Stephan Spiekman

I'm really thrilled to see the "Cromhall Croc" finally getting the attention it deserves! Please welcome Galahadosuchus jonesi, named after Ewan's school science teacher, who inspired his love of the natural world ♥️
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Meet Galahadosuchus jonesi, a new crocodylomorph from the Late Triassic of the UK, described by @es-ucl.bsky.social & @nhm-london.bsky.social PhD student Ewan Bodenham (with @stephanspiekman.bsky.social, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social & Paul Upchurch): anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Here's Galahadosuchus, a new saltoposuchid from Gloucestershire that I was brought on to illustrate.

Congrats to Ewan Bodenham, Stephan Spiekman (@stephanspiekman.bsky.social), Susie Maidment (@tweetisaurus.bsky.social), Paul Upchurch, and Phil Mannion (@pdmannion.bsky.social) on the publication!

Yesterday, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social visited us @smnstuttgart.bsky.social to talk about her amazing work on Spicomellus, which had everything that makes palaeo great: unexpected discoveries, fieldwork, prep work, bizarre anatomy, CT scanning, you name it

Hello from Stuttgart! Never been to the SMNS before but it's a lovely museum with amazing collections. Right now they have a temporary exhibit on Triassic life, featuring Mirasaura. @stephanspiekman.bsky.social showed me round.. Amazing fossils!

Skull of Scyllacerta, reconstructed based on scans of four nearly complete skulls.

Introducing a new Permian reptile: Scyllacerta creanae

With a tympanic fossa on the quadrate and no lower temporal bar, Scyllacerta challenges long-standing ideas about when-and-how hearing evolved in reptiles 🦎👂

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/pala...

Meet our brilliant team of Associate Editors!

𝐃𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐤𝐦𝐚𝐧 (Museum of Natural History Stuttgart) is a specialist in Triassic reptile evolution, using comparative anatomy, functional morphology, histology and phylogeny.

Read more: buff.ly/UYmwXjr
@stephanspiekman.bsky.social #Paleosky

A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe - Nature New results indicate that rhabdodontids and the previously described Ajkaceratops are actually distinctive European ceratopsians, a group better known from Asia and North America.

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper! Buffa 𝘦𝘵 𝘢𝘭. (2025) redescribe the anatomy of the enigmatic stem-reptile 𝙂𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙝𝙮𝙧𝙪𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙨 from the Permian of South Africa and the origin of Neodiapsida 🦎

Phylogenetic analysis of the relationships of Permian reptiles. Read the study here: buff.ly/62lJG0W

#FossilFriday #PaleoSky

YouTube video by The Ancients Inside The Bizarre Biology Of The Stegosaurs

On the off-chance that you are one of the three people left in the world who hasn't heard me talking about stegosaurs, you can catch me here, on The Ancients podcast: youtube.com/watch?v=I9Vk...

🐸 NEW PAPER OUT!
This time it’s all about FROGS and their melanosomes!

Falk et al., 2025, iScience: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.114220

#palaeontology #frogs #deeptime

Congrats Andy!

Avian cranial evolution is influenced by shape interactions between hard and soft tissue traits Abstract. Changes in the structure and relative size of the brain are thought to be key transformations in the evolution of birds, reflecting innovations a

You wait ages for a paper, and two come along (almost) at once! This is the first publication from the project we're currently working on, where we're investigating the relationship between different regions of the avian head. 1/n royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Just a quick heads up for those who intended to use the free scale bars handed out at this year's SVP by #PaleoTools: don't...

What cynic would ever say such a thing? 👀

The holotype of Galesphyrus, an articulated skeleton of a small stem reptile preserved as a mold. It is beautifully preserved, but decided to lose it’s skull prior to discovery

A diagram showing the evolutionary relationships of early reptiles found in this study. Importantly, this study places Galesphyrus as sister to Millerettidae + Neodiapsida, reconciling postcrania and cranial data for support of Parapleurota!

Buffa et al.’s paper on the enigmatic Permian reptile 🦎 Galesphyrus and the origin of Neodiapsida is out in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology! Read the thread 👇 for some important takeaways from our study

@valentinbuffa.bsky.social

#Paleontology #Reptile #Permian

doi.org/10.1080/1477...

🦎✨ New research delivers the 1st full 3D anatomical atlases of the veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus)! Open-access atlases + lesson plans offer powerful new tools for studying reptile evolution and teaching comparative anatomy.
Leavey et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Save Geology at the University of Leicester Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?

The geology department at the University of Leicester, where myself and countless others did our palaeontology PhDs, is at serious risk of closure

Please show your support by signing the below!

c.org/KtYyZB8dHk

Four people hugging in a pub, three man and a woman, all dressed up and smiling

We have a proper picture! Thanks @stephanspiekman.bsky.social and the rest that doesn’t have a BlueSky handle

Spiekman and Ezcurra doing totally normal things in my office... @stephanspiekman.bsky.social

@stereospondyl.bsky.social, you're welcome!

‼️‼️Triassic Life just opened @smnstuttgart.bsky.social‼️‼️

For all #Triassic fans, lovers of strange reptiles and the Dawn of the Modern World, this is an absolute MUST!

It also couldn't be more timely with our recent publication @nature.com of the wonder reptile #Mirasaura, which is now on display!

Reconstruction of Cyamodus orientalis on a blank background

Placodonts are amazing! Exhibit A: Cyamodus orientalis. And no, this is NOT a turtle.

This is an illustration for my book (in preparation) You can see this one and another Placodont I reconstructed for my book in a new post exclusive for my patrons

Patreon.com/serpenillus

🐡 🎨 🧪 #paleontology 🐍

A slightly cartoony illustration of a Mirasaura sitting on a mossy tree branch. The lizard-like animal has a long snout resembling a bird's beak, large eyes and a massive crest on its' back somewhat resembling a birds' wing feathers, as if someone stuck an entire wader's wing into his back. The animal has large eyes and it looking behnd him at a passing dragonfly.

The Triassic was a time of weird reptiles of every description.

This is one of the more recent finds: Mirasaura from France. It's one of the drepanosaurs, an odd group of arboreal reptiles with superficially bird-like heads and, in some cases, equally superficially feather-like appendages.

PhD position available at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin on avialan ontogeny (birds and their closest non-avian dinosaur relatives)!

jobs.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/jobposting/e...

Freshly deceased Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis on a Jurassic sea floor covered in Belemnite rostra (a "belemnite battleground"). Artwork by Andrey Atuchin.

News @ Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken (UMO) in Bayreuth: new ichthyosaur, Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis, named today after UMO's prime excavation site, the Jurassic clay pit Mistelgau. @olorotitan.bsky.social beautifully reconstructed the to-be fossil on a belemnite battleground typical for the locality.

Check out the provisional programme for #SVP2025 #2025SVP - the Triassic symposium was so popular they are running it for the entire day!

vertpaleo.org/wp-content/u...

Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!

Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur - Nature The ankylosaurian dinosaur Spicomellus afer possessed a tail weapon and uniquely elaborate dermal armour.

Meet Spiny Norman, the earliest known and definitely the most outrageously spiky ankylosaur ever discovered, as presented by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social & @richardjbutler.bsky.social in @nature.com. Q: how did it mate? A: carefully. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Unusual fossil skin appendage is not a feather Although large, elongated protrusions on a 247-million-year-old reptile fossil have some similarities to feathers, they are not feathers.

Unusual fossil skin appendage is not a feather. Although large, elongated protrusions on a 247-million-year-old reptile fossil have some similarities to feathers, they are not feathers www.nature.com/articles/d41...