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Christopher Dean

@princessquatris.bsky.social
222 followers 253 following 33 posts

Palaeontology person. My interests include music, science, justice, animals, shapes and feelings. (he/him)

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Reposted by Christopher Dean
Palaeoverse @palaeoverse.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Yesterday we led a workshop at @cpeg-cpb25.bsky.social on “Building open data science skills in paleobiology and ecology”. Huge thanks to everyone involved for making the workshop so successful and fun! 🤩
William Gearty presents some advanced topics when using GitHubLewis Jones discusses different approaches for dealing with missing dataHarriet Drage feeds back suggestions from the group, written on post-its, on the opportunities and difficulties of archiving data and codeA group picture of the workshop leaders and participants in front of a fresco at the University of Zurich
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Harriet B. Drage @harriedrage.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
This week, Open Palaeontology published our first research article: a reassessment of the giant millipede-like Arthropleura by Lhéritier, Vallois and Durand! Thank you to the authors for being part of the open-access publishing revolution! www.openpalaeo.org/article/view...
openpalaeo.org
Re-assessment of Arthropleura from the Moscovian of Northern France: new anatomical information and adaptations to terrestrial environments | Open Palaeontology
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Palaeoverse @palaeoverse.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨 It’s time to announce our Summer 2025 talk schedule 👀 Looking forward to hearing from @spissatella.bsky.social, @sauropodlets.bsky.social, @nmkphylo.bsky.social and @russellgarwood.co.uk! Sign up here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-lecture-series-2025
A flyer for the Palaeoverse Lecture Series for Summer 2025
June 26th - Dr Katie Collins, Natural History Museum
“Both round and upward: Spiral morphometry and how to compare things that are the same, but different”
July 31st - Summer break
August 28th - Amy Shipley, University of Leeds
“Modelling ancient food webs: ecosystem changes across the Pliocene marine megafaunal extinction”
September 25th - Dr Nicolás Mongiardino Koch, UC San Diego and Dr Russell Garwood, University of Manchester
“The Tree of Life and Death: What do fossil taxa contribute to morphological phylogenetics?”
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Really happy to see this out! Also super grateful for Jeff bringing me on board; what started as a casual conversation over lunch in the NHM staff room has turned into some really interesting work and a great friendship. What more can you ask for?! Read on for stuff on fossil record preservation! ⤵️
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Go work with Lewis, he's bloody great. But seriously, if you're interested in bias in the fossil record, open science, or corals, he's your man!
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Jeff Thompson @echinerd.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
Just under two weeks left to apply for this 3 year postdoc looking at how signalling shapes skeletal development in sea urchins! Please reach out if you’re interested! For lovers of imaging, skeletal development, biomineralization, in situ hybridization, and marine invertebrates!
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
A huge thanks to @bethanyjallen.bsky.social for the write up on our recent Current Biology paper! Happy to have added to the ever growing toolkit for combatting sampling bias in deep time 🖥️📈🦕
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Dr. Bethany Allen @bethanyjallen.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
If you are interested in biodiversity in deep time, check out my new preprint with @rachelwarnock.bsky.social and @dralexdunhill.bsky.social! We review methods of quantifying diversity and diversification, using the fossil record and phylogenies with extinct tips 🐚🦕📊 doi.org/10.32942/X2D...
doi.org
“A history of the world imperfectly kept”: Will we ever know how biodiversity has changed over deep time?
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
🖥️ Our new paper summarising the paleontological community's progress with data equity is now out! 📉 Really thankful to have played a small part in the making of this paper; it was a joy working with these folks and very satisfying to find a home for some of my thoughts on museum data and curation.
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Andrew Alden @geology.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
The paperback is here!
The author holds his shelf copy of Deep Oakland's new softcover edition, release date 6 May, preorder now!
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Tara Okon @rivers-disguise.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Curlews #WorldCurlewDay
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Megan Renoir @meganrenoir.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I use the CDNC *literally* daily for research that supports tribal sovereignty/rights claims. This is such a vital resource with outsized impact for U.S. researchers, communities, history, etc etc etc. Please, please, pleaseeee reshare and submit a comment!
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UK Reproducibility Network @ukrepro.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Great to see Lewis Jones received his Doscar as one of the winners of the 2025 Dorothy Bishop Prize for his work on the Paleoverse (palaeoverse.org) a community space improving reproducibility in palaeobiological research. #Palaeobiology #Reproducibility #OpenResearch #Research
A lego minifigure of Dorothy Bishop with a laptop, which is a 'Doscar' award for the UKRN Dorothy Bishop Prize, held in an open hand, in front of a laptop screen with visible text "Welcome to the Paleoverse"Lewis Jones, a smiling brown haired man, holding the lego minifigure of Dorothy Bishop (the 'Doscar' award for UKRN Dorothy Bishop Prize) out in front of him.
