Rebecca Cooper

The CPEG & CPB meeting is officially underway! 🎉

We kicked things off with two fantastic workshop sessions:

📊 R-based open data science in palaeobiology and ecology
🧠 Deep learning for macroevolutionary analyses

Big thanks to all our speakers and participants - spot yourself below!

#CPEGCPB25

The lagerpetid Scleromochlus, one of the closest relatives of pterosaurs. Artowrk by Gabriel Ugueto

‪[1/n] New paper co-lead by @emmadnn.bsky.social‬ @macroecoevoale.bsky.social‬ and I: we combined fossil occurrences, biogeography and climate modelling to investigate the origins and early evolution of pterosaurs 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 We are thrilled to announce that the preliminary program for the upcoming CPEG & CPB Conference is officially LIVE! 🎉

Check out the full list of talks, lightning talks, and poster sessions happening in just over a month!

👉 www.cpeg-cpb25.uzh.ch/en/abstract....

#CPEGCPB25

Landscape-explicit phylogeography illuminates the ecographic radiation of early archosauromorph reptiles - Nature Ecology & Evolution Using a newly developed spatiotemporal phylogeographic path analysis method combined with phylogenetic niche modelling, the authors estimate clade-wide dispersal maps spanning the early Permian to end...

Pleased to say that the final chapter of my PhD is out today in Nature Ecology and Evolution: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
My favourite bit of science that I've done to date. If you enjoy biogeography, weird reptiles, and the TARDIS, then have a read!

Have you developed a computational method or tool which would be useful to palaeobiologists? 🧰 If you might be interested in presenting in our Lecture Series later in the year, please get in touch with us! 🗓️ #FossilFriday

Two major ecological shifts shaped 60 million years of ungulate faunal evolution - Nature Communications Here, the authors analyze a fossil dataset spanning 60 million years to investigate ecological stability. Their network analysis identifies prolonged stability interrupted by two major functional tran...

🦏🦣🦌 LARGE paper alert!!! We tracked 60 million years of large herbivore evolution—over 3,000 fossil species—to uncover how ecosystems have changed and reorganized through time. What we found might help us understand the next big tipping point 🧵👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you are interested in biodiversity in deep time, check out my new preprint with @rachelwarnock.bsky.social and @dralexdunhill.bsky.social! We review methods of quantifying diversity and diversification, using the fossil record and phylogenies with extinct tips 🐚🦕📊
doi.org/10.32942/X2D...

Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity - Nature Ecology & Evolution Analysing the global distribution, source and authorship of fossil research over the past 30 years, the authors find that researchers in high- or upper-middle-income countries hold a monopoly over pal...

When @mauritiantales.bsky.social and I began leading this study, we never thought it would get 10 citations let alone the 200 it reached his week!

But what started almost 5 years ago as a lockdown data project has taken us on an unimaginable rollercoaster... (1/n)

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record in North America Dean et al. examine the fossil record of North American dinosaurs prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Estimates of detection probability from occupancy models decrease prior to the extinction...

🚨 I'm super happy to announce that our new paper is finally out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🚨

We used the ecological approach of occupancy modelling to investigate the structure of the dinosaur fossil record prior to the K/Pg mass extinction!

www.cell.com/current-biol...

I am deeply saddened to have learned of the death, on Feb 5, 2025, of Elisabeth Vrba—a fantastically creative scientist and a warm, wonderful human being. She leaves us a legacy of original macroevolutionary thinking that is still fresh and illuminating.

CPEG and CPB are coming up next year in Zurich, should be a great opportunity to hear cool science from palaeontologists and ecologists

Might be biased, but the workshops sound pretty cool too 🦕✨

Would be great to be included if possible 🦣🦕

Oops, thanks! 😊

These starter packs have been so useful for finding people. Would it be possible to be added to round 2 please?