Gabriela Sobral

About marine reptiles, I’m glad I decided to treat several groups separately for my analysis… I already can see differences among them and it will be an improvement to my data matrix

In other news, yesterday I submitted what I hope is the last version of my manuscript and today another important manuscript that I was heavily involved was also submitted. Fingers crossed for both!

Tomorrow I travel to Beijing, first for several different institutions and then to IVPP next week. I wish I had more time to go to Hefei – important material there and quite close by, but I do not have the time, unfortunately.

Things have been busy, Rudolf’s departure, sickness and holiday disrupted my pre-trip schedule. But all is fine now; my trip to China went well and today is my last day in Wuhan. Things have been incredibly productive and I’m learning more and more about aquatic reptiles.

When the biggest empire that dominated Europe fell, it took the continent quite literally a thousand years to recover from the resulting political unrest and now the same folks are asking people to get over in just 50-150 years. I see.

white and light grey siberian husky laying on an armchair, and looking at the camera as if smiling

Today I lost my buddy. I think it were 14 years well lived, over half of which with me after my mom had health issues that prevented her to take care of hiim properly. I hope I was able to give him the best life possible. He will be missed.

Evolutionary rate incongruences in squamates reveal contrasting patterns of evolutionary novelties and innovation Abstract. Understanding the rate of phenotypic evolution can reveal fundamental aspects of organismal evolutionary trajectories. Hence, several studies hav

Our latest paper, now how to conciliate apparently discrepant evolutionary rate patterns in squamates, but which may well apply to any study system with Stephanie Pierce and
@7brumas.bsky.social
#macroevolution

academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

living a nightmare called "re-scored two characters for two taxa and that completely messed up tree topology"

I had also planned to tide up some stuff from the trip, reply to some emails and do other bureaucratic stuff but due to a last minute meeting, I accomplished only half of that. Oh well… tomorrow then. It’s just that I’m feeling so overwhelmed with work 😭

When I arrived from Grenoble, I left the fossils in the museum and decided to go straight home without unpacking them. Today I was planning to take off but I was too paranoid whether the fossils were fine, so I came and unpacked them: they’re great and now I’m heading back home cuz I’m so tired

Photo of a fossil slab in complete dam except for the vertical green target laser refracting in several thinner parallel lines

Cool photo from last night 😍

All went fine and this morning I dismounted everything and packed the fossils. Now chill a bit until lunchtime and then back home. Apparently there are some probs with European airports today, I hope this does not affect trains too much.. my arrival is scheduled for 11pm and hope won’t be delayed

This took some time away from the 2 extra scans we had planned and kept us in the lab until 1:30 in the night but Vincent was super patient. We had to drop one, but secured a nice scan of the skull of Pleurosaurus.

So, all done here in Grenoble. Last night of experiments ran well, despite some disruptions earlier yesterday. We had to repack and reposition one of the fossils for a better scan of the dentary but holy damn was that worth it!

My synchrotron scan keeps crashing. We still have some buffer time to finish all experiments necessary but I have missed half a shift already. This is really unfortunate.

I sent nothing less than 7 emails regarding my visit to China in the past hour and a half. Not even lunchtime yet and I'm mentally gone already.... my head hurts

#2025SVP #SVP2025
Note: "Your poster should be formatted in portrait (vertical) orientation and not larger than 234 cm/92 inches in height x 95 cm/37 inches in width."
vertpaleo.org/poster-prese...
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I'm very glad there are people helping me out with this... and I think I can make it all work time-wise, but I still need to hear back a couple of confirmations. It'll be intense, but I think it will be worth it... I'm super excited for the trip!

The amount of people to contact when visiting collections in China can feel overwhelming. I mean, it is in part my fault, as I didn't realise there were THAT MANY different institutions with fossil collections there (mostly marine stuff, which is all new to me).

It’s easy to complain about German trains… my journey started 10 minutes later. But I wasn’t expecting a delay in France!

Early registration (and the best possible rates) still open for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting 2025 in Birmingham, but it closes on Thursday. Register now if you haven't already! #SVP2025 #2025SVP

vertpaleo.org/2025-registr...

And the other scan…. It’s missing the braincase aaaaaaaaaa THE CURSE OF THE MISSING BRAINCASE

Hopefully combined the plates in the matrix with measurements from photographs, I’ll be able to reconstruct the orbit and the scleral ring, but I am always amazed with such results. It’s there! Why can’t you show it?? Probably too high kV but it’s difficult to convince folks to lower it down.

Checking a CT scan for which I was not present… it looks beautiful but unfortunately not enough. Amazing how scanning goes… there are three articulated scleral ossicles that one can see with the naked eye, but they don’t show up in the scans. Other plates seem to be present so it may not all be lost

Today was all about sorting out the data from the previous days, trying to tackle some bureaucracies that were on hold and preparing for the ESRF next week. So tired!

On another happy note, my manuscript came back with minor revisions. It will be soon out! :D

A selfie of me, a latina woman with glasses and short, light brown hair and wearing a green pullover, smiling in front of the huge, wall-mounted fossil of Helveticosaurus.

Me behind a camera on a tripod, holding a lamp and photographing Helveticosaurus

Another selfie of me smiling in front of the also large wall-mounted fossil of Askeptosaurus

Leaving Zürich after three amazing days in the collections of PIMUZ! It was so good, I discussed and learnt a lot about early marine reptiles anatomy! I also shared some thoughts on projects going there at the moment and plans for future collaborations. Visiting collections is so much fun!

‘Incredible’ fossil reveals earliest relative of lizards and their kin Paleontologists use x-rays to reconstruct ancient reptile bones too fragile to remove from rock

Hey yo, did you guys see the new rhynchocephalian around?? I shared my thoughts here! :) www.science.org/content/arti...

Shaken to hear Mark Norell passed—good friend, trusted colleague, giant in our field. Coincidentally, I got the news as I was working on my talk for the Intl. Symp. on Asian Dinosaurs in Fukui later this month. Here's my slide on Mark’s impact on Asian dinosaur science. It hurt to add 1957–2025. 😥

I’m in Zürich for a few days and I spent the morning discussing marine reptile anatomy and I feel I have learnt a lot, but also that my brain is very tired… and this is just day one!