iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Out today: We show that Westlothiana lizziae or "Lizzie," described 35 years ago as the world's oldest reptile - is not a stem amniote at all, but a stem tetrapod. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The part and counterpart of the holotype specimen of Westlothiana.

Paleoartistic reconstruct of Westlothiana by Jacob Schick based on our new data

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Aaron Kufner @akufner.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This one has been a long time coming! I'm happy to share that another chapter of my PhD has been published! In this one, I'm shaking up the taxonomy of North American metoposaurids. This work was largely done in museum collections, and more on that below. peerj.com/articles/217...

A figure with maps showing the distribution of metoposaurid occurrences in Upper Triassic outcrops of western and eastern North America (centered on the USA). The approximate chronostratigraphic ranges of the now five recognized species are plotted, and line drawings of all of the potentially or definitively diagnostic holotypes of North American metoposaurids are included.

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LucyParkerPaul🦉🇦🇺 @lucyparkerpaul.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

A young, inquisitive Powerful Owl at dusk in a Brisbane park yesterday. #birds #wildoz #brisbane

Young Powerful Owls track everything that moves, often head-bobbing to get a sense of their surroundings.

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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! Led by Dr Wei Wang at #IVPP in Beijing, it presents a complete skeleton of #Austronaga, the most marine of all archosauromorphs. To boot, this fossil preserves the oldest complete digestive tract of any reptile! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Our paper on turtle origins is finally out in Current Biology, with two major implications for our understanding of reptile evolution 🐢 #Paleontology #Turtles #Evolution www.cell.com/current-biol...

A pair of Eunotosaurus by Gabriel Ugueto: a sense of scale is provided by Glossopterus leaves in the fore-and-background and by a prosbolid hemipteran insect

Phylogeny of major reptile groups, showing turtles (Pantestudines) as early archosauromorphs and the putative stem-turtle Eunotosaurus as a millerettid stem reptile

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Sergio @nebreda.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Say👋 to *Gorgonavis alcyone*, the newest enantiornithine bird from the Early Cretaceous of Spain✨🐦 We welcome here the 1st adult cranial remains of a bird from the fossil site of Las Hoyas, and the 1st longipterygid out of China... Thread!!🧵👇 Paleart by Roc Olivé

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Ville Sinkkonen @villesinkkonen.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Haolong dongi, amazing new spiny (yes,really) iguanodontian from early cretaceous china #sciart

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Birds of the World | The Cornell Lab @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

MAJOR NEWS! We just launched an awesome new tool! The illustrated Birds of the World Phylogeny Explorer lets users trace any bird’s lineage, compare species relationships, and explore major evolutionary milestones with a click of a button. SHARE and EXPLORE! birdsoftheworld.org/bow/news/phy...

IMAGE SHOWS GRAPHIC OF CORNELL LAB OF ORNITHOLOGY PHYLOGENY EXPLORER TOOL.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Introducing a new Permian reptile: Scyllacerta creanae With a tympanic fossa on the quadrate and no lower temporal bar, Scyllacerta challenges long-standing ideas about when-and-how hearing evolved in reptiles 🦎👂 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/pala...

Skull of Scyllacerta, reconstructed based on scans of four nearly complete skulls.

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The Anatomical Record @anatrecord.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

New insights into Chanaresuchus bonapartei! From Triassic of Argentina, this proterochampsid shows a unique tarsal anatomy — with features not seen in other basal archosauriforms, & traits shared w/Ornithodira. Cotuli-Cereda et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #FossilFriday

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Cary Woodruff @doublebeam.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

#ZAVACEPHALE IS FINALLY OUT! 🥳 Our first definitive Early Cretaceous pachycephalosaur! (~15 my older than the previous oldest pachycephalosaurs) And the first hand material for the clade! I can't tell y'all how much of a pleasure it was to review this paper! ☺️

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Alberta Claw @albertonykus.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

It's been online for a month but now in final format: a new paper I'm on is out today! We analyzed over 200 features from the bird wing and shoulder girdle skeleton to see how they're distributed across the bird family tree. academic.oup.com/iob/advance-... 🪶🧪 (📷 @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social)

Photo of a mostly white duck (male common pochard) with a rufous brown head and dark neck. It is leaning back on the surface of the water with its wings raised.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

It’s finally out! Our work addressing the origins of reptiles is published in PCJ! peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.... We use novel info gleaned from the scan data of dozens of stem reptiles to substantially revise our understanding of early reptile evolution #paleontology #herpetology

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Uberabatitan_ @lucaspaleoarts.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

✝︎𝙆𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙙𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙤 𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙖𝙚 - 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗶𝗿𝗮 𝗲𝘁 𝗮𝗹., 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟭 ⚊ O primeiro #pterossauro da nossa semana. O gênero #Kariridraco! Diretamente da formação #Romualdo no Ceará, É também alguns possíveis táxons que viveram com ele. 🔽 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗰̧𝗼̃𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮́𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘀.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Our description of Milleretta rubidgei, a 252 million-year old reptile, is out! academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a... #Permian #Reptile #South Africa

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Thom Sanger @thomsanger.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

I am very proud of the work that went into this new Sanger Lab publication. This paper was led by postdoc Marta Marchini and a number of my lab's undergraduate students, each of which contributed unique skills or effort to the completion of this project.

