Robert Brocklehurst

Great new paper just dropped! A really comprehensive look at how mammals and their ancestors moved from sprawling to upright stances... but not in the straightforward way you might think! Congratulations to all the authors! 🎉

My coauthor, Mags Mercado, is a very talented artist (and scientist!) 🎨🔬

Head over heels: How mammals stood up and took over the world For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over a fundamental mystery in our evolutionary history: how did mammals go from sprawling like lizards to striding like cats and dogs?…

This work would not be possible without a long list of collaborators, collection staff and colleagues. Extremely grateful to my coauthors (including a former student who made vital contributions).

You can see a lovely write-up of the paper here news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

An artistic rendering of the theoretical "adaptive landscape" of posture evolution in mammals. Different taxa occupy distinct adaptive peaks associated with different postures (green - yellow = sprawling, orange = upright). Image credit to Magdalen Mercado.

Contrary to older ideas that posture evolved in a stepwise manner, we found that the ancestors of mammals navigated a complex evolutionary adaptive landscape, evolving, radiating and diversifying in their own unique ways.

A phylogeny of living and extinct tetrapods, showing the inferred evolution of forelimb posture in reptiles, salamanders, and mammals and their ancestors (green to yellow = sprawling, orange = upright). Illustrated with representative humeri (upper arm bones) from the study. Full figure and caption in the paper https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003188

We compiled a huge dataset of limb bones from living and extinct animals (>200 species) and analysed what they look like, how they functioned and how this all changed through 300 million years of evolutionary time.

Adaptive landscapes unveil the complex evolutionary path from sprawling to upright forelimb function and posture in mammals The ‘sprawling-to-parasagittal’ postural transition is a key part of mammalian evolution from non-mammalian synapsids. This study uses evolutionary adaptive landscapes to reveal parasagittal postures ...

I'm so excited to share my latest paper out now! How did the ancestors of mammals make the switch from sprawling to upright, taking over the world in the process? Spoiler alert; it's complicated! journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Left: Phylogeny of tetrapods showing the evolution of posture from sprawling (green, yellow) to upright or parasagittal (orange), illustrated with humeri of select living and fossil species to show changes in morphology over time. Image credit Robert Brocklehurst. Right: The adaptive landscape of posture evolution in mammals and their ancestors. Living and fossil species with sprawling vs upright postures occupy different adaptive peaks. Image credit Magdalen Mercado.

How did our mammalian #posture arise from our sprawling #synapsid ancestors? @docrobbrock.bsky.social &co reveal #parasagittal postures in stem therians, implying that synapsids evolved & radiated with distinct forelimb trait combinations for most of their history @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4loAHoy

Oh look! Me and @nhcooper123.bsky.social have done a podcast!

For each episode we scour the @nhm-london.bsky.social's collections for weird and fun specimens that fit the theme, and then ramble to each other about them.

So if that's your bag, give it a listen! 🎉

Relationship between joint shape and function as revealed through ex vivo XROMM Summary: Experimental data measuring mobility across different types of limb joints in a mammal (opossum) and a reptile (tegu lizard) raise further questions on how well articular morphology predicts ...

New publication day! 🥳 Read all about arm joints in mammals and lizards - what they look like and how they move - with me, @l-fahn-lai.bsky.social and our co-authors. Out today in @jexpbiol.bsky.social

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

A white woman with dark blonde hair and glasses leans over a large piece of rock with black fossils embedded in the surface.

Announcing The first found, and most complete, #dinosaur skeleton from the Middle #Jurassic of Scotland! 📢🦖 So delighted to finally be able to share this great new fossil, published today! It was actually the first dinosaur found in #Scotland... thread 🧵 #OpenAccess #fossils doi.org/10.1017/S175...

Colourful digital illustration of a misty lagoon landscape in evening sun, during the middle Jurassic period. In the middle ground, there is a smallish ornithischian dinosaur standing in shallow water and lookind around. The dinosaur is purplish grey with green and creamy white patterns. On the foreground, there are rocks covered in mosses, ferns and fungi, with a small lizard hiding among the vegetation. On a tree branch above, a small mammal (Krusatodon) yawns. The background has more mossy rocks and gnarly trees partially obscured by mist, as well as a turtle and a salamander.

The Elgol Dinosaur is out!

This is the first and most complete dinosaur skeleton from the Jurassic of Isle of Skye, Scotland. I got to work with the amazing @elsa-panciroli.bsky.social on bringing this early ornithischian back to life. #Sciart

Link to paper: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

BFEX: A Toolbox for Finite Element Analysis With Fossils and Blender We introduce BFEX, a Blender add-on for building Finite Elements Analysis for Fossils software. This approach streamlines the process of creating and visualizing FE models.

Just out of the oven! Today @migueldlm.bsky.social just published his first paper related to his PhD thesis! BFEX is a new Blender tool for making FEA more accessible for biologists and paleontologists! All using open and free software 😱

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New research led by Spencer Hellert tests the idea that major radiations within synapsids are begun by small faunivores.

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Press release: www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

Exciting pair of muscle evolution companion papers just out! Bishop & Pierce describe the fossil record of appendicular muscle evolution in Synapsida on the line to mammals in forelimb & hindlimb
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...