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If you've been paying attention to what we've been doing in Palaeozoic tetrapods these past few years, this is unexpected but in line with some broader trends. If you haven't, this is an earthquake that registers an 8+ on the Richter scale.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 3h

I’m super honored to have been co-first author on this study, big shout out to Ben Igielman for starting this project to begin with! This project is the first of many early Carboniferous revisions I’m a part of, keep an eye out for more in the future!

Our 3D reconstruction of the Westlothiana skull, in dorsal, lateral, palatal, and medial view.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 3h

This is super important, because Westlothiana, as the (formerly) oldest crown tetrapod, had been used for molecular divergence estimates of Tetrapoda, and (mistakenly) for Reptilia by some studies.

Close up photos of the skull of Westlothiana, our reconstruction, and other important anatomy.

Palatal, braincase, and gill arch elements of Westlothiana, covered in thousands of tiny teeth.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 3h

This suggests that features long-consisered to be terrestrial adaptations, such as a more gracile humerus, pentadactyl foot, ‘amniote’ phalangeal formula, and claw-like phalanges known in Westlothiana, likely first evolved in an aquatic or amphibious setting in near relatives of crown tetrapods.

The forelimb bones of Westlothiana, showing many features for classically linked to terrestrial locomotion, including the absence of an L-shaped humerus and the presence of an olecranon process. Are these truly terrestrial features, is the morphology due to limb reduction in this taxon?

The hip and hindlimb of Westlothiana, our scans reveal numerous additional tarsal elements that were not visible on the surface.

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 3h

Rather than being a terrestrial amniote, synchrotron tomography shows many features of the skull, branchial skeleton, and postcrania that are consistent with an aquatic lifestyle. This include palatal fangs and an ossified gill skeleton that still in articulation with the braincase!

A phylogenetic tree of early tetrapods, showing the placement of Westlothiana among stem tetrapods. Artist recon of Westlothiana by Jacob Schick!

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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 3h

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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Kai The Fish Guy @kaithefishguy.bsky.social · 6h

Had an amazing 8 days on the island of Buru in the Maluku Archipelago! Here are some notable pictures.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Posting for your consideration, without comment.

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

A ptyctodont (Ctenurella?), the acanthodian Gyracanthus, the lungfish Gosfordia, and a coelacanth

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Matt Friedman @friedmanlab.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

ANSP 22341, an unassuming slab from the Famennian Catskill Formation with portions of a few articulated lobe-finned fishes (Holoptychius) and a placoderm (Bothriolepis). Special to me as the first fossil I found to end up in a museum, collected during the first summer of my PhD. #FossilFriday

Red siltstone block containing blue-to-brown fish remains, including areas of articulated scales, fins, and skull bones. A collection label is on top of the specimen.

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The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A new quasipetalichthyid placoderm from the Middle Devonian of China onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #PapersinPalaeontology #FossilFriday @morphobank.bsky.social

Upper left: photograph of fossil specimen IVPP V26687, the placoderm Yipetalichthys maxiongensis, a natural mould of the dorsal part of the endocranium, preserving only a portion of the preorbital plate. Scale bar at lower right of photograph is 10 mm. Lower right, interpretive line drawing. Red rectangle in lower left corner is a cover image from the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

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Prof. Juan Cisneros ⚒️🐉 @cisneros.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Estas duas mandíbulas encontradas a mais de 200 km de distância, no interior do Maranhão, pertencem à mesma espécie Tanyka amnicola, que viveu antes dos dinossauros. #FossilFriday +

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

Recent redescriptions of several metoposaurid taxa including Anaschisma browni (left) and Buettnererpeton bakeri (right) and character matrices attempting to discern metoposaurids relationships made this work reasonably straightforward.

Holotype of Anaschisma browni, redescribed by Gee, Parker, and Marsh (2020).

Holotype of Buettnererpeton bakeri redescribed by Gee and Kufner (2022).

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

One interesting example is Metoposaurus krasiejowensis described by Sulej (2007) which exhibits variation in the contribution of the lacrimal to the orbital margin. This character has been used extensively for taxonomic differentiation, so seeing variation within a population is...disconcerting.

Specimen of Metoposaurus krasiejowensis figured by Sulej (2007) that lacks an orbital contribution from the lacrimal.

Holotype specimen of Metoposaurus krasiejowensis from Sulej (2007) with a lacrimal contribution to the orbital margin (the majority condition among specimens of this species).

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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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Tim Fedak PhD @timfedak.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This 400 million year old fossil is one of the oldest fossil plants from Nova Scotia. A Devonian plant from Murphy Brook Formation, Cliffs of Fundy UNESCO Global Geopark.

