Pal(a)eontologist with reptilian bias |
@snsf_ch
Ambizione fellow at Uni of Fribourg studying turtle evolution | former
@BensonLabOxford
member (he/him)
Neck retraction, ecology & skull shape disparity are linked -> neck retraction plays an important ecomorph role. We hypothesise that neck mobility was a key innovation for the ecological diversification of turtles, allowing the evolution of specialized feeding strategies 9/10
In our new paper, published today in
@nature
& led by Martín Ezcurra
@MacnVp
, we present evidence that lagerpetids, a group of Triassic reptiles, are the closest evolutionary relatives of pterosaurs, the flying reptiles. (Art: Rodolfo Nogueira)
1/9
NEW PAPER! Meet Sahonachelys mailakavava, the "quick-mouthed frog turtle", gorgeously reconstructed by
@AndreyAtuchin
🤩
#paleoart
Great team work w/ W. Joyce, Y. Rollot, L. Rahantarisoa,
@DiggingDinos
& D. Krause
Our Irritator paper is out... Olof has a nice thread summarizing the scientific details. I understand there is lots of valid criticism to the ethics, so I offer some personal comments.
Tyler Lyson (
@DiggingDinos
) & team w/ a new species of 🐢, Plastomenus joycei – the first named after Walter Joyce, honouring his contributions to turtle palaeontology - Walter will be happy it's a trionychid too. Congrats to all! Artwork
@AndreyAtuchin
In career news, I am extremely excited, happy, humbled & thankful to have been awarded an Ambizione fellowship by
@snsf_ch
(
@snf_ch
) for my project "Macroevolutionary patterns of shape evolution in turtles" 🤩🐢🎉
For
#FossilFriday
, I have to continue with Solnhofen fossils of which I saw plenty this week - including two original Archaeopteryx. The Eichstätt specimen is preserved with slap and counter slap, and the relatively newly described 12th specimen from Painten is the oldest one!
Today, I woke up to the fantastic news that I have been awarded this year's Edward Forbes Prize of the
@Palaeonto_Soc
. The prize recognizes outstanding contributions by early career researchers in the field of taxonomic and systematic palaeontology. 1/4
Finally, Allosaurus jimmadseni has been formalised! Congrats to Mark Loewen and Dan Chure for this paper. Really nice reconstructions (and a bunch of photos of mine).
So I guess I won the Romer Prize. Wow. I’m incredibly happy to be the latest name in a list that includes such incredible people as Nadia Fröbisch or Katrina Jones — just to name two relatively recent winners.
#2019SVP
Huge Congrats to
@SirJoscha
on winning the
#RomerPrize
at
#2019SVP
! Additional note: First student at an institution outside of North America to win the prize!
NEW paper! I'm🤩🤩about this one: it expands my research on flipper evolution fr chelonioids (modern sea turtles) to thalassochelydians, an independent lineage of Jurassic marine turtles. 🌊🐢
Paper by W. Joyce & M. Mäuser & I
@PLOSONE
:
1/9
The situation in 🇩🇪 allows first post-Corona collection visits! Today we were in Bamberg to collect data on some spectacular Late Jurassic marine turtles from the Solnhofner plattenkalke. I love how the museum set up the room in style reminiscent of art museums
On this
#TurtleTuesday
, I used a Geoemyda spengleri CT scan (UMMZ herps 227761) from
@MorphoSource
to teach some of our PhD students how to use Mimics. Look at that huge egg (typical for geoemydids), while the turtle itself is only 10 cm carapace length 🤩🐢♥️
PhD Announcement: Prof. Walter Joyce & I are looking for a PhD student at Uni Fribourg (Switzerland 🇨🇭), starting date flexible but asap. As the position is not linked to a specific grant, possible topics are wide ranging but should concern turtle evolution. Details here 👇
Today 5 years ago was my PhD defense! Now I have 34 published papers, nearly 1k citations, my own grant & PhD student. Academically, this was a difficult year - but overall, I’m happier than ever. W/ the Turtle Evo Symp & many papers coming, I look forward to the near future 😊🐢
I‘m in Munich, so it’s time for Solnhofen fossils from Oli Rauhut‘s office! This is a Pleurosaurus ginsburgi, a marine sphenodontian from the Late Jurassic
The 2 major turtle clades, cryptodires & pleurodires, have different ways to retract heads inside the shell. These CT-based 3D models (cranium=y; neck=b; shell=r) of Terrapene carolina in side view show cryptodiran neck type w/ vertical neck retraction forming an S-curve (1/2)
For
#FossilFriday
, I am pleased to announce another new theropod paper in
@thePeerJ
! We clarify the anatomy of the cheek region in Allosaurus, and provide an updated reconstruction.
