John P. Friel, Ph.D.

Bumping to the Fishes! and Science feeds🐟🧪

Promotional image featuring a mosasaur skull wearing a Santa hat, with the text 'Santa Jaws is Comin' to Town' and the Alabama Museum of Natural History logo on a festive green background with snowflakes.

Promotional graphic for the Alabama Museum of Natural History featuring an illustration of a nautilus with a festive red bow, set against a blue, bubble-filled background with the text 'On The Nautilus List.'

Promotional image featuring a festive rock with a red bow, titled 'On The Gneiss List', set against a colorful bokeh background. Logo of the Alabama Museum of Natural History displayed at the bottom.

Logo of the Alabama Museum of Natural History featuring a stylized opossum wearing a Santa hat, surrounded by a colorful string of Christmas lights and the text 'Festive & Feral'.

Make sure you're on the Gneiss List by visiting the Alabama Museum of Natural History on December 12 for our All Day Holiday Open House! From 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., admission to the Museum will be free all day and we're and giving away bookmarks and festive buttons to take home!

Antique tractor on display at The Henry Ford. The tractor is painted dark green with yellow lettering above the radiator reading "ALLIS-CHALMERS."

Illustration of the skull of Polypterus. From Allis, E. P. 1922. The cranial anatomy of Polypterus, with special reference to Polypterus bichir. Journal of Anatomy, 56: 189-294.

100+ y.o. tractor @ Henry Ford with a fishy connection. Edward Phelps Allis Jr., one of the great comparative anatomists of the last century, enjoyed substantial financial support as the son of E. P. Allis Sr., founder of a manufacturing company specialized in industrial and agricultural equipment.

magazine article. woodpecker research may offer answers for head trauma

My students working on our woodpecker project were recently featured in UA's Collegian Magazine! What a nice piece! 🧪

Striped hyena, photo Rushikesh Deshmukh DOP (Wikimedia Commons)

Do striped hyenas have a sweet tooth?

Yes, yes they do.

Here's the first record of honey consumption by a hyena, caught on a camera trap in Kenya:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🧪🌍🐾🍯

Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize Duelling prairie chickens, a snake-mimicking moth and a once-a-year sunrise at the South Pole feature in the best images from the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025

Wow.... Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize www.newscientist.com/article/2506...

New project documenting A.I. slop graphics in academic journals

neurodojo.blogspot.com/2025/12/new-...

Bumping to the Fishes! and Science feeds. 🐟🧪

Ticks on an Eel: Museum Specimen is a First of its Kind Two ticks found on an 1873 electric eel specimen mark the first recorded case of ticks parasitizing a fish—but only documented just this year.

Forget Snakes on a Plane; how about Ticks on an Eel? cc @greenleejw.bsky.social entomologytoday.org/2025/12/03/t...

Educational livestream. December 9th 7am to 7pm CST

The CVN lab is officially hosting a ~12h educational livestream next Tuesday!
It'll be like a data-collection LAN (lamb?) party where we will count as many headbutts as possible! Tune in for goats facts and to learn about our research! We are taking topic suggestions 🧪
nicoleackermans.com/live/

Blue shark CT scans of swordfish interactions

Pathology of stranded blue sharks (Prionace glauca) impaled by swordfish (Xiphias gladius) 🦑🌿🐟🦈 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Maria Dragoi stood in the Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology.

What’s missing from natural history collections? Maria Dragoi, @ucl.ac.uk Museum Studies alumna and current PhD candidate, discusses her research into our entomology collection and the importance of interpreting collections through a decolonial lens. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

Depictions of evolution where a phylogeny often has humans on the far right or top can give an impression of evolution being progressive of leading to ‘increased complexity’ when it does not. Top figure shows such a phylogeny which can look the same as ‘the March of progress’ depiction most commonly used to depict evolution (showing monkey to man erroneous march of evolution) - instead swiveling some nodes on a phylogeny where humans are shown closer to the center (which doesn’t change relationships) can lead to better ‘tree thinking’

New post by me on #MITPressReader @mitpress.bsky.social

On the 100th anniversary of the #ScopesMonkeyTrial
the ways we depict #evolution can still give an erroneous progressive view (that evolution leads to humans or ‘increased complexity’).

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/is-our-pictu...

On this day in 1954, a meteorite blew a hole in Ann Hodges' roof, ricocheted off a large Philco radio, and struck her in the side (she survived). It contains fragments of the first things to make up our solar system. See it at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. → bit.ly/3F92ky9

Social media highlights the overlooked impact of cats on arthropods The impact of domestic cats on vertebrate biodiversity is unequivocal; however, we still know little about their effects on arthropods. By analysing over 17,000 photos and videos from social media p...

