Z. Jack Tseng

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

They found him. He died.

Another murder by our immigration goon squads

A book wrapped in heart-shape patterned wrapping paper, with the words “fossil hunter”, “autobiography “, and “paleontology” on the front.

The inside cover of a book called “From Siberian Prisoner to Dinosaur Egg Detective”, edited by Thomas Holtz

Our BioSci library did this Valentine’s themed mystery book feature at the front desk, where you can unwrap a secret valentine book to check out if the keywords catch your eye. I couldn’t resist this one, which seems to be edited by none other than @arctomet.bsky.social!

The fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) is what arrives when you order a puma off of Wish.

They're the largest apex predator on Madagascar, where they act to control the local lemur population.

They're the 'big cat' equivalent in family Eupleridae, which is a sister taxon to the mongoose family.

Well in the case of a crap paper maybe ‘drop’ is the correct verb 😂

(PDF) Women from the Americas and Their Contribution to Fish Paleontology PDF | Paleontological studies have traditionally been conducted by male researchers, and the study of fossil fishes, as well as extant ones, has been no... | Find, read and cite all the research you n...

Humbled to see my work and opinion included in this study, alongside some of the best female paleoichthyologists across continents. Our resilience is written in the fossil record 💪🐟🐠🐡

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Locomotive implication of a Pliocene three-toed horse skeleton from Tibet and its paleo-altimetry significance | PNAS The Tibetan Plateau is the youngest and highest plateau on Earth, and its elevation reaches one-third of the height of the troposphere, with profou...

Happy Lunar New Year! Before the fire horse, there was the ‘high horse’: our team’s closest encounter with this year’s zodiac animal was studying one of the highest elevation three-toed horse fossils back in 2012. #LunarNewYear #丙午马年

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

SVP Diversity Committee co-chair here. Feel free to dm me your thoughts. I’m working with DivComm and some other committees on an action plan and I’d love to know what you want to happen and what would make you feel safer, reassured, and welcome.

(1) Long 🧵 Time.
Today we learned that paleontologist Jack Horner (the same guy who helped give us "Jurassic Park") is in the Epstein Files. As a paleontologist, I feel compelled to say something because this touches my field and I want to make my stance clear on this...

The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation - npj Biodiversity npj Biodiversity - The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation

New paper out:

The flounder effect: disparities in taxonomic and ecological study intensity across extant and fossil marine organisms hamper conservation

with @fossildetective.bsky.social, @bigfacecats.bsky.social, Curtis Congreve & @jonhendricks.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44... 🦑⚒️

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

I‘ve been a woman in paleontology far too long to be surprised by this shit.

Stella Carlson is a face painter & children's entertainer.

She's also an American hero.

If you can, watch the entire CNN segment.

It made me cry to see such a courageous & eloquent patriot.

Do your part:
Call Congress & tell them to ABOLISH ICE! 19% of even Republicans agree.

202-224-3121

If you’re interested in extinction risk, please check out our new paper in @science.org led by my former PhD student Cooper: www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Mummified cave cheetahs inform rewilding actions in Saudi Arabia - Communications Earth & Environment Naturally mummified cheetah remains in a Saudi Arabian cave system with radiocarbon-calibrated ages between about 4,200 and 100 years cluster with Asian as well as West-African sub-species, with impli...

fascinating specimens with exciting implications for the conservation of the critically endangered asiatic cheetah! www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Come check out back-to-back Law lab talks today in the Shape and Climate session (room B112)!

10:15am - Long fuse evolution of carnivoran skeletal phenomes
13:30am - Endocranial shape variation in relation to climate in primates

#SICB2026 @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social

Time to publish responsibly: DAFNEE, a database of academia-friendly journals in ecology and evolutionary biology Abstract. The current economics of scientific publishing reveal a profound imbalance: academia pays prices far exceeding the actual costs of publication. R

Academia friendly peer-reviewed journals in EEB: academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

A classroom with orange chairs clustered somewhat out of order.

It’s a wrap for my vertebrate morphology class. Students surveyed the vertebrate fossil record, functional anatomy, phylogenetic comparative methods, geometric morphometrics, scientific writing, + more! A doubly meaningful experience for me because I took this class as an undergrad 24 years ago! 💙💛🐻

Our reviewed preprint @elife.bsky.social: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

The research team will undertake revisions based on the initial reviews to further strengthen the evidence underlying our work! #paleontology #mammals

Study on the ‘origin story’ of carnivoran skeletal diversity from our NSF project led by @chrislaw.bsky.social, now officially published. Two climatically volatile time periods seemed to have facilitated phenomic diversification at two different taxonomic levels! See Chris’ 🧵for more details. 🦴🐻🐶🐱🦦

Claude, an American alligator with albinism, lounging on his favorite heated rock.

It's with heavy hearts that we share that Claude, our beloved albino alligator, has passed away at the age of 30. Claude brought joy to millions of people at the Academy and across the world during his 17 year tenure. We will miss him dearly. 🤍

The @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social
Annual Meeting #2025SVP was an absolute blast! Great to reconnect with European colleagues this year, and to hang out with EDDy Lab folks again. I presented some of our ongoing work on #teeth #biomechanics. Stay tuned, more toothy madness on the way! 🦷

The emergence and diversification of dog morphology Dogs exhibit an exceptional range of morphological diversity as a result of their long-term association with humans. Attempts to identify when dog morphological variation began to expand have been con...

While the range of physical diversity dogs show is often thought to be the result of intense breeding over the last 200 years, a new Science study suggests domestic dogs began developing their distinctive forms thousands of years before humans started shaping modern breeds. https://scim.ag/4nVRhNq

The Dogs of 8,000 B.C. Were Amazingly Diverse

Maybe the explosion of diversity among dogs didn't really start in the Victorian era! "Now, a new analysis of canine skulls spanning the last 50,000 years suggests that even early dogs came in an array of shapes and sizes." #dogs #bioarchaeology #archaeology #anthropology

Safe travels all #2025SVP folks! En route to Birmingham via London…and who am I to argue with the NHM’s kids pack swag? 😁

Bringing up baby: preliminary exploration of the effect of ontogenetic niche partitioning in dinosaurs versus long-term maternal care in mammals in their respective ecosystems Mesozoic dinosaurs and Cenozoic mammals are often regarded as broadly ecologically equivalent, as they included the majority of medium-to-large-bodied terrestrial vertebrates of their respective eras....

Fascinating new study from @arctomet.bsky.social about how differences in parental care (or lack thereof) between Mesozoic dinosaurs and Cenozoic mammals might potentially affect interpretations of species diversity and trophic abundance in ancient communities. 🦖🧪

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

salamander phylogeny with representative limb bones and their cross-sections

New PhD preprint! We studied the effects of habitat and multi-stage life cycles on salamander limb bones! Aquatic and terrestrial spp. have divergent morphs + semi-aquatic and multi-phasic spp. do their own thing + decoupled external and internal shape promote diversity. 🧪🦎

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Collections Study Grants Collections study grants provide financial assistance for graduate students and post-doctoral researchers to study the collections of the University of Washington Burke Museum (UWBM).

New Collection Study Grants for students and postdocs to come visit the @burkemuseum.bsky.social! Applications due 12/15/25. www.burkemuseum.org/collections-...

Support for preregistration and registered reports at Historical Biology In this editorial, I will update the readership on the progress of the new ‘Registered Report’ article type, our support for preregistration, and how this furthers our goal of becoming an Open and ...

Interested in preregistration and registered reports? Historical Biology supports both! My new editorial on these developments:

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