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THE FAR SIDE DAILY @bot.cowtools.org · 23/09/2026

Night of the Living Dead Chipmunks

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bioRxiv Developmental Biology @biorxiv-devbio.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

INTACT-olotl: A simplified system for rapid cell type-specific profiling during axolotl limb regeneration www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

hey @jmtheodor.bsky.social we need to create an analytical tool called VeyIzMir

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The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Tetrapod cololite from a middle Permian lagoon community in European Russia & its implications for palaeoecological reconstruction onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... #PapersinPalaeontology

Upper left: photograph of a yellow-brown rock sample containing a fragment of the postcranial skeleton of a reptiliomorph (?Nyctiboetus kassini) (darker brown) with cololite from the Shikhovo–Chirki locality (PIN 161/180). Scale underneath is 10 mm.
Lower left: interpretative sketch of the specimen showing tetrapod remains in brown, fields of scales (paler brown), the cololite in grey and undigested remains in red.
Upper right: tentative reconstruction of the fragmentary skeleton in dorsal view; the bones in red are preserved and the cololite is shown in blue.
Lower right: reconstruction of the postcranial skeleton with cololite, based on CT data. Scale bar in lower right corner is 5 mm.
Red rectangle on right side is a cover image from the journal Papers in Palaeontology.

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Dr Stephan Lautenschlager @palaeostephan.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

New paper out today! Led by Daniel Schwarz, we retrodeformed the skull and reconstructed the cranio-mandibular musculature of the giant stem-amphibian Mastodonsaurus giganteus. Our results show that Mastodonsaurus had a powerful bite and a crocodile- like bite-and-hold feeding style.

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Igor Schneider @ischneider.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Excited to see our lab’s latest work out today in npj Regenerative Medicine! 🎉 Canonical mTOR signaling can support complete fin regeneration, suggesting that salamander-specific mTOR hypersensitivity is an evolutionary novelty. Kudos @josanesousa.bsky.social and amazing team! tinyurl.com/f74w7syr

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The Anatomical Record @anatrecord.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Who “nose” how turtle nasal anatomy evolved? A study of Emydura subglobosa reveals key developmental changes, distinctive pleurodiran features, and a new fenestra rostralis—offering new insights into #turtle cranial evolution. Study by Ito et al.: doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

At the same time folks were fast and lose with ringing the “science is broken” bell, and if it’s rung loud enough and long this is who comes to dinner. Science is, of course, not broken as we’ve seen with enduring from operation warp speed to LIGO.

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Alberta Claw @albertonykus.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Remains of a hesperornithiform (diving theropod closely related to modern birds) including feathers preserved in a coprolite from the Hell Creek Formation: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🪶🧪 (📷O'Connor et al.)

Preserved feathers from a diving bird-like dinosaur contained within fossilized feces, along with a map showing where the specimen was discovered in Montana, U.S.A.

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Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Absolutely, the paper even touches on that. It does mean that a concerning chunk of 'mainstream' science is at least very bad science & possibly pseudoscience. My coauthor Charles has written more on this that I like www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

journals.uchicago.edu

University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent

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Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

This renders a lot of mainstream anthropology, and almost all evolutionary psychology, pseudoscience. A lot of it is ad hoc verbal theorizing and well-disguised genetic determinism.We need to clean up our own house in mainstream to make our criticisms stick.

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Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

It's a traditionally neglected, but now rapidly growing, subfield of philosophy of science. I am currently writing a book on the philosophy of the geosciences that gives introduction, but in meantime I can recommend this survey paper by two members of my #PhiGeo research group

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

What is Philosophy of the Geosciences?

The philosophy of the geosciences is an emerging subfield in philosophy of science. Although past and present geoscientific disciplines differ substantially, we argue that they frequently face common...

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The fossil record asking you to take it literally just one more time

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Developmental Biology @devbiol.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

#DBfeature #ICYMI Unusually high prevalence of cervical ribs in an 18th-Century Hungarian town: The impact of a tuberculosis epidemic on homeotic shifts during pregnancy By F Galis, AEA van der Geer, TJM Van Dooren, T Szeniczey, T Hajdu, K Kiss, I Pap tinyurl.com/yc8jjkft

