Alan Tennyson

Faking it without making it: The de-extinction disinfo campaign manager’s history of hype. How Colossal Biosciences’ CEO Ben Lamm keeps the hype cycle going. gmwatch.org/en/106-news/...

De-extinction was big news in 2025 – but didn't live up to the hype Biologists poured cold water on Colossal Biosciences’ claim to have brought the dire wolf back from extinction, and some worry the overblown headlines will undermine conservation work

www.newscientist.com/article/2505...

A single tiny bone suggests bowerbirds once lived in Aotearoa The bone belonged to a songbird, but it didn’t belong to any existing New Zealand songbird, alive or dead, and so Elizabeth Steell was stumped. Steell, a research fellow at the University of Cambridg...

www.nzgeo.com/stories/a-si...

‘Incredible’ carved canoe dates back to first settlement of islands near New Zealand Fibers found on waka in Chatham Islands roughly align in age with earliest known human arrival

‘Incredible’ carved canoe dates back to first settlement of islands near New Zealand | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Testing finds Chatham Islands' waka Rēkohu from mid 1400s The waka was unearthed by father and son Vincent and Nikau Dix.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Evidence of ancient tree-climbing 'drop crocs' found in Australia Scientists say the crocodiles hunted like leopards by climbing trees and killing prey below.

Michael Archer, no stranger to media hype (see: resurrecting thylacines), has invented the "drop croc" based on the solid palaeotological evidence of…fossil eggshell. There's no evidence that any terrestrial croc could climb, let alone drop out of trees like a leopard. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Our #2025SVP poster on a newly described extinct Chatham Island duck

Had a blast at #2025SVP. Great to see so many friends again

Universities in 'battle of the century' with journal publisher Elsevier One New Zealand university told its staff all universities in New Zealand and Australia would "lose some degree of access" to the publisher's 1600 titles from the start of next year.

The irony here is that academics don’t just write the articles for free—we also referee and edit for them for free. Something is deeply broken.

“New Zealand's eight universities spent $30-million a year on journal licences and about half of that sum went to Elsevier.

www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Just a reminder that Elizabeth Holmes once featured on TIME's 100 Most Influential People list. Incidentally, TIME's unbridled hymn of praise for Lamm comes courtesy of George Church who is, of course, the co-founder with Lamm of #ColossalBio.

Dark PR attacks on critics of 10-billion-dollar biotech Goliath Debunkers of de-extinction disinformation hit by vicious campaign of intimidation. Report: Jonathan Matthews

You have to laugh at some of the quotes in this piece about the smear campaign against critics of @itiscolossal.bsky.social. George Church says Ben Lamm "has faced technical hurdles and skeptics with respect & humor" www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/... 1/2

I wouldn't call @itiscolossal.bsky.social CEO Ben Lamm's tweet respectful or funny, & certainly not his comments calling critics, like @devoevomed.bsky.social, lying tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists with mental health problems who are stalkers. Seriously WTF. What planet is Colossal on? 2/2

An artist's reconstruction of the St Bathans bowerbird. A small bird with long feet, coloured in dark olive green and yellow plumage, with a bright yellow eye. It's holding a thin twig in it's thick, sturdy beak and the bird is perched on a stick.

🦴New fossil alert🦴 Introducing Aeviperditus gracilis, a possible bowerbird from the Miocene of New Zealand. My first fossil description!

Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)

Super chuffed to have been awarded $40,000 in the latest @universityofotago.bsky.social Research Grant round to continue our palaeontological research at St Bathans - with @palaeocharlie.bsky.social, @atennyson.bsky.social, Ross Thompson, Malcom Reid, Amy Adams, & Gerry Closs.

A tiny fossil suggests bowerbirds once lived in ancient New Zealand – new research New Zealand’s ancient bowerbird was smaller and more slender than the species living in Australia and New Guinea today.

Check out our @aunz.theconversation.com article covering the St Bathans #bowerbird story!

theconversation.com/a-tiny-fossi...

@nicrawlencenz.bsky.social @atennyson.bsky.social @plubbe.bsky.social

A possible early bowerbird from the Miocene of New Zealand Aotearoa New Zealand is home to several endemic passerine bird lineages that likely dispersed from Australia between the Eocene and Miocene. Although the Australian pre-Pleistocene passerine fossil...

Team effort from @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social @plubbe.bsky.social @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social Alex Brown and @atennyson.bsky.social between Cambridge Uni, Otago Uni and Te Papa Tongarewa.

