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Stephan Spiekman

@stephanspiekman.bsky.social
396 followers 320 following 56 posts

Postdoctoral Researcher @smnstuttgart.bsky.social. Vertebrate palaeontologist studying Triassic reptile evolution.

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Reposted by Stephan Spiekman
Dr Paul M.J. Burke @palaeoburke.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Introducing Herugavialis cairensis. A new genus of fossil gavialoid crocodylian from the Middle Eocene of Egypt. Recovered from the Mokattam Formation, Herugavialis was found from the same rocks used to build the Great Sphinx and pyramids of Egypt. Read here: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
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Phil Mannion @pdmannion.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Introducing Herugavialis cairensis, a newly recognised Eocene gavialoid crocodylian from Egypt from the same geological formation as the rocks used to build the Sphinx, led by @palaeoburke.bsky.social (with @stephanspiekman.bsky.social + @hesham-sallam.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
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Serjoscha Evers @sirjoscha.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
1/4 🐢 What should fossil turtle systematics look like ten years from now? Walter Joyce & I offer our personal answer in a new review paper: "Transforming Turtle Systematics: Challenges, Opportunities, and the Path Ahead" Out now in @journalsystpal.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Figure 1 from our paper, highlighting turtle ecology across phylogeny
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Gabriel Ugueto @serpenillus.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Here is a link to a wonderful thread by @stephanspiekman.bsky.social about this amazing paper! Thank you so much for entrusting me with reconstructing this amazing animal bsky.app/profile/step...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
The fish scales are only found in the intestinal region, actually. We made the common mistake of calling any gut content "stomach content"! See one of the supp figs here for the position of the scales.
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Second, we'd expect the lungs to reach further anteriorly, reaching to between the pectoral girdles. Also, lungs are extremely fragile and virtually never fossilize (I don't know a single Triassic example), whereas there are quite some (partial) cases of stomach preservation in marine reptiles.
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
That's a good question and we pondered this for a long time. First, the liver isn't necessarily posterior to the stomach, but seems to be largely covered by it, with only its posterior portion sticking out. You can see how far anteriorly the liver extends in the ventral part of the body cavity.
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Naturkundemuseum Stuttgart @smnstuttgart.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Spectacular discovery: Researchers, including Dr. @stephanspiekman.bsky.social (Natural History Museum Stuttgart & @unihohenheim.bsky.social) have, for the first time, identified parts of the digestive system in a 245-million-year-old marine reptile from China. Press release: t1p.de/7e2wr
Fossilized marine reptile skeleton in rock with green label "A LOOK INSIDE A MARINE REPTILE."
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Many thanks to Wei Wang and Chun Li for the opportunity to contribute to this amazing project, and thanks to the entire team for the great collaboration. And thanks to @serpenillus.bsky.social for this stunning reconstruction! @smnstuttgart.bsky.social @unihohenheim.bsky.social @dfg.de
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Exceptionally, the fossil preserves an intact stomach, liver (incl reddish hue and high iron contents) and intestine. The simple stomach shows that the double chambered stomach of birds and crocs likely evolved later in archosauromorph evolution. And the short intestine befits a fish-eating reptile
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Its limb proportions are similar to mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs, suggesting the front limbs were mainly used for steering and the tail for propulsion. Austronaga was clearly an excellent swimmer, more so than we ever imagined for an archosauromorph. But the story doesn't end there...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Austronaga exhibits hyperphalangy (an increase in phalanges to increase flipper surface area), enhanced forelimbs and a strong reduction of the hindlimb, including a loss of articulation between the sacrum and pelvis. This allows it to optimise its centre of mass for underwater locomotion
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Trachelosaurids show extensive marine adaptations, including an increase in presacral vertebral count, flippered limbs, and viviparity (giving birth to live young). But Austronaga takes these aquatic adaptations even further...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
There is an exception to this rule though, and of course it can be found in the Triassic, the ultimate time of reptile innovation! In recent years, we identified a clade of highly marine archosauromorphs: Trachelosauridae, which includes the charismatic 'Chinese Sea Dragon' Dinocephalosaurus
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Archosauromorphs (crocs, birds and their relatives), dominated the land during the Mesozoic. Although they also invaded the oceans several times (think penguins or thalattosuchians - oceangoing crocs), their aquatic adaptations never rivaled those of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, or mosasaurs
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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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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Congrats Brandon! Great to have you strengthen European vertebrate paleo :)
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Brandon Peecook @gondwannabe.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Today is my first day in office as the new curator of vertebrate paleontology at @nhmdk.bsky.social & @ucph.bsky.social! 🇩🇰 🏛️ 🦴 🦕 😁 Starting off right with some proper Paleozoic Greenlandic friends (🐟/🐸, 🦈) and an extremely Danish office surprise! 🧱
A guy stoked outside a newly painted brown office door with a lil picture of him on it“Grace” (NHMD 72798), a particularly beautiful skull of the early tetrapodomorph Acanthostega. A light, wooden brown “rock” with a large grey orbit and small white teeth arcing below. Hand for scale. Four fingers against a swooping dark grey rock that contains the holotype (NHMD-167021) of a very bizarre cartilaginous fish. The swoop at top is a semicircular whorl of teeth from a very special animal you’ll be hearing more about.A Lego kit of a Triceratops skull
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Tiago Simões @trsimoes.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Proud to share our latest paper in out in Nature today on the origin of #snakes. We present Tametara mirim, an articulated 3D preserved stem snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. Tametara helped us re-tell the story of snake origins in a novel way... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Exceptional brain and ecological diversity in the earliest snakes - Nature
A well-preserved fossil snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil shows early ecological and brain shape disparity in the group.
