Paleobiology Research Group at OU

New paper!

"Fossil tip-dating reveals novelties on evolutionary and diversification trends in three Late Ordovician brachiopod genera (Atrypida, Anazygidae)" Yay for brachiopods! 🧪

Huge congrats to @crowleyk.bsky.social (Wright lab) and colleagues on publishing a major taxonomic revision of Paleocene gastropods!

Undergraduate Programs The University of Oklahoma

As a paleontologist, here's something incredible about the geosciences program at OU:

1. Overall freshmen enrollment has been * increasing * in recent years.
2. We have more students in our * Paleobiology * Bachelor of Science program than any other option (including the general geosciences path)

Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data Understanding the evolution and phylogenetic distribution of morphologic traits is fundamental to macroevolutionary research. Despite decades of major advances and key insights from molecular systemat...

New updated preprint! Many thanks to reviewers for their suggestions and helpful advice for improving our manuscript. Check it out if you're interested in fossils, phylogenies, and modeling morphologic evolution! 🧪

News PhD and MSc positions in Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology [Posted September 2025. Deadline is January 15, 2026. See below for information about the lab, student opportu…

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

Congratulations to @crowleyk.bsky.social (Wright lab) and colleagues on their new publication examining niche evolution in gastropods across the K-Pg extinction!

An extinct crinoid forms the "stem" of a non-ultrametric phylogeny. Text says "OU Paleobiology" with a similar form to the University of Oklahoma logo where the O is slightly above and to the left of the U, just like a radianal posterior plate is to the C-ray radial plate in many eucladid crinoids

New @oupaleobiology.bsky.social logo just dropped

Very proud of @oupaleobiology.bsky.social graduate students @crowleyk.bsky.social & Alysha Zazubec for their contributions to the 2025 field season on Anticosti Island. I'm particularly excited about the fantastic echinoderm fossils they found this year!

A happy group of 8 people...most of them wearing fossil-themed shirts

Mandatory airport photo of the combined Anticosti Island field teams of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. Grateful for the assistance of students and staff. The core team remains for another week of field work 🧪

New paper for #FossilFriday by Sam Noble Museum / OU paleontologists Lena Cole and Davey Wright, with AMNH collaborator Melanie Hopkins. Check it out!

Flexible crinoids are really cool group of rare & morphologically distinct fossil echinoderms. They originated during the Ordovician but substantially increase in diversity, disparity, & abundance in the Silurian after the mass extinction, so a new taxon near the boundary is a significant discovery.

I'll have more info in a few weeks when I get back from fieldwork but I'll be recruiting 2 graduate students to begin in 2026 (1 PhD, 1 MS). My lab investigates macroevolutionary dynamics using phylogenetic methods & the fossil record. Please share with students having strong research interests!

Need to include "future leader of the National Academy of Sciences" on the list of possibilities when paleobiology students ask where their careers may take them

A gray t-shirt which a drawing of an enrolled trilobite that says, "Anticosti Island 2025 Research Team | OMNH x AMNH Paleontology"

TFW you're about to leave for fieldwork so you create t-shirts for the team of researchers, staff, and students. This year's intrepid, multi-institutional team involves folks from the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History & the American Museum of Natural History. Does anyone else do this? 🧪

i'm a broken record on this topic but god i love being a paleontologist 🧪

Celebrating 2 years since Lyndsey Farrar joined the Invertebrate Paleontology team at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History! Lyndsey manages day-to-day collections operations & improvement, coordinates volunteers, engages in public outreach, & helps curators care for millions of specimens

A man with glasses in a plaid shirting holding a fossil crinoid

📰 Assistant Professor in OU Mewbourne + Assistant Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology @samnoblemuseum, 𝐃𝐫. 𝐃𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐝 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 has received a Junior Faculty Fellowship 🧪

👀 OU News: ou.edu/news/article...
📮Wright's feature in The Norman Transcript: link.ou.edu/4jXPPrG

Happy to be working these jaw dropping beautifully preserved fossil echinoderms on #FossilFriday 🧪

New paper! 🧪

Phylogeny and macroevolution of a “dead clade walking”: a systematic revision of the Paragaricocrinidae (Crinoidea)

Ancient catastrophes could provide keys to climate future New funding in Norman could help scientists understand how to preserve biodiversity in a world that has alarming similarities to one mass extinction in particular.

Ancient catastrophes could provide keys to climate future 🧪

"The future is what we put in it now," Wright said. “We can make comparisons with what we know has happened...and use our knowledge of history as a baseline for what could happen in the future."

Recovering From Disaster: OU Professor Awarded Junior Faculty Fellowship to Study Life After Mass Extinctions Understanding how life recovers in the aftermath of a mass extinction is critical to unraveling the broad patterns of evolutionary development that have shaped Earth’s history.. To further this unders...

"The fossil record effectively provides a set of natural experiments," Wright said. "By studying these historical events, we gain insights into how ecosystems respond when pushed past their breaking points, which has direct implications for understanding biodiversity loss today." 🧪 #FossilFriday

A beautiful specimen of the calyx and arms of the fossil crinoid Agalocrinus oklahomensis (OU 7337)

a museum drawer full of fossil crinoids

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has an absolutely spectacular collection of fossil crinoids, including these beautiful late Paleozoic eucladids #FossilFriday🧪

Two people closely in the museum collections looking closely a trilobite specimens from a drawer full of fossils sitting on a table

Very excited to have Melanie Hopkins, trilobite paleontologist extraordinaire and Curator & Chair of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, and her student Gabe visit our collections here at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History! #TrilobiteTuesday

Congratulations to OU Paleobiology graduate students Kiera Crowley (Wright lab) and Nicolas Bell (Cole lab) for successfully defending their graduate research proposals to their committees this week! Well done!

Very large as aphid trilobite from the Bromide Formation of Oklahoma

Museum drawer full of trilobite specimens

Although fossils from nearly all major intervals of the Phanerozoic can be found in Oklahoma, it's a veritable Paleozoic paradise at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History #FossilFriday 🧪

Congratulations to @crowleyk.bsky.social (Wright lab) for receiving this year's Outstanding Graduate Teaching Associate Award from the OU School of Geosciences!

Congratulations to OU Paleobiology graduate students Kiera Crowley (Wright lab) and Alysha Zazubec (Cole lab) for receiving Paleontological Society Student Research Grants!

Graph of the geologic history of biodiversity through time with major events (radiations, mass extinctions, etc.) labeled and the 3 Evolutionary Faunas identified

Paleontologists may quibble over various aspects of the Sepkoski Curve, but it's a fantastic framework for teaching. I show this in nearly every lecture of my non-majors, intro-level history of life class. The Sepkoski Curve is to paleontology what the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram is to astrophysics

Congratulations to OU Paleobiology graduate students Alysha Zazubec (Cole lab) and Kiera Crowley (Wright lab). Both were recognized with an Honorable Mention for this year's NSF GRFP award and we're very proud of their accomplishments!

the blastoid echinoderm Pentremites summetricus, a distant relative of starfish & kin that looks a little bit like an acorn. Specimen from the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History collections

WHAT DID THE BLASTOIDS KNOW #FossilFriday

"Presumably, blastoids did not disappear at the close of the Guadalupian from stress over anoxic oceans 5 million years in the future." --Erwin [The Great Paleozoic Crisis]