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
🦖📉 In case anyone missed it, our new paper on using occupancy modelling to resolve the structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record came out yesterday! 🪨⛰️ You can find it here ⬇️ www.cell.com/current-biol... It's also accompanied by this incredible illustration by @tim-bird.bsky.social!
A comic representation of the author's paper published in Current Biology. It features the last days of the dinosaurs, as well as an graphic interpretation of the process of occupancy modelling and the results of the study.
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New Scientist @newscientist.com · 08/04/2025
It’s been hotly debated whether dinosaur populations were thriving or dwindling when an asteroid slammed into the planet 66 million years ago.
newscientist.com
Rethink of fossils hints dinosaurs still thrived before asteroid hit
The number of dinosaurs may have been stable before the asteroid impact, despite evidence that species were getting less diverse
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Andrew Alden @geology.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
A new way to gauge the cracks and stains in our windows to the deep past.
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
🚨 I'm super happy to announce that our new paper is finally out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🚨 We used the ecological approach of occupancy modelling to investigate the structure of the dinosaur fossil record prior to the K/Pg mass extinction! www.cell.com/current-biol...
cell.com
The structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record in North America
Dean et al. examine the fossil record of North American dinosaurs prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Estimates of detection probability from occupancy models decrease prior to the extinction...
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Dr Cecily Nicholl @piginatutu.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
Our new paper out today describes a sebecoidean crocodylomorph from the Early Palaeocene of Patagonia, and provides support for the survival of a large-bodied terrestrial vertebrate lineage across the K-Pg. @pdmannion.bsky.social @es-ucl.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Tewkensuchus salamanquensis skull elementsPalaeontologists retrieving the fossil from the ground
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Palaeoverse @palaeoverse.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
The Palaeoverse team have published a 🚨new preprint🚨 on “Ten simple rules to follow when cleaning occurrence data in palaeobiology” 🧹🐚 Take a look here: doi.org/10.32942/X2FS8M There is also an accompanying R vignette on our website at tenrules.palaeoverse.org 💻
doi.org
Ten simple rules to follow when cleaning occurrence data in palaeobiology
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Nick Crumpton - Taking a break from social media.👋🏻 @lsmonster.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
My new book SMALL WORLD came out yesterday! And it's ironically HUGE (here modelled by my eldest), immersing you in the habitats of 30 of Earth's smallest animals. It's *insanely* illustrated by Rosie Dore and published by Wide Eyed Editions (Quarto) here in the UK. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/smal...
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
I remember starting my PhD and wishing there was a guide on how to how to prepare data for palaeo analyses. Now there is. Very happy to see this preprint out and more broadly to be a part of the Palaeoverse. It’s a joy to work with these folks in so many ways.
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Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Brilliant news! At last, confirmation that the Govt *will* go ahead with the #NaturalHistoryGCSE 🎉 We have to get to know our fellow travellers on this planet again. Young people who know & love nature are far more likely to protect & restore it - as well as enjoying better physical & mental health
theguardian.com
Department for Education confirms launch of natural history GCSE
Campaigners have been calling for the qualification for years but plan stalled despite a curriculum being drawn up
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Palaeoverse @palaeoverse.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨 🗓️27th March 2025, 16:00 UTC🗓️ Next week we will hear from Dr Ondřej Mottl from Charles University, on “FOSSILPOL: the workflow to process global palaeoecological data of fossil pollen for vegetation-based macroecological synthesis” Register here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-...
A flyer for the next talk in the Palaeoverse Lecture series, featuring a picture of Dr Ondřej Mottl, wearing a checked shirt and smiling into the camera
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Without a doubt the best paper you'll read this year. The video abstract is pretty hard to beat too.
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Dr. Bethany Allen @bethanyjallen.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Today I have resigned from my position as a Data Editor at Proceedings B. I believe the journal does great work, but it feels wrong to voluntarily spend my time holding authors to account on behalf of the Royal Society, while the Society refuses to hold its own Fellows to account.
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Dr Elsa Panciroli @elsa-panciroli.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Announcing The first found, and most complete, #dinosaur skeleton from the Middle #Jurassic of Scotland! 📢🦖 So delighted to finally be able to share this great new fossil, published today! It was actually the first dinosaur found in #Scotland... thread 🧵 #OpenAccess #fossils doi.org/10.1017/S175...
A white woman with dark blonde hair and glasses leans over a large piece of rock with black fossils embedded in the surface.