NEW paper! We describe the cranial anatomy of the paracryptodiran turtle Uluops from the Tithonian Morrision Fm – more famous for its dinosaurs, but look at this gorgeous fossil turtle 🐢🤩 🐢🤩🐢🤩 1/4
For
#FossilFriday
, I chose the less famous side of 'Big Al' Allosaurus specimen MOR 693. Impressive specimen, and I was lucky to have a full week with that skull back in 2014.
Nearly forgot
#FossilFriday
! This is the hand & lower arm of a sauropodomorph
@mefpatagonia
. It’s an unpublished specimen, so no more info here, but I got permission to post the pic by
@poldiego
(thanks 😊)
I thought to give a sneak about our upcoming work. One paper accepted today, 3 in review, 1 to be submitted next week. Prepare for (1) anatomical networks of turtle skulls, (2) fossil & (3) extant carettochelyid anatomy, (3) some baenid news & (5) my first testudinid paper!
New paper alert! This one is w/ Gabriel Ferreira as lead author, who teamed up with
@tweetIrena
, myself & non-tweeters to look at turtle skull biomechanics. Particularly happy to finally have a paper w/
@PalaeoStephan
!
New paper! Ready for some cool turtle 3D-models & anatomy!? I am very pleased to announce that my re-description of the weird turtle Sandownia harrisi is out now in
@RSocPublishing
's RSOS. (1/4)
For
#FossilFriday
, here is a cool shot I took a few yrs ago: Manual unguals of the Suchomimus holotype! Suchomimus is a late Early Cretaceous spinosaurid from which very complete material is known - but 21 years after it's intial short report, the material is still undescribed...
New paper alert!
Neurovascular anatomy of the protostegid turtle Rhinochelys pulchriceps and comparisons of membranous and endosseous labyrinth shape in an extant turtle.
OA at:
1/n
My two cents in for the
#skullsgetsweird
picture series: A skull of the chelid freshwater turtle Mata mata, Chelus fimbriatus. Fits well today, since my friend
@GFerreiraMorph
& colleagues just have a new paper about pleurodiran phylogeny out ()
I miss working directly with specimens during this pandemic & thus went through some pictures of my last collection visit trip. Found a series of photos & couldn't stop myself... if you ever wondered how my daily work as a turtle palaeontologist goes: wonder no more! 🐢
#SVP2020
Massive congratulations to my friend
@AAlechiarenza
for winning the 2020 Romer Prize!! Especially as this year was just a complete wow-factor! He looks fairly happy about it for sure ;)
What a day! Besides
@Gemma
's paper, my 2nd
#PhD
paper was published today too (didn't know it would be...), w/
@NHMdinolab
&
@BensonLabOxford
in
@thePeerJ
. It's about the cranial anatomy of a Cretaceous protostegid & marine adaptation in sea turtles: (1/6)
Continuation of Solnhofen fossils from Munich! This is a wee turtle, approx 3 cm long (photographed through glass, so nothing for scale). Maybe a baby Eurysternum!? 🐢
New paper alert: I am happy to announce that my latest descriptive paper on the cranial osteology of the pleurosternid turtle Pleurosternon bullockii is published today in
@thePeerJ
, together with
@RollotYann
& W. Joyce: 1/4
As someone who has in the past been vocal in criticizing the Ibrahim et al. (2014) paper – particularly the neotype designation, the documentation of the new material, & their taxonomic conclusions – I thought it might be good to say something now, w/ new info being presented 1/n
Happy
#WorldTurtleDay
! Good time to share some sneak previews of different upcoming papers on turtle evolution on which I am lead or senior author 🐢🤩 Wait for evolution, paleontology, and soft tissue anatomy content to drop later this year (or maybe the one after, who knows)
New paper today in
@thePeerJ
, with Yann Rollot & Walter Joyce! This is a CT-based reinterpretation of the cranial anatomy of Arundelemys, an Early Creatceous paracryptodire and possible early baenid.
