The Skullywag Lab

Little bettongs' dramatic nut-cracker performance Native Australian animals range from high-hopping kangaroos to fast-running emus—but clever little bettongs also have a special ability to find and eat the food they love.

Two threatened bettong species possess distinct jaw adaptations that enable them to crack open tough sandalwood and quandong seeds, offering insights for targeted conservation efforts. doi.org/hbb24p

Our lab just published a cool paper on seed-cracking bettongs. Not just any seeds, but some of the hardest seeds out there! Two species in the same genus showing different adaptations to hard biting. Very cool 💀💀🤓🤓 #skull #science academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Phenotype response for the invasive Petaurus notatus in Tasmania Petaurus notatus (Krefft’s Glider), introduced to Tasmania in the 1830s, has been linked to bird predation. Using geometric morphometrics, we found that Ta

Terrible for the birds, but it's fascinating to see this small glider species becoming more actively predatory in real time 💀
academic.oup.com/jmammal/adva...

Interesting study on carnivore jaws www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

YouTube video by The Skullywag Lab How I made a magnetized model of a 385 million year old placoderm

"How I made a magnetized model of a 385 million year old placoderm" brought to you by Flinders Palaeo and The SkullyWagLab @theskullywaglab.bsky.social

#placoderm #GogoFormation #arthrodire #Blender #3Dprinting

www.youtube.com/shorts/0NByE...

Joy! A new place to find cool bones! Well done team Ozboneviz: an Australian precedent in FAIR 3D imagery and extended biodiversity collections

url:https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biaf064/8157903

Just made this for The Skullywag Lab website I'm building.

Come sit by the for and enjoy some skulls 💀 🤓

#skull #science

#FossilFriday it’s been an action-packed week for fossil CT and FEA fans:

-During et al: efficient and open-access CT segmentation

-Díaz de León-Muñoz et al: open-access FE modeling

-Mitchell et al: new framework for comparative FEA

All open access! Kudos to the authors.

(links in thread) 1/4

Testing hypotheses of skull function with comparative finite element analysis: three methods reveal contrasting results Summary: Common approaches for scaling muscle forces in skull finite element models might not always offer reliable results for all hypotheses: a framework for selecting the appropriate method is prov...

Are we standardising FEA models wrong? Is it a bit of garbage in, garbage out?

A new study suggests so, and sets out three protocols for standardising the FEA models with respect to what the heck you are actually looking at.

#evobio #Mammals 🧪

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

Presumed extinct, this desert rat-kangaroo may still be alive in hiding. New analysis reveals its delicate diet Knowing what an animal eats can help biologists find it – especially when a species is as elusive as this one.

Some interesting findings from our new methods paper. We used the skull of the presumed-extinct desert rat-kangaroo as a case study and discovered some important details about its feeding habits 🦘💀

theconversation.com/presumed-ext...

Testing hypotheses of skull function with comparative finite element analysis: three methods reveal contrasting results Summary: Common approaches for scaling muscle forces in skull finite element models might not always offer reliable results for all hypotheses: a framework for selecting the appropriate method is prov...

For any researchers that study skull function using comparative finite element analysis, our new paper outlining how to scale muscle forces to adequately represent the hypothesis is extremely important

#skull #science #finiteelementanalysis #evolution

journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

YouTube video by The Skullywag Lab Why are there no unicorns? | The science of horns in big mammals

New vid!
youtu.be/L09bmjB3UgM?...

Morphological change in an isolated population of red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in Britain | Royal Society Open Science The mechanical properties of dietary items are known to influence skull morphology, either through evolution or by phenotypic plasticity. Here, we investigated the impact of supplementary feeding of peanuts on the morphology of red squirrels (Sciurus ...

Who doesn't love squirrel skulls?
#skull #science
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....