🐈 What's TikTok good for? Examining which arthropods are hunted by cats.

🌍 Social media have become an increasingly useful resource in ecological research.

🪲 We now know that cats kill arthropods from 14 different orders.

🧪 Study:
resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Happy #FossilFriday! This tooth plate is from a giant fossil lungfish called Ceratodus. This specimen is thought to be from the Mesozoic Era and is estimated to be up to 13 feet long! Lungfish have been around for nearly 400 million years, and are one of the closest living relatives to tetrapods!🦎

A new analysis of Dunkleosteus terrelli reveals its massive jaws were far more cartilage-rich than once thought, reshaping ideas about muscle layout, bite mechanics & feeding style. Time to rethink this Devonian apex predator.
Engelman et al.:
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

YouTube video by FishEvolutionLab-Edu The Library of Life - Dahiana Arcila, Ricardo Betancur-R., Ben Frable

Great video highlighting the value of natural history collections and the importance of preserving them for generations to come

A Spotted Estuary Smooth-Hound swims near the rocky ocean floor, its body blending softly into the murky blue water. (© Luca Davenport-Thomas CC BY- NC some rights reserved https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/468558133)

Great "behind the paper with @royalsocietypublishing.org" seminar - lead author of "Evidence of active sound production by a shark" discusses how she came to discover that New Zealand rig sharks can make strange noises @cassyni.bsky.social cassyni.com/events/NRzSF...

Basking - The Nursery | Tipperary Artist Directory Basking – The Nursery is a continuation of Tom Meskell’s acclaimed Basking series, exploring the majestic presence and gentle mystery of the basking shark through illuminated sculpture and…

Basking sharks visit Tipperary!

A new exhibition by Irish artist Tom Meskell opened last weekend in Tipperary Town. In 'Basking - the Nursery', the focal points are two juvenile sharks, each about 2.5 metres in length, suspended in blue-green light amidst the sounds of the ocean.

What does representation in natural history look like? Mark your calendars for Giving Tuesday (Dec 2) — we’re excited to share how you can support #BlackinNHMs.” #GivingTuesday
Donation link: www.blackinnhms.org/donate

In preparation for this upcoming panel at @sicb.bsky.social, I filmed an Editing 101 for scientists looking to make longer form science outreach videos using Premiere Pro. You can check it out here! youtu.be/pBLuY9ScjEI

Professor of History - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

UW-Madison is hiring a Professor of History who work in the history of science with a focus on water

For full consideration, all materials must be received no later than 11:59pm on December 31, 2025.

jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/profess...

I'm delighted to share the latest publication involving my lab - out now in PNAS:

Geochemists & Paleontologists across the globe joined forces to confirm the preservation of molecular #biosignatures in #fossil organic matter - and explore signals associated with photosynthesis.

NEW episode of MeatEater Podcast chatting gars & native fish conservation!

Grateful for the opportunity to chat stewardship of freshwater natural resources with Steve Rinella and the hunting & fishing crew! youtu.be/xLDSV5qbyzw?...

Ichthyologist Fang Fang Kullander would have been 63 years old today. She travelled the globe for her taxonomical studies of freshwater fish and her work with Fishbase, but passed away at the age of 47 in 2010 from gall duct cancer.

#WomenInSTEM #Ichthyology #FishSky #BioSky 🧪🐟

For #FossilFriday & in honor of @alinemghilardi.bsky.social & colleagues' fantastic discovery of a new Cretaceous pterosaur in Brazil in a dinosaur regurgitalite ("fossil vomit"), here's a diagram I made for my book 'Dinosaurs Without Bones' (2014) showing the physics of a puking brachiosaur. 🧪🦕🤮🪨

Ohio State news piece on our deep-sea fish body shape study:
news.osu.edu/how-fishes-o...

The Comeback Croc - bioGraphic American crocodiles are booming in Florida, thanks to a little help from a nuclear power plant.

By the mid-1970s, only 200 American crocodiles remained, their habitat largely gobbled up by sunseekers. But hope lurked in the shadows of a nuclear power plant—the same facility built to air-condition the homes that had led to the reptiles’ demise. Read more about this unlikely partnership:

Large-eyed animals like owls 🦉 have a trade-off between large eyes & short optic nerves, which lowers eye mobility (to compensate they evolved swivelly necks)

But chameleons 🦎 have long, coiled optic nerves with extra slack for eye mobility, allowing them to use their famous large swivelly eyes 👀🧪🌏