Alex Howard

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 Brymbo Fossil Forest is offering students the chance to get involved in palaeontological excavations of a Carboniferous fossil forest in North Wales. QR code on image directs to further details.

🚨 UK Student Palaeo Research Opportunity 🚨

Brymbo Fossil Forest are offering students the chance to get involved in active palaeontology research & excavations ⚒️ at a unique #Carboniferous fossil site in Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 - See below for more details ⬇️

#Paleontology #Geology #Fieldwork #FossilFriday #ECR

Comic. [2x2 chart. Top left quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of dinosaurs stegosaurus, triceratops, tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, and long-neck dinosaur. Top right quadrant: seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of mosasaur, quetzalcoatlus, dimetrodon, plesiosaur, and pteranodon. Bottom left quadrant: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are dinosaurs. Silhouettes of penguin, egret, ostrich, pigeon, falcon. Bottom right: don’t seem like dinosaurs x are not dinosaurs. Silhouettes of squirrel, stapler, plant, person, and bicycle.]

Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs

xkcd.com/3204/

A cartoon with a drawing of a pigeon standing next to a tall glass of milk against a snowy background, and text that says "Happy Holidays! Remember to put out (some kind of) milk for Santa."

Happy holidays! Pigeons make milk, and I hope this fact fills you with joy and concern during this festive time of year

Wish I could be there, will be a really cool talk! Using PPGM!

Unlocking Palaeo-Historical Biodiversity Data to Inform Ecological Baselines through AI at University of Reading on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Unlocking Palaeo-Historical Biodiversity Data to Inform Ecological Baselines through AI at University of Reading, listed on FindAPhD.com

Interested in Historical Ecology and Conservation Palaeobiology? 🪸🦀

Steve Pates and I are offering a PhD project on Unlocking Palaeo-Historical Biodiversity Data to Inform Ecological Baselines @es-ucl.bsky.social
@uclcber.bsky.social

🗓️ Apply by 19th January 2026

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Conservation biology: Fossils inform the future Conservation decision-making increasingly requires data beyond those from depauperate modern ecosystems. A new study that integrates Pleistocene fossi…

🌍 New paper alert!

We’re pleased to share that Dr. Michelle Lawing has published a new Dispatch in Current Biology titled “Conservation biology: Fossils inform the future.”

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

👏 Congratulations

#TAMUECCB #ConservationBiology #Paleobiology #FossilData #Research

Feeling tired on the train back from #2025SVP after a great conference. Loved being able to talk about snakes, see a bunch of cool talks, and see my palaeo friends. Shout out to drinking wine under a dinosaur with @lucyroberts.bsky.social!🍷🐍🦖

So happy to be part of this academic family🐍🦎🐢

So excited for the paper describing my and Dr Michelle Lawing's ppgm R package to come out in time for the end of #2025SVP ! If you're interested in using the PPGM method, this is the paper to read, and please come find me at the conference if you want to chat #R

New snake just dropped! 🐍

Interested in corals, dispersal, and diversification dynamics? 🪸

We're offering a PhD project on how the Tethys closure shaped global marine biodiversity — supervised by me, Bridget Wade, Nadia Santodomingo, & Francesca Bosellini.

🗓️ Apply by 17th December 2025

www.trees-dla.ac.uk/projects/how...

Standing near the fossil statues at Crystal Palace park, shaking my head so everyone knows I know they're inaccurate.

In all seriousness, was super cool to see these icons of Victorian palaeontology. Featuring an iguanodon, plesiosaur, ichthyosaur, and a mosasaur (possibly...)

Also, should go without saying, but trans rights are human rights. My heart goes out to all the LGBTQ+ Aggies

So incredibly disappointed by Texas A&M. So much for academic freedom.

The CPEG & CPB meeting is officially underway! 🎉

We kicked things off with two fantastic workshop sessions:

📊 R-based open data science in palaeobiology and ecology
🧠 Deep learning for macroevolutionary analyses

Big thanks to all our speakers and participants - spot yourself below!

#CPEGCPB25

A pair of Deinonychus embracing showing the colors of the Pride flag on their arm feathers

Happy Pride! 🌈 🏳️‍🌈

I hope everyone has a great Pride month! Here is a lively pair of Deinonychus!

