Prof. Valentin Fischer

We'll be hosting a joint Crossing the Palaeontological–Ecological Gap (CPEG) meeting & Conservation Paleobiology Symposium @ucl.ac.uk in London in August 2027, which aims to bridge spatial and temporal gradients between palaeontology, ecology, and conservation: www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical...

Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology ELSEVIER Volume 31, Issue 2, April 2000, Pages 117-165 RETRACTED: Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans Gary M. Williams 9 Robert Kroes °, Ian C. Munro © 2 This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal

#Oops: The seminal paper that has been used for 25 years to justify that the use of #Glyphosate is safe has been retracted.

▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings…"

#Paleobotany #Devonian #Fern
Last week, I attended the EMBO workshop in Vienna on early land plants and terrestrialisation.
There, I presented my research on rhacophytalean evolution, focusing on a reappraisal of the genus Cephalopteris from the latest Famennian of Bjørnøya. 🌿🌿

A new analysis of Dunkleosteus terrelli reveals its massive jaws were far more cartilage-rich than once thought, reshaping ideas about muscle layout, bite mechanics & feeding style. Time to rethink this Devonian apex predator.
Engelman et al.:
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Hey everyone! I’m excited to share that one of my thesis projects was just published in @currentbiology.bsky.social and featured on phys.org! In this paper, we use an old statistical approach developed by the US Navy in WW2 to predict the aquatic habits of various dinosaurs and marine reptiles 🦖🐊

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Ten simple rules to follow when cleaning occurrence data in palaeobiology Large datasets of fossil occurrences, often downloaded from online community-maintained databases, are a vital resource for understanding broad-scale evolutionary patterns, such as how biodiversity h...

Happy #FossilFriday! Interested in fossil data handling & building analysis-ready databases? New paper out today in Palaeontology @thepalass.bsky.social with @palaeoverse.bsky.social team led by @lewisajones.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Hope it helps! 💻📊📈🦐🦪🦣🐚🪸🦕🦖🐋🐊🐟🦑🐢🐍🦎🐦‍⬛🦂

‪
Nouvelle expo dans le jardin du @mnhn.fr sur les Savanturières, avec, parmi les chercheuses exposées, une paléontologue ! Nathalie Bardet @cr2p.bsky.social

Post-doc @narimanechatar.bsky.social is working with extinct sabertoothed cat-like carnivores from John Day, scanning a cast of Pogonodon platycopsis, housed in the UCMP. 3D scanning allows her to compare the shape and mechanical performances of its cranium and jaw. tinyurl.com/pogcranium

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

We're excited to share a new Special Issue on sabretooth taxa, broadly defined. From defining what makes a sabertooth/tusk to exploring fossil taxa and saber function.
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19328494...
Volume edited by Hartstone-Rose, Werdelin & Pollock

Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate - Nature Breugnathair elgolensis gen. et sp. nov., an early squamate identified from a newly discovered Middle Jurassic skeleton on the Isle of Skye, provides new evidence on the origins of snakes.

Benson, R.B.J., Walsh, S.A., Griffiths, E.F. et al. Mosaic anatomy in an early fossil squamate. Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The Jane Goodall Institute of Canada has learned this morning, Wednesday, October 1st, 2025, that Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, UN Messenger of Peace and Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, has passed away due to natural causes.

She was in California as part of her speaking tour in the United States.

A new Eurhinosaurus (Ichthyosauria) species from the Lower Jurassic (Toarcian) of Mistelgau (Bavaria, Southern Germany) Eurhinosaurus is a European Lower Jurassic longirostrine ichthyosaur, characterized by its remarkable overbite. Despite the long history of the genus, the taxonomy of Eurhinosaurus is still under deba...

A new ichthyosaur species is discovered! Welcome Eurhinosaurus mistelgauensis! fr.pensoft.net/article/1542...
Huge congratulations to @spichergael.bsky.social for leading this project.

