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Brian Beatty

@vanderhoofius.bsky.social
395 followers 626 following 18 posts

Comparative Anatomist, Vertebrate Paleontologist, and Surface Metrologist - Long Island NY, Florida, China, everywhere!

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PEC Exeter @pec-exeter.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Where are all the field studies? This ⬇️ important but rather depressing paper describes how conducting, & crucially initiating, field studies is becoming harder & rarer. A short 🧵 (and a call for more fieldwork) www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
cell.com
Extinction of experience among ecologists
Fieldwork-based research and education in ecology are under multiple threats and are progressively declining. We call for greater attention to this ongoing loss of direct field experience within the ecology community, as it could have widespread consequences for science and education, ultimately hindering efforts to address the ongoing biodiversity crisis.
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Philip Donoghue @phil-donoghue.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Tahlia Pollock @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social has an amazing new study integrating 3D shape, biomechanics, and optimality modelling, helps explain why so many mammals evolve sabre teeth: functional optimality was a key driver behind the repeated evolution of extreme sabre-tooth morphologies.
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Fascinating…
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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Looking for reviewers before Christmas
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. @arctomet.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Eugenia, P.M., Bona, P., Siroski, P. and Chinsamy, A. (2025), Analyzing the Life History of Caimans: The Growth Dynamics of Caiman latirostris From an Osteohistological Approach. Journal of Morphology, 286: e70010. doi.org/10.1002/jmor...
doi.org
Analyzing the Life History of Caimans: The Growth Dynamics of Caiman latirostris From an Osteohistological Approach
This research offers insights into the life history and growth dynamics of Caiman latirostris, highlighting their growth patterns, aging, and attainment of sexual maturity, and how environmental cond...
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
Spent the afternoon helping my students prepare for a big day tomorrow. The first day of sampling for our AHA-funded project starts at 7:30am tomorrow!!!
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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
#artadventcalendar x #fossilfriday Valenictus sheperdi, an extinct tusked (but otherwise toothless) walrus from the Pliocene Purisima Formation of northern California - here shown cruising along an early rocky shore habitat. We named this earlier this year. 🐡🐬🦑🦖
Illustration of the extinct walrus Valenictus swimming through an early kelp forest; the seafloor consists of rocky outcroppings covered in giant green anemones, mussels, urchins, sea stars, with a few other friends (spider crab, wolf eel, abalone, rockfish, a couple of garibaldi fish, and a California sheepshead). Several giant and bull kelp stalks are present.The skull of Valenictus sheperdi; the skull is facing to the right in oblique view, and the tusks are missing.
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. @arctomet.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
apnews.com/article/mast...
apnews.com
Giant sloths and mastodons coexisted with humans for millennia in Americas, new discoveries suggest
New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.
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Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
10 anuran species x 4 muscles (3D diceCT scan data) x 40 to 168 fibres/muscle = a monumental study of form and function in frog legs by Leavey et al. WOW!! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
3D visualisation of Arthroleptis tanneri (voucher number CAS:HERP:168823) fibres from the four muscles used for analysis, extracted in R (GoodFibes package) and visualised in Amira (Version 2020.2). Right hindlimbs in dorsal and oblique views, with bones shown in grey and coloured streaky fibres of 4 different leg muscles around them.
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Robert Boessenecker, Dr. of Whaleontology ™️ @coastalpaleo.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
#artadventcalendar day 18: Life restoration of the 17-18 myo fossil walrus Pelagiarctos from southern California, with a photograph of the mandible overlain - walruses were still quite sea lion like at the time. Graphite and digital, 8x10", 2012. #sciart #paleoart #paleontology 🐡🐋🦖
Colorized drawing of an extinct walrus with a sea lion like head; it's got large canines and bulky cheek teeth, long whiskers, a big ole brown eye, a black nose, short brown hair, and short ear flaps. I want to pet it but it would take off my whole arm
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. @arctomet.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Amy M. Balanoff (2024) Dinosaur palaeoneurology: an evolving science Biology Letters 20(12): 20240472 doi: doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
doi.org
Dinosaur palaeoneurology: an evolving science | Biology Letters
Our fascination with dinosaur brains and their capabilities essentially began with the first dinosaur discovery. The history of this study is a useful reflection of palaeoneurology as a whole and its ...
