The Palaeoverse Community

A flyer for the next instalment of the Palaeoverse Lecture Series. The flyer features a cartoon laptop with a sticker of the Palaeoverse logo on the lid, alongside a picture of Natalie, wearing glasses and a white and green shirt.

🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨
🗓️26th February 2026, 15:00 UTC🗓️

Join us next week for our next instalment, given by Dr Natalie Cooper @nhcooper123.bsky.social from Natural History Museum, London, on “Hack-a-thons: what, why and how to run them” 💻

Register here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-...

A flyer describing the next four talks in the Palaeoverse Lecture Series, which take place on the last Thursday of every month at 3pm UTC. February 26th: Dr Natalie Cooper, Natural History Museum, London Hack-a-thons: what, why and how to run them March 26th: Dr Brooke Long-Fox, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology Building open, reproducible palaeontology: a practical introduction to FAIR data and MorphoBank April 30th: Dr Joseph Flannery-Sutherland, University of Birmingham Cleaning taxonomy, time, and their messy interactions with the fossilbrush R package May 28th: Dr Alexandra Howard, Texas A&M University Using palaeontological, neontological, and spatial data to understand evolution through time and space

🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨

We are very excited to share our next four talks in the Series 🥳

We are looking forward to hearing from @nhcooper123.bsky.social, @brooke-long-fox.bsky.social, Joseph Flannery-Sutherland and @alexh-palaeo.bsky.social!

Sign up now at bit.ly/palaeoverse-...

The billion-dollar case for sustaining palaeontology’s digital databases - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors survey community palaeontological databases, documenting their contributions to science as well as their vulnerabilities, and provide recommendations for the future of open science databas...

🚨 Hot off the press: Our look into of the palaeontological database landscape and its sustainability into the future.

Palaeo databases are invaluable and continue to transform our research field - but they are vulnerable... (1/6) 🧪 ⛏️

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

🤔Looking to make your #code more #reproducible? Check out our new and improved guide to Reproducible Code! 🧪🌍️

Find it here👇️
buff.ly/10TeNok

@nhcooper123.bsky.social
@britishecologicalsociety.org

Ediacaran fossil surface on the coastline of Newfoundland, Canada

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

[blog] Paleontology R Packages to Benefit from Software Sustainability Institute Grant 🎉 🦴

Palaeoverse is a grassroots organization that develops R packages for paleontology (The Palaeoverse toolkit). 🐊🦕🌿🪸🦑

Will Gearty and The Palaeoverse Team are excited to announce funding from the Software […]

📢 Abstract submission for IPC7 is now open!

We invite researchers to submit their abstracts through our web

📅 Deadline: 30 June 2026
🔗 Submit your abstract: www.ipc7.site

#IPC7 #Paleontology #AbstractSubmission #CapeTown

✨ Calling all PalAss members & future members! ✨

👉 Explore all opportunities here: palass.org/awards-grant...

Not a PalAss member yet? You’re very welcome to join us!
🔗 palass.org/membership

Please share with colleagues and students who might benefit 💬✨

#PalAss #grant #palaeontology #join

Nominations for Student Representative to the Paleontological Society (2026-2028) The deadline for consideration is March 1, 2026. The Role: Student Representatives serve as voices for student needs in the Society and play leading roles in student activities including organizing...

⚡Applications for Paleontological Society Student Representative (2026-2028) are open! ⚡ @paleosoc.bsky.social

It's a great way to be a part of the community and advocate for students! Applications due March 1.

forms.gle/6qg2BLWgEXVd...

🎉 The 6th VCWAP is happy to announce our upcoming workshop!

🗓 Wednesday, March 4th
⏰ 1:00–3:00 PM (UTC+1)

🔍 “An Introduction to Open Science in Archaeology and Palaeontology”

🎤 Presented by @palaeoverse.bsky.social
👉 palaeoverse.org

✨ Don’t miss it! Join us!
#workshop #conference #online

Great news! A new NSF Geoinformatics grant to support the PBDB was funded in June of 2025! This will overhaul the technical underpinnings of PBDB, a necessary step for carrying the PBDB forward -- www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

The timing and nature of marine ecosystem recovery following the Permian-Triassic mass extinction - npj Biodiversity npj Biodiversity - The timing and nature of marine ecosystem recovery following the Permian-Triassic mass extinction

Exciting news! Our invited perspectives in npj Biodiversity looks at how marine life bounced back after the worst mass extinction ever, the Permian‑Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME) ~252M years ago. Big questions: fast or slow? recovery or restructure?

