Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Using these definitions, I've witnessed many cases of malice but not a single instance of magic

Apparently, it's also Earth A.D. by The Misfits day

That's a large and happy group of paleontologists!

I recently re-read a graptolite paper I like and sent it to a student for inspiration. What have I become?

YouTube video by theclashVEVO The Clash - The Call Up (Official Video)

Happy Sandinista! day to all who celebrate

Very large as aphid trilobite from the Bromide Formation of Oklahoma

Museum drawer full of trilobite specimens

Although fossils from nearly all major intervals of the Phanerozoic can be found in Oklahoma, it's a veritable Paleozoic paradise at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History #FossilFriday 🧪

The quote is from Gould's preface to Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck (1991) by Dave Raup. I should mention that it goes on to talk about how much respect and admiration he had for Raup, calling him "the best of the best"

It's easy sometimes to forget that scientists, especially famous and/or influential scientists, are humans. Stephen Jay Gould was so real for this comment:

"Paleontology...is a relatively friendly profession. I like almost all my colleagues" 😅

I like to use the K-Pg mass extinction to illustrate to 1st-year students the importance of being a well-rounded scientist. Extinction is a problem relevant to biological evolution & the fossil record, but understanding the iridium layer required geochemistry & finding the crater required geophysics

Speaking as an invertebrate paleontologist: I can't explain it but in terms of empirical study systems and general awesomeness, fossil fish are the echinoderms of the vertebrate world

A new fossil fish sheds light on the rapid evolution of early lungfishes Qiao et al. report a new Early Devonian lungfish from China, Paleolophus, which bridges the morphological gap between Diabolepis and eudipnoans. Its three-dimensional preservation reveals cranial anat...

In the early Devonian #lungfishes — now considered "living fossils" — were all the rage!

A new #fish from China attests to this early diversification.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

The loss of Diaz and Alanso is incalculable. Non-baseball fans will never understand how devastating this is for a Mets fan. What's next, Grimace joining the Yankees?!

Welp, with all of the offseason changes I'm not sure I'll even recognize my beloved NY Mets next year. 😭🫠

YouTube video by American Museum of Natural History The Most Successful Animals You've Never Seen (Spoiler: It's Trilobites)

#DYK? Trilobites ruled the Earth longer than the dinosaurs! It took three major mass extinctions to end trilobites’ more than 250-milion year evolutionary lifespan. Join Museum Curator Melanie Hopkins to explore these arthropods through the Museum’s extensive collection of trilobite specimens.

If one tries to imagine the anatomy of an "ancestral" brachiopod before they evolved a bivalved shell, they're just little worm-like blobs and there isn't much to talk about. Like, what would their hypothesized synapomorphies even be? I do love brachiopods though lol

Revisiting Foote & Sepkoski's (1999) paper on measures of paleontological completeness and * my god * the brachiopods in figure 1 😮

Don't ask “when is it coevolution?”—ask “how?” Abstract. Coevolution has come to be widely understood as specific, simultaneous, reciprocal adaptation by pairs of interacting species. This strict-sense

It's in print! My opinionated dive into the definition of "coevolution" is officially out in the December issue of @journal-evo.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Every day I am living proof that you can, in fact, work on 5 or more manuscripts at a time. They just don't all get the same attention at once...

Unfortunately I don't think most folks learned how to multiply matrices either

An isolated trilobite head featuring large, compound eyes with numerous dome-shaped lenses

Sometimes when you stare into the abyss of geologic time, the abyss stares back.

The Ordovician trilobite Calyptaulax from the OMNH collections. Like modern insects, trilobites had compound eyes with many lenses. The lenses are made of calcite, which also makes up the exoskeleton. #TrilobiteTuesday

Global sampling decline erodes science potential of natural history collections - Nature Communications Natural history collections hold over two billion specimens representing Earth’s biodiversity, but their scientific value depends on continued specimen collection and digitisation. This study demonstr...

In an era marked by rapid climate change and biodiversity loss, it is imperative that we continue to invest in the unique value of natural history collections data

"Global sampling decline erodes science potential of natural history collections" 🧪

Apropos of nothing, the students I personally know and/or mentor at The University of Oklahoma are among the smartest, talented, and hardest working students in all of academia. They are truly fantastic

An interesting result is that the rate of species description has accelerated, with the largest numbers of new species per year in the past ~20 years. We're currently experiencing an age of discovery for Earth's biodiversity & the role of natural history museum collections couldn't be more important

Never forget that pigeons inspired one of the most important & far-reaching ideas in the history of human thought

Congrats on wrapping up your first semester here. We're glad to have you!

New Beginnings in the Invertebrate Collection As the year winds down, I’ve been reflecting on how much has happened since I joined the University of Oklahoma and the Sam Noble Museum. Shelby, our new Collections Manager, came on board just a...

A lot can happen in just a few months! New papers, new specimens, new collaborations, and lots of arachnids. 🕷️
I wrote a blog post reflecting on our early progress at @ou.edu and at the Sam Noble Museum.
🔗 gustavomiranda.weebly.com/news/new-beg...

Absolutely. Like, I'm not religious either but I don't see how they thought it's relevant or helpful for promoting "science" unless they wanted complete control and conformity

Anecdotal, but there seems to be a significant correlation between the folks who fought creationism in classrooms AND were also proselytizing atheism with the current wave of bigotry among people I know. It makes one wonder if it was a defense of science (a good & worthy cause) or all about control

The past and future of known biodiversity: Rates, patterns, and projections of new species over time The number of known species on Earth is increasing rapidly, suggesting unexpectedly large numbers of many groups.

"The problem is that it is difficult to include estimated extinction rates in our calculations if the number of species going extinct is unknown."

Stanley SM. Why the punctuational model of evolution is valid. Paleobiology. Published online 2025:1-14.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...