The pterosaur Tethydraco regalis was named by Longrich et al. in 2018. The holotype is FSAC-OB 1, a left humerus, and referred were two ulnae, two femurs, and a tibia. All of this material hails from the Ouled Abdoun Basin of Morocco, specifically the latest Maastrichtian "Couche III" phosphate bed. A bunch of other pterosaur … Continue reading What is Tethydraco? (plus a few words on azhdarchid habits)
Paleontologist Robert Broom is a man with a complicated legacy. On the one hand, he excavated hundreds of therapsid skulls and made gargantuan contributions to our knowledge of stem-mammal evolution (Wyllie 2003). He also excavated some of the most complete and important fossil hominin skulls, perhaps the most famous of these being Mrs. Ples (the … Continue reading Robert Broom and race science
In 2018, I attended a talk about end-Permian ecosystem collapse by Smith et al. (2018) at that year's Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Albuquerque. The presenter mentioned a mass Lystrosaurus death site from earliest Triassic South Africa. That in itself is cool, but he offhandedly mentioned some preserved some individuals with mummified skin - … Continue reading We still know nearly nothing about synapsid integument
[This blog post is a written counterpart to my presentation at Specposium 2022] On June 25, 2022, a little show finished its run on educational TV stations in the UK. At the end of that year, an hour-and-a-half edit version aired on American television. It spawned a multimedia franchise that extended into publishing, museum exhibits, … Continue reading 20 Years of The Future is Wild
As we should all know, the earth's plates are on the move. The theory of plate tectonics is a well-supported mechanism for the movement of the continents in deep time. It explains many prior observations about geology and biogeography, and can be directly observed today via GPS. It makes sense that therefore plate tectonics will … Continue reading Plate tectonics of the far future
As you probably already know, Sinopterus is a genus of tapejarid pterosaur from the Jiufotang Formation of China. The holotype of Sinopterus dongi was first named by Wang and Zhou (2003). Since then, a bunch of other species of tapejarid from the Jiufotang Formation have been named (incl. Li et al. 2003, Lü et al. … Continue reading Cladistic ontogeny of Jiufotang tapejarids
Speculative evolution, aka speculative biology, is a fascinating field. I think it's really neat because it involves integrating creativity and a solid scientific grounding. Apparently a lot of other people think so too, because it's very popular among biology and paleontology enthusiasts on the internet. But there isn't really a centralized spec evo community on … Continue reading Specposium 2021
Glaciations are neat - we're currently in one, and the subjects of my undergrad research lived in the previous one, the Late Paleozoic Icehouse. The Phanerozoic has seen three glaciations so far: the Ordovician Glaciation, the Late Paleozoic Icehouse, and the Cenozoic Ice Ages (glaciation, icehouse, and ice age are often used interchangeably). There were … Continue reading How to start an ice age
I recently watched Bringing Up Baby, a 1938 screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks. Screwball comedies were common in the 30s-40s, taking a traditional romance story and turning it into a farce. Critics liked this movie, but it only did modestly at the box office. Its reputation has grown into it with time, however; … Continue reading Random movie review: Bringing Up Baby
Now somewhere in the black mining hills of Dakota, there lay a rich Cretaceous fossil plant site. The tale of this site is a tale of obsession, "petrified pineapples", theft, and one of the very few U.S. National Monuments that has not only been decommissioned, but also lost pretty much all protections it had. That's … Continue reading Fossil Cycad National Monument
Those with Pycnofibres 