Philip Donoghue

Start with closing down PPE at Oxford

Thanks to Yinuo and Wei for organising such an excellent Spring Festival meal @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social last night - enough to attract our alums Eleonora and Mattia from Ireland and Spain!

A New Dayongaspid Galeaspid from the Silurian of the Lower Yangtze Region: Implications for Biogeography and the Evolution of Key Adaptations in Galeaspids - Journal of Earth Science Galeaspids are an extinct group of jawless armored fishes that are integral to understanding the origin of anatomical innovations of jawed vertebrates. Resolving the nature of the jawless ancestor of ...

Our latest: A new dead (jawless) fish from the early Silurian of China, informs on the nature of the ancestral galeaspid. Led by Yumeng Zhang from Zhikun Gai's group at IVPP

Excuse me but Kockelella variabilis was the first fossil I studied scientifically. It’s very important. Promise.

Is there a Scottish ceratopsian-eating theropod available, too? There’s probably a Welsh Linhenykus

You’re so fussy! The variation on the first two axes almost sums to 7%. What more do you want? Blood?

Where there’s blame there’s a claim. The degrees of ambulance-chasing lawyers were not, evidently, impacted negatively

Congrats to @ruolinwu.bsky.social who is now officially Dr Wu! @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social

What, if anything, rests on the resolution of this debate? All the chat about nervous system evolution depends on your interpretation of evolution on a tree; the tree does not require it

Interesting stuff

Investigating the Morphogenesis and Replacement of Lamprey Toothlets Using Synchrotron Imaging Toothlet replacement is a conserved feature in lampreys. We describe the mechanism at tissue level and quantify the determining factors, thus providing the basis for studies into a deep homology of c...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

a woman says " would you like to join us " with her eyes closed ALT: a woman says " would you like to join us " with her eyes closed

📢 Open faculty position – Origins of Life
We have an opening in our section at the University of Geneva! 🧬🚀

SPREAD THE WORD

Apply here: jobs.unige.ch/www/wd_porta...

The you’re going to be very surprised by our latest discovery, when we publish it, from the middle Ordovician

There is a strong facies bias impacting early vertebrate evolution that Rob Sansom and I have written about. It is not seriously considered in synoptic macroevolutionary studies. The biogeography of Ordovician vs Silurian verts is also perplexing

I’ve spent some time playing this game myself in formulating calibrations for nodes including crown-gnaths. Conodont are not adequate controls because they are exclusively marine while stem and early crown gnaths vary in their ecology, but are often known only from freshwater localities.

There weren’t any teeth until the middle Silurian but then they were described from the Llandovery in 2022. There is a very poor record of vertebrates, besides conodonts, between the Upper Ordovician and Middle Silurian which I think Sue Turner characterised as Talimaa’s Gap, echoing Romer’s Gap

There is a report of a shark tooth from the Harding Sandstone by Sansom et al 1996 Nature. However, there are no teeth with a lot of early chondrichthyan deposits and lots of acanthodians (stem-chondrichthyand) were edentate. We did some ASE on this in Rücklin et al 2021 Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 5 :919

And when you’re done with Fay-Wei’s excellent book, get a copy of this awesomeness by Neil Bell, which explains why mosses are almost as cool as liverworts, including stunning photography and the latest science

Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history Sponges have a cryptic Ediacaran history because ancestral sponges were soft-bodied and had low fossilization potential.

Our latest: Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history, led by @meleonora-rossi.bsky.social with help from friends @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social including @anariesgo.bsky.social @evopalaeo.bsky.social Davide Pisani and many others

This is all that is wrong with Trinity Hall. I don’t imagine that Southampton or Bristol universities would do the same

Liars and winners, as it turns out

Computational Approaches to Early Evolution

Join us for interesting discussions at the Computational Approaches to Early Evolution workshop next year in April at OIST in Onna, Okinawa! 🦠💻🧬 Registrations open until January 2nd '26, do not miss it! More info & registration details in the link below! 🔽
www.oist.jp/conference/c...

Pre-Christmas moleclular-clock shenanigans with @sabifo4.bsky.social @mariodosreis.bsky.social @zihengyang.bsky.social

As we head into the festive period, don't forget to apply for my awesome project (including much cleverer co-supervisors) on flowering plant (genome) evolution by January 8. You know you'll regret it if you don't! 🎄🧑‍🎄🔔🎁☃️❄️

Festive update on chondrichthyan jaw evolution: Evolution of chondrichthyan jaw morphology, from ecological generalists to specialists, led by Ben Griffin, with help from @evopalaeo.bsky.social @euphanerops.bsky.social @emilyrayfield.bsky.social Pablo Milla Carmona and Zerina Johanson

Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.

The Royal Society's Newton International Fellowship scheme opens to applications Jan 15 with a March 11 deadline. It provides £280K (salary and research expenses) over 2 years to outstanding ECRs from outside the UK. Why not come and work with me (or anyone else) @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social?

Here's Chris's piece from the @bristoluni.bsky.social news page www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2025/de...

Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes - Nature Analysis of eukaryotic gene sequences using a relaxed molecular clock methodology indicate that eukaryotes emerged 3.0–2.25 billion years ago as a result of mitochondrial endosymbiosis with complex ar...

Our latest, led by the inimitable Chris Kay "Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes" in which we used gene duplications to test hypotheses of eukaryogenesis. TLDR? They're all wrong. With @tweethinking.bsky.social @anya1.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Davide Pisani

I’m not sure the standard is different but, for me, the question is about who you want choosing reviewers for your manuscript and interpreting their reports, editors who are research specialists you respect, or professional editors with little or now specialist knowledge

Just back from a few days scanning tiny fossils @psich.bsky.social Swiss Light Source. TOMCAT is still in commissioning phase but sub micron resolution scans are down to 90 seconds!