Tristan J. Stock

Takahe peering past a tree

Today I visited Zealandia and of course asked about the chance of seeing the resident takahē.

Basically no chance, my guide replied. Their habitat is off-limited to visitors right now and they rarely venture beyond it.

Resigned to this, I sat down on bench to watch riflemen...and who peeked out?

New fossils may settle debate over mysterious sail-backed spinosaurs Spinosaurs have sometimes been portrayed as swimmers or divers, but a new species of these dinosaurs bolsters the idea that they were more like gigantic herons

In which I provide a few thoughts on the new Spinosaurus species, S. mirabilis.

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

I also stressed the deep connections between one of the study authors - Nathan Myhrvold - and Geoffrey Epstein to New Scientist. They didn't mention it, neither has anyone else.

Nice theropod but check out the third author on it

Cool head crest? ✅
Tall neural spines? ✅
Deep tail? ✅
Was thought to be aquatic for several years? ✅

Spinosaurus is a hadrosaur.

Speaking as someone studying aquatic adaptations and transitions in tetrapods, I've firmly been in the camp that this animal is not a "specialist pursuit predator in water." Anatomy overall much better matches a wading or terrestrial stalking lifestyle. Aquatic pursuit predation is very hard to do.

Also looks like it has fossae in the diastema, showing that the longest teeth in the lower jaw really do slot into the notch. Everyone expected as much but this is the first direct confirmation of it in a spinosaur fossil afaik.

Most people: "Confirmation that Spinosaurus is not a swimmer!"

Me: "Holy crap, three individuals from the same site. With overlapping material showing variation no less!"

Giant tortoises are ubiquitous around the world between the mid Miocene and late Pleistocene. The Sharktooth Hill collections at LACM has bits and bobs of tortoise shells over a meter and a half long. Here’s a fragment of costal I found in a drawer during my Master’s work. ID is Hesperotestudo.

First, I want to be very clear that I am not speaking in any official capacity for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) with this post. I’ll be speaking of the society of course, but this is not an organizational official statement. I’m also not going to speak super directly to the details of the Epstein Files revelations that erupted over the weekend and still continue. I believe the stories I’ve heard from numerous female SVP members about other behaviors, words and actions by accused individuals and many other men. There should be a robust Ethics Committee investigation that includes the possibility of bannings and revocations as potential consequences for a totality of offenses both recent and otherwise. This goes for any SVP member, not just those with outsized influence or media presence. Communications Committee (which I am co-chair of) was not involved in crafting the statement released by SVP earlier this week. We are discussing how to better integrate relevant committees in future situations that require precise, expeditious official commentary from SVP. While the technical legalistic language in that statement is correct, IMO it severely missed the mark on understanding and acknowledging the hurt and anger amongst membership. The community response appeared to be in part driven by decades of women in membership feeling their real experiences with harassment, objectification, and assault continue to be minimized and ignored. Due to structural inequities, legal fears and power imbalances we especially see influential repeat-offenders relegated to whisper-network warnings rather than face any true professional or personal consequences. As anyone with a shred of empathy can understand, this has over time led to intense and even angry frustration, members quitting the society, and others avoiding membership altogether.

Despite robust cultural and operational changes within SVP over the past 20+ years, the outcomes we are experiencing are still deeply problematic. If the outcomes are chronically proven inadequate, that means the systems producing those outcomes are inadequate, and should be fixed where appropriate or thrown out in favor of a complete rebuild. I have not arrived at these conclusions lightly. I have been in private conversation with current and former SVP members (mostly women) nearly constantly since this past Sunday. Everyone from students who only joined very recently, early careers expressing dismay at the silence of more senior figures, established mid-career members, and those who have left membership in frustration. The act of leadership relies most on listening, and I’ve been doing my best to do that where I can this week. In light of this assessment, and with the help of extensive dialogue which I am immensely grateful for, I have submitted the following action items to SVP leadership to be included in discussion at an upcoming followup town hall meeting: 1) Strongly consider an overhaul to our Code of Conduct rules regarding interpersonal behavior, ethics reporting, and ethics violation policies within the bounds of technical legal protections required for all parties. This includes but is not limited to banning from meetings, banning from society membership, and revocation of Society awards as official potential consequences. If our current systems for dealing with abusive or unprofessional behavior are not getting the job done, we should fix them. 2) Assemble comprehensive, expansive strategies that SVP leadership can implement with the goal of addressing the underlying unprofessional actions and attitudes that lead to misconduct behaviors propagating in our community. In function, the goal is to educationally inoculate against toxic and unprofessional behaviors.

