Prof. Valentin Fischer

Comic. [3-column table with headers Period, My Favorite Part, and My Biggest Complaint] [Row 1] P: *Precambrian*, MFP: Life develops, MBC: Snowball Earth episodes [Row 2] P: Cambrian, MFP: Trilobites!, MBC: Evolution could stand to calm down a little [Row 3] P: Ordovician, MFP: Earth might have had rings, MBC: Scary volcanic eruption in North America [Row 4] P: Silurian, MFP: First land animals, MBC: Earth’s newfound mold problem [Row 5] P: Devonian, MFP: Big mountains in Boston, MBC: Yeah, sure, what those giant killer fish needed was *armor* [Row 6] P: Carboniferous, MFP: Cool forests, MBC: Bugs too big [Row 7] P: Permian, MFP: Pangea, MBC: Google “The Great Dying” [Row 8] P: Triassic, MFP: Tanystropheus [dinosaur with extremely long neck next to tiny person for scale], MBC: Damage to Canada still visible from space at Manicouagan [Row 9] P: Jurassic, MFP: Birds, MBC: Parasitoid wasps [Row 10] P: Cretaceous, MFP: Raptors, MBC: Raptors [Row 11] P: Paleogene, MFP: Pretty horseys!!!, MBC: Paleocene-eocene thermal maximum [Row 12] P: Neogene, MFP: Forests of *Dracaena* Dragonblood Trees, MBC: Zanclean Flood [Row 13] P: Quaternary, MFP: Burrito invented, MBC: Whoever picked this name for the third period of the Cenozoic

Geologic Periods

xkcd.com/3120/

Grateful for the chance to present my #marinereptiles research at both #EAVP2025 and #SEB2025 over the past weeks.

Huge thanks to the organisers, and all my coauthors for their support and guidance!

Looking forward to the next conferences!

Today is the day!
#SEBExPalaeo will be live at #SEBCONFERENCE

9h30 in Nightingale 1&2
(follow signs for Bird Rooms)

Looking forward to seeing you for plenty of experimental #palaeontology #palaeobotany #3D #modelling and fun discussions!

Earliest evidence of Neanderthal multifunctional bone tool production from cave lion (Panthera spelaea) remains - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Earliest evidence of Neanderthal multifunctional bone tool production from cave lion (Panthera spelaea) remains

new lab paper, lead by Dr. Greg Abrams! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very glad that Juliette Vendanger obtained funding for her PhD from ED227 to work with Nathalie Bardet and myself on mosasaurs. Looking forward to working all together :)

A NEW ARMORED CROCODYLIFORM FROM THE UPPER CRETACEOUS OF CATALONIA (SPAIN): NEW INSIGHT INTO THE EVOLUTION OF THE EUSUCHIAN POSTCRANIAL AND DERMAL SKELETON The origin and early radiation of Crocodylia have shifted attention to the Upper Cretaceous of Europe, where numerous new taxa have recently been disc…

🎉New lab paper lead by @just-fre.bsky.social based on his master thesis work! Francesco and his colleagues describe new allodaposuchid material from the latest Cretaceous of Spain (as well as the importance of postcranial anatomy for croc phylogenies 😉).

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

Glad to have contributed to this paper led by Annabelle Aish, which highlights the great potential of Palaeobioinspiration! @recherche.mnhn.fr

Happy Birthday, Mary Anning!

This 195-million-year-old marine reptile was discovered in Lyme Regis at some time before 1836 by the British palaeontologist Mary Anning (1799–1847).

Only 3 days left to help us create a gigantic mosasaur statue in Liège!

promethea.koalect.com/project/43722

Hi Bluesky! Finally putting this account to use. I'm an early-career paleontologist working on aquatic animals, especially marine reptiles 🐊🌊.

Excited to connect with others in paleo, evo-bio, and anyone interested in ancient ecosystems!

New on Bluesky, and already excited to share some big news — my first co-authored paper is out (and in OA)! You can find the link in the thread below.

Thanks to everyone involved in this project!

Merci pour tous les bons moments partagés. Tu vas nous manquer, Pierre.

Thank you for the wonderful moments we shared. We will miss you Pierre.

Does technology recapitulate biological evolution? The rise of information technology provides a unique framework to answer this question. Check this @royalsocietypublishing.org paper by @svalver.bsky.social @nilese.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

YouTube video by Réjouisciences ULiège Les Dents de la Meuse : une sculpture monumentale à Liège !

We have passed the first objective of our campain to build a lifesize mosasaur in Liège! 🎉🎉🎉

Check the video and the link below to learn more about the project and make it come true!

Help the project: promethea.koalect.com/project/43722

@universitedeliege.bsky.social

image of watchmen's doctor manhattan, a superhero who is entirely blue and nude, sitting on a rock, small in frame, on what is depicted to be a very pink version of the surface of the planet mars. he looks pensive.

It is 2002. I am 18 years old. We are in a once-in-a-generation economic crisis.

It is 2008. I am 24 years old. We are in a once-in-a-generation economic crisis.

It is 2020. I am 36 years old. We are in a once-in-a-generation economic crisis.

