A hand holding a small fossil skull (facing left) still in the rock: grey, brown, with reddish purple hematite. Grassland in the background.
A Diictodon in the hand is worth two in the bush. But we’ll look anyway. #FossilFriday
Cover of the journal Nature, featuring the head of a large fish with its mouth open. A smaller fish is swimming into its mouth. The cover reads "Caught in Time: Early fossils shed light on the origins of bony fish."
Osteichthyans--the bony fishes--are by far the most diverse group of living jawed vertebrates. Two papers out today in @nature.com feature remarkable new Chinese fossils that paint a picture of substantial morphological diversity among stem osteichthyans.
New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Result from the Koobi Fora #paleostream! This region on the east side of modern day Lake Turkana in Kenya is a treasure trove for fossils of the early Pleistocene and is most famous for many early human remains, with up to 6 species present throughout the layers...
👀👀👀
An historic black and white illustration of a paper nautilus floating on the ocean. There are boats, a city and hills in the background.
🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more:
blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran...
#BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪
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🚨New preprint out @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social (under review elsewhere!) 🧵
No global collapse of food webs across the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Really sad news. Hans worked on an incredible diversity of vertebrate groups but in particular made huge contributions to our understanding of the Triassic.
Sunset over the mountains; with a sprinter van (mobile museum) in the foreground. Black, orange and white with a small herbivorous dinosaur skeleton under the museum logo.
On this #FossilFriday I challenge any other museum on here to go harder for thescelosaurs than the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Proud.
New van wrap 🌟 🚐
"mixed-media sculpture made of steel and old rocks"
😍
💯
Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator of #Mollusca at the Natural History Museum Denmark, University of Copenhagen: employment.ku.dk/tenure-track...
🗓️ Early bird registration for #EAVP2026 ends 20 Feb 2026!
If you’re planning to join us in Vilnius (hybrid format), lock in your spot and save
🦋🐛🦋🐛🦋
A reddish brown skull with big eyes and little teeth looking to the left; black metal scale bar shows it is around 12cm long.
A reddish brown skull with big eyes and little teeth looking to the right; black metal scale bar shows it is around 12cm long.
A favorite for #FossilFriday: this exquisite skull of the late Permian therocephalian Ictidosuchoides from the upper Madumabisa Mudstone Formation of #Zambia 🇿🇲
Check out those post dentary bones! 👂🏻?
@burkemuseum.bsky.social
😍
Result from the Joggins Formation #paleostream! This Canadian site is an absolute classic and even if you are not familiar with its name you probably know at least one of its major players...
seconded
Start your #FossilFriday with a bit of grounding in a classic tale.
Graphic illustrating the reconstruction process for Scyllacerta creanae (SAM-PK-K7710). The holotype aggregation specimen (left) comprises four skulls and at least six nearly complete skeletons preserved in lifelike positions. Using synchrotron micro-CT scans of the skulls, the bones could be segmented, digitally isolating them from the matrix and allowing their full morphology to be studied in detail (top center). Combining information from all four skulls, a reconstructed version could be assembled, depicting the likely life appearance (center, with each bone in a distinct color). This reconstruction can be used to make line drawings for science communication and skeletal reconstructions (bottom center). These reconstructions were the basis for a detailed life restoration of the head of Scyllacerta (bottom right, by @LiterallyMiguel). Despite its incredibly small size (top right, compared to a human hand), the known individuals were likely nearing full maturity.
Very excited to share Scyllacerta creanae, a new Permian stem-reptile from South Africa known from an aggregation of several individuals. This specimen provides unprecedented detail regarding the anatomy of the early reptile skull. 🦎
(1/🧵)
Line drawing of Scyllacerta in numerous anatomical views, done by paleontologist Cy Marchant
Permian reptiles keep challenging what we know about reptile origins 🦎👂 More to come!
BTW- the CT segmentation, reconstructions, and line drawings were done by ISU undergraduate Cy Marchant @slvrhwk.bsky.social…. He’d be a great fit for any paleo lab! 👀
all in good time
A small bit of grey rock containing the entwined and overlapping skeletons of several small lizard-like reptiles. On white foam with a scale bar.
This #FossilFriday we are pleased to have published the new younginid taxon Scyllacerta from the late Permian of South Africa 🇿🇦
This beautiful aggregation has the holotype and has been in the literature for 30 years as “juvenile Youngina”.
Photo taken before scanning at the @esrf.fr
The origin of the tympanic fossa in reptiles revealed by a late Permian neodiapsid [new taxon Scyllacerta creanae]
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Art @literallymiguel.bsky.social
Phylogeny of early reptiles showing the placement of Scyllacerta as an early Younginid and mapping the appearance of the tympanic fossa, loss of lower temporal bar, and appearance of the cephalic Condyle on the quadrate in these taxa.
That question led Valentin Buffa @valentinbuffa.bsky.social and I to re-examine all non-saurian neodiapsid taxa.
And we found tympanic fossae in more places than expected…. Even Youngina!
Zoom in showing the middle ear, tympanum, and occiput of Scyllacerta
But the most exciting result?
Scyllacerta preserves a tympanic fossa on the quadrate.
This strongly suggests the presence of a tympanic (impedance-matching) ear. 👂
Top left: photograph of a grey slab containing multiple fossils, with vertebral columns clearly running vertically (SAM-Pk-K7710). This is a group of six Scyllacerta creanae individuals, including the holotype, a late Permian neodiapsid reptile from South Africa (scale bar at top right is 2 cm). Bottom right: a computer reconstruction of the skull based on three of the individuals in the fossil block. Scale bar at top right is 5 mm.
The origin of the tympanic fossa in reptiles revealed by a late Permian neodiapsid: new species Scyllacerta creanae onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #FossilFriday @semifossorial.bsky.social @morphobank.bsky.social
Gary crouched next to a mounted fossil in the CT scanner.
A fossil mounted for scanning inside the CT scanner.
Had a productive week scanning at VTCT! I'm excited to dive into the data and start segmenting.
Brown osteodrrms in rows on grey green sandstone. So pretty.
It's taken a few days but this tail is coming along quite nicely. 66 million year old gator.