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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... 🦑⚒️

Winifred goldring award: apply by April 30th! Coral decorative image in background

Opportunity for women students in paleontology! The Winifred Goldring Award will be presented to three women graduate students and the AWG Undergraduate Paleontology Award will be presented to a student pursuing a career in paleontology. Due April 30th. More information here: tinyurl.com/msdc3m68

Brilliant talk by Dr Johannes De Groeve today, perfectly timed to the time I was working on my spatial analysis. I'll definitely be keeping TABS on the package.

Uppsala in late autumn

Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Join us later today! 👇

⚠️After a fantastic 69th PalAss meeting in Portsmouth, we’re thrilled to announce what’s next! 🎉✨

📅 The 70th Annual Meeting
📍 Oxford 🏛️
🗓 8–11 December 2026 

📌 Mark your calendars, spread the word, and keep an eye out 👀 — more details coming soon! 🚀

#PalAss26 #oxford #conference

New paper out today! "Fossil otolith assemblages reveal millennial-scale changes in reef fish biomass and trophic structure across the Isthmus of Panama"

🔓https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0419

We used fossil fish otoliths to reconstruct community structure and energetics over millennia.

Revealing the hidden patterns of shark and ray diversity over the past 145 million years Gardiner et al. reconstruct the diversity of sharks and rays across the past 145 million years using deep learning and an extensive dataset. Their results unveil previously hidden patterns, including ...

Our new paper is online! We found that 1) today's shark & ray diversity was already reached ~100Ma; 2) that the K/Pg extinction was not catastrophic; 3) that the max diversity was reached ~50Ma; and 4) that today's diversity is depleted compared to the past.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

A flyer advertising the next instalment of the Palaeoverse Lecture Series. The flyer features a cartoon of a sloping landscape, featuring a river and trees, overlying a grid system suggesting how it might be modelled. There is also a black and white picture of Dr De Groeve, with spiky hair and wearing a black t-shirt.

🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨
🗓️29th January 2026, 15:00 UTC🗓️

Join us next week for our first lecture of 2026, given by Dr Johannes De Groeve from University of Amsterdam, on “Tips for TABS (Temporal Altitudinal Biogeographic Shifts)” 🏔️

Register here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-...

🎉✨ The PalAss is BACK after winter break! ✨🎉

And we’re coming back with amazing news 👀👇

🌍✈️ Next ProgPal is heading to London!
📅 22–25 June 2026

💡Get ready for inspiring sessions, great talks, and posters 🇬🇧
⚠️Stay tuned — more details coming soon! 🚀🔥

#conference

NEW EDITORIAL! 💡

Using data to construct tripartite networks & models 📊, we found that editorial diversification helps make peer review more inclusive & better aligned with the global distribution of ecological research 🌐

Find out more 👇
doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Postdoctoral Researcher, Paleontology San Francisco, CA

Collaborate with me! Myself and @peterroopnarine.bsky.social are looking for a postdoc with expertise in quantitative paleoecology to work on our new NSF grant addressing whether communities after the PTME functioned differently than those beforehand.

job-boards.greenhouse.io/californiaac...

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....

There’s not long left to apply for these positions! ✍️

Generic diversity trajectories of three clades

Simulation results shows two correlation patterns of morphological disparity and taxonomic recovery through time

Contingent responses of diversity and disparity of different animal groups to the P-Tr mass extinction:
"Ammonoids...brachiopods exhibit refilling of vacated morphospace of shell outlines, Ostracods underwent adaptive radiation"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

We are excited for this new phase of @palaeoverse.bsky.social activities and encourage anyone who shares our enthusiasm for palaeontology, data, and open science to apply! 🗳️

Community Engagement Coordinator 🤝
Help develop an active community of computational palaeontologists through the organisation of workshops, hackathons, coworking sessions and mentorship schemes. Organisational skills and event planning experience are essential.
Link: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Research Software Engineer 🛠️
Help to develop, support, and future-proof our R packages and other computational resources. Familiarity with R, software development and GitHub is essential.
Link: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...