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Eric Scott @captainfossil.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has issued an official statement regarding recent executive orders from the current administration & the effects of these attacks on vertebrate paleontology and the scientific community in general, w/ a request for input from affected scientists. 🧪

Dear Eric,

We are now facing unprecedented, systemic challenges to scientific enterprise, its infrastructure, and the diverse people and communities that make it possible. The recent executive orders issued by the Office of the President of the United States threaten to directly harm our discipline and the people in it.

As paleontologists, we know that in times of upheaval, ecological communities that fare the best tend to be the most diverse. Analogously, our varied backgrounds and perspectives and our willingness to listen to and learn from each other have enabled us to adapt to challenges facing our discipline and our Society in the past. We believe that the best approach to overcoming these new challenges is to turn to our fundamental values and our mission, which includes facilitating the cooperation of all persons concerned with the history, evolution, ecology, comparative anatomy, and taxonomy of vertebrate animals. We take this moment to specifically support and affirm the right of all of our members and our non-member colleagues to conduct science and live their lives in safety and harmony, no matter their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age, or citizenship status.

We encourage members in positions of safety and security to advocate for members who are not. Speak out in favor of research funding, evidence-based policies, and policies that ensure people of all identities receive equitable protections and opportunities. SVP leadership is actively working with other scientific organizations to respond to and mitigate the impact of these government actions on our members. We will continue to prioritize building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive vertebrate paleontology community where all feel welcome and are able to thrive.

The mission of our Society is primarily scientific in nature. We seek to advance the science of vertebrate paleontology throughout the world, and foster the scientific, educational, and personal appreciation and understanding of vertebrate fossils and fossil sites. Several executive actions taken by the current presidential administration are antithetical to this mission, including the pause and audit of federal grant funding, the silencing of federal employees, the stripping of climate history data from government websites, the attempts to downsize the federal workforce, including departments charged with maintaining fossils and fossil sites, and attacks on academic freedom, climate change research, disabled people, transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people, immigrants, and endeavors for diversity, equity and inclusion. These actions, if successful, will impede our ability to carry out our mission and harm the broader practice of science.

The Society would like to gather additional information regarding the effects of recent federal action on paleontologists on the ground. To help us in this task, we ask that you share your experiences. We would like to know if you have been impacted or may be impacted by these executive actions. We recognize that at this point there is uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the federal funding audit, pending legal challenges, and other aspects of these executive actions, so you may not know the full impacts yet. This uncertainty itself is an impact. If you have been or might be impacted by these executive actions, please fill out this survey [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com]. Please also provide any ideas or suggestions, including areas of concern on which you believe the Society should focus.

Below we share some resources that you may find helpful when considering ways to support your colleagues and/or take action during these tumultuous times. We appreciate that this is a time full of uncertainty for many of you, especially those located in the United States, and we will do our best to keep you informed of Society actions.

Contact your congressional representatives [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com]

NSF updates on the implementation of executive orders [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com]

List of ongoing presidential actions [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com]

Understanding the impacts of NIH funding on a specific state [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com]

How to support trans colleagues [vertpaleo.us1.list-manage.com] (linked from SICB)

In solidarity,

Stuart Sumida, SVP President, and the SVP Executive Committee

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Rachel Logan @rmslogan.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

I love seeing all of these awesome statements coming from science orgs lately. There's been a lot of them. We aren't experts in law or sociology, but from a biological standpoint, we know something is very very wrong.

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Raymon Skjørten Hansen @pappkanin.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Hell yeah! Leave it to people who deal with dinosaurs for a living to not be intimidated by this nonsense.

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