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Alec Wilken, PhD

@alec-wilken.bsky.social
52 followers 65 following 13 posts

Assistant Teaching Professor at University of Missouri School of Medicine 🐯 Ears, jaws, and vertebrate paleontology (he/him)

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Alec Wilken, PhD @alec-wilken.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Check out this great write up of our Thrinaxodon hearing paper featured in Popular Mechanics! 👂🙉🌽 www.popularmechanics.com/science/a701...
popularmechanics.com
Scientists Discovered the Origin of Human Ears in the Skull of an Ancient Creature
While Thrinaxodon liorhinus didn’t yet have the sophisticated hearing equipment of modern mammals, it shows that eardrums began evolving much earlier than assumed.
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Alec Wilken, PhD @alec-wilken.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
While we didn’t mean to ruffle any feathers with our last paper on the evolution of cranial kinesis in birds, we are grateful for the opportunity to keep the conversation going! Check out our response to Benito et al. out today in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (1/n)
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Alec Wilken, PhD @alec-wilken.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
🚨New paper alert🚨 Check out our new paper on the biomechanics of hearing in our cynodont ancestors! pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (1/n)
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Reposted by Alec Wilken, PhD
Maya Juman @mayajuman.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
We created a database of all published paramyxovirus detection attempts in pteropodid bats! Lots of sampling gaps and avenues for future study ⬇️ Excited to share this PhD chapter with @danjbecker.bsky.social and @viralemergence.org, out last month in @plos.org 🦇🦠🔓 journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...
journals.plos.org
Paramyxoviruses in Old World fruit bats (Pteropodidae): An open database and synthesis of sampling effort, viral positivity, and coevolution
Author summary Paramyxoviruses are a family of viruses that include the human measles and mumps viruses as well as emerging zoonoses like Hendra and Nipah henipaviruses. These henipaviruses spill over...
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