Prof. Valentin Fischer

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.

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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...

PG-18: turtles reach adult shell shapes at about 65% maximum carapace length - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology Ontogenetic shell shape changes of turtles are often only documented for individual species. It is currently unclear how shell shape changes during ontogeny across species, if there are common trends,...

New paper by Guilherme Hermanson & me out: we explore ontogenetic shell shape change in turtles to check if there is a size threshold at which turtles reach adult shapes. This started for a different (in prep) study & was a fun little project w preliminary data

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

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).