@palaeosingh.bsky.social
• Vertebrate Palaeontologist •📍The Open University, UK • Interested in understanding the links between morphology, ecology & evolution through deep time, with a focus on terrestrial tetrapods • 🌿- 🦕- 🦖
A photo of the fossilized skeleton of Eryops megacephalus. It is dark brown in color. The animal is low-slung with a large head.
This Fossil Friday, meet Eryops megacephalus! Evidence, including strong limbs and trackways that may have been made by this critter, suggests it was one of the most terrestrial early tetrapods. It lived ~280 mya during the Early Permian.
25.07.2025 20:36 — 👍 122 🔁 25 💬 1 📌 4
Sepia-toned museum hall. Long-necked Barosaurus skeleton sweeps diagonally across the image
Close up of juvenile Allosaurus cast skeleton posed leaping onto the sauropod’s back
Barosaurus from behind, we can see that it’s crouching and its legs are partially buried
From ground level, total of six Allosaurus skeletons surrounding Barosaurus. A girl in pink looks up at the scene
I love everything about this tableau of a mired Barosaurus swarmed by juvenile Allosaurus. There’s so much life and movement imbued in these casts! #FossilFriday
25.07.2025 13:47 — 👍 111 🔁 31 💬 2 📌 0The group ultimately went extinct at the end of the middle Permian during the End-Guadalupian mass #extinction event. They were superseded by more derived neotherapsids in the late Permian. Among these later therapsids were #cynodonts, from which mammals would later emerge in the Mesozoic.
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#Dinocephalians were highly successful in the middle Permian, being found all over the world. This specimen was discovered in South Africa in the 1900s, but dinocephalian fossils have also been uncovered in Russia, China & Brazil, as well as other countries in Southern Africa.
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Tapinocephalids also notably posses thick, dome-shaped skulls, which it’s thought were used for head-butting in contests over food, water, or access to mates and/or territory, similarly to some modern rams.
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Mormosaurus was a tapinocephalid dinocephalian. Tapinocephalids were heavily built with robust limbs, large guts & relatively short snouts. These features, in combo with small, chisel-like teeth, suggest a herbivorous diet. These animals were some of the first truly large terrestrial herbivores.
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It was #therapsids that dominated terrestrial faunas in the mid-late Permian, before the rise of dinosaurs in the Mesozoic. Dinocephalians diversified in the middle Permian, evolving both carnivorous & herbivorous forms, & huge sizes. They were among the largest land animals of the Permian.
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Dinocephalians sit on the #synapsid branch of the animal evolutionary tree, making them distant relatives of mammals. Dinocephalians were one of many clades of synapsid that diversified in the mid-late Permian that are collectively together known as #therapsids.
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The skull of the dinocephalian, Mormosaurus seeleyi, housed in the fossil collections of the Natural History Museum UK in London, England.
Here's a skull of the #dinocephalian, Mormosaurus seeleyi from the collections of the @nhm-london.bsky.social for this #FossilFriday. This ancient forerunner of mammals lived in the middle #Permian (~272-259 Ma) in what would eventually become South Africa 🇿🇦
#Paleontology #Science #Paleozoic
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Geochemical chronologies in Paranthropus robustus teeth inform habitat and life histories www.nature.com/articles/s41...
24.07.2025 10:58 — 👍 8 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
A nice #paleoecology paper by Link et al. describing a phorusrhacid (terror bird) fossil from the #Miocene with bite marks from a large caiman - offering a glimpse of life in the ancient Pebas megawetland of South America ⬇️
#paleontology #science
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Artwork by Gabriel Ugueto
I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎
This fits with the idea that these resilient herbivores were able to scratch out a living from the most meagre of food resources during & after the devastation of the P-Tr extinction. These critters were tough little survivors!
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l've done a little work on their feeding #biomechanics and #ecology - it's thought that lystrosaurs were acutely adapted to eat tough vegetation, perhaps roots & tubers. Their jaws gave them a shearing bite, with added shock absorption to deal with the toughest of plant materials.
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#Lystrosaurus became the dominant terrestrial animals in the Early #Triassic, showing great abundance all over the world, from Antarctica to China. Multiple species emerged showing differences in morphology that likely reflect the local environments.
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A mounted skeleton of the dicynodont, Lystrosaurus, on display at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France.
