Cary Woodruff

This was a MASSIVE and EXCEPTIONAL multi-institutional collaboration led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social and @Palaeo_Bham, and it was incredible to meet, work with, and learn from our amazing colleagues at the Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah.
-fin

And while there have been proposed turiasaurs from here, these three teeth are the first definitie turiasaur from Morocco. And they're also the geologically oldest turiasaurs from mainland Africa!

These are turiasaur teeth! Turiasaurs are a very weird/cool group of sauropods that are classically known for their unique "heart-shaped" teeth. Made famous by the Spanish #Turiasaurus and @Losillasaurus, this odd clade of hard to place 'pods has a near global distribution.

This is one I'm really excited about! A few years back, I was fortunate enough to join an expedition to Morocco led by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social and @Palaeo_Bham. We were in Morocco hunting for other things, but these three teeth were found, & I *vividly* remember holding them and going "Holy sh#t!"

(& Christ, it was *BIG* team effort!: @NHMdinolab, Driss Ouarhache, Abdessalam El Khanchoufi, Khadija Boumir, @kawtar_ech, @AhmedOUSSOU, @Palaeo_Bham, @LukeEMeade, @Simon_D_Wills, Mike Smith, & @Tweetisaurus)

NEW PAPER DAY! 🥳I'll start by sharing the OPEN ACCESS paper:
🧵

www.app.pan.pl/article/item...

A diverse assemblage of tanystropheid archosauromorphs from the continental interior of Late Triassic Pangea includes a new taxon (Akidostropheus oligos gen. et sp. nov.) The upper Blue Mesa Member of the Chinle Formation at Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, U.S.A., contains a remarkable diversity of Triassic vertebrate fossils. The locality PFV 456 includes hun...

I will never NOT be amazed by 3D tanystropheid or azhdarchid cervicals 😮

bioone.org/journals/Pal...

Gold, Mindy. GOLD! 🤣👏

Remarkable soft tissue anatomy recorded in titanosaur (Sauropoda) tracks from the latest Cretaceous of Mongolia Abstract. Dinosaur footprints can provide important palaeobiological information, including the speed, behaviour, limb kinematics, and soft tissue anatomy

Phil R Bell, D Cary Woodruff, Khoi Nguyen, Buuvei Mainbayar & Philip J Currie (2025)
Remarkable soft tissue anatomy recorded in titanosaur (Sauropoda) tracks from the latest Cretaceous of Mongolia.
doi.org/10.1093/zool...
academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

New paper day! Phil Bell led a great study on some *INSANELY COOL* titanosaur tracks our expedition found in Mongolia. The scales in particular are extra awesome - they're like little pyramids, and they *may* have helped with scratch digging and/or walking on sandy surfaces!

AND what according to the info (but pics are suspect) might be one of the most complete Pachycephalosaurus skulls....

Netanyahu plays into Trump’s hopes for Middle East peace — and nominates him for a Nobel Prize | CNN Politics Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump Monday marks his third time at the White House since January. Unlike the previous two episodes, there’s no public events on the ...

Well, if you ever wondered what it's like to vomit/shit with disgust/rage, here's some light reading that will elicit that response:

www.cnn.com/2025/07/07/p...

In a democracy, government employees can voice respectful dissent to their leadership. But today, EPA leadership retaliated against its own employees for expressing disagreement w/ the admin’s actions & policy directions. Punishing gov't employees for this expression is an alarming development. 🧵

Tom T.P. van der Linden, Michael P. Taylor, Amy Campbell, Brian D. Curtice, René Dederichs, Lucas N. Lerzo, John A. Whitlock, D. Cary Woodruff, and Emanuel Tschopp (2025)
Introduction to Diplodocoidea.
Palaeontologia Electronica 28(2): a27
palaeo-electronica.org/content/pdfs...

I'm a few days late, but NEW PAPER day! 🥳

This paper is a synthesis on our current knowledge about Diplodocoidea (Diplodocus and kin) - ranging from their paleo history, life history, appearance, behavior, so much more.

It's a Saurischian-airport kind of day....

Obligatory* selfie with #Brachiosaurus at #ORD.
(* any photo with a sauropod is a good photo)

There may be a paper coming out soon that talks about this a little bit more.....

*HOW* is that an 'olive branch' statement?! That's not a plea for peace, that's a open threat! This is exactly the kind of antagonization that has made this situation so dangerous, so quickly. & this was the same admin that pulled out of the JCPOA! So, in part, they created this very problem....

Trump says no plans to kill Iran's leader 'for now', before calling for 'unconditional surrender' - live updates Trump says Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei

Yes, nonproliferation across the board. But the 'leader of the free world' openly saying that "we" won't kill Iran's Supreme Leader "for now"?! 😬 Could you imagine that comment being said about Trump from any other leadership in the world?!
www.bbc.com/news/live/cx...

So far, I've only found it in a pub by Snively & Russell (2007), and technically, it's in a table of examined specimens. But it still stands that it was scientifically examined and published on.

I don't know its ownership status (NAMAL vs the non-prof org), but given that it's the type and has been published on, I would think (hope) they wouldn't even consider it. But this opens a scary door for US paleo institutions....

And for what it's worth (no capitalism pun intended), but the specimen had actually been included in a published study several years ago....

"Humans are imperfect, so nuclear near-misses and accidents are a fact of life for as long as these weapons exist."

@nukestrat.bsky.social, @mattkorda.bsky.social, @elianajjohns.bsky.social and @alliemaloney.bsky.social of @scientistsorg.bsky.social have the latest: wapo.st/4jK0VjO

Field Susie is peak Susie 😅

We don't have to read a book to know that you smoke and swear a lot in the field..... 😂

a cartoon of a chef with a needle in his mouth is playing at 4:32 ALT: a cartoon of a chef with a needle in his mouth is playing at 4:32

And I'm biased from my own research interests, but Poropat et al find support for things like ontogenetic dietary partitioning and ontogenetic skull changes associated with diet. So, in short, the ontogeny section (Hell, really the whole paper!) is:

This doesn't mean that everything we've said is right, nor does this 'pod equal all 'pods, but it's verification and substantiation that many of the ways we think about sauropods collectively as functioning biological organisms is correct.

Not only does the geochemical work in this paper support the interpretation that this 🦕 ate these plants (IMO), but basically every which way you turn, this fossil substantiates SO MUCH about what we've been interpreting and saying about sauropod paleobiology.