Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

It is really is this simple. (Stares at multiple scientific societies.)

Tagging @gustavo-de-miranda.bsky.social to see this thread!

All of these ai commercials are so desperate.

It’ll be like your digital servant wife! If someone doesn’t like ai, they’re paranoid! Please use ai for everything because no one likes it and the money’s running out.

I'll be interested in the Super Bowl halftime show when they get the Descendents to play

To anyone wondering or assuming: no this has nothing to do with the Beatles. I don't like the Beatles or their music but I am a fan of actual beatles, white winged doves, and walrus

The white winged doves outside are doing their "coo coo ca choo" (i.e., "who cooks for you?") calls and I love them so much

You will never get the sense of accomplishment from writing with AI that you will get from actually writing with just yourself

YouTube video by Z4RT4N LinkedIn Eddie Vedder

I was reminded of this classic earlier today. I can't help but laugh every time it gets to the 'Kenny Seeton' part. Incredible. (I've never intentionally listened to Pearl Jam's music and truly have no idea what Eddie Vedder is actually saying, so I choose to believe the names *are* the lyrics)

man I’m sorry to be all corny here but when I see a “the city is beautiful! There’s more to it than homeless people!” I gotta say you know who’s also beautiful? People who have no place to live & are trying to get by in a system that has turned its back on them & if you don’t see that that’s on you

Anti-homeless sentiment is so ubiquitous across the political spectrum that it's become a jump scare. I can't tell you how many times someone whose politics seemed very good has just out of nowhere said something about people sleeping on the sidewalk that's indistinguishable from Fox News sludge.

People kept telling me this is exactly the old Muppet Show and they were absolutely correct. A pure joy to watch. (And I'm VERY picky about my muppet canon.)

Can't say it enough, if you are going to build ANYTHING, you are going to be criticized much more than you will be praised. Do not be deterred. Build what you want to exist. Find your people and seek their counsel. Keep it moving.

“Palaeoverse, a grassroots organization that develops R packages for paleontology, has been awarded a Large Grant from the Software Sustainability Institute, via the Research Software Maintenance Fund”

#rstats

ropensci.org/blog/2026/02... 🧪

Uh, yikes

The Oxford University Museum is really lovely.

That's a great record, too (all of it). The song At Peace * really * hits these days

One of the greatest modern punk bands, right here

Love this band. The lyrics and guitar riff in this song are absolute fire 🔥

📢 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

Paleontology FTW

I gotta say though... they've known about this person's behavior for *decades*. I first heard rumours of it on my first trip to the US in 2005! Why would they act now, rather than that time he married *his own undergrad?*

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

We dig into what “recovery” really means : species return, ecosystem structure, and function. If you love palaeobiology or biodiversity, this perspective offers fresh ways to think about life rebounding after crisis. Read it open access! 🌊💡

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

they should make a movie series about how it’s irresponsible to use technology to mess with the natural order of things for profit

Disc-shaped fossils with concentric grooves scattered through a limestone block.

Image of the apex of the Great Pyramid, taken from the base of the southeast corner. The layers of massive blocks of limestone composing the pyramid are clearly visible. The pyramid is set against a sunny blue sky.

I've seen fossils in some remarkable places, but this takes the prize: the benthic foram Nummulites in the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza. These massive blocks were quarried from the Eocene Mokkatam Formation when a relictual population of woolly mammoths still lived on Wrangel Island.

This recent paper by C. Paul has specimen images of the genus. However, I think you'll notice there are key differences which led us to conclude your specimen might represent a new species of Wellerocystis

I've asked my paracrinoid enthusiast extraordinaire & current @oupaleobiology.bsky.social grad student, Colby Higdon, about it, and he concurs. However, the specimen has features that make us believe it could represent a new species. Very interesting!

Okay: this is likely a specimen belonging to the paracrinoid genus Wellerocystis, which is only known from the Ordovician (Kimmswick) of Missouri.

It's incredible (but also somewhat exciting) to know that even with morphology, the fossil record, and genomes, there are still so many major branches of the tree of life that are extraordinarily difficult to resolve

New paper on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social: Are interphylum spiralian relationships resolvable? doi.org/10.64898/202...

@maxjtelford.bsky.social and I tried answering this question with two independent phylogenomic datasets.

(1/7) 🧪

Caption from Figure 9 in paper: Appendages of Ordovician Phacopida. A, B Anacheirurus adserai from the Fezouata Shale (Pérez-Peris et al., 2021). A, Endopodite (YPM 226573). B, Exopodite in dorsal view (YPM 517074). C, Bavaillia zemmourensis with antennae (MCZ:IP:20105; Martin et al., 2016; Richards et al., 2024). D – F, Ceraurus pleurexanthemus from the Rust Formation (Losso and Ortega-Hernández, 2024). D, Biramous appendages (MCZ:IP:110933). E, Biramous appendage (MCZ:IP:112018). F, Exopodite (MCZ:IP:104973). G – I, Flexicalymene senaria from the Rust Formation (Losso and Ortega-Hernández, 2024). D, Protopodites in cross section (MCZ:IP:104956). E, Biramous appendages (USNM 68379). F, Endopodites (USNM 68381). J, Placoparia cambriensis from the Llanfallteg Formation (NMW 91.46G; Whittington, 1993). Abbreviations: ant, antennae; cla, claw; en, endopodite; end, endite; hyp, hypostome; lm, lamellae; pn, podomere number; pt, protopodite.

Do you ever wonder about trilobite appendages?

Literally everything ever known has now been reviewed by Sarah Losso @thomashegna.bsky.social @invertebratepal.bsky.social 🧪⚒️🦑

osf.io/preprints/pa...