Matt Friedman

Results from the Flocking #paleostream!
Megamastax, Ornitholestes, Tanyka and Eosteus

A digital painting of a Megamastax

A digital portrait of an Ornitholestes

A digital painting of a Tanyka

A digital painting of an Eosteus

Flocking!

Megamastax, Ornitholestes, Tanyka, Eosteus.

#paleoart #paleostream #sciart #art

Yup--the curved ones are on the tooth whorl at the front of the lower jaw. The other teeth of both the upper and lower jaw are more conical, and lack that distinct S-shaped profile.

Those striations on the collar look like what you see in onychodonts. That makes sense, since Onychodus is fairly well represented in the Middle Devonian rocks of Ohio, including the Silica Shale.

Taking some time to reflect on my progress as I inch closer to my qualifying exam.

I think it’s been easy for me to connect to my study system when it is *literally* in my backyard. The fish I’m describing comes from the Birmingham Shale, which is close to the surface at my parents house

Hand-constructed cladograms of early bony fish relationships, drawn in the style of old AMNH Bulletins. Top diagram shows only Acanthodes as a stem osteichthyan; lower diagram shows it joined on the stem by a variety of scale-based (mostly) taxa. From Friedman & Brazeau (2010) JVP.

It was an exciting day when these landed in my inbox for review. My time with early bony fishes goes back to when acanthodians were considered osteichthyan relatives and scale-based taxa now placed on the stem were typically regarded as actinopts. Great to see how much our understanding has grown!

The oldest articulated bony fish from the early Silurian period - Nature A tiny, articulated, near-complete osteichthyan from the early Silurian Chongqing Lagerstätte, represents the oldest osteichthyan occurrence including microfossils, and the earliest articulated remain...

The second reports a tiny (~3 cm) articulated fish from the early Silurian. The material is challenging, but it is unquestionably a bony fish. Fittingly named Eosteus, it co-occurs with the oldest articulated jawed fishes and cements the antiquity of osteichthyans.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Largest Silurian fish illuminates the origin of osteichthyan characters - Nature New findings from articulated head and trunk material of Megamastax amblyodus yield previously unseen morphological details of a Silurian stem osteichthyan.

The first revisits Megamastax, a late Silurian fish described in 2014 as a sarcopt based on isolated jaws. Remarkable new cranial material shows it is a stem osteichthyan, providing our most detailed picture of a bony fish branching before the sarcopt/actinopt split. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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 out from @hoehna.bsky.social Lab, led by the brilliant @bjorntko.bsky.social! We applied the Pesto software (Kopperud & Höhna, 2025) to look at lineage-specific shifts in diversification rate on large, densely-sampled phylogenies across the Tree of Life doi.org/10.1093/evle...

Happy Birthday PALAEONAVIX - Bohemiacanthus was a great opener during the first two years of our enterprise

www.palaeonavix.org/index.php/pa...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Skull of a Paleozoic tetrapod in a glass display case. The bone is black and the matrix filling the orbit is gray.

Skull (cast) of the Carboniferous embolomere Neopteroplax on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Paleo Club graphics team is batting 1.000.

Coryphaena!

The Evolutionary Morphology Research Group (EvoMoRG: www.evomorg.org) at the Department of Palaeontology of the University of Vienna seeks a motivated PhD student (University Praedoc Assistant) as soon as possible.

For more information visit: jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...

Photo taken to the east down Liberty in Ann Arbor at night. Lampposts with spherical tops line the right side of the street. Three neon marquees are featured: Michigan Theater in maize and blue, State Theater in red and green, and Pinball Pete's in pink. Burton Memorial Clock Tower looms in the background.

Newest neon addition to Liberty.

211-0252/25-2N - Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator of Mollusca

Tenure Track Assistant Professor and Curator of #Mollusca at the Natural History Museum Denmark, University of Copenhagen: employment.ku.dk/tenure-track...

They went so quickly!

UMMP is hiring: Administrative Assistant Senior position with primary duties related to administrative support, collections and publications compliance, and museum outreach and communications work. careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Discovering new connections between Great Lakes' winter storms and global climate patterns About a year ago, researchers at the University of Michigan found that the extratropical cyclones that are the biggest drivers of winter weather in the Great Lakes region are warming and trending nort...

new links between #GreatLakes winter storms & global climate patterns uncovered. Findings show how large-scale teleconnections shape storm temp, moisture & precip, key for improving seasonal forecasts: news.umich.edu/discovering-... by @abbathehut.bsky.social and other @UMich
CIGLR researchers

Box showing a dozen assorted filled yeast donuts (pączki).

Coming soon to a paleontology museum near you.

It does! Worth a visit.

Concert poster for Fishbone and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Printed mostly in red and black, it features a drawing of the head and trunk shields of Dunkleosteus.

Concert poster for Jawbox, Trenchmouth, and Whatever. Printed in pink and black, it features a head-on view of a mastodon skull.

Black-and-white paste-up images for the two concert posters in previous images. The two posters are displayed side-by-side in a single frame.

Had a chance to catch a temporary exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History featuring paleo-inspired art by Derek Hess. More info here: www.cmnh.org/explore/curr...

Phylogenetic distributions of minimum bathymetries for Mytilidae (A) and Lucinidae (B).

Contrasting diversification and invasion histories of bivalves to the deep sea:
"...evolutionary pathways to deep-sea endemicity are more often shaped by multiple, independent events than by in situ diversification"
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Macroecology

PhD Research Fellows in geosciences, planetary or exoplanetary sciences – up to three positions (294610) | University of Oslo Job title: PhD Research Fellows in geosciences, planetary or exoplanetary sciences – up to three positions (294610), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Sunday, March 1, 2026

Apply for PhD Fellowships at the Centre for Planetary Habitability in Oslo! There are projects for geologists, paleontologists, paleobiologists, astrobiologists, stats-y folks, geoscientists and planetary folks! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Head-on photo of life-size model of the giant armored fish Dunkleosteus pursuing the shark-like fish Cladoselache. On display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Lunchtime for Dunkleosteus.

Gar, prob. Cuneatus.

I mean, you aren't wrong.

Photo showing black, diamond shaped fish scales being prepared out of dark gray matrix.

Emerging in the lab . . .

Yes!