Mark Wright

Two quail embryos. The individual on the left has dark pigment in it's eye while the individual on the right has no visible pigment in the eye.

Two leopard gecko embryos. The individual on the left has dark pigment in it's eye while the individual on the right has no visible pigment in the eye.

I was collecting #quail #embryos this morning and found an individual with albinism! Look at the lack of pigment in the retinal epithelium! Reminds me of finding a leopard #gecko embryo with the same condition during my PhD.

Multicolored CT model of a fossil cichlid skeleton. Image credit: Austin Babut (project technician).

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

Grade F level diagram of an ostrich skeleton. The pelvis is labelled as a humerus, and sternum appears to be labeled as the pelvis.

The team of Ph.D. level experts in ChatGPT apparently doesn't include any anatomists.

The way I convert has always been to start from:
0 C = 32 F
Then, every +10 C is +18 F

So,
10 C = 50 F
20 C = 68 F
30 C = 86 F
(+5 C is +9 F for filling in increments between when needed)

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/...

1. Knowledge of what’s local (and how to care for it)
2. Not having any areas that I control

The motivation to figure out the first would be there if the second wasn’t the main barrier

Thank you, Bouwe!

Today, my successfully defended dissertation was accepted by ProQuest in its final, correctly-formatted version! What a journey it has been to get to this point. #PhDone

His training schedule in this interview:
-Wake up at 8:30am
-Start training day at 9:30am
-Workout, lift, recovery
-Sleep all afternoon
-Wake up at 10pm
-Work UPS until 4am
-Sleep 3 hours, wake up, repeat

It's still early in the season, but he's run the fastest time in the world so far this year

YouTube video by CITIUS MAG Jacory Patterson Talks Job At UPS + Racing Unsponsored After 43.98, 2nd In Long Sprints At GST Miami

Biggest story IMO from the first two meets of Grand Slam Track so far:

Jacory Patterson, unsponsored athlete and UPS driver, wins the 400 in Miami this weekend becoming the 26th fastest guy in history (43.98). Finishes 2nd in the Slam, takes home $50k. That's life changing

youtu.be/QJ4AhRONMjk?...

Bone microstructure supports a Mesozoic origin for a semiaquatic burrowing lifestyle in monotremes (Mammalia) | PNAS The platypus and four echidna species are the only living egg-laying mammals and the sole extant representatives of Order Monotremata. The platypus...

Early Cretaceous fossil of a humerus from a monotreme indicates semiaquatic burrowing lifestyle as in platypus (and echidna):
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Congrats!!

🚨 HISTORY LOADING... 🚨

Nike has announced that on June 26th, triple Olympic 1500m champion and mile world record holder Faith Kipyegon will attempt to do what no woman ever has: run a sub-4-minute mile.

Kipyegon currently holds the WR at 4:07.64.

💻 Read more: citiusmag.com/articles/fai...

Graphical abstract for "The Diffusion Diaries: Diffusible Iodine-Based Contrast-Enhanced CT for Vertebrate Natural History Specimens", showing the number of scans : "252 scans of 205 specimens from 7 natural history collections" a plot showing how staining time increases with mass, log-transformed (bottom left), a pie chart showing the Tissue Condition scores (TCS) recorded for all specimens (bottom middle), and a screenshot of a lab protocol for diceCT'ing museum specimens (bottom right)

Cover image for Integrative Organismal Biology, showing cross sections through a fish, a tenrec, a frog, and a lizard at the bottom of the image, and a 3D rendering of each animal at the top of the image (colored in teal, grey, yellow, and pink, respectively)

🚨New publication alert!🚨 A big one! It might just be my *biggest* one: doi.org/10.1093/iob/... IMPORTANT THREAD! From the moment Dave Blackburn set me loose at the Florida Museum, I had a marvelous time using diffusible iodine-based contrast-enhanced CT (diceCT) to create anatomical datasets 🧪1/6

Shelly-Ann racing in her kid's Parents Day race at the school is the funniest thing I've seen all week LMAO

Not-periodizing means leaving a little bit of fitness on the table, for example, if you have a goal marathon you are working towards, but it’s pennies compared to other stuff (like total volume)

Others have touched on this, but it depends on goals. Periodization is mostly for elites (at least college level) to optimize peaking for a particular race. For most folks (especially those running for health/fitness), better to do what keeps you motivated with down weeks as the body needs it.

A photo of a pygmy possum clinging to a human thumb. The animal has a curly pink tail and somewhat resembles a light brown mouse.

Behold the western pygmy possum! This dainty marsupial typically weighs ~0.5 oz (14 g)—that's about as much as a AA battery! It inhabits treetops in forests throughout parts of Australia. As a nectarivore, it mainly feeds on plant nectar.
Photo: gilliank, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist

Absolutely love this illustration!

A multi-tasking #platypus: chewing & scratching at the same time.
When #platypuses dive, they cram their cheek pouches full of food, to chew when they surface. Platypuses don't have teeth (they wear down too easily): they've replaced them with ever-growing horny ridges.
#Tasmania #fieldwork #WildOz

A card announcing the call for papers stating 'Special Issue: The Integrative Biology of Exercise Guest Editors: Erika Eliason, Christopher Guglielmo, Natalie Holt and Monica Daley Submission deadline: 27 June 2025' with the Journal of Experimental Biology logo and the logo for the Special Issue containing a fish on the bottom left, a flying goose on the top and a dumbbell on the bottom right.

Don't miss out, we are inviting submissions to our upcoming Special Issue: The Integrative Biology of Exercise.
🧵1/3

journals.biologists.com/jeb/pages/ex...

At this point, the dissertation acknowledgements is definitely giving a shout out to coffee growers, coffee roasters, and the family Rubiaceae for giving rise to such a fine genus. Maybe also Ethiopian farmers for cultivating it and the Ottomans for bringing it to Europe if I feel particularly bold.

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...

Flow movie title card

Cannot give this film enough praise! So excited to see that it won the Oscar for Animated. Absolutely love the detail they put into animal movement and personality.

"Good News, She's Dead" from the opening scene of Wicked

Slack Failing to Load Screen

Felt appropriate

Social media postcard saying: Special Issue Integrating Biomechanics, Energetics and Ecology in Locomotion Guest Editors: Andrew A. Biewener and Alan M. Wilson Journal of Experimental Biology. The image on the left shows a zebra wearing a collar with a tracking device in the Okavango Delta, northern Botswana.

Andrew Biewener & Alan Wilson discuss themes from the JEB Special Issue that aims to break down boundaries between the fields of #biomechanics, #energetics & #ecology by integrating laboratory and field studies through novel technologies across ecosystems

bit.ly/4hRSoeM

Already accomplished something for the week, and it's barely Monday afternoon 🏃
foddy.net/Athletics.ht...

How do you measure what isn't there?

Elska did a fantastic job leading this paper on how we can measure the volume of changing, 3D spaces inside XROMM skeletal animations. And, importantly, how good are those volume measurements?
journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/...

movies you've watched more than six times, gifs only
(*could not find a gif, so i'll go with a regular static image)