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@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 6:53 AM

Interesting and openly accessible book on the alternative radiation of intelligent tetrapods and their brains: AKA birds or avian dinosaurs.
Apparently there is everything -- the phylogeny as well as scaling.
direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...
🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio

Phylogeny of amniotes with the focus on birds

Brain-body mass scaling in birds and reptiles

Neuron density as a function of body mass in birds, mammals and nonavian reptiles

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 9:29 PM

One more popular account of our recent study on the biosphere vulnerability patterns and the early warning signs of mass extinctions published a month ago in "Nature Communications".
www.earth.com/climate/clim...
🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 10, 2026, 11:17 AM

Interesting analysis. Biologically this could be interpreted as the case of clade selection for extinction resistance without the internal lower-level improvement in survivorship dynamics. Genera live longer because extinction selects for their toughness.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Event survival curves reveal age dependence punctuated by earlier extinction filters

Allowing toughness to consistently increase or decrease over time does not improve the fit

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 8, 2026, 11:08 AM

Maybe anybody can comment of the taxonomic affinity of this fossil cephalopod found by my student? It is an erratic boulder from Lithuania, most probably of Ordovician or Silurian age.

🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Fossil cephalopod in the erratic boulder

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 12:41 PM

New genus and species of lungfishes from the Famennian of Latvia - Jumisodus latus, named after the god "Jumis" from old Baltic mythology.
🧪⚒️ #EvoBio #Paleobio

Comparison of selected Paleozoic lungfishes with tooth plates and parasphenoid in palatal view from digital 3D models.

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 12:24 PM

We all know big-headed giant theropods. But what about big-clawed and strong-arm predatory dinosaur evolution?
"..Megaraptoridae...the only large-bodied carnivorous theropod lineage retaining a specialized forelimb-based predatory strategy.."
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧪⚒️ #EevoBio #Paleobio

(A) Ancestral state reconstruction of log-transformed claw centroid size under a Brownian motion model estimated using REML. (B) Phenogram
of log-transformed claw centroid size through time, illustrating the evolutionary trajectories of Megaraptora (blue), phylogenetic outgroups (light green),
Allosauria (black), Megalosauria (green), and Coelurosauria (red). (C) Fitted values from the phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) model relating
Procrustes-aligned shape data to systematic category and size

Phylogenetic integration patterns (effec t siz e in the left and r-PLS on the right of the black line) and evolutionary rates of claw, ulna-radio, and humerus among non-avian theropod clades with well-developed forelimbs. ( Joaquinraptor skeletal reconstruction modified from Ibiricu et al., 2025 ). Evolutionary rates of hindlimb elements were estimated using the set of Procrustes Coordinates ( compare.evol.rates function, geomorph v. 4.0.9 package) under a Brownian evolution model with 10,000 interactions and a permutational procedure.

@andrejpaleo.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 12:07 PM

Present is just a point in time, and all the present patterns are a random realization of many processes, which can miss generalities
"inclusion of extinct species...revealed a significantly negative relationship between temperature and body mass"
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Scatterplots showing the relationship between body mass in grams (log10) and mean annual temperature.

Reconstructed Phylogeny of Canidae by Wang et al. (2008) and Zrzavý et al. (2018), annotated with body mass, represented by a bar chart alongside the tree, with mass expressed in grams

@dsrovinsky.bsky.social Sep 7, 2026, 2:33 AM

Like thylacines? Of course you do.
A little thread on some recent research I was part of with @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social here 🧵⤵️
#SciComm #EvoBio #PaleoBio #Evolution #Paleontology
1/n
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

@abel-paleo.bsky.social Sep 6, 2026, 7:47 AM

Ein neuer Blogbeitrag über ein Paper von mir mit @dinosven.bsky.social, Jahn Hornung und Benjamin Kear über einen der wenigen Flugsaurierfunde aus der deutschen Kreide. Lebendrekonstruktion von @markusbuehler.bsky.social.
erdgeschichten.net/2026/09/04/d...
#Paläontologie #Fossilien #paleobio