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Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. @arctomet.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Natalia Jagielska Thomas G Kaye Michael B Habib Tatsuya Hirasawa Michael Pittman (2024) New soft tissue data of pterosaur tail vane reveals sophisticated, dynamic tensioning usage and expands its evolutionary origins eLife 13:RP100673. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
doi.org
New soft tissue data of pterosaur tail vane reveals sophisticated, dynamic tensioning usage and expands its evolutionary origins
Laser-stimulated fluorescence (LSF) imaging of early pterosaurs uncovers new soft tissue data of tail vane that reveals sophisticated, dynamic tensioning usage and expands its evolutionary origins.
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Caley Orr @caleyorr.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Our new paper announcing a freely available database of 3D scans of primate skeletal material--a major effort led by Sergio Almécija & his team at the American Museum of Natural History. 🧪 🏺 #paleosky #anatomy #primates #anthropology #morphology #zoology #paleoanthropology #openscience
nature.com
Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource
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Dr Luis Huckstadt @luishuckstadt.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
🚨 New Paper Alert 🚨 We put decades of effort in collecting this massive dataset on movement and diving behaviour of northern elephant seals and now we make it available! 🦭🦑🌎 Check it out here 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Two decades of three-dimensional movement data from adult female northern elephant seals
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Simon J. Brandl @gobyone.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
🚨New postdoc positions available: we are looking for 2 postdoctoral researchers to join a large, collaborative effort to document, describe, and investigate the biodiversity of tiny, cryptobenthic fishes in the Indo-Pacific 🤏🐠🧪. More details: fishandfunctions.com/join%F0%9F%9... Please repost 🦑🧪
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Alex Stewart @aast242.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Do you need a salamander phylogeny? You're in luck! We put together the largest salamander phylogeny to date based on molecular markers and used more fossil calibrations than any other currently available trees. 765 salamander species! Check it out! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
A time-calibrated salamander phylogeny including 765 species and 503 genes
Recent time-calibrated amphibian phylogenies agree on the family-level relationships among extant salamanders but had disparate sampling regimes and i…
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
Realizing that I’ve basically become by dad… same beard, same sorts of glasses, same corny jokes… miss you dad (can you tell which ones are me?)
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Gabriel Ugueto @serpenillus.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Quick sketch I did as a request from patron Flouder who suggested I sketched the Late Jurassic mammaliform Castorocauda lutrasimilis #paleoart #sciart #sketch
A pair of Castorocauda on a partly submerged tree branch. One of the Mammaliforms has its head underwater looking at an aquatic salamander. A Pterosaur flies in the background
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Zach Cofran @dizachster.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Awesome image showing how birds can be so smart despite having small brains — more neurons packed into that small space (Olkowicz et al. 2016: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....)
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 12/12/2024
Over 30 prominent scientists call for a ban on the creation of a "mirror cell"--a microbe made of molecules that are mirror images of their natural forms. It could cause a mind-boggling global disaster. Here's my story [gift link] 🧪https://nyti.ms/3OUCXp6
nyti.ms
A ‘Second Tree of Life’ Could Wreak Havoc, Scientists Warn (Gift Article)
Research on so-called mirror cells, which defy fundamental properties of living organisms, should be prohibited as too dangerous, biologists said.
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Loïc A. Royer 💻🔬🧪 @loicaroyer.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
The birth of fruit fly's central nervous system imaged with multicolor #adaptive #lightsheet microscopy. The microscope self-aligns to a signal that appears during imaging. www.nature.com/articles/nbt...
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Ben Miller @extinctmonsters.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Biomass of living mammals, compared! I knew the world was mostly humans and cows but I'm pleasantly surprised that baleen whales are a visible chunk due to pure size, rather than numbers. Original paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (This was on other sites but I haven't seen it here with alt text)
Diamond-shaped graph is broken down by type of mammal according to their populations' total biomass on Earth. Humans and cattle are each about 40%. Other domesticated mammals account for another 10% or so. Baleen whales like 4%. 