3) SVP will produce a media series that guides members through the full start-to-finish ethics violation reporting and administrative action processes. We believe empowering membership with this information will help us all hold each other accountable and make SVP as safe and welcoming as possible to those wishing to contribute to the betterment of our professional community. (This one is more directly under my control and thus I can speak more assertively about it.) 4) SVP should provide quarterly progress updates on initiatives to address member safety as well as violation accountability procedures. This *would not* mean a change in policy for public disclosures on the details of ongoing ethics violation investigations. It will mean providing members with updates on process overhauls and finding new ways to provide allowable transparency to membership without creating legal vulnerabilities. We are a society of incredibly smart, talented, generous and hardworking people. Circumstantial excuses do not protect our community members. These chronic problems are fixable if we have the collective will to do so. Thanks for your time if you made it all the way through. I look forward to working with anyone with good-faith interest in making the changes our organization clearly still needs.

Regarding events of last week in SVP and the wider vertebrate paleontology community.

Feel free to pick apart my argument. This is far from my field of expertise, and Gallagher is definitely more immersed in the literature of dinosaur epidermal anatomy than I am.

So Haolong might not have true “feathers,” but it does have very bird-like integument. I think this whole discussion is becoming more of a matter of what a “feather” is. It would probably be beneficial to properly describe all sorts of avian integument to help place fossil epidermal structures.

These structures grow directly from the skin, not a follicle, and have a “pulp” of living cells inside of them to facilitate constant growth. Again, this is just like Haolong, as well as Psittacosaurus quills. Data however is lacking on what the developmental origin of these structures are.

This is not the only option though. These structures also have strong similarities to bird monofilaments that are not “feathers” (which yes, those exist too). Various gamebirds have display monofilaments that are developmentally not considered feathers, such Anhima and turkeys.

This is also an animal that split from the bird lineage >110 my prior to its death. The actual bird lineage developed vaned flight plumes in that same time, and they’re not like the ideal ancestral feather either. We don’t know what the evolutionary stages to get to this point were for Haolong.

Further along in development birds have a pin feather phase where the integument is spiky and sparse, again, quite similar to what we’re seeing in Haolong. By this stage they have started development of the follicle, but the feathers remain blood-filled vascular structures into full development.

Maybe I’m just used to playing devil’s advocate, but I’m not quite convinced that these cannot be feathers. They’re not like mature feathers yes, but feathers do start out as vascular blood-filled structures that are part of the epidermis, just like in Haolong.

The one rule regarding dinosaur integument is that we should never underestimate its diversity

art depicting two haolong individuals, depicted with the unique spikey integument preserved with the holotype

a very warm welcome to haolong dongi, a fascinating hadrosauroid from the early cretaceous yixian formation described by huang et al. 🎉 the near-complete holotype preserves highly unique integumentary structures unknown in other dinosaurs
www.nature.com/articles/s41
(art by fabio manucci)

Jack Horner in the Epstein File trying to raise money to fund dinosaur research. When I discovered we had rich nazis on our dig in 2008, I dropped them like a rancid turd; ask Don. There will never be a Trumpasaurus with my name attached! @paleontologizing.bsky.social @utahpaleo-ufop.bsky.social

Needless to say I feel the same, and reading the email left me feeling extremely betrayed by a community I thought I could trust. I do not think I will be renewing my SVP membership at this point.

This Jack Horner. Who’s been known to the whisper network for some time now. There’s a reason I have repeatedly turned down writing about his work or him.

You know palaeontology online spheres are dominated by men, with a big name being outed as a peado accomplice, the first thing they comment on are "I never agreed with his stance on T.rex" & "I preferred Bakker/Gould anyway"

And not "The field is rotten to the core with sex pests and weird men"

This is a really great paper, with a big boost from new fossils for Ajkaceratops. European ceratopsians are weird--and a ceratopsian identity is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence. Some thoughts / notes...

Have a source/documentation for this? Very interesting if true: especially following the rumors that most of the film creatures were designed and had toy production start with Mattel before a script was finalized.

The Distortus rex figure made for Jurassic World Rebirth is not selling. No-one buys it. So I'm glad I held off as it's only a matter of time before it's remaindered.

What might be my favourite fossil has been just published by Kiat et al. 2025. Years ago I saw a pic of this Anchiornis specimen in nat geo article and I audibly gasped.preserving not only the feathers but also the original patterns as well. I made this drawing on the spot. Maybe its time to do v2.0

James Napoli, Witmer, and Cleveland Museum of Natural History Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Caitlin Colleary with the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) for CT scanning (June 2023).

James Napoli with the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) for CT scanning (June 2023).

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Caitlin Colleary with the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) for CT scanning (June 2023).

Witmer with the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) for CT scanning (June 2023). I had this same skull on loan in my Ohio University lab for study and CT scanning for over a year and, as far as I can tell, never appeared in a photo with it. I didn't my chance this time!

We'll close out this #FossilFriday with the obvious choice of Nanotyrannus. I couldn't share this CT scanning session at the time (June 2023) but can now. @jgn-paleo.bsky.social brought the holotype Cleveland skull he had on loan, and CMNH VP curator Caitlin Colleary & I joined in the fun!

#2025SVP ”SVP is not afraid of the word diversity. Thank you very much.”