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Just in time for the weekend: this new skull fills a big gap in the formation of the bulldog-like🐶 rhynchosaur skull, which we also use as an excuse to review all of rhynchosaur skull evolution! Another Triassic weirdo off my bucket list✅ @smnstuttgart.bsky.social @unihohenheim.bsky.social @dfg.de
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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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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Thanks Brandon, that's great to hear!
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Thanks Gabi! :)
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Delighted to see this published Stephan! The second in our series of short reviews on the systematics of major groups. (Short by @stephanspiekman.bsky.social standards, you understand). Take a look at this Bluesky... you'll want to cite it!
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Finally a thank you to @journalsystpal.bsky.social and especially @tweetisaurus.bsky.social for the invitation to contribute to this special issue. There will be a lot more (and more succinct😉) systematic reviews coming!
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This review was inspired by my recently started Turtle Origins Research Group @smnstuttgart.bsky.social and @unihohenheim.bsky.social funded by a @dfg.de Emmy Noether Grant, which will deal more with this subject. So much more to come! For now, please enjoy: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Getting to the root of it: perspectives on the phylogenetic origins of modern reptiles
Reptiles are currently represented by turtles, archosaurs (crocodylians and birds), and lepidosaurs (lizards, snakes and the tuatara). However, these groups represent only a fraction of the known d...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This is a hot topic with many unknowns and loads of strange Permo-Triassic reptiles. It is also very current, with loads of ongoing progress, exemplified by this great paper by @semifossorial.bsky.social et al. published during the process of writing this review: www.cell.com/current-biol... ->
cell.com
The phylogenetic origin of turtles
Jenkins et al. present the largest morphological dataset for early reptile phylogeny, recovering turtles as sisters to archosaurs and rejecting Eunotosaurus as a stem turtle. Instead, Eunotosaurus is ...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This is massive systematic unknown holding back our understanding of reptile evolution. And the only way to solve it is with fossils! 🦴⚒️ We delve into this complex but very important topic. Why is it so difficult to resolve? Can we ever resolve it and if so, how? ->
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
New review paper with Martín Ezcurra just published in @journalsystpal.bsky.social as part of a special issue! Modern reptiles comprise archosaurs 🐊🦉, lepidosaurs🦎🐍, and turtles🐢, but their origins is murky. Where do turtles fit in, really? And most marine reptiles? Choristoderes? Drepanosaurs? ->
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
We @journalsystpal.bsky.social commissioned a series of short review articles on the systematics of major fossil groups from leading experts, and asked them to speculate on where their field is going. The first, by Otega-Hernandez, is out now: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
tandfonline.com
A decade after Deuteropoda – insights into the systematics, evolution and dynamics of Cambrian euarthropods
The systematics and evolution of Cambrian euarthropods have undergone a major transformation in recent years owing to the continued discovery of new species from sites with exceptional preservation...
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
I'm really thrilled to see the "Cromhall Croc" finally getting the attention it deserves! Please welcome Galahadosuchus jonesi, named after Ewan's school science teacher, who inspired his love of the natural world ♥️ anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
A second species of non‐crocodyliform crocodylomorph from the Late Triassic fissure deposits of southwestern UK: Implications for locomotory ecological diversity in Saltoposuchidae
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Phil Mannion @pdmannion.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Meet Galahadosuchus jonesi, a new crocodylomorph from the Late Triassic of the UK, described by @es-ucl.bsky.social & @nhm-london.bsky.social PhD student Ewan Bodenham (with @stephanspiekman.bsky.social, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social & Paul Upchurch): anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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Dr Matt Dempsey @sketchy-raptor.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
Here's Galahadosuchus, a new saltoposuchid from Gloucestershire that I was brought on to illustrate. Congrats to Ewan Bodenham, Stephan Spiekman (@stephanspiekman.bsky.social), Susie Maidment (@tweetisaurus.bsky.social), Paul Upchurch, and Phil Mannion (@pdmannion.bsky.social) on the publication!