It is 2025. I am 41 years old. We are in a—

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
So let me get this straight
1. Academics spend decades building the PDB openly
2. A company trains AlphaFold on it, releases limited code under pressure
3. Academics work hard to create fully open versions
4. Companies then use the open models to build closed products

It might sound crazy but we are going to build up a life-size sculpture of Mosasaurus right in the city center of Liège! You can discover and contribute to project via this link!
promethea.koalect.com/project/43722

@universitedeliege.bsky.social

For this #FossilFriday meet Sarkastodon mongoliensis from the Eocene of Inner Mongolia from @natural-history.bsky.social we scanned with PhD student Melvin Vankeslt. First described in 1938 by W. Granger this oxyaenid was absolutely MASSIVE 😱

PhD alert: Je cherche un candidat pour travailler sur l'évolution morphologique et fonctionnelle de la tête des squamates apodes. Le projet implique de la biologie évolutive, des expériences et simulations mécaniques et des bestioles à écailles! @mnhn.fr @mecadev.bsky.social
adum.fr/as/ed/voirpr...

Cranial osteology of Cynodictis (Amphicyonidae), the oldest European carnivoran - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology The amphicyonids, colloquially called ‘beardogs’, are one of the oldest known groups of caniformians, taking part in the initial radiation of this carnivoran clade. While the oldest American occurrenc...

New paper out on the morphology of early carnivoran Cynodictis! Lead by Dr. Kevin Le Verger and with mind blowing illustrations by Charlène Letenneur; check it out!

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

@universitedeliege.bsky.social @mnhn.fr

Classification of Collagens via Peptide Ambiguation, in a Paleoproteomic LC-MS/MS-Based Taxonomic Pipeline Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) extends the matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) Zooarcheology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) “mass fingerprinting” approach to species identification by providing fragmentation spectra for each peptide. However, ancient bone samples generate sparse data containing only a few collagen proteins, rendering target–decoy strategies unusable and increasing uncertainty in peptide annotation. To ameliorate this issue, we present a ZooMS/MS data pipeline that builds on a manually curated Collagen database and comprises two novel algorithms: isoBLAST and ClassiCOL. isoBLAST first extends peptide ambiguity by generating all “potential peptide candidates” isobaric to the annotated precursor. The exhaustive set of candidates created is then used to retain or reject different potential paths at each taxonomic branching point from superkingdom to species, until the greatest possible specificity is reached. Uniquely, ClassiCOL allows for the identification of taxonomic mixtures, including contaminated samples, as well as suggesting taxonomies not represented in sequence databases, including extinct taxa. All considered ambiguity is then graphically represented with clear prioritization of the potential taxa in the sample. Using public as well as in-house data acquired on different instruments, we demonstrate the performance of this universal postprocessing and explore the identification of both genetic and sample mixtures. Diet reconstruction from 40,000-year-old cave hyena coprolites illustrates the exciting potential of this approach.

New paper, wayyyyyyy outside my comfort zone, lead by Ian Engels, Anxandra Burnett, Simon Daled, and Maarten Dhaenens
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

A Safe Place for Science program at Aix Marseille University for US scientists who "feel threatened or hindered in their research...dedicated to welcoming scientists wishing to pursue their work in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence & academic freedom" www.univ-amu.fr/en/public/ac...

A bit too late for #FossilFriday but I haven't post anything in a while soooo... In the @natural-history.bsky.social for 2 weeks to scan carnivorous mammals with PhD student Melvin Vankelst and we found some BIG BOIIIS 🐯🐺

There have been people less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, bc I know I am not unique in this experience. No thank you to the physics study assoc that made me sing songs about how women couldn't study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a stripper name within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of computer girl. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to apologise months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so no hard feelings remain hopefully And no thank you to him for attending every conference I've been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was surprising that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with you should consider it. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists don't know how to design an experiment. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the exec board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted. ... You have made me feel like I do not belong in science & I cannot forgive you for that.

A friend included this anti-acknowledgement section on her PhD thesis. She also added the proposition: “Systematic bullying and undermining of girls and women in STEM starts early on and is the reason why they do not stay in science and related fields.”
Absurd we still need to go through this
🧪👩‍🔬

BFEX: A Toolbox for Finite Element Analysis With Fossils and Blender We introduce BFEX, a Blender add-on for building Finite Elements Analysis for Fossils software. This approach streamlines the process of creating and visualizing FE models.

Just out of the oven! Today @migueldlm.bsky.social just published his first paper related to his PhD thesis! BFEX is a new Blender tool for making FEA more accessible for biologists and paleontologists! All using open and free software 😱

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Postdoc on stegosaurs with Roger Benson at the AMNH careers.amnh.org/postings/4384

I worked with a narcissistic bully once and the thing is… you can try to appease them for a while and be friendly and nice to try to get them to come along… But it will never be enough for them. It’s always better to just do what’s right despite them.

Homonotichthys, an early beardfish

Two new #oa 3D models of @universitedeliege.bsky.social collections on our sketchfab, scanned by Keo Vandewalle (son of @vdwnico.bsky.social) :

A super nice mammoth molar ULgPA9130 : sketchfab.com/3d-models/ma...

and the early beardfish Homonotichthys ULgPA6671 sketchfab.com/3d-models/ho...

Symposium on Toarcian Palaeobiology 2 Luxembourg City (Luxembourg) 15th - 18th June 2026 Save the date! The background features a painting by James McKay of a Toarcian crocodylomorph. Organised by the Musée national d’histoire naturelle Luxembourg (National Museum of Natural History Luxembourg), the Geological Collections Group, and the University of Leeds.

🌟⏰SAVE THE DATE⏰🌟

I'm super excited to announce that the second Symposium on Toarcian Palaeobiology will be held in Luxembourg City between 15th - 18th June 2026.

Watch this space for more details coming soon! 👀

🐊💗