At the RVC we are grieving the death of the Structure & Motion Lab's creator, and stalwart comrade, Professor Alan Wilson FRS, from a plane crash in Namibia on Wednesday. He was a giant in comparative biomechanics and an amazing scientist. I'm still reeling. It is utterly shocking and deeply sad.
06.03.2026 13:54 — 👍 50 🔁 12 💬 9 📌 6
An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.
🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪
Un nouvel hyrax dans le Pliocène d'Arménie découverts par des collègues du Jurassica 👏
www.jurassica.ch/fr/Infos-pra...
Welcome Armenohyrax aznavouriani! Thrilled that our latest study is out sjp.pensoft.net/article/1813... We described this new species & did the first phylogenetic analysis of pliohyracids! Thanks to my co-authors who gave me the opportunity to work on this exciting study when I was at JURASSICA!
26.02.2026 13:41 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0🦕I am extremely grateful to my colleagues and The Jurassic Foundation for making this project possible, which has marked a milestone in our knowledge of European titanosaurs and which we are convinced is on its way to becoming a reference work in the field.
21.02.2026 19:43 — 👍 13 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Come and join us in the world class Life Sciences Building at the University of Bristol! Closing date: Sunday 8 March
JOB ALERT! Lecturer in Biological Sciences Interested in our research areas? Click the link in our bio to discover more! Closing date: Sunday 8 March
JOB ALERT!
We are excited to announce that we are recruiting three new academics at lecturer level!
Click the link below for more info on how to apply, and don’t forget to explore our research themes too!
We look forward to receiving your applications!
www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...
A book on a cushion held open with a weighted rope, with handwriting on the right hand page.
Happy bday Charles Darwin (born #OTD 1809)! 🎉 Check out Charles Darwin’s Library on #BHLib, a virtual reconstruction of the surviving books owned by Darwin, drawing on original copies & surrogates, providing full transcriptions of his annotations & marks: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/d...
12.02.2026 06:01 — 👍 21 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
🚨Job alert🚨
Curator in the Zoological Collections in Tübingen, Germany
www.myscience.ch/jobs/id69219...
2 RVC faculty jobs are advertised now!
Lecturer / Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences
Comparative Biomedical Sciences Department
Location: Camden (King's Cross, London)
Very broad search in the CBS department's remit
jobs.rvc.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
EDI-friendly
Second PhD paper is out! We find: 1) aquatic and terrestrial salamanders have different limb bone adaptations, 2) complex life cycles promote different traits, 3) decoupling of external and internal bone traits increase diversity.
Thread (1/8) and FREE link below! 🦎🧪
doi.org/10.1111/joa....
This is the "SEA SHEEP" (Costasiella kuroshimae) & it took the old axiom: "you are what you eat" VERY literally.
It eats algae & rather than just digest them, it harvests the chloroplasts & becomes PHOTOSYNTHETIC. Solar slug!
Also, some of its cousins can rip their own heads off.
DAFNEE, a useful database of academic-friendly journals in #Ecology and Evolutionary #Biology
academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...
On 1 January 2026, the Biodiversity Heritage Library will take flight, becoming fully independent after nearly two decades hosted by the Smithsonian Institution. Learn more on the #BHLBlog: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2025/12/give... #GiveBHLWings #BHLTransition #GivingTuesday
02.12.2025 14:24 — 👍 10 🔁 9 💬 0 📌 0Please consider supporting Biodiveristy Heritage Library, which preserves so many key historical publications you can't find anywhere else online!
01.12.2025 06:06 — 👍 13 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
#DAWNDINOS paper! We built a 3D musculoskeletal model of ~1 kg Triassic pseudosuchian archosaur Gracilisuchus. Forelimbs were a challenge. Nice articulations of ribs, vertebrae & osteoderms made a good torso & neck. Probably quadrupedal, plantigrade & not fully erect limbs. doi.org/10.1111/joa....
20.11.2025 09:33 — 👍 18 🔁 7 💬 1 📌 0
Philippe Taquet, paléontologue français
⚠️ Sad news for science: Philippe Taquet, the gentleman of French paleontology, passed away on Sunday, November 16.
@cr2p.bsky.social @mnhn.fr @recherche.mnhn.fr @academiesciences.bsky.social
De mon côté on m'a confié le micro pour la chronique sciences.
Cette fois j'ai décidé de parler du fonctionnement scandaleux de l'édition scientifique, peu connu en dehors des labos : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg2C...
Mais 4 minutes c'est court, alors j'ajoute quelques ressources ci-dessous !
Philippe Taquet, chasseur de dinosaures et ancien directeur du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, est mort
17.11.2025 10:55 — 👍 29 🔁 21 💬 1 📌 12RDV à 16H pour écouter @houssayecnrs.bsky.social de @mecadev.bsky.social et Guillaume Lecointre de l'@isyeb.mnhn.fr sur la paléo-bioinspiration
06.11.2025 12:59 — 👍 4 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0Analysis of 985(!!) baboon skulls' CT scan data from MorphoSource shows that >18% have slice spacing errors that propagate to downstream analyses-- an important cautionary tale on checking CT metadata vs. errors, and a goliath effort: peerj.com/articles/201...
27.10.2025 07:40 — 👍 27 🔁 11 💬 0 📌 4
New paper on crocodylian locomotor evolution led by Masaya Iijima, w/Richard Blob & me!
More erect hindlimb postures help extant gators support their weight (esp. at ankle), & how these mechanics constrained giant Deinosuchus to a slow walk at best!
The paper-- www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
New bird paper led by the brilliant and talented Andrew Orkney! 🐣
We show that greater parental care is linked to greater evolutionary flexibility in how birds fly 🦅
A drawing of Protobalanus spinicoronatus, a flat oval-shaped mollusk with no distinct head and armored plates and also spikes on the body's edge.
A fossil 3D-scan of Protobalanus spinicoronatus, showing the oval-shaped body of the mollusk with armored plates and also a few spikes on the body's edge.
#paleoctober2025 day 9 : Protobalanus spinicoronatus !
Despite its name, this animal is a devonian mollusk, more specifically a basal polyplacophoran. You may know its current day relatives as little criters on the beaches called "chitons" (that are not slugs with shells nor crustaceans).
To a certain amount, you can estimate the angle of the ankle joint (mean angle during stance phase) of some land mammals by measuring the angle of their tibial long axis vs. calcaneal tuber long axis, and that could be handy:
peerj.com/articles/200...
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...
Hello, microanatomy &/or salamander enthusiasts!
If you’re a first-year master’s student, I might have an exciting internship for you on the microanatomy of two salamanders sp., with already great results on the humerus.
What: Zeugopod microanatomy
Where: SMNS
Contact: morgan.proust@smns-bw.de
New paper led by @es-ucl.bsky.social PhD student Samantha Beeston (with @profpaulbarrett.bsky.social + others) on the evolution of postcranial pneumaticity in early sauropodomorph dinosaurs + its likely independent acquisition from that of theropods & pterosauromorphs: doi.org/10.1111/joa....
26.09.2025 08:40 — 👍 13 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0
I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA
10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)
"After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how the animal looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant" www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...
24.09.2025 07:00 — 👍 166 🔁 59 💬 6 📌 11
JOBS JOBS JOBS! Stony Brook are advertising two assistant professorships in vertebrate palaeo/evolution, one focused on (in the words of the SVP programme) NOT DINOSAURS and the other on evolutionary neurology:
apply.interfolio.com/172502
apply.interfolio.com/172517