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Yesterday, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social visited us @smnstuttgart.bsky.social to talk about her amazing work on Spicomellus, which had everything that makes palaeo great: unexpected discoveries, fieldwork, prep work, bizarre anatomy, CT scanning, you name it
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Hello from Stuttgart! Never been to the SMNS before but it's a lovely museum with amazing collections. Right now they have a temporary exhibit on Triassic life, featuring Mirasaura. @stephanspiekman.bsky.social showed me round.. Amazing fossils!
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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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Journal of Systematic Palaeontology @journalsystpal.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Meet our brilliant team of Associate Editors! 𝐃𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐤𝐦𝐚𝐧 (Museum of Natural History Stuttgart) is a specialist in Triassic reptile evolution, using comparative anatomy, functional morphology, histology and phylogeny. Read more: buff.ly/UYmwXjr @stephanspiekman.bsky.social #Paleosky
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe - Nature
New results indicate that rhabdodontids and the previously described Ajkaceratops are actually distinctive European ceratopsians, a group better known from Asia and North America.
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Journal of Systematic Palaeontology @journalsystpal.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
New paper! Buffa 𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘭. (2025) redescribe the anatomy of the enigmatic stem-reptile 𝙂𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙝𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙨 from the Permian of South Africa and the origin of Neodiapsida 🦎 Phylogenetic analysis of the relationships of Permian reptiles. Read the study here: buff.ly/62lJG0W #FossilFriday #PaleoSky
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
On the off-chance that you are one of the three people left in the world who hasn't heard me talking about stegosaurs, you can catch me here, on The Ancients podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=I9Vk...
youtube.com
Inside The Bizarre Biology Of The Stegosaurs
YouTube video by The Ancients
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Dr Valentina Rossi @she-paleo.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
🐸 NEW PAPER OUT! This time it’s all about FROGS and their melanosomes! Falk et al., 2025, iScience: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.114220 #palaeontology #frogs #deeptime
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Congrats Andy!
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Andrew Christopher Knapp @knapprew.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
You wait ages for a paper, and two come along (almost) at once! This is the first publication from the project we're currently working on, where we're investigating the relationship between different regions of the avian head. 1/n royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
royalsocietypublishing.org
Avian cranial evolution is influenced by shape interactions between hard and soft tissue traits
Abstract. Changes in the structure and relative size of the brain are thought to be key transformations in the evolution of birds, reflecting innovations a
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
Just a quick heads up for those who intended to use the free scale bars handed out at this year's SVP by #PaleoTools: don't...
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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
What cynic would ever say such a thing? 👀
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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Buffa et al.’s paper on the enigmatic Permian reptile 🦎 Galesphyrus and the origin of Neodiapsida is out in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology! Read the thread 👇 for some important takeaways from our study @valentinbuffa.bsky.social #Paleontology #Reptile #Permian doi.org/10.1080/1477...
The holotype of Galesphyrus, an articulated skeleton of a small stem reptile preserved as a mold. It is beautifully preserved, but decided to lose it’s skull prior to discovery A diagram showing the evolutionary relationships of early reptiles found in this study. Importantly, this study places Galesphyrus as sister to Millerettidae + Neodiapsida, reconciling postcrania and cranial data for support of Parapleurota!
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The Anatomical Record @anatrecord.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
🦎✨ New research delivers the 1st full 3D anatomical atlases of the veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus)! Open-access atlases + lesson plans offer powerful new tools for studying reptile evolution and teaching comparative anatomy. Leavey et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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Jordan Bestwick @jordanbestwick1.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
The geology department at the University of Leicester, where myself and countless others did our palaeontology PhDs, is at serious risk of closure Please show your support by signing the below! c.org/KtYyZB8dHk
c.org
Save Geology at the University of Leicester
Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?
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Gabriela Sobral @sobralg.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
We have a proper picture! Thanks @stephanspiekman.bsky.social and the rest that doesn’t have a BlueSky handle
Four people hugging in a pub, three man and a woman, all dressed up and smiling
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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Spiekman and Ezcurra doing totally normal things in my office... @stephanspiekman.bsky.social
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