Lauren Wilson

Ten bird reconstructions set in circles. Large text says "Fossil Birds", and the birds are labeled with their names: Longipteryx, Archaeorhynchus, Yixianornis, Gansus, Apsaravis, Ichthyornis, Hesperornis, Lithornis, Asteriornis, and Tsidiiyazhi.

These are the paleobirds I did for Scientific American last year! #FossilFriday 🪶🧪🐡

Despite many cool ammonites, my favorite fossil find has to be this teeny tiny gastropod!

(I feel like he probably had a great personality)

After a fun SVP, I’m thankful to have some extra time in the UK to explore! Had a wonderful day walking the Jurassic Coast in Kimmeridge and Lulworth Cove

Off to Lyme Regis tomorrow for more adventures!

A list of presentation titles and authors

Princeton has a great showing at #SVP2025! See our work on such diverse topics as baby stem-crocodylians, mammal tooth isotopes, dinosaurian energy/fitness models, and ostrich development. #2025SVP

Two men cutting open a plaster jacket

A man and a woman opening a plaster jacket containing rock

A man licking rock off of a fossil housed in a plaster jacket

Opening a field jacket in the new prep lab! Preparator Jack Wilson will work his way through the matrix to the croc skull hiding inside

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Proud to share a new piece in Scientific American co-authored with the brilliant @lnwilson.bsky.social , edited by @katewong.bsky.social, and featuring this spectacular depiction of the endless daylight of the Cretaceous summer in Alaska by Chase Stone!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

Truly impressive number of birds migrating tonight. More than 800 MILLION birds up in the air right now❗ #BirdMigration

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

I got to paint some paleobirds! (The headline art is by the incredible Chase Stone) 🪶🧪

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Thank you to editor @katewong.bsky.social for making this possible! I also cannot thank Chase Stone and @nearbirdstudios.bsky.social enough for their incredible artwork that brings these birds to life!

Bird Migration Is One of Nature’s Greatest Spectacles. Paleontologists Just Found Clues to Its Origin Tiny fossils hint at when birds began making their mind-blowing journey to the Arctic to breed

Right now, millions of birds are migrating south before the onset of the boreal winter. @ksepkalab.bsky.social and I explore the evolutionary origins of this amazing behavior in our article for @sciam.bsky.social!

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

Made another new friend today 🔍

Cool! Maybe we’ll bump into you in Jordan!

Back in Montana working in the Fort Union Formation for the next couple weeks! It’s my first time leading my own fieldwork and we’re already off to a great start!

#FossilFriday

All around an amazing and important study from some awesome people! Be sure to check it out!

They show how to mitigate challenges (uncertain phylogenetic relationships, branch lengths, model choice) through real case studies – from predicting bush-cricket calling frequencies to the neuron density of T. rex brains. They also offer a guide and resources for making phylogenetic predictions.

Phylogenetic predictions are also less precise for species on longer branches. The more time a species has had to evolve from a common ancestor, the more uncertain we are about its unknown traits. Phylogenetically informed predictions are, therefore, more honest reflections of uncertainty.

Through simulations on multiple tree types and sizes, they show that phylogenetically informed predictions are more accurate than calculations from OLS and PGLS regression formulae. In the figure, you can see that the range in error (actual - predicted) is narrower for phylogenetic predictions.

Using the Past to Predict the Present: Confidence Intervals for Regression Equations in Phylogenetic Comparative Methods | The American Naturalist: Vol 155, No 3 abstract: Two phylogenetic comparative methods, independent contrasts and generalized least squares models, can be used to determine the statistical relationship between two or more traits. We show th...

Methods to predict traits while accounting for phylogenetic relationships were established 25 years ago. However, many studies still calculate unknown traits from preexisting regression formulae without accounting for phylogeny during prediction.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Predicting traits like body size is often done by calculating them from regression formulae, based on some proxy. However, this fails to account for shared ancestry among species. Both ordinary (OLS) and phylogenetic (PGLS) regression formulae ignore relatedness during the prediction process.

Phylogenetically informed predictions outperform predictive equations in real and simulated data - Nature Communications Phylogenetically informed predictions account for phylogenetic relationships among species while predicting unknown trait values. Here, the authors critically compare this approach with equations deri...

Need to predict an unknown trait, like body size, for extinct species? Use phylogenies! A new paper by colleagues from the ‪@uniofreading.bsky.social‬ and Montana State demonstrates that phylogenetic prediction is more accurate than regression formulae.
doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Thank you!! ❄️🐣

Research by Montana State alumna reveals birds nested in the Cretaceous Arctic alongside non-avian dinosaurs The evidence, published this week in the journal Science, was found in 73-million-year-old fossils discovered on Alaska’s North Slope.

MSU alumna Lauren Wilson leads a study uncovering evidence that birds nested in the Cretaceous Arctic alongside non-avian dinosaurs! 🦖🐦Several MSU alumni were involved in this research project, including MOR Research Associate Dr. Chris Organ. Read more: www.montana.edu/news/24599/r...

Thank you! 🫡

Thank you so much!! ❄️🐣

Arctic bird nesting traces back to the Cretaceous Polar ecosystems are structured and enriched by birds, which nest there seasonally and serve as keystone ecosystem members. Despite the ecological importance of polar birds, the origins of high-latitu...

Thank you to the whole Tyrrell gang for inviting me up to give this talk!

And if you haven’t yet, make sure to take a look at the study, out now in Science: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

YouTube video by Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology Cretaceous Arctic Birds from the Prince Creek Formation of Northern Alaska

Can’t get enough Cretaceous Arctic baby birds? ❄️🐣 Me neither!

Check out the talk I gave at the Royal Tyrrell Museum! I not only get into what types of birds were living in northern Alaska 73 million years ago, but also the crazy Arctic fieldwork we do to actually find the fossils!

#FossilFriday

First evidence of ancient birds nesting above the Arctic circle Tiny bone fragments from Alaska suggest birds started breeding and nesting in the Arctic 30 million years earlier than previously thought

Tiny bone fragments from Alaska are revealing how and when birds first reached the highest latitudes on Earth.

I’ll take one too!

Thanks Ash! ❄️🐣