Congenital anomalies associated with cervical ribs. A) Spina bifida occulta, a neural tube defect that causes the neural spines not to close (indicated by arrow; Vác no. 153), B) Asymmetric 6th cervical vertebra (Vác no. 178), C) Fused 7th cervical and 1st thoracic vertebra (Vác no. 153), D) Fused 2nd and 3rd cervical vertebrae (Vác no. 153), E) Fused 1st and 2nd thoracic vertebrae (Vác no. 180), F) Sacrum with an asymmetric transitional lumbosacral vertebra (indicated by the arrow). This is due to lumbarization of the 1st sacral vertebra on the right (i.e. the right part of the vertebra has a more lumbar shape, with the transverse process not fused laterally to the ilium and not fused caudally to the adjacent sacral vertebra; Vác no. 260), G) Part of a vertebral column showing symmetric homeotic transformations and asymmetry in the length of lumbar transverse processes. The most caudal lumbar vertebra (indicated by the vertical arrow) has been sacralized on the left (i.e. it has a more sacral shape and is fused to the sacrum) and the twelfth thoracic vertebra (indicated by the horizontal arrow) has been lumbarized on the left (on the left a lumbar transverse process and on the right a rib articulation). There is a strong asymmetry in the length of the transverse processes of the first and fourth lumbar vertebrae (Vác no. 195), H) Sternum with asymmetrical left and right first ribs (Vác no. 153).

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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A very informative post by Brian Curtice digging into the Academy of Natural Sciences’ financials. Mostly confirms what we’ve been assuming, but backed up with actual numbers: www.fossilcrates.com/blogs/news/a...

fossilcrates.com

The Academy of Natural Sciences - A Financial Peek

The Financials Behind Why It Could Not Be SavedThe death spiral and the arithmetic of resurrection of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia Quick Background I study sauropod dinosaurs, most...

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MorphoBank @morphobank.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Explore the project on MorphoBank: www.morphobank.org/project/6035... 🧪 #morphology #evolutionarybiology #biology #paleontology #openaccess #openscience

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Current Biology @currentbiology.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

So many things in America are not what they seem or purported to be.. The so-called American cheetah, for instance, is much more closely related to Pumas. And it ate fish! Great new CB paper by Molly-Cassat Johnstone + amazing artwork by Julius Csotonyi 🐆🍣 www.cell.com/current-biol...

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Miracinonyx was a versatile predator/scavenger of small, largely aquatic, prey, with small but stable populations extending north into the Yukon. So much for the "Miracinonyx were specialists at hunting pronghorn antelope" story. www.cell.com/current-biol...

cell.com

Range and diet diversity in the Pleistocene American “cheetah,” Miracinonyx trumani

Cassatt-Johnstone et al. use paleogenomics to show that extinct American cheetahs were most closely related to pumas, not cheetahs. These cats ranged far into the Arctic and exploited aquatic prey, th...

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J Pardo @jdpardo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Lots of new dinocephalian data here in this excellent paper, including possible soft tissues of the brain of Moschops anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Andy Farke @andyfarke.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Also, having done some simple illustrations and worked with illustrators myself, the *process* of illustrating new taxa often reveals important data for the underlying science, and helps clarify the writing process. What matters/what doesn't is an important decision in illustration.

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James Lamsdell, PhD @fossildetective.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Exactly this. So much of the focus of science, education, etc. is now on output or product - when the PROCESS is what is truly important. If you insist on focusing on product, then you need to realise that cutting courses in the process is going to make a shitty product.

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Prof. Juan Cisneros ⚒️🐉 @cisneros.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Nenhum dos fósseis está inteiro mas eles se complementam, pois um tem o crânio e outro, a cauda, juntos nos dão uma boa ideia do esqueleto completo desta espécie. Dentre as características principais da nova espécie temos a presença de uma corcunda triangular +

Foto mostrando um fóssil de peixe, cor cinza-azulada, com algumas escamas brancas, sobre um fundo preto. Ao lado, uma régua mostrando 10cm.

Foto mostrando um fóssil de peixe, cor cinza e branco, sobre um fundo preto. Ao lado, uma régua mostrando 10cm.

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Prof. Juan Cisneros ⚒️🐉 @cisneros.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Demos as boas vindas a uma nova espécie de peixe que viveu antes dos dinossauros: *Nazaria limnica* Ela leva o nome do município do Piauí onde foi encontrado e que tem sido palco de várias outras descobertas: Nazária. Já "limnica" significa "do lago" +

Desenho mostrando um peixe de corpo alto e cor esverdeada com manchas marrons, num lago com estromatólitos de cor amarelada, e fundo de areia clara.

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Stephen Heard @stephenbheard.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Sadly, I expect this will mean less science here in Canada too. Because it will hoover uo resources that could have gone to excellent young scientists, many more of them, and it's doubtful that a single large "bigwig lab" can produce as much knowledge as a dozen smaller ones.

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