Find the paper here www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @historicalbiology.bsky.social (🧵2/11)

A tiny fossil suggests bowerbirds once lived in ancient New Zealand – new research New Zealand’s ancient bowerbird was smaller and more slender than the species living in Australia and New Guinea today.

You can check out our @aunz.theconversation.com article on this new discovery here theconversation.com/a-tiny-fossi.... 8/9

This research mahi on the St Bathans bowerbird was led by the amazing @lizzysteell.bsky.social of the @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social lab. She is one of the up and coming palaeontologists working on passerines (songbirds) and definitely one to watch.

Fossilized foot bone of an extinct songbird, shown in multiple views.

New possible Miocene bowerbird from New Zealand, Aeviperditus gracilis: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Congratulations, @lizzysteell.bsky.social! 🪶🧪

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

Check out our new paper led by Rebecca Kinaston & I in @newzealandecology.bsky.social newzealandecology.org/nzje/3616. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this study Rebecca - with Jill Hamel, Chris Lalas, Amy Adams, @atennyson.bsky.social, Richard Walter & Michael Richards 1/6

Scientists targeted by dark PR tactics: Several academic scientists critical of de-extinction projects have become the targets of anonymous smear articles and weaponized copyright infringement claims:... EMBO Press is an editorially independent publishing platform for the development of EMBO scientific publications.

#ColossalBio CEO Mr. Lamm is concerned that my “mental health” issues and “stalking-like behavior” threaten his employees’ safety; ad hominem attacks in response to valid public criticism of their #DisInformation campaign is not a mental health disorder 1/n 🧪

www.embopress.org/doi/full/10....

On #FossilFriday I am proud to share a new discovery - a skull of a large extinct relative of king and emperor penguins.

@atennyson.bsky.social, Daniel Thomas, Felix Marx,
and I report this magnificent skull in Journal of Paleontology:
https://
bit.ly/4ne3HQV

Close relatives of emperor penguins lived in NZ some 3 million years ago. What caused their extinction? Great penguins once lived in much warmer waters, but then retreated to the Southern Ocean. In a warming world, they might be able to shift their range again.

Our latest article on Taranaki fossils is out: Close relatives of emperor penguins lived in NZ some 3 million years ago. What caused their extinction? theconversation.com/close-relati...

Funding is needed to save Samoa’s ‘little dodo’ from extinction (commentary) It’s early August 2025. Deep in the rainforests of Upolu, on the island of Samoa, Moeumu “Moe” Uili and I have paused our hike, counting the seconds between coo calls from an unseen pigeon hidden in t...

Celebrities and venture capitalists throw millions at a company claiming it can breed fake dodos, which seems especially cruel given the dodo’s living relative., the Samoan tooth-billed pigeon or manumea, is on the brink of extinction for lack of money. news.mongabay.com/2025/09/fund...

Dire wolves remain very extinct Despite what you are being fed, de-extinction is a con, full of gloss, bullshit and ghoulish greed.

There's a great Substack piece by Adam Rutherford debunking all this nonsense.
arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

The scientists who are on Colossal's SAB really, *really* need to re-think what they are doing there and whether they want their names associated with this project.

Fossilized skull of an extinct penguin, shown from multiple views.

Large penguin from the Tangahoe Formation (Pliocene of New Zealand), a member of the same genus as extant king and emperor penguins: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 🧪🪶 (📷 @atennyson.bsky.social et al.)

Extinct Macaronesian endemics revealed in new study A PNAS Nexus study records 220 species extinctions in Macaronesia, including half of all endemic birds, with losses accelerating over 12-fold after human colonisation in the 15th Century. The Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, Canary Islands and Cape Verde have lost snails, reptiles, arthropods and birds, prompting calls for urgent conservation and habitat restoration to protect their fragile biodiversity.

A new study warns that Macaronesia has suffered heavy biodiversity losses, revealing each extinct species including 27 birds:

Nice to see my opinion piece on moa 'de-extinction' published in the latest issue of the @birdsnewzealand.bsky.social magazine. Thanks to those who helped give this article wings...you know who you are.

De-extinction is a fairytale, not a substitute for conservation | Bioprotection Aotearoa There has been a resurgence in discussions of de-extinction, also known as resurrection biology or species revivalism. Discussions were sparked by the news that the biotech company Colossal Bioscience...

bioprotection.org.nz/de-extinctio...