Juned Zariwala

I've been working on a book proposal and alternating between "this is meaningful" and "this is pointless," and a friend recently shared this quote that she stumble on in a Goodreads review: "Every book is a grand gesture of optimism on the part of both the reader and writer." Keep creating, friends.

WAKE UP EVERYONE NEW #SurvivingEarth STILL FEATURING PLIOSAURS JUST DROPPED!!!

We have a new paper out! Turtle ancestors evolved a shell—but what else? We found that an unique rostral vasculature was also obtained gradually along the lineage, and that one of the earliest turtles Proganochelys likely retained a mostly ancestral state!🐢 sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Cranial osteology of Archaeoceratops oshimai (Ornithischia: Ceratopsia) and phylogenetic evaluation of basal Ceratopsia Archaeoceratops oshimai Dong & Azuma, 1997, is a representative early-diverging neoceratopsian dinosaur excavated from the Lower Cretaceous Xinminpu Group in the Mazongshan area of Gansu Province, ...

Cranial osteology of Archaeoceratops oshimai (Ornithischia: Ceratopsia) and phylogenetic evaluation of basal Ceratopsia: Historical Biology: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Illustration showing a pair of Cartorhynchus swimming in coastal waters

A pair of Cartorhynchus lenticarpus, swimming in the shallow coastal waters of Early Triassic Asia

#paleoart #sciart #art

Expedición Cretácica I - Dia 1 YouTube video by Paleocueva Lacev

Live feed of a team of Argentinian Paleontologists digging for dinosaurs (and hopefully, plants) in Patagonia. Starting NOW!

www.youtube.com/live/ahvR-kh...

My new book with @markwitton.bsky.social on Spinosaurus and their relatives is out a month today! It's available for preorder, so now is the time to get in on this amazing and well-illustrated book on these oddest of #dinosaurs. But don't take our word for it, here's what others have to say:

Biodiversity modulates the cross‐community scaling relationship in changing environments Organismal abundance typically declines with increasing body size, with metabolic theory predicting a universal size–abundance slope of –0.75. Using protist microcosms across gradients of species ric...

Does body size predict abundance the same way in all environments, as predicted by the Metabolic theory of Ecology? Our new study challenges this assumption. Read it here: 📄 doi.org/10.1111/ele....

New study maps 3D structure of healthy human inner ear using largest micro-CT dataset to date. Reveals sex-based differences, key regions of variability in semicircular canals & cochlear base & accurate models predicting ear volume
Spedaliere et al anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Chart showing the embryonic development of the skull in a chicken, a quail, a duck, and a goose.

A new paper I'm on is out today! Primarily the work of @evodevoba.bsky.social, we found that distinguishing skull features among chicken-like and duck-like birds do not always arise later than shared similarities during embryonic development. evodevojournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... 🪶🧪

Art Lab is open for submissions at the moment. Be very careful and research who you’re submitting to!

Happy Birthday, T. rex! 🎉🎂 120 years ago today (1905), fossils collected in Montana were given the name Tyrannosaurus rex. Here’s the "sitting" mount of the T. rex known as Bucky (TCM 2001.90.1) at the National Museum of Nature & Science, which I visited last week in Tokyo. 🦖

Join the lab The Caetano lab at Towson University (Maryland, USA) is seeking a Master's degree student to start in Fall 2026. A Research Assistant (RA) position is available to the student during part (or all) of....

Master's degree position at Towson University with Daniel Caetano on macroevolutionary and phylogenetic comparative methods! Daniel is an awesome human and a great mentor, share with your students!
caetanods.weebly.com/join-the-lab...

Need science visuals? Graphic design? Scientific illustration? Motion graphics? I do those! Get in touch and let's discuss how we can work together to communicate your research. I can create visual assets for journals, social media, print, meetings or outreach. Website here: stuartponddesign.com

Proceratosaurus babies looking up to momma

( #paleoart for Beast studio's upcoming project!)

Large football sized egg in a container

Small turtles in a jar

Snakes wrapped inside a collection jar

Some kind of tropical frog in a jar

Always fun to get a @friedmanlab.bsky.social tour of @ummnh.bsky.social research collections. A new one for me was a whole preserved elephant bird egg.

Functional ecological convergence between the thylacine and small prey-focused canids - BMC Ecology and Evolution Background Morphological convergence is a fundamental aspect of evolution, allowing for inference of the biology and ecology of extinct species by comparison with the form and function of living species as analogues. The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), the iconic recently extinct marsupial, is considered a classic example of convergent evolution with the distantly related placental wolf or dog, though almost nothing is actually known regarding its ecology. This lack of data leads to questions regarding the degree of convergence with, and the similarity of, the functional ecology of the thylacine and the wolf/dog. Here, we examined the cranium of the thylacine using 3D geometric morphometrics and two quantitative tests of convergence to more precisely determine convergent analogues, within a phylogenetically informed dataset of 56 comparative species across 12 families of marsupial and placental faunivorous mammals. Using this dataset, we investigated patterns of correlation between cranial shape and diet, phylogeny, and relative prey size across these terrestrial faunivores. Results We find a correlation between cranial, facial, and neurocranial shape and the ratio of prey-to-predator body mass, though neurocranial shape may not correlate with prey size within marsupials. The thylacine was found to group with predators that routinely take prey smaller than 45% of their own body mass, not with predators that take subequal-sized or larger prey. Both convergence tests find significant levels of convergence between the thylacine and the African jackals and South American ‘foxes’, with lesser support for the coyote and red fox. We find little support for convergence between the thylacine and the wolf or dog. Conclusions Our study finds little support for a wolf/dog-like functional ecology in the thylacine, with it instead being most similar to mid-sized canids such as African jackals and South American ‘foxes’ that mainly take prey less than half their size. This work suggests that concepts of convergence should extend beyond superficial similarity, and broader comparisons can lead to false interpretations of functional ecology. The thylacine was a predator of small to mid-sized prey, not a big-game specialist like the placental wolf.