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Kaedan O'Brien, Ph.D. @deadbovids.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

So happy to see this finally published by Lüdecke et al.! Not only is this a fascinating result (Raymond Dart would be shocked!), this is an awesome new use of nitrogen isotopes www.sciencenews.org/article/earl...

sciencenews.org

Early human ancestors didn't regularly eat meat

Chemicals in the tooth enamel of Australopithecus suggest the early human ancestors ate very little meat, dining on vegetation instead.

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Gabriel Ugueto @serpenillus.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Let me introduce you to Ahvaytum bahndooiveche, a new #dinosaur described yesterday that represents the oldest Laurasian dinosaur known so far! I was lucky enough to be commissioned to create the reconstruction of this taxon. Congratulations to Dr. David Lovelace and colleagues! #paleoart #sciart

An illustration showing Ahvaytum inspecting a series of dying/dead metoposaurid tmenospondyls in a drying pond

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Yuting Lin @tinandemu.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Ever wondered how birds stand up? Our paper explores how emus use their muscles to stand up. We found that these large, flightless birds use large muscle fibre length changes, activations and forces. My 1st PhD chapter, out now in @jexpbiol.bsky.social! journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

journals.biologists.com

Hindlimb kinematics, kinetics and muscle dynamics during sit-to-stand and sit-to-walk transitions in emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae)

Summary: The dynamics, biomechanical constraints and musculotendinous coordination strategies during the sit-to-stand/walk transitions for a large bipedal bird – the emu – inform morphology, evolution...

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

A pretty solid couple of days for publishing some of my dissertation work! 🦎Our description of Milleropsis pricei, a late Permian reptile from South Africa, is out! 🚨Rethink what you know about 'parareptiles'🚨 Link here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

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Dave Lovelace @paleobadger.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I am incredibly excited to share our new Open Access publication in the @zoojlinnsoc.bsky.social that was released today. Please welcome *Ahvaytum bahndooiveche*, a new species of sauropodomorph(?) dinosaur from the Popo Agie Formation, WY, USA. tinyurl.com/3zx7s3mx (1/x)

Image contains a small theropod dinosaur checking out a dead amphibian in a wetland forested ecosystem

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Our anatomical description of Hapsidopareion is out in Papers in Palaeontology! Thanks to collaborators and mentors @gondwannabe.bsky.social, Arjan Mann, and @hanssues.bsky.social and ISU undergraduate coauthors for their massive help with segmentation! 😄https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.1610

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Natalia (娜塔莉) @wrycritic.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Imagine your notebook surviving for centuries to be studied by historians. This happened to transcriptions by Nicholai Miklouho-Maclay, Russian of Ukrainian Cossack descent, of a palaeontology class delivered by Ernst Haeckel (1866) This unlikely record, captures the rise of race science in Germany🧵

Sketch of a "pterodactyl" labelled as Archeopter by Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay

Doodle below writing of a plesiosaur and Pterodactyl

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Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Oh groovy, our paper on the hindlimb biomechanics of the Triassic dinosauriform Lagosuchus is out! A quick thread for now. We uCT-scanned most of the existing skeletal material for this important outgroup to Dinosauria. We sorted through the elements and chose the best ones to make a 3D model from.

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Armita R. Manafzadeh @armanafzadeh.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Thrilled to share: out in @natureportfolio.bsky.social (!) just in time for Thanksgiving, the dinosaurian history of how your turkey does the twist. Fibular reduction enabled mid-drumstick mobility, unlocking extreme knee long-axis rotation in theropods 🍗🦖🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08251-w

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Joschua Knüppe @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

A quick little size chart put together to show the differences in proportions of some of the larger pterosaurs that were found in southern Germany during the late Jurassic. #Skiphosoura #paleoart #pterosaur

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Dr Dave Hone @davehone.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Ok, so the news is still new. I have a new paper out today naming a cool new pterosaur: Skiphosoura bavarica (Bavarian sword-tail), from the Late Jurassic of Southern Germany. The full paper is here with all the info: www.cell.com/current-biol... Artwork by @serpenillus.bsky.social.

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Gabriel Ugueto @serpenillus.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Please welcome the new pterosaur Skiphosoura bavarica from the Late Jurassic of Europe This amazing darwinopteran is known from an incredibly complete fossil, largely preserved in 3D! Needless to say I was SUPER excited when @davehone.bsky.social commissioned me to reconstruct this amazing animal!

A pair of Skiphosoura flying against a dark sky

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