Field Palaeobiology Research Group

An artist's reconstruction of the St Bathans bowerbird. A small bird with long feet, coloured in dark olive green and yellow plumage, with a bright yellow eye. It's holding a thin twig in it's thick, sturdy beak and the bird is perched on a stick.

🦴New fossil alert🦴 Introducing Aeviperditus gracilis, a possible bowerbird from the Miocene of New Zealand. My first fossil description!

Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)

Constrained variation in the internal architecture of avian wing bones Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Happy to share my first postdoc work published in @funecology.bsky.social ! A huge thank-you to @oliverdemuth.bsky.social @lizzysteell.bsky.social @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social @grumpydrfabre.bsky.social and to @snsf.ch

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Photo of a mostly white duck (male common pochard) with a rufous brown head and dark neck. It is leaning back on the surface of the water with its wings raised.

It's been online for a month but now in final format: a new paper I'm on is out today! We analyzed over 200 features from the bird wing and shoulder girdle skeleton to see how they're distributed across the bird family tree. academic.oup.com/iob/advance-... 🪶🧪 (📷 @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social)

Exciting news at Cambridge! We are launching the Darwin-Hamied Centre to promote research at the intersection of biodiversity and economics christs.cam.ac.uk/news/darwin-.... We are advertising two 5-year Senior Research Fellowships—application deadline 22nd June! christs.cam.ac.uk/vacancies-ch...

Now available for preorder, Mike Brooke's 'No Island Too Far' describes a career pursuing secrets of seabird biology at the ends of the earth. Mike is my predecessor as Strickland Curator at
@zoologymuseum.bsky.social
and the book is sure to be fascinating! pelagicpublishing.com/products/no-...

Congratulations, Lizzy!

The influence of soft tissue volume on estimates of skeletal pneumaticity: implications for fossil archosaurs | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Air space proportion (ASP), the volume fraction in bone that is occupied by air, is frequently applied as a measure for quantifying the extent of skeletal pneumaticity in extant and fossil archosaurs....

Congrats to PhD student Grace Burton! Learn how soft tissue volumes affect estimates of pneumaticity in archosaurs, open access: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10..... Thanks to @paleofox for the invitation to contribute to this special issue! Plus a Calgarian Swainson's Hawk on the cover!

Thanks, Ben—I've heard @zdfde.bsky.social is hoping to sell it to a UK broadcaster. Hope they're successful!

Dino Birds Fossils reveal how birds survived the killer asteroid and became today’s only living dinosaurs.

'Dino Birds' airs on @pbs.org in N. America tomorrow (9pm, 5th Feb.). Follow research from our lab and colleagues around the world revealing the origin of birds. Hope you enjoy it!

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...

@stevebrusatte.bsky.social @gnavalon.bsky.social @ksepkalab.bsky.social

Morphological Criteria for Staging Near‐Hatching Embryos of the Domesticated Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides) We devised novel staging criteria for near-hatching embryos of the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides) based on four easily measurable morphological traits. We show that our...

Embryo development provides mechanistic insight into the evolution of form, so enabling comparable points in development to be compared among species is crucial. Congrats to @evodevoba.bsky.social on this new cross-species staging table for waterfowl! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

That is the classic @albertonykus.bsky.social calling card!

Delighted to share this *epic* exploration of extant bird comparative morphology—the centrepiece of
@albertonykus.bsky.social's PhD thesis. Among the most detailed investigations of phylogenetic signal in the avian skeleton. Bravo, Albert! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....

There have been lots of amazing advances in palaeornithology over the last few years. In this invited review we discuss recent discoveries bearing on the origin of the bird brain, shoulder, palate, and air-filled skeleton. Check it out open access here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Diagram showing the evolutionary relationships of birds to their close extinct relatives. Color-coded pie charts indicate the points at which modern "avian" features evolved.

If you need a summary of recent advances in the field of bird paleontology, my labmates at @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social have a new paper out reviewing the origins of the avian brain, palate, wing skeleton, and air-filled bones! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 🪶🧪 (📷Field et al.)

Our first paper of the year, led by John Peacock, investigates barn owl hearing physiology, which surprisingly remains underexplored despite their extraordinary hearing capabilities. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... Recent shots of Western, Eastern, and American Barn Owls below!

Sparkling Violetear on a perch in the Jardín Botanico de Quito, Ecuador.

Arrived in Ecuador today & was greeted by hummingbirds, including this Sparkling Violetear. How apropos that our study on hummingbird bill bending was published today! Led by @ecophysicslab, this project began when I started my PhD... >14 years gestation! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

If you're interested in a career working with important zoological collections, the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology is hiring an assistant conservator! www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/46400/. Bonus points if you can tell me where (and when!) this drawer of birds comes from...