Paper:
1/3
3 🐢-papers accepted w minor revs in one week! Stay tuned for: new pleurodire & 🤩
#palaeoart
I'm burning to finally share soon; re-description of a fossil paracryptodire w implications for cranial scute homology; & Jurassic marine turtle w soft tissues & flippers
#TurtleThursday
Our paper from July about a new phylogenetic hypothesis of turtles, finding 3 independent origins of marine lifestyles in turtles (excluding pleurodires) and high K/Pg survivorship of those is now published in an issue in
@ThePalAss
journal Palaeontology!
🐢🤩New paper out today!🤩🐢
Together w/ a team of
@mfnberlin
researchers Jasper Ponstein, Maren Jansen & Jörg Fröbisch, as well as
@jaimiAgray
from
@UF
&
@FloridaMuseum
, I describe variation in mandibular osteology across extant turtle groups 🐢1/8
OA:
Based on the status quo, the options for repatriation I see are: The state could decide to give it to Brazil, or a court could rule that it is unrightfully in GER, forcing the state to repatriate. I hope one of these will happen, but I can only speak for myself.
I'm very excited to take on my new role as Associate Editor
@JournalSystPal
, and thankful to be given this opportunity :) I'm looking forward to handling turtle and other reptile submissions to come 🐢🦎🐊
This project was well underway when the Ubirajara story broke, making at least me aware of the legality issues with Brazilian fossils. We didn't terminate this (student) project then, but decided to mitigate effects in various ways (incl. the casts).
NEW PAPER w/
@BronzatiMario
,
@BensonLabOxford
,
@VTechmeetsPaleo
& [next tweet] on archosaur inner ear functional morphology & evolution! Very happy; this took ++hours of Avizo work & lots of thinking too 😃
Paper:
1/x
A small paper, but still ;) The IDs for this were difficult, but we hypothesize that these very fragmentary remains from Langenberg, Germany, provide evidence for the presence of several theropod lineages in this part of Jurassic central Europe.
Our paper from earlier this year is now out in it's final version:
Check it out if you like comparisons between the endosseous inner ear and the actual, underlying organ!
Check out my new paper w/
@BensonLabOxford
on a new turtle phylogeny w/ implications for the timing and number of evol. transitions to marine ecology. Thanks to
@ThePalAss
(esp. Sally Thomas & Andrew Smith) and the reviewers
@JamesFParham
& J. Sterli!
I’m having an exciting week scanning fossils at the Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation of
@KITKarlsruhe
with a novel computed laminography setup that can scan slab fossils. Solnhofen secrets - here we come
Our decision to publish on this specimen and our ethics statement have been widely criticized. Thanks for all the insights & opinions on this. It seems we did a poor job with the statement - but I need to digest & review all the comments to reflect.
Today we were in the Eichstätt museum, located in a beautiful 14th century castle. It’s inhabitant are even older, like this Jurassic Solnhofia, a turtle fossil prepared from both sides! A paper on this specimen was Walter Joyce’s first, daring to the year 2000
As a decision on repatriation was beyond our power, we decided to produce casts & prints to be send to Brazil. The CT data have been available for years, as we published them before we had finished analyzing the fossil. Many think this is not enough – & that's legitimate.
