Alex Howard

So happy to be part of this academic family🐍🦎🐢

So excited for the paper describing my and Dr Michelle Lawing's ppgm R package to come out in time for the end of #2025SVP ! If you're interested in using the PPGM method, this is the paper to read, and please come find me at the conference if you want to chat #R

New snake just dropped! 🐍

Interested in corals, dispersal, and diversification dynamics? 🪸

We're offering a PhD project on how the Tethys closure shaped global marine biodiversity — supervised by me, Bridget Wade, Nadia Santodomingo, & Francesca Bosellini.

🗓️ Apply by 17th December 2025

www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/how...

Standing near the fossil statues at Crystal Palace park, shaking my head so everyone knows I know they're inaccurate.

In all seriousness, was super cool to see these icons of Victorian palaeontology. Featuring an iguanodon, plesiosaur, ichthyosaur, and a mosasaur (possibly...)

Also, should go without saying, but trans rights are human rights. My heart goes out to all the LGBTQ+ Aggies

So incredibly disappointed by Texas A&M. So much for academic freedom.

The CPEG & CPB meeting is officially underway! 🎉

We kicked things off with two fantastic workshop sessions:

📊 R-based open data science in palaeobiology and ecology
🧠 Deep learning for macroevolutionary analyses

Big thanks to all our speakers and participants - spot yourself below!

#CPEGCPB25

A pair of Deinonychus embracing showing the colors of the Pride flag on their arm feathers

Happy Pride! 🌈 🏳️‍🌈

I hope everyone has a great Pride month! Here is a lively pair of Deinonychus!

#paleoart #dinosaurs #pride2025 #pride

Snake handling training busts 'evil' myth about 'easygoing' reptiles Queensland experts Chris Hay and Christina Zdenek run snake handling courses to bust myths and teach professionals how to stay safe around venomous snakes.

ABC news online piece about how our snake-handling course and education efforts are debunking persistent snake myths and combating snake misinformation.
#SnakesOfOz #VenomousSnakes #Snakes #SnakeEducation #HumanSnakeConflict
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

It’s Mary Anning’s birthday, so time to share @katebeaton.bsky.social’s brilliant cartoon again.

Rainbow Research: Contribute to our Pride Month Blog Series! To celebrate Pride Month in June, we are relaunching our Rainbow Research blog series! This series aims to promote the visibility and inclusion of ecologists and evolutionary biologists from the LG…

To celebrate UK Pride Month 2025, we are relaunching our Rainbow Research series to promote the work of LGBTQIA+ researchers around the world🌈

Find out here how to contribute!👇

buff.ly/SF9l8vW

🧪🌍

Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF Efforts to shrink staff, budget, and focus have alarmed members of Congress

NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.

David Attenborough in a blue suit standing in front of the Natural History Museum with text that says "Happy 99th Birthday Sir David Attenborough!"

Happy Birthday to master storyteller Sir David Attenborough! 🎉

We’ve loved working with Sir David as he delivered the narration to the upcoming immersive experience, Our Story with David Attenborough.

Tickets go on sale in just two weeks. Keep an eye out for the announcement!

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Illustration of a pair of Diplocaulus swimming in a flooded forest alongside other animals like an Eryops larva an ancient shark and a lungfish

A pair of Diplocaulus magnicornis swimming in a flooded Early Permian forest alongside a bunch of other animals like a small Eryops larvae

Diplocaulus magnicornis was a lepospondyl (which is a weird, likely polyphyletic group) that is famous for its weird boomerang shaped head.

Happy Earth Day! 🌍🐍 Snakes are vital for our planet, controlling pests, balancing food webs, & indicating healthy ecosystems. Protecting them helps us all! Learn 10 ways to #SaveTheSnakes: savethesnakes.org/earthday
#WildlifeConservation #EarthDay

In addition to what others have posted there are some folks (who I can vouch for) tracking the terminated NSF grants to facilitate coordinated responses, media coverage, etc:

Form to add a terminated grant: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Current grants on the list: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

A copperhead snake on a path

Spontaneous walk in the park after work and was rewarded with a sighting of this beautiful copperhead! The first wild copperhead I've ever seen 🐍😍 Luckily I spotted this beauty before a person and their dog passed by and scared it into the bushes...

Why claims about 'resurrecting' dire wolves are the tip of the iceberg Colossal Biosciences’s "de-extinction" news is just the latest in a slew of eyebrow-raising claims by privately funded researchers. Is the bar for belief lower when those making the claims have a lot of money, wonders Jonathan R. Goodman

Colossal Biosciences’s "de-extinction" news is just the latest in a slew of eyebrow-raising claims by privately funded researchers. Is the bar for belief lower when those making the claims have a lot of money, wonders Jonathan R. Goodman

Forgotten women of Paleontology: Carol Heubusch Faul The lack of diversity in Geosciences is a long-standing issue. The  geoscientist is often seen as an athletic, bearded white male, and that stereotype has created an “image problem” that prevents m…

The lack of diversity in Geosciences is a long-standing issue. #Womeninstem 🧪⚒️

paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/f...

Scientists love to debate and argue, but if there are 3 things every scientist absolutely agrees on, it's that:

1. Climate change is real
2. Vaccines work
3. Those are NOT dire wolves 😤

🧪

Spending the next how many months telling people this...

So cool. Saw a Rough Green Snake at St. Marks Wildlife Refuge devour a caterpillar. These are rare snakes to see on the ground and a lifer for me. 1/3

An extremely stocky and muscular ox, painted by George Garrard in 1813.

"they hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak"

our beef:

Libraries and museums are so important for science outreach and public education, and they were already severely underfunded. This is heartbreaking.

A Stegosaurus with the coloration of the transgender pride flag. Light blue, pink, and white.

Trans rights are human rights!

Hand holding a buttermilk racer, a grey snake with white speckes

Hand holding a Slowinski's corn snake, a grey brown snake

Head of a coachwhip snake resting on a body coil

A broad banded water snake resting on some leaf litter

Some beautiful snakes of East Texas, everyone but the Nerodia was very polite. 🐍

Buttermilk racer - Coluber constrictor anthicus
Slowinski's corn snake - Pantherophis emoryi slowinskii
Coachwhip - Masticophis flagellum
Broadbanded water snake - Nerodia fasciata

Screenshot of text from a Nature Ecology & Evolution Editorial entitled "Deep cuts"

In our latest Editorial we discuss the continuing damage being done to US science, and its impact on researchers and the environment 👇

Deep cuts: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Darwin wrote: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."

Let's celebrate #DarwinDay by reminding ourselves that everyone has moments when they feel worse for wear.

Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell in 1861:
"But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything."

www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-L...

So, hang in there, #academicsky!
🧪