Zach

Semionotiformes could never

Monitor displaying information for the Smith Lecture presented by me on October 31. Talk is entitled: Shedding light on the unseen: Evolutionary insights from the fish fossil record.

Nothing better than spooky fish fossils for a Halloween talk! If you're in the Ann Arbor area next week come check out my talk! 🎃👻🦴🐠

Whiteia anniae sp. nov. in right lateral view, Holotype (CHU 2016). (a), Whole specimen. (b), closeup of the calcified lung (indicated by lower arrows) and lateral line (indicated by upper arrows). (c), a scale near the head. (d), anterior tips of jaws with arrows indicating the fangs in anterior coronoids. (e), denticles on the last ray of the anterior dorsal fin.

New species of #coelacanth from the Early Triassic of China just dropped. Say hello to Whiteia anniae.🐟🧪 #FossilFriday

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

'Uncharted territory': Ongoing shutdown threatens food aid for 42 million people SNAP, the country's largest anti-hunger program, dates back to the Great Depression and has never been disrupted this way. Most recipients are seniors, families with kids, and those with disabilities.

SNAP, the country's largest anti-hunger program, dates back to the Great Depression and has never been disrupted this way. Most recipients are seniors, families with kids, and those with disabilities.

It is the smallest among us who bully and harm the weakest to make themselves feel big. They may dress themselves in uniforms, put themselves on stages, or direct armies at a whim, but inside they are small and afraid.

poor guy :/

1/2) Is that time of year again #Sundayfishsketch friends! This weekend marks the end of our 9th year of sketches! As we move into year 10, our annual #Fishytheme is to draw on Opah (the first fish sketch), to appreciate improvements made while practicing throughout the year. #sciart 🦑

Mesquite's two icons, one against a black background, and one against a sun on a sky blue background.

Mesquite 4.02 update released! It fixes a few bugs and adds Codon Alignment and various other improvements. Also, much faster with genomics files with 1000s of loci. www.mesquiteproject.org 🧪 #evolbio
@bembidion.bsky.social

Bumping this up one last time. I'm looking to hire graduate student(s) to work on an NSF-funded project to study elevational range shifts among dragonflies here in Colorado. @cudenverclas.bsky.social 🧪🌍🐙

Applications will be considered until Nov 1. See post below for more details

This #fossilfriday , I wanted to post a very classic Pittsburgh fossil. This is Fedexia striegeli. It’s known from only one specimen (shown here) that was collected during a geology field trip to a roadcut near Pittsburgh in 2004. I credit it as the specimen that made me interested in local verts!

Defleshed Amia calva (bowfin)

Very fishy Friday..

Saving the Museum After years of financial troubles and millions of funds raised in support, the Museum of the Earth is still struggling to bridge its multi-million dollar budgetary gap. It needs to

Update on the Paleontological Research Institution and their remaining need for donations to pay off their mortgage and avoid foreclosure
#savePRI please share; tag anyone you think might help🧪⚒️🦑

@lastweektonight.com @colbertlateshow.bsky.social @pbseons.bsky.social

www.ithaca.com/news/regiona...

It’s rough right now, for a lot of people. Grad apps are due, grant deadlines are close, and then there’s everything else. Plus it’s getting cold and dark (at least where I’m located). Give others grace and take care of yourselves

Ask ask ask. The “awkward” or “hard” questions are the most important ones to inquire about. Set up zoom meetings if possible.

They might not be giants: U-M study unravels genetics behind why some fish remain tiny Imagine you are a kind of fish called a goby, part of a huge family of more than 2,000 species.

News release for my goby paper! Thanks @morgansherburne.bsky.social for writing this up!

news.umich.edu/they-might-n...

I don’t like that fishes have a complex endoskeletal component to their shoulder girdle. ur Head is already Too much why do you add this mystery element?!

My PhD so far:

Learning the vagaries of vertebrate anatomy and evolution from studying humans ❌

Learning the vagaries of vertebrate anatomy and evolution from studying some horrible dead flattened Carboniferous fish ✅

Sanaa smiling and holding a plaque in front of a background with a repeated pattern of the Paleontological Society logo.

Congrats to Sanaa El-Sayed on her DEEP Award from the Paleontological Society!

Figure showing complete endocast of Durialepis in dorsal view. Upper panels show this with only partial sensory canal overlay; lower panel shows elaborately ramifying branches of main canals.

CT renderings and interpretive drawings of the anterior half of the endocast of Durialepis.

CT renderings and interpretive drawings of the posterior half of the endocast of Durialepis, showing the skeletal labyrinth.

CT renderings and interpretive drawings of the anterior half of the endocast of the holoptychiid porolepiform Glyptolepis.

Now out in Tim Smithson's Festschrift: neurocranial anatomy (incl. endocast) of the Early Devonian Durialepis et al. OA for your porolepiform pondering pleasure. W/ @gilespalaeo.bsky.social @jorgemondejar.bsky.social @tom-challands.bsky.social & S. Henderson www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Parallel shifts in differential gene expression reveal convergent miniaturization in fishes | PNAS Body size variation in vertebrates is a complex polygenic trait, tightly correlated with numerous aspects of a species’ biology, ecology, and physi...

Why are some species smaller than a paperclip while others grow longer than a school bus? How is body size evolution governed in animals? Out now in @pnas.org we tackle these longstanding questions through a genetic lens using my favorite group of fishes as our model!! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hot off the press is the final chapter of my dissertation now published in @pnas.org Here, I explore the genetic drivers of extreme body size reduction using goby fishes as a model. I'll write up a short summary thread later tonight...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Publication alert!🧪 Major new volume on early tetrapods and Carboniferous palaeoenvironments. The festschrift for Tim Smithson has just been published by Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh. Most articles are open access.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Powerful letter from a non-verbal autistic person. Give it two minutes of your night and feel your heart expand.

Several people in a corridor. Matt is in the center, flanked by grad students dressed as Matt, wearing the same outfits as Matt is shown wearing in pictures they are holding.

With Halloween fast approaching, I'm reminded of a time a few years ago the lab surprised me with costumes based on my past profile pics. Complete with actual elements of my wardrobe, supplied by my partner who was in on the act. (I'd spent the past week wondering where my clothes went.)

Alison Davis Rabosky, Director of the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, poses in the museum’s Herpetology archives at the University of Michigan’s Research Museums Center.

Thais Vasconcelos, Director of the University of Michigan Herbarium, poses at the University of Michigan’s Research Museums Center.

Great pair of articles in this morning's Ann Arbor News highlighting the outstanding new leadership of the U-M Museum of Zoology and U-M Herbarium: Alison Davis Rabosky (left) and Thais Vasconcelos (right). 🍄🌿🌺🐚🪲🐟🐸🐍🐦🐿️

Fossil fish skull in right lateral view. Fossil bone is dark brown-black on tan rock matrix.

A big bowfin skull (presumably Amia pattersoni) on display at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Pretty rare Green River fish.

Listen man lentil soup is probably one of the top five things created by people

These ancient bumblebees were found with their pollen source Insects have long pollinated plants, but evidence of ancient pairing is rare. Fossils now show bees and linden trees goes back 24 million years.

Scientists just found several fossil bumblebees covered in pollen that directly matches fossil flowers nearby.

The 24-million-year-old discovery reveals the oldest known evidence connecting pollinators to the pollinated.

#Paleontology #NationalFossilDay

🧪🏺

New at @sciencenews.bsky.social

That would be Iron City for ya

fossil fish from Ohio

Happy national fossil day, from one of the many fishes that haunt my dreams