The statement "currently, (...) the specimen is property of (...) Baden-Württemberg" was meant to reflect the status quo, not our opinions about where the specimen should reside or the lawfulness of the status quo (which I don't feel qualified to judge).
New
#openaccess
paper today
@thePeerJ
– a chapter of Yann Rollot's PhD thesis. Carotid circulation & nerve patterns are important for turtle systematics & evolution – we describe, discuss & figure all extant turtle clades based on 3D data (image 👇).
We show that lagerpetids bridge the temporal and anatomical gap to pterosaurs. Our phylogeny implies that pterosaur evolution does not require very high rates of evolution if lagerpetids are included as their sister group 3/9
These will be cool fossils. Although what would also be cool is to see the fossils of the previous expeditions described properly ;) Suchomimus is 25 years “known” now…
Here is a new paper by
@Dave_Hone
&
@TomHoltzPaleo
, reinterpreting available data for
#Spinosaurus
and other spinosaurids as more likely being heron-like, wading animals rather than extremely aquatic pursuit hunters.
1/6
Among the cool things when visiting Munich is the random selection of fossils in
@O_Rauhut
‘s office. Here is some cool looking therapsid. Don’t know much about synapsids, so no clue if the label is up to date taxonomically, but Someone on twitter will know ;)
#FossilFriday
Saw something running across the street, car in front of me had stopped, said it was an echidna. So I park my car, change flipflops->boots, enter the jungle, follow small noises, go close to where I thought noise went, stand for 30 mins w/o moving, then this guy crawls out:
Just opened this beautiful dataset by
@tweetIrena
! I lacked a complete Chelydra for my next project, but Irena had one in her
@thePeerJ
paper on Desmatochelys lowii, so I emailed her, asked if she could share, and now she's part of our project. Thanks Irena!
@ThePalAss
awarded me and
@BensonLabOxford
with the "Best Paper Prize" in the Journal Palaeontology! This was a very pleasant surprise, thank you very much! Please check out the paper if you're interested in turtle evolution and systematics 🐢
The Best Paper Prize for
#Palaeontology
was awarded to
@SirJoscha
and
@BensonLabOxford
for their paper "A new phylogenetic hypothesis of turtles with implications for the timing and number of evolutionary transitions to marine lifestyles in the group"
Very important paper! Many illustrations of yet unshown specimens, such as the articulated Suchomimus neck. Looks cool, congrats to Nizar and colleagues. (1/n)
Thanks to everyone in the team! Thanks also to
@SteveBrusatte
& Nick Fraser & other reviewers for their comments as well as H. Gee as editor. Also, the artwork produced by Rodolfo Nogueira is absolutely breathtaking! 9/9
German museums house many Brazilian fossils – but this may be unrightfully so. (State)museums cannot easily repatriate specimens, even if they want to. We wrote an open letter asking to clarify the legal status in Baden-Württemberg & repatriate Irritator.
Just gone through pics on my phone fr this week’s research trip. This is a nice shot of Freddy Spindler (l), me (ml), Márton Rabi (mr) & Walter Joyce (r) & weirdo turtle (background). Thanks for all museum staff in Bamberg, Eichstätt & Denkendorf this week for help!
#TeamTurtle
This turtle is awesome! Bit of a shame it’s publicized so much. This way, turtles will never make it to high impact journals that embargo any of the content...
Support for our hypothesis of evolutionary relationships comes from across the entire skeleton, and also from neuroanatomical information. Lagerpetids were prob. quite active animals, possibly arboreal & their sensory capabilities might have paved the way for pterosaurs 4/9
The only thing that’s currently higher than the number of “ehms” in my practise talks is the level of caffeine in my body.
#nervous
#2019SVP
(Thursday 9:15 am Romer Prize Session)