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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

@daveyfwright.bsky.social

3.1K followers 140 following 1.5K posts

Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, & punk rock enthusiast. Assistant Professor & Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology. U Oklahoma/Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. Macroevolution, phylogenetic methods, echinoderms https://daveyfwright.wordpress.com

daveyfwright.wordpress.com

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · Sep 2

New updated preprint! Many thanks to reviewers for their suggestions and helpful advice for improving our manuscript. Check it out if you're interested in fossils, phylogenies, and modeling morphologic evolution! 🧪

Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data

Understanding the evolution and phylogenetic distribution of morphologic traits is fundamental to macroevolutionary research. Despite decades of major advances and key insights from molecular systemat...

www.biorxiv.org

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4h

Species description by ChatGPT

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 14h

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 14h

"The chancellor approved it"

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 1d

I know I'm a broken record on this but god I hate AI so much

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 1d

OU vs Texas means it's a Pentaceratops horns down kind of day

Pentaceratops skeleton depicted with its skull (and horns) down

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 2d

incredible how older taxonomic literature in paleontology will describe geologically old, plesiomorphic (and potentially paraphyletic) taxa as "an important root-stock in evolution"

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · May 16

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has an absolutely spectacular collection of fossil crinoids, including these beautiful late Paleozoic eucladids #FossilFriday🧪

A beautiful specimen of the calyx and arms of the fossil crinoid Agalocrinus oklahomensis (OU 7337)

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 2d

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." ― George Orwell, 1984

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 2d

Truly bizarre this is often the case and rarely questioned

they/them might be giants ☭ @babadookspinoza.bsky.social · 2d

Show me a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and I’ll show you a warmonger.

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 3d

Those of us who are systematists still cite papers from >100 years ago because of their significance to taxonomy (good species descriptions never die) & following correct citations for zoological nomenclature. That's a good point about AI slop, too.

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 3d

It's important to focus on the things that bring you joy. For example, the New York Yankees suffering a crushing defeat

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4d

Somehow I signed up to author/co-author six abstracts for the upcoming GSA/Paleontological Society meeting and boy do I have some work to do

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4d

I used to think it was because they got so hyper-focused on ontology they forgot everything about epistemology, but their grasp of epistemology is somehow even worse

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4d

Sometimes I (blissfully) forget there was a group of hardcore cladists that philosophized so hard they rejected even parsimony-based phylogenetics and inadvertently became science nihilists

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Esther Schindler @estherschindler.bsky.social · 5d

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 6d

"AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations"

JB_AU @jbau.bsky.social · 13d

This whole section really.

Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 7d

I love how nature documentaries sound like they're describing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting when talking about plants and animals doing totally normal stuff

"In the deep dark forest, one animal begins an epic quest into the abyss where the trees cast spells and zombies roam the woodlands"

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 7d

Surprisingly (to me), I found this Hutchinson line from a 1957 article titled, The Future of Marine Paleoecology

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 7d

"Uninspired prophecy is notoriously dangerous; all that we can do is to assess probabilities, in full confidence that the improbable will sometimes happen." - G. Evelyn Hutchinson 🧪

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Emily Troyer @fishfetisher.bsky.social · 8d

Happy Anatomically Incorrect Invertebrate season to all who celebrate

A fake snail with a skull for a shell and bony body

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

TFW scientific prose makes you smile. I love this line from a 2010 paper by @peterjwagner3.bsky.social and @katelyons.bsky.social

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

"...although analyses of extant phylogenies can estimate extinction rates and even suggest mass extinctions, they cannot imply trilobites ever existed or that sphenodonts (now represented only by the tuatara) were once as diverse as lepidosaurs (lizards and snakes)." #FossilFriday 🧪

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 10d

New paper!

"Fossil tip-dating reveals novelties on evolutionary and diversification trends in three Late Ordovician brachiopod genera (Atrypida, Anazygidae)" Yay for brachiopods! 🧪

Fossil tip-dating reveals novelties on evolutionary and diversification trends in three Late Ordovician brachiopod genera (Atrypida, Anazygidae) | Journal of Paleontology | Cambridge Core

Fossil tip-dating reveals novelties on evolutionary and diversification trends in three Late Ordovician brachiopod genera (Atrypida, Anazygidae) - Volume 99 Issue 2

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 10d

🚨We're hiring! The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is seeking a tenure-track split position as Assistant Curator of Ichthyology and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. Please retweet & share with colleagues! 🐟🐠🧪

Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/174674

A job ad with multiple images, including the exterior of the museum, a view of collections (jars on shelves), and pictures of some cool, tropical fish but I don't know enough about fish to describe them other than to say they're pretty colors of yellow and blue/green

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

the thing about arsonists is they often cosplay as firefighters

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 9d

Great issue of Phil Trans B @royalsocietypublishing.org on the BIG QUESTION of the origin of life: royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1936

royalsocietypublishing.org

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

Few can pull it off--and many don't need to IMO. I love bands like Bad Religion and the Descendents because their sound was basically perfect from the start and became more refined over time. (They're both incredible live, too.) AFI's sound evolved both gradually & in jumps but it's all good stuff