Joshua Lively, PhD

Diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among a group of birds, scaled against geologic time. Cartoon birds (including a gallinule and a crane) are arranged at the ends of select evolutionary branches.

Diagram showing the evolutionary relationships among a group of birds, scaled against geologic time. Cartoon birds (including a falcon, a macaw, and a sparrow) are arranged at the ends of select evolutionary branches.

Annual bird phylogeny update. www.deviantart.com/albertonykus... 🪶🧪🐡

Hey everyone! I’m excited to share that one of my thesis projects was just published in @currentbiology.bsky.social and featured on phys.org! In this paper, we use an old statistical approach developed by the US Navy in WW2 to predict the aquatic habits of various dinosaurs and marine reptiles 🦖🐊

Like some kind of grim Omen of things to come, #Hawaii ’s #Kilauea volcano just unleashed a MASSIVE WING SHAPED eruption with lava fountains soaring 1,500+ feet high

2.1 Reading Trees Chapter contents: Systematics — 1. Taxonomy — 2. Phylogenetics —— 2.1 Reading trees ← —— 2.2 Building trees —— 2.3 Character mapping —— 2.4 Phylogenetic trees and classificationParts of a tree A phylo...

If you're a #teacher interested in a great #openaccess write up on reading #phylogenetic trees, check out www.digitalatlasofancientlife.org/learn/system... created by @jonhendricks.bsky.social and Elizabeth Hermsen.

Coming to the end of another University of Birmingham Palaeontology undergraduate fieldtrip to Utah & Colorado. Thanks to the incredible @jlivelypaleo.bsky.social & @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social team - we had an amazing time digging dinosaurs in the Cedar Mountain Formation.

Selfie photo of me, in field garb, in front of our newly-erected shade tarps at the "Lorrie's Site" Gastonia quarry out in the eastern Utah desert

MORE CRETACEOUS FIELDWORK! I'm back out in the Cedar Mountain Formation with @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social, digging up dozens of ankylosaurs and streaming each day at 1pm Pacific

Tune in @ twitch.tv/paleontologizing to see what we're finding and ask some questions!

We lost Mark Norell today. Dinosaur hunter extraordinaire. The coolest dude alive. My PhD supervisor.
Wherever you are, raise a glass of your favorite lager or single malt, as it is what Mark would want.

Anderson BM, Allmon WD. Punctuated equilibria remains the dominant pattern of morphospecies origin in the fossil record: an analysis using the “persistence of ancestor” criterion. Paleobiology. doi.org/10.1017/pab....

Keep sciencing. We are living through a time when looking at a rock and wondering how old it is qualifies as an act of resistance.

Poster-style infographic depicting a blue-white-brown lovebird (Agapornis) laying on her back, with her reproductive organs illustrated on her belly. Around the bird, different stages of egg formation from fertilization to shell formation are illustrated and explained.

The reproductive system of birds is an evolutionary marvel. Their only functioning oviduct is a fantastic conveyor belt of weirdness, of which parts are still mysterious. An illustration made for a pet bird magazine.

You can read more on my Cara page: cara.app/post/e9f92d4...

ICYMI, the Great Salt Lake has dropped to a low that triggers forced conservation measures under a new Utah law: www.fox13now.com/news/great-s... #utpol #Utah

The First Planned Migration of an Entire Country Is Underway The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu could be submerged in 25 years due to rising sea levels, so a plan is being implemented to relocate its population to Australia.

The first planned migration of an entire country due to climate change is happening! Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation, is at risk of being submerged under rising sea level, so it has signed an agreement with Australia to allow 280 Tuvaluans to settle in Australia as permanent residents each year.

Breathtaking views of the high elevation North Horn Fm in Central Utah

Fragment of trionychid turtle shell between the stubby, worn fingers of a paleontologist

Spent yesterday checking on access to various sites in the Cretaceous-Paleocene North Horn Formation, including a new site with adult and juvenile ceratopsian material we’ll be opening next month. Paleo can be challenging at 8000-10,000’!

And of course there are turtles. 🐢🥰

#FossilFriday

I’m just a #Cretaceous guy with a cool #mammoth in collections… #FossilFriday #coldplay

Utah may ultimately abandon lawsuit over control of public lands The state of Utah might not re-file a controversial lawsuit demanding the federal government hand over control of millions of acres of public lands.

NEW: After spending millions on a legal and PR campaign, the state of Utah might ultimately drop its lawsuit laying claims to millions of acres of public lands: www.fox13now.com/news/politic... #utpol #Utah

Reorganization of the theropod wrist preceded the origin of avian flight - Nature The forelimbs of two Late Cretaceous theropod dinosaurs show the presence of the pisiform bone, previously thought to have been lost early in theropod evolution and regained in birds during the evolut...

