spread each session (e.g. every second board). (1/2)
#2025SVP For people who missed my talk: I’m happy to give this or longer versions via zoom/in person for your seminars/colloquiums. Being based at a small museum w/ little daily exchange among peers, it’s a great opportunity for me to stay connected & for you to learn about our shelled overlords.
@palaeo-jrule.bsky.social bringing Simpsons gifs to his talk on filter feeding in seals. #svp2025
The title slide for my SVP talk entitled “Comparative Evidence for Independent Evolutionary Reductions of Tail Length Among Stem Mammals”. Authors for the talk are myself (Spencer K. Pevsner), Katrina E. Jones, and Roger B. J. Benson. The slide shows photos of skeletons of Sphenacodon, Diictodon, and Thrinaxodon, all with tails present.
Are you attending #2025SVP #SVP2025? Come see my talk on Thursday at 2pm in the Synapsida technical session on tail length evolution in across stem mammals, and find out why this long-neglected part of the skeleton has a much more complicated story to tell than we previously thought!
Just arrived in Birmingham for #2025SVP! Looking forward to seeing everyone.
Ever wondered about the evolution of filter feeding in Antarctic seals?
If so, come along to my talk on Wednesday at 4pm in Hall 1.
A Livyatan catching a large squid! this painting was inspired by a recent video of a modern sperm whale swallowing a giant squid. While Livyatan had a fierce arsenal of teeth and massive jaw muscles, we still don't know what it was eating exactly.
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#paleoart #sciart
Yes, the #PrehistoricPlanetIceAge trailer is out today...
Our controversial paper is finally out in @cp-iscience.bsky.social !
As part of my PhD dissertation at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social in 2021, the last chapter was dedicated to a specific pathological pattern in hadrosaurid tails!
Photo of part of my poster for SVP 2025. It's got a blue background, has some white text, a stratigraphic column, and photos of fossil fur seal mandibles.
I picked up my poster for #2025SVP and it looks SO NICE 🥰 I'm very excited! Hope to see you there - my poster session is on the first day (Wednesday) so please stop by, though I know many of us will be distracted by catching up with old friends! 🐬🦖
Nanotyrannus is real.
For years I’ve considered many mid-sized gracile tyrannosaurs to be juvenile T. rex.
But I was wrong. This stunning new skeleton of a mature long-armed small tyrannosaur is clearly a different species.
Isn’t science fun?!
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
