Will probably be back next week or the week after with more deets on where those authors are/were based at the time of publication (country-level) once I come up with schemes for how to count/measure/weight that.
Reminder that you can find the code + data here: github.com/bryanmgee/ne...
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The last thing I have data for, which is maybe of greatest interest to some, is WHO is publishing these papers. Still figuring out how to graph this, but the top hitters for Nature & Science only:
-Zhe-Xi Luo: 16
-Jin Meng: 15
-Xu Xing: 14
-Min Zhu: 11
-Qiang Ji: 9
(data on GitHub)
Likewise, Palaeontology sees more holotypes from the UK, western Europe, and other parts of the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia). But China remains dominant in being the source of new species.
PNAS/Current Bio sees much higher representation from the U.S. (probably because PNAS is a U.S.-skewed publication). If you squint hard enough, Myanmar is also higher up there - Current Bio has published a lot of Cretaceous amber material (though not recently).
The maps for where holotypes are from are also interesting. Nature and Science show the same trend in being dominated by new species from China.
Palaeontology (@thepalass.bsky.social) is the best I have atm for 'typical' paleo in which naming of inverts outpaces that of verts - not uncommon to see single papers naming 5+ new species of inverts, which almost never happens for verts. Binned inverts out more for @daveyfwright.bsky.social
Quite interesting to compare relative ranks among clades to which new species belong between Nature/Science and what could be considered the 'next tier down' in journals like PNAS and Current Bio.
🐝📈
🌱📈
🦖📉
🐟📉
I have cleaned up the graphs a bit after some internet rando told me my five-minute rush-job matplotlib was ugly 😢
Clade- and time-based charts now have standardized colour schemes and the clades are binned out more. The following data are Nature/Science (1995-present, including this week's new🐟)
👋 Back for #FossilFriday with more data on where/what new species get published!
Updated data and scripts: github.com/bryanmgee/ne...
Nature/Science: ⬆️in coverage through 1995
PNAS: 🆕, new species through 2000
Current Bio: 🆕, new species through 2006
Palaeontology: 🆕, new species through 2010
🧵👇
Ah Palaeontology is a good one to check! Definitely a shift away from descriptive work in my experience (less recent descriptions to cite), will add to list
Yep, the next step, which i mostly have scripted just not pushed on GitHub, is to pull information on authors and institutions from a bibliographic API - there are definitely some heavy hitters who are on 5+ articles in this dataset
The molluscs were modestly represented IIRC, I might split them out in the next iteration - it was a hassle trying to identify all the conditional labels to make some that would make sense and not be too vague
Anyway, this is a fun per project I'm just noodling on in my spare time, but if anyone else is interested and wants to contribute, the GitHub is there for forking or you can DM me!
github.com/bryanmgee/ne...
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Chloropleth map more readable as distribution shifts more to U.S. (JVP is a American-society-based pub).
You're more likely to see new fish 🐟 and pseudosuchians 🐊 in JVP and wayyy more likely to see Cenozoic species.
For comparison, I also got data from JVP (I wanted J Paleo but their date filter is borked), though it's only through 2020 because there are so many more papers. The mammal "advantage" (really just skew in this case) persists.
And the vast majority of new species in fancy journals are from China; the skew is so strong it completely blows out the chloropleth map.
Here it is in another form. These groupings are mine, are highly asymmetrical, will probably be tweaked, and were done to try and make this more comprehensible. The Mesozoic is also the most common time bin.
People may assume dinosaurs benefit the most from being charismatic, but it's actually new mammaliaforms that have the highest representation.
Predictably, there's a skew towards vertebrates and tetrapods specifically.
Bad news if you don't work on animal fossil specifically. It does happen once in a blue moon though!
www.nature.com/articles/nat...
Firstly, Nature publishes way more of these naming papers than Science.
This is just a pet project, so I won't belabor the methods. It's all in the README on GitHub with my code and data:
github.com/bryanmgee/ne...
In short, I searched 'sp. nov. fossil' in Nature and Science's websites, 2010 through 2026 inclusive, and pulled data. Then the script magic happens ✨️
Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen, @fishfetisher.bsky.social suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by @daveyfwright.bsky.social - I got bored after work and now I have (some) data!
🧵👇
#FossilFriday
#CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated
Very sad to hear about the passing of Hans Sues. I was always impressed with Hans' breadth across Tetrapoda and his enthusiasm, but he was just a really nice guy above anything else. He was very patient and kind to me as a nervous grad student when handling my first MS, which I have never forgotten.
Real ones know
Looks like it's that time of the year to pull this out again (with updated speen art)
#FossilFriday #TemnospondylsDidItBetter
Guess we're about to find out how many people checked the author list before fanboying over an overrated dinosaur
I think this is one of the hard parts of society investigations in a small field. Even if the ethics person doesn't let personal connections interfere, the mere perception of a potential impropriety, against a backdrop of a lack of transparency, can undermine trust in "the process"
Explicit conflict of interest policies
bsky.app/profile/kosk...
