Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Yes! Look at that fur texture!! Delicious! 🥰 010
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 09/10/2026You owe me nothing but I would love some fun bespoke palaeochoices 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I thought that after we got rid of the thylacine, no sheep would die. Huh.🤔 010
Reposted by Douglass S Rovinsky, PhDJess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 08/10/2026This is obscene. Destroying something so precious for shitty memes? Just sickening. 026582
Reposted by Douglass S Rovinsky, PhDNic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I'll be giving a free public talk on "Mythbusting de-extinction to sort fact from fiction" in Christchurch (in the central city) on Thurs 29th Oct at 6pm. It would be great to see you there. Spread the word. events.humanitix.com/myth-busting... @smcnz.bsky.socialevents.humanitix.comMyth busting de-extinction to sort fact from fictionAssociate Professor Nic Rawlence, University of Otago will speak on can scientists actually de-extinct animals, and more importantly, should they bring them. 02218
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 06/10/2026It's like when they slap thylacine stripes on every single prehistoric metatherian predator any bigger than that. Ugh. So tired of this self-referential feedback loop everything is stuck in. 031
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 01/10/2026You don’t see a lot of this within terrestrial vertebrates, which is why I have such a bugbear about using the phrase “apex predator” to describe e.g., lions. You can’t have an apex if your trophic system is flat! 020
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 28/09/2026I lost SO MANY BOOKS when I moved to Australia. Entire bookshelves full left behind or donated to the local op shop. I really, really miss some of them. 010
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Oooooh you know how to tickle my fancy! 031
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026Hadrosaur reconstructions have always been some of my favourites. No matter the era, they always have a sense... I dunno. Something that viscerally appeals to me. I love the rubbery lizard people ones, the old sad Trachdons, the noble slabs of duck, everything. So good. 120
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Yeah. More and more it seems that our choice are between worse and worse. This isn’t the future I was hoping to grow old in. 011
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 20/09/2026Ground News does seem like a great source. I’m just not often using the internet to get the news 😅 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 20/09/2026The functional* peer-review engine is Google Scholar… *becoming less & less so. But yeah - I’m often looking for very specific pieces of information, or esoteric things like anatomical drawings of the palmar surface of hyena manual phalanges. Bing shits a big brick. Google shits smaller bricks. 010
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 20/09/2026That’s not to say that Google is _good_; it’s demonstrably worse than it used to be. It’s just still better than the alternatives if you actually need to find certain things, and not just hand-wavy approximations. 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 20/09/2026It’s not _just_ the AI results - it’s the fact that I can search for something very specific, and whereas Google gives me workable results (along with AI) Bing just seems to make wild guesses as to what it thinks I must have wanted. From a research/professional standpoint it’s just not functional. 120
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Until it isn’t a re-skinned Bing (or Google’s engine gets even worse) that isn’t likely to happen. I need search results that make sense, not vague guesses. 000
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 19/09/2026Yeah, both Google Scholar and now just straight-up Google itself has started shitting the bed on me over the past few days. It’s… really not impressive. 2200
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 18/09/2026At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I have, and I agree with @sophiesaurus98.bsky.social . I don’t feel they are any more a window into reality than, say, what I experience when I’m drunk. They’re just making my brain Go Weird, & that’s really cool & fun & feels neat, but it’s not the Hidden Truth. 020
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 18/09/2026Especially if that grad student is in palaeontology. I remember being brow-beaten by a professor about my sample size. I was like “Ma’am, we only have one of these. There aren’t more to get.” 170
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Whoa! Gonna have to sit with the methods on that, but wow that’s cool (or, rather - warm!) 010
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 11/09/2026What a flashback; seen so many of these things! 011
Reposted by Douglass S Rovinsky, PhDPaul Z. Barrett PhD @nimravenous.bsky.social · 09/09/2026Happy to announce the publication of our article in Nature Ecology & Evolution on adaptive zone evolution in terrestrial mammal carnivores. Over the next few days, I’ll share the major results—and by extension, take you on a tour of carnivore evolution. (rdcu.be/6okG1hVhvtHa) 1/nrdcu.be 2139
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026This paper had a long, painful gestation & birth. Lots of iterations, direction changes, difficulties, and issues. It was a very weird one, and likely will be the last bit of research I will be a large part of. Wish many things with it were different, but that's most often the case! 17/17 030