Here’s a snapshot of the plucky little #dicynodont, #Lystrosaurus on display at @mnhn.fr for this #FossilFriday. This distant forerunner of mammals was one of the few animals on land to survive the worst mass extinction event of all time, the Permo-Triassic extinction.
#paleontology #science
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New paper by Lovegrove et al. describes a new silesaur specimen from the Ntawere Fm. 🇿🇲 that suggests large silesaurs were perhaps quite prevalent in the Late #Triassic - interesting implications for early #dinosaur evolution ⬇️
#paleontology #science
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
I had a great day, doing research at the Nature Education Centre of Kraków University. Here are some photos of the Triassic archosauriform Smog wawelski that was found in Poland.
#FossilFriday #paleontology #science #research #nature
These human activities proved too much for the Moa, driving them into #extinction. Our arrival to islands & other lands previously without such pressures have led to similar extinctions of so many species throughout our history. Hopefully, with our current knowledge, we can be better.
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Humans supposedly arrived in NZ around/before the 1300s. Carbon dating of Moa remains indicates that all species were extinct by 1445, with their decline occurring rapidly over ~100 years. It’s thought that humans hunted the Moa, ate their eggs, & destroyed their habitats via land clearances.
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The diversity of Moa on NZ (11 currently recognised species) & their survival from at least the #Miocene to the #Holocene shows that these animals were very successful at adapting to different conditions & environments of NZ. However, it appears they could not adapt to humans.
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Once the #Moa arrived in NZ, they diversified into a number of species across the North & South Islands, showing local adaptations to the different conditions. They became the dominant large herbivores on NZ, likely feeding on leaves & twigs from trees & shrubs 🌿
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Recent genetic studies have shown that the closest relative of the #Moa is actually the South American, #Tinamous, which can fly, rather than the #KiwiBird, another smaller ratite that also lives in New Zealand. As such, there’s some debate as to when & how Moa first arrived in NZ.
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Moa are #ratites, a group of flightless birds that include living emus, cassowaries & ostriches. It also includes the extinct #ElephantBird of Madagascar, which rivals the #Moa for the title of largest known bird. The Elephant bird is the heaviest known bird, while the Moa is the tallest.
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A mounted skeleton of a Moa on display at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. This giant, extinct flightless bird once lived in New Zealand but went extinct shortly after the islands were colonised by humans.
With all the talk of cloning a #Moa, I thought I’d share this snapshot of one at @nhm-london.bsky.social for this #FossilFriday. These large, flightless birds lived across New Zealand 🇳🇿 through most of the Neogene, with some species growing up to 2 metres tall.
#Paleontology #Science #Birds
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The skull of Icaphoca in dorsal view - the skull is long and narrow with a triangular snout, large orbits, and a nearly circular braincase. On the right is a diagram showing the sutures and different bones of the skull, color coded.
The skull of Icaphoca in lateral view - the skull is long and narrow with a triangular snout, large orbits, and a nearly circular braincase. Below each photograph is a diagram showing the sutures and different bones of the skull, color coded.
New paper by Dewaele and Muizon: A new fossil true seal, Icaphoca, from the late Miocene Pisco Formation (~9 myo) of Peru! It's narrow-snouted, with widely spaced cheek teeth - and closely related to the geochronologically younger (and slightly smaller) Acrophoca from younger strata. 🐬🦖 🧪
10.07.2025 19:34 — 👍 34 🔁 12 💬 1 📌 0I've wanted to write this article for years. About my and other's struggles to even survive sometime in #academia. Thank you to the amazing editors at @plosbiology.org that gave me the forum to write this piece. #science
24.06.2025 18:09 — 👍 342 🔁 176 💬 19 📌 423-year #Postdoc opportunity at the University of York!
I am #hiring a Postdoc to join my URF project on exploring how #biodiversity change is unfolding in the #Anthropocene.
Deadline: 10th August 2025.
All details and the link to apply: shorturl.at/qOQst
@anthropocenebio.bsky.social #ecology
One notable species for this post is Dimetrodon borealis, which is Canada’s only known species of Dimetrodon. You can actually see a replica of its fossil in the photo - the fragment of upper jaw in the foreground of the photo.
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There are multiple species of #Dimetrodon & studies of their teeth show subtle variations in jaw & tooth morphology, indicative of dietary specialisation & niche partitioning. They also vary somewhat in overall body size.
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