Two zoomed in sections show wild terrestrial and wild marine breakdowns in detail. Rodents are like 15% of terrestrial mammals, artiodactyls are 30%. baleen whales are like 70% of wild marine mammal biomass.
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Rory Cooper @rorylcooper.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
This is the face of a shark! I've stained the mineralised tissues to show that their teeth and scales are both made of the same enamel-like material 🦈 🦷 🧪
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Just after thanksgiving I went to Fire Island Wilderness Visitor Center, and besides a beautiful sunset, had a visit with an old friend, Balaenoptera physalus #whales #longisland #fireisland
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Pedro Godoy @pedrolgodoy.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
New croc paper alert! 🐊🚨 In this new study led by my friend and colleague Thiago Fachini, we reassessed the cranial morphology and phylogenetic position of Barreirosuchus franciscoi, a peirosaurian from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
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Nicolas Di-Poi @nicolasdipoi.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
New snake renderings from CT scan data, created using our recently published SmARTR photorealistic pipeline! 🐍 Our manuscript is now in its final published form: doi.org/10.1016/j.is...
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Methods in Ecology and Evolution @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
📖Published📖 In our new Application article, Papadopoulou et al. present the swaRmverse package, an R package for the comparative analysis of collective motion 🌎 🧪 Find out more here👇 buff.ly/3CSAEQW
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The Company of Biologists @biologists.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
🧪 See the full list of speakers who will be presenting at our #biologists100 conference. 100yearsconference.biologists.com/p… 📅 We welcome abstract submissions for both oral and poster presentations by 13 December 2024. #SciSky
Biologists @ 100 logo 
24-27 March 2025
ACC Liverpool, UK

Portraits of various speakers in the conference: Tom Macvicar, Iruka N Okeke, Sadaf Farooqi, Charles Swanton, Jane Francis, Hans-Otto Pörtner, Loydie Jerome-majewska, Susana Godinho, Alpha Yap



Read more at: https://100yearsconference.biologists.com/programme/speakers
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Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Not an African safari - Trafalgar Square with hippos, elephants and lions ~120,000 years ago..Postcard from the British Geological Survey
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Alek Erickson @alekerickson.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
I’m recruiting a PhD student for my new group at Stockholm University! The project will be focused on in vivo modeling epigenetic drivers of craniofacial tissue shaping. If interested, message me a CV
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PaleoSynthesis @paleosynth.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Are you interested in some analytical training in paleobiology and a grad student? Then apply for a place in the Summer School 2025! The call is open as of today. More info can be found here: www.paleosynthesis.nat.fau.de/index.php/ap...
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Hmm.. feels right
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Armita R. Manafzadeh @armanafzadeh.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Incredibly cool work by @kevinhatala.bsky.social et al.!! 👣
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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 27/11/2024
A paper in Nature reports on the use of fossilized samples of faeces and vomit to reconstruct the rise of the dinosaurs to become the dominant players in Earth’s ancient ecosystems. go.nature.com/412c4af 🧪
This is figure 2, which shows feeding evidence inferred from bite marks and synchrotron-scanned bromalites from Krasiejów, Lisowice and Sołtyków.
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phy_papers @phypapers.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Phylogenetic comparative analysis of suspensory adaptations in primates pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39591816
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phy_papers @phypapers.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Functional and phylogenetic signals in the pectoral girdle of Thalattosuchia and Dyrosauridae (Crocodylomorpha) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39587815
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Leigha Lynch, PhD @squeacslab.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
#SICB2025 workshop registration is now live!!! If want to learn how to take your specimen and turn it into accessible and reusable data then check out our workshop. You can register here (www.xcdsystem.com/sicb/program...) if you're registered for the conference. @nocturnetwork.bsky.social
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Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández @mathchaos.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Are you working on palaeontological projects in Latin America? Then, you should consider presenting at the 12th Latin American Congress of Palaeontology. === XII Latin American Congress of Paleontology 📆March 3-7, 2025 📍BUAP, Puebla, Mexico sites.google.com/view/xii-clp...
sites.google.com
XII CLP 2025
Primera Circular
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Chris Stringer @chrisbstringer.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Exploring the potential of dental calculus to shed light on past human migrations in Oceania www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Exploring the potential of dental calculus to shed light on past human migrations in Oceania - Nature Communications
Preservation of oral microbiome ancient DNA from Oceania is much better than human ancient DNA. The authors leverage this to demonstrate that oral microbial community composition in Oceania is not onl...