New paper today about the evolution of the wrist along the dinosaur to bird transition: a bird-like configuration appeared in predatory dinosaurs first, as suggested by new exceptionally preserved hands of oviraptors and troodontids
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New #RSOS paper: The earliest #fossil cetacean with Osedax borings: narrowing the spatiotemporal gap between Cretaceous marine reptiles and late Cenozoic #whales. Read more: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #palaeontology @plesiosarahs.bsky.social @pdmannion.bsky.social‬

@prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social staff and volunteers put a TON of effort into this dig, from permitting to the actual excavation. No mention of the museum in the book, so our gift shop won’t be carrying it!

Close-up of outer surface of fossil termite nest preserved in fossil tree, with nest evident as interconnected areas filled with sand-sized light-brown pellets (former tunnels and other spaces within the nest) cutting across petrified wood, which is protruding from surface. A gray fine-grained sandy matrix outside of the nest is helping to preserve the overall form of the fossil tree, which was about 3 meters (10 feet) long and a meter wide (3.3 feet) at its base. A steel ruler at the top of the photo in millimeters and centimeters shows that the tunnels are about 8-12 millimeters wide.

Unweathered termite coprolites (Micorcarpolithes hexagonalis) in thin sections. (A) Densely packed M. hexagonalis specimens in a clastic sediment fill surrounded by coalified log tissue of NMV P344746. (B, C) Individual pieces with uniformly featureless black interiors and a definite hexagonal cross-section through their shortest two dimensions. Figure from Edwards et al. (2025).

CT (Computer tomography) reconstructions of termite and mite coprolites. (A, B) Synchrotron imagery of termite (A) and mite (B) coprolites. The internal carbonaceous infill of the termite coprolites is distinct from the outer, denser layer; scale difference is apparent between the different coprolites. (C, D) MicroCT imagery of termite coprolites within nest section as differently colored grains. The internal low-density carbonaceous infill is shown separately for over 50 pieces. Figure from Edwards et al. (2025).

For #FossilFriday, trace fossils (nest & coprolites) & body fossil (petrified wood) of the oldest termite nest in Australia (Early Cretaceous, ~127 million years old), from the Wonthaggi Formation of Victoria. For more info & images, here's a 🧵. 1/n

European mammal turnover driven by a global rapid warming event preceding the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum | PNAS A brief global warming event known as the Pre-Onset Excursion (POE) occurred just before the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM, 56 Mya). The d...

European mammal turnover driven by a global rapid warming event preceding the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

That track was something else to collect… But the view was phenomenal!

Have you seen the Band of Brothers episode of Walking With Dinosaurs yet? Last year it was an absolute pleasure to dig at the site with our University of Birmingham undergraduates - thanks so much to @jlivelypaleo.bsky.social & @prehistoricmuseum.bsky.social for an amazing experience!

Honestly one of the most challenging sites I’ve ever worked. We can’t even jacket most individual bones (or groups of bones) because they are so dense. Thankfully, all those smaller osteoderms are robust and pop out in one piece!

#WalkingWithDinosaurs #WWD2025

Walking with Dinosaurs | Band of Brothers | Episode 3 Follow a gang of armored dinosaurs battle to reach adulthood, pursued by ferocious raptors

If you missed us on @pbs.org, you can stream the Band of Brothers episode of #WalkingWithDinosaurs online!
#WWD2025 #FossilFriday

www.pbs.org/video/band-o...

Tonight is the night! Tune in to watch our crew excavate the world’s largest concentration of armored dinosaurs and see both Gastonia and Utahraptor come to life on @pbs.org

#WalkingWithDinosaurs #WWD2025

We’re less than 24 hours away from the premiere of our episode of #WalkingWithDinosaurs!

Our excavations of Gastonia and Utahraptor will air Tuesday night at 7 pm on PBS Utah. Check your local listings for show times on your PBS station.

#WWD25

The details that are going to come out about this are going to make the Museum of Ancient Life & Thanksgiving Point more broadly lose all credibility in the world of natural history museums. As far as I’m concerned, they are a for-profit roadside attraction with dinosaur mounts they peddle like art.

These folks at the bottom of the cover. They never reached out to me about any info on the museum or anything else for the book, so I guess they just took the Utahraptor stuff and ran with it. That’s showbiz I guess!

Speaking of, pretty bummed to see ZERO mention of the museum excavating and taking care of these fossils in the new #WalkingWithDinosaurs book. Plenty about @paleojim.bsky.social’s “megablock” though.
#WWD2025

Tribune editorial: The state has no right to punish private Utah corporations for speech it doesn’t like “Since when has it been a conservative, Utah value that government has the power to tell individuals or private corporations what they may or may not say on social media?” writes The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.

“Since when has it been a conservative, Utah value that government has the power to tell individuals or private corporations what they may or may not say on social media?” writes The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board.