My final paper out of my PhD was published 5 years ago:
bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

Let's take a 🧪🧵 look back at convergent #evolution using the #thylacine and canid #mammals

1/n

Many animals can reshape and shed their teeth – and now scientists have traced this ability back 380 million years A new study of ancient, extinct fish known as placoderms provides another piece of the evolutionary puzzle about our deep time, aquatic ancestors.

Many animals can reshape and shed their teeth – and now scientists have traced this ability back 380 million years #Bullerichthys #GogoFormation #Devonian

theconversation.com/many-animals...

Crash-proof drone inspired by the head of the woodpecker Despite the fact that they bang their heads against trees on a daily basis, woodpeckers don't suffer brain injuries. Inspired by the tough-headed birds, scientists have developed a fixed-wing drone th...

A perfect example of why my research is needed. The tagline "woodpeckers don't suffer brain injuries" is not entirely true!
My review on why is out soon! 🧪
newatlas.com/drones/swift...

World Heritage Officer in Dorchester | Dorset Council View details and apply for this World Heritage Officer vacancy in Dorchester. Join a passionate and collaborative team at the heart of Dorset's environmental and heritage work. As part of the Dor...

AMAZING JOB ALERT!!! Dorset Council are recruiting a World Heritage Officer to support the management of the Jurassic Coast! Would suit an Earth Science graduate with an interest in digital comms and content: deets here: www.jobs.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/vacancies/32...

Selection of drawings of dinosaurs and pterosaurs and kin in a mosaic with cover of the Mesozic Art 2

The spectacularly produced new art book, Mesozoic Art II, hit the shelves! I happen to be one of the artists featured in the line-up of fantastic people who bring the dead back to life! A great opportunity to talk about my creative journey 🧵

Wild canids and felids differ in their reliance on reused travel routeways

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

A purple and red octopus talk to each other on the tin can telephone. Purple octopus says “want to connect your students with real Scientists?” Then red octopus says “Skype a scientist matches groups with scientists for virtual q&as. It’s free!” And then an orange flapjack octopus says “get a match at skypeascientist.com”

Hey, you!

Do you know any teachers, librarians, scout troop leaders, or other k-12 educators?

Please send them this picture & link www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

For what Skype a Scientist lacks in advertising budget we make up for in program value.

We're GLOBAL so this applies to all 😘

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...

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...

At the top: a map of the world showing Palaearctic occurrence records for ostracod Isocypris beauchampi with a bioclimate model showing predicted suitable areas for the taxon to inhabit in green. At the bottom: a plot of mean January (horizontal) and July (vertical) air temperatures for Nearctic and Palaearctic occurrence records plotted over the point cloud of all records in four northern hemisphere databases (DOAD, NANODe, NODE adn EANODe). Scale bar on SEM image of Isocypris beauchampi in bottom right corner is 0.2 mm.

Climatic niche stability & lability in Holarctic non-marine ostracods: implications for Quaternary palaeoclimate reconstruction onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Twenty-Five Years of Paleontological Research in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah: Public Lands in Service to Science and the Public Author(s): Titus, Alan L.; Irmis, Randall B.; Sampson, Scott D.; Zanno, Lindsay E.; Albright, L. Barry; Sertich, Joseph J.W.; Roberts, Eric M.; Farke, Andrew A. | Abstract: On September 18, 1996, Gran...

A.L. Titus et al. (2025)
Twenty-Five Years of Paleontological Research in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah: Public Lands in Service to Science and the Public
Parks Stewardship Forum 41(3): 402-424
doi: doi.org/10.5070/P5.5...
escholarship.org/uc/item/4p99...

Dramatic Dryptosaurs 🦖

Evolutionary rate incongruences in squamates reveal contrasting patterns of evolutionary novelties and innovation Abstract. Understanding the rate of phenotypic evolution can reveal fundamental aspects of organismal evolutionary trajectories. Hence, several studies hav

Our latest paper, now how to conciliate apparently discrepant evolutionary rate patterns in squamates, but which may well apply to any study system with Stephanie Pierce and
@7brumas.bsky.social
#macroevolution

academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

YouTube video by BBC Earth Science Ancient Sea Dragon Rebuilt in Stunning 3D Scan | Attenborough and the Sea Dragon | BBC Earth Science

youtu.be/4AzYMqX3JaI?...