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Lee Hsiang Liow (廖珕庠) @lhliow.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Stockholm is looking for a senior curator in paleontology! Come be my neighbor! Stockholm is a lovely city! recruit.visma.com/spa/public/a...
recruit.visma.com
Senior Curator (Researcher) in paleontology
• Independent research and publishing at a high international level in collection-based paleontology, systematics and evolution, stratigraphy, and paleoecology. Presentation of research findings at na...
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Excited about the manuscript coming from our recent study presented at AHA www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1...
ahajournals.org
Abstract 4113951: Calcification Alters Luminal Surface Complexity in Cadaveric Left Anterior Descending Arteries | Circulation
Background: Understanding the intricacies of luminal surface topographic changes in pathologic coronary arteries may yield insight not only on the efficacy of existing clinical interventions (e.g. imp...
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
One of the many perks of working on Desmostylia is the abundance of derpy reconstructions. This is among the derpiest… 😍
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Professor Anjali Goswami FRS @evoswami.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
New paper! For all of you working with 3d scans (e.g. micro-CT, MRI), check out SPROUT, a rapid open-source tool for generating segmented and parcellated data, meaning your scans are separated into the individual elements without any manual labelling or training. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Figure showing diverse datasets analysed with SPROUT, including a skink skeleton, aardvark skull, human heart, concrete block, and foraminifera.
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Reader of Banned Books @readerofbannedbook.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Testing hypotheses of skull function with comparative finite element analysis: three methods reveal contrasting results www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
biorxiv.org
Testing hypotheses of skull function with comparative finite element analysis: three methods reveal contrasting results https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.20.624579v1
Comparative finite element analysis often involves standardising aspects of the models to test equiv
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Benjamin Grädel @bgraedel.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
I thought #fluorescencefriday would be a good opportunity for my first post here. Here are some crazy actin dynamics imaged with TIRF
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Alexandre Dumoulin @axonsalex.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Happy #FluorescenceFriday ! Let's celebrate with a colorful image of a developing ventral spinal cord of a 🐣 embryo. #neuroscience #microscopy
Happy #FluorescenceFriday !
Let's celebrate with a colorful snapshot of the developing ventral spinal cord of a 🐣 embryo.
#neuroscience #microscopy
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Dr Dana Ehret @drdanaehret.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Bottosaurus harlani was a late Cretaceous/early Paleocene (~65 million yrs. old) crocodilian related to modern caimans. Some researchers believe their unusual rounded teeth were used for crushing their prey. This mandible (lower jaw) was found in Gloucester Co., NJ #FossilFriday
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Brian Beatty @vanderhoofius.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
Our department of Anatomy at NYITCOM (formerly known as NYCOM) is hiring a postdoc!! Please consider applying and spread the word. Teach anatomy in the fall, research all the rest of the year, for 3 years! careers-nyit.icims.com/jobs/3786/po...
careers-nyit.icims.com
Postdoctoral Teaching & Research Fellow in Old Westbury, New York | Careers at Old Westbury, NY
New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM) seeks a Postdoctoral Teaching and Reseach Fellow for the Department of Anatomy.    This is a 3-year position in the Anatomy ...
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Xavier A. Jenkins @semifossorial.bsky.social · 22/11/2024
For this #FossilFriday, the early #Triassic owenettid Saurodektes kitchingorum from South Africa. This taxon (and other procolophonoids) were some of the only reptilian survivors of the End Permian #Extinction. Was it because they were burrowing? Bonus: There are fossil millipedes (:
Two small fossil reptiles coiled together in what used to be a burrow structure. Only one specimen, towards the top of the photo, preserves the skullA close up of the fossil reptile skull in lateral view. There’s a tympanic fossa and a large orbit
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