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026...and there are unfortunately no adult heads in good enough preservation to look at the internal soft anatomy. To top it off, the reasons for a large IOF are varied and poorly understood. Heck, it could even be a developmental spandrel. 16/n 130
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026SideWeird, one of the bugbears of @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social was that the thylacine has a really large infraorbital foramen (IOF), which transmits nerves and blood to the snout, lips, and whiskers. What does that mean? Who knows! Thylacines don't seem to have had extravagant whiskers... 15/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Intriguingly, the shape doesn't seem to really exist anymore - but savvy palaeos know that it is one that has popped up in many lineages in the past. Including Andrewsarchus! Were these animals also quick+efficient canine-snapping at relatively smaller prey? Needs to be tested! 14/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026This can be somewhat mitigated by moving the centre of mass farther from the joint (think of a hammer). And, of course, by simply being bigger. Perhaps the thylacine was quickly snapping at things while trying to get the most 'bang for the buck' out of the skull shape. Needs to be tested! 13/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026What does all this mean when put together? Because of how levers work, the tip of a long jaw will move faster than the tip of a short jaw. BUT it will also be at a bit of a strength disadvantage, due to the distance from the joint & muscles. 12/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Looking at the height of the snout at this narrowest spot also shows an interesting picture. Again, the thylacine and Andrewsarchus are outliers (though not the Ethiopian wolf this time). The snouts of thylacine & Andrewsarchus are long, narrow, expanded at the tip, & taller than expected. 11/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026The width at the narrowest part of the snout - the 'pinch' - compared to the width across the canines, regresses out pretty tightly. Oh - except for the thylacine... and Andrewsarchus. The only modern placental in the dataset was Canis simensis - the Ethiopian wolf. 10/n 111
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Then we looked at something that has intrigued several people over past decades. The snout of the thylacine is narrow, has a bit of a pinch, then expands into a terminal rosette. Is it really different than in comparatives, and are there others like that in our dataset? 9/n 120
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Contrary to that, the skull width across the canines & across the main flesh-shearing teeth is narrower than expected. So, even though the head is big, the snout long, and cheeks broad, the actual bitey bit is... more graceful? Thylacine = purple Grey wolf = Black Dingo = Tan Coyote = Teal 8/n 120
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Some of this seems to be driven in part by having a longer snout & wider zygomatics (cheeks) than expected for their skull size. The cheeks in particular get more emphasised in larger* thylacines (positive allometry). Thylacine = purple Grey wolf = black Dingo = tan Coyote = teal *all adults 7/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Digging deeper with old fashioned linear metrics, we looked at different aspects of the skull. We triple-checked the head size thing, and yup - even using a proxy metric from doi.org/10.1186/s129... the skull size was bigger than expected. 6/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026One of the things that started this paper was @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social finding out that the thylacine seems to have had a big head in one of their datasets. We double-checked with my data, and yup. Kinda outsized skull there! 5/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026We took previous data from my PhD and added a few new data points: a South American sparassodont Borhyaena tuberata, the mid-Miocene thylacinid Nimbacinus dicksoni, and the wicked-huge Eocene Andrewsarchus mongoliensis. Intriguingly, Andrewsarchus often plotted close to the thylacine... 4/n 111
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026We took a look at some interesting features of the thylacine's skull and had some thoughts about what they might mean. 3/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026The recently extinct thylacine (aka Tasmanian tiger) has always been an iconic critter, in parts due to the convergence with placental predators, its recent extinction at the hands of humans, and the surprising near-complete lack of observational data. Lots we don't know, even if we have video! 2/n 110
Douglass S Rovinsky, PhD @dsrovinsky.bsky.social · 07/09/2026Like thylacines? Of course you do. A little thread on some recent research I was part of with @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social here 🧵⤵️ #SciComm #EvoBio #PaleoBio #Evolution #Paleontology 1/n www.nature.com/articles/s41...nature.comSkull morphology of the extinct Tasmanian tiger suggests unique biting style - Nature CommunicationsThe recently extinct thylacine was Australia’s largest marsupial predator and famously likened to dog-family carnivorans such as wolves. However, here the authors show that its skull functioned differ... 12810