I am extremely happy to see that our review on fossil tip-dating is out in early view in Systematic Biology! A huge thanks to all the authors of this massive project (@heckeberg.bsky.social, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social, Gustavo Darlim, and @hoehna.bsky.social)! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

this exists it is called thinking

Ditch the Megalosaurus, we want a full size Ichthyosaurus!

Predicting body length and assessing the shape of tail-propelled Mesozoic marine reptiles | Biology Letters Body length is a crucial ecological predictor in vertebrates, yet total body length proxies have seldom been assessed for ancient marine top predators. Here, we test the strength of phylogenetic imput...

A similar analysis is in the works for sauropterygians; for now here is the paper: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Published in Biology Letters @royalsocietypublishing.org with A Rogé, R Cottereau, @just-fre.bsky.social , @antoinelaboury.bsky.social , I Scavezzoni, @palaeotheoryum.bsky.social

@universitedeliege.bsky.social @rennesuniv.bsky.social @uantwerpen.be @naturalsciences-be.bsky.social

3/4

The good news is that isolated elements that are abundantly fossilised such as dorsal centra and propodials are good predictors of body size.

However, body size appears labile among subclades and genera, resulting in poor performance of phylogenetic imputation methods.

2/4

Are you tired of people constantly overestimating body size of marine reptiles? No longer!

We provide equations to estimate body size in ichthyosaurians, mosasaurids, and thalattosuchians.

1/4

Multicolored CT model of a fossil cichlid skeleton. Image credit: Austin Babut (project technician).

Do you like cichlids? Fossils? Fossil cichlids? Would you like to study them as part of a graduate degree at the University of Michigan, joining an NSF-funded project? Get in touch.

Slab of gray rock with black-to-orange impressions of branches and leaves.

UMMP 57588: specimen showing the Late Devonian genera Archaeopteris (fronds) and Callixylon (trunks, branches) belonged to the same plant. This critical discovery by UMMP curator Charles Beck illuminated the structure of trees contributing to some of the planet's most ancient forests. #FossilFriday

From paper: Figure 2: Photographs and interpretation of specimen MNHNL TV211. (A) overview of the specimen. (B) anatomical interpretation of the right lateral portion of the skull. (C) zoom on the fossilised gut content, showing a vampyromorph gladius (red arrow).

LOVE papers about gut contents!

Vampyromorph coleoid predation by an ichthyosaurian from the Early Jurassic Lagerstätte of Bascharage, #Luxembourg

Valentin Fischer et al

peerj.com/articles/197...

(Seen thanks to @arctomet.bsky.social!)

Gut contents: the trace fossils that answer the question "What was for dinner?", even if dinner was 180 million years ago. 🧪

New paper showing that ichthyosaurs ate vampyromorph coleoids. Did they like it ? No idea 🤷‍♂️

@universitedeliege.bsky.social @naturmusee.bsky.social @just-fre.bsky.social
@peerj.bsky.social

peerj.com/articles/19786

"Growth series", with foetus, of two very distinct ichthyosaurs from the Triassic! Very glad to have participated to this cool study! Thanks again Lene!

New paper out today lead by @tsengzj.bsky.social where we test the 150-year-old hypothesis that the unique jaw torus in Nimravus is an adaptation to resist bite forces using FEA🦁🔪our results highlight some functional advantage of the torus, which are amplified at larger gape doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Measuring the load-bearing capacity of Mesozoic marine reptile teeth using Finite Element Analysis Paleontologists have long inferred the dietary preferences of Mesozoic marine reptiles based on skull and tooth morphologies. Previous researchers have hypothesized that different marine reptile to...

New paper where we applied FEA on marine reptiles teeth, with Joshua White & Matthew McCurry @australianmuseum.bsky.social. @universitedeliege.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New #GRAVIBONE paper from @camillebader.bsky.social with Rémy Gilardet, Nicolas Rinder, @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social & @toriherridge.bsky.social on the long bone microanatomy of elephants. Well done Camille :)
academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...