#paleoart #dinosaurs #pride2025 #pride

Snake handling training busts 'evil' myth about 'easygoing' reptiles Queensland experts Chris Hay and Christina Zdenek run snake handling courses to bust myths and teach professionals how to stay safe around venomous snakes.

ABC news online piece about how our snake-handling course and education efforts are debunking persistent snake myths and combating snake misinformation.
#SnakesOfOz #VenomousSnakes #Snakes #SnakeEducation #HumanSnakeConflict
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05...

It’s Mary Anning’s birthday, so time to share @katebeaton.bsky.social’s brilliant cartoon again.

Rainbow Research: Contribute to our Pride Month Blog Series! To celebrate Pride Month in June, we are relaunching our Rainbow Research blog series! This series aims to promote the visibility and inclusion of ecologists and evolutionary biologists from the LG…

To celebrate UK Pride Month 2025, we are relaunching our Rainbow Research series to promote the work of LGBTQIA+ researchers around the world🌈

Find out here how to contribute!👇

buff.ly/SF9l8vW

🧪🌍

Trump officials take steps toward a radically different NSF Efforts to shrink staff, budget, and focus have alarmed members of Congress

NSF grant terminations are disproportionately affecting underrepresented scientists. 58% of canceled grants have women PIs, despite making up only 34% of awards. 17% of canceled grants have Black PIs (versus 4% of the pool). Hispanic and disabled PIs are twice as likely to have NSF grants canceled.

David Attenborough in a blue suit standing in front of the Natural History Museum with text that says "Happy 99th Birthday Sir David Attenborough!"

Happy Birthday to master storyteller Sir David Attenborough! 🎉

We’ve loved working with Sir David as he delivered the narration to the upcoming immersive experience, Our Story with David Attenborough.

Tickets go on sale in just two weeks. Keep an eye out for the announcement!

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Illustration of a pair of Diplocaulus swimming in a flooded forest alongside other animals like an Eryops larva an ancient shark and a lungfish

A pair of Diplocaulus magnicornis swimming in a flooded Early Permian forest alongside a bunch of other animals like a small Eryops larvae

Diplocaulus magnicornis was a lepospondyl (which is a weird, likely polyphyletic group) that is famous for its weird boomerang shaped head.

Happy Earth Day! 🌍🐍 Snakes are vital for our planet, controlling pests, balancing food webs, & indicating healthy ecosystems. Protecting them helps us all! Learn 10 ways to #SaveTheSnakes: savethesnakes.org/earthday
#WildlifeConservation #EarthDay

In addition to what others have posted there are some folks (who I can vouch for) tracking the terminated NSF grants to facilitate coordinated responses, media coverage, etc:

Form to add a terminated grant: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

Current grants on the list: airtable.com/appGKlSVeXni...

A copperhead snake on a path

Spontaneous walk in the park after work and was rewarded with a sighting of this beautiful copperhead! The first wild copperhead I've ever seen 🐍😍 Luckily I spotted this beauty before a person and their dog passed by and scared it into the bushes...

Why claims about 'resurrecting' dire wolves are the tip of the iceberg Colossal Biosciences’s "de-extinction" news is just the latest in a slew of eyebrow-raising claims by privately funded researchers. Is the bar for belief lower when those making the claims have a lot of money, wonders Jonathan R. Goodman

Colossal Biosciences’s "de-extinction" news is just the latest in a slew of eyebrow-raising claims by privately funded researchers. Is the bar for belief lower when those making the claims have a lot of money, wonders Jonathan R. Goodman

Forgotten women of Paleontology: Carol Heubusch Faul The lack of diversity in Geosciences is a long-standing issue. The  geoscientist is often seen as an athletic, bearded white male, and that stereotype has created an “image problem” that prevents m…

The lack of diversity in Geosciences is a long-standing issue. #Womeninstem 🧪⚒️

paleonerdish.wordpress.com/2024/02/01/f...

Scientists love to debate and argue, but if there are 3 things every scientist absolutely agrees on, it's that:

1. Climate change is real
2. Vaccines work
3. Those are NOT dire wolves 😤

🧪