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Phil Mannion @pdmannion.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
New paper @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social in which we consider how species' ranges shift, expand, and contract in the present day, past, and future, along with the effects on local and global biodiversity, with Jed Brodie, Ben Freeman & Anna Hargreaves: doi.org/10.1016/j.tr... @es-ucl.bsky.social
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Palaeoverse @palaeoverse.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
We’d like to announce the Spring 2025 line-up of the 🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨 Don’t miss these four excellent speakers! Register for a Zoom link here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-lecture-series-2025
Flyer outlining the upcoming talks of the Palaeoverse Lecture Series.
February 27th, Dr Xia Wang from Chengdu University of Technology, will present ‘DDE-Outcrop3D: an interactive platform for digital outcrop models’
March 27th, Dr Ondřej Mottl from Charles University, will present ‘FOSSILPOL: the workflow to process global palaeoecological data of fossil pollen for vegetation-based macroecological synthesis’
April 24th, Dr Richard Stockey from University of Southampton, will present ‘Modelling ancient animal habitats in space and time: linking fossils and Earth system models’
May 29th, Dr Allison Hsiang from Stockholm University, will present ‘Automating large-scale morphometric data generation using AutoMorph and deep learning’
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
🚨 It's been a week since our 'dark data' manuscript was published! 🚨 If you missed it and want to know how it can impact fossil groups, you can follow this little thread I put together ⬇️
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Kit Yates @kityates.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
🚨I promised I'd say more on the Royal Society and Elon Musk, so here it is. 🚨 I've resigned my position as Associate Editor at Royal Society's journal Open Science in protest at their lack of action over Elon Musk. My op-ed in @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Elon Musk is a proven danger to good science, but the Royal Society won’t say so. That’s why I resigned | Kit Yates
It is vital to act, and I urge colleagues to do so. How can we stand by and laud this man while he undermines scientific integrity? asks academic and author Kit Yates
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Nick Crumpton - Taking a break from social media.👋🏻 @lsmonster.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Exactly this. The @royalsociety.org had a chance to lead but has instead aligned itself with oppression and conservatism. I predict (and hope for) a #boycott. If you're a reviewer, an author, recommended for a prize... take a look at the #royalsociety and consider what it now endorses. #musk #doge
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Megan Renoir @meganrenoir.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Bluesky community - I’m raising rapid-release funds to help Congolese friends with emergency evacuation and subsistence support in Bukavu and Goma. Many have lost work and access to aid, not least b/c of USAID gutting. Please give what you can & re-share this post! www.gofundme.com/f/emergency-...
gofundme.com
Donate to Emergency Evacuation Fund: DRC Peacebuilders, organized by Zarinah Agnew
On Friday February 14th, M23 rebels captured and occupied Bukavu, the secon… Zarinah Agnew needs your support for Emergency Evacuation Fund: DRC Peacebuilders
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Robert Macfarlane @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
A fascinating & hopeful river-moment: Lewes District Council agrees to recognise a Charter of Rights for the River Ouse. “The Ouse has long been taken for granted…this is the beginning of a journey to give the river a voice & ensure its wellbeing for future generations.” elflaw.org/news/histori...
elflaw.org
Historic decision sees River Ouse set to become first in England with legal rights - Environmental Law Foundation
Lewes, – In an exciting and groundbreaking decision, Lewes District Council have agreed to recognise the Rights of the River Ouse, paving the way for the Ouse to become the first in England to have its legal rights recognised by a local authority. The decision represents a major step in the UK’s environmental movement, […]
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Dr Thomas Clements @taphonomist.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
I'm transitioning my Japanese historical art threads to bluesky - todays wonderful example is 'Fish and Octopus' from a series called 'Colorful Realm of Living Beings (Dōshoku sai-e)', painted by Itō Jakuchū in 1766. There is a sneaky second octopus in the painting who is very very cute 🐙♥️
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Gill Petrokofsky @greenwoodtree14.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Museum 'dark data'! Really interesting paper. Similar problem of 'legacy data sets' in forestry - being explored with a view to rescue by group led by Sheila Ward in @iufro.bsky.social
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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 26/02/2025
Museum ‘dark data’ show variable impacts on deep-time #biogeographic and #evolutionary history #ProcB #OpenAccess royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
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Eric Ekdale @eekdale.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Anyone who has worked in and/or with a natural history collection knows what an untapped trove of treasures they are. This paper showcases their importance! #NaturalHistoryCollections #MuseumScience
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Christopher Dean @princessquatris.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Very excited to use my first @bsky.app post to announce @echinerd.bsky.social and I's new paper in Proc B! 🎉 We used a dataset of Palaeozoic echinoids from 33 museums worldwide to see the impact museum ‘dark data’ has on biogeographic and evolutionary patterns in deep time! doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Museum ‘dark data’ show variable impacts on deep-time biogeographic and evolutionary history | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The age of digitally accessible datasets has transformed palaeontology, enabling previously impossible macroevolutionary insights. However, a substantial reservoir of generally inaccessible ‘dark data...
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