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Pasha van Bijlert

@pashavanb.bsky.social

1.2K followers 190 following 75 posts

Evolutionary biomechanist & Paleontologist 🇳🇱 Interested in how animals move PhD candidate at @uugeo.bsky.social & @naturalis.bsky.social 📷:Tom Brown

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Dec 30

Most birds use a funny running style: grounded running. It's a paradox: GR costs more energy than normal running, but animals usually minimize costs.
Do birds waste energy? We resolve this with a model of the emu (the best bird).
Published in @science.org Advances last Sept
(reposting my x 🧵s)
1/18

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Dr. Oliver Demuth @oliverdemuth.bsky.social · 9d

Last week our in press manuscript was made available at @jexpbiol.bsky.social with the typeset version following soon. We conducted ex vivo XROMM experiments to determine the joint mobility in Red legged partridges and compared them with in silico simulations: doi.org/10.1242/jeb....

Accepted manuscript. Oliver E. Demuth, John R. Hutchinson, Vittorio La Barbera, Sharon E. Warner, Daniel J. Field; Soft tissue constraints on joint mobility in the avian shoulder. J Exp Biol 2025; jeb.250952. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.250952

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Jack Tamisiea @jack-tamisiea.bsky.social · 20d

How did the ostrich cross the ocean? This fossil holds clues!

This is the holotype of Lithornis promiscuus at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This heron-sized bird lived in a swampy floodplain in Paleocene Wyoming. #FossilFriday thread (1/4)

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · 21d

Very grateful for the grant support for this trip by the @knaw-nl.bsky.social Ecology Fund and @biologists.bsky.social Travelling Fellowship. Wasn't expecting this to be how I would start the final year of my PhD at @uugeo.bsky.social and @naturalis.bsky.social 🐦🦘🇦🇺

a kangaroo and an emu are standing next to each other in the dirt .

ALT: a kangaroo and an emu are standing next to each other in the dirt .

media.tenor.com

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · 21d

Made it to the Sunshine Coast to visit @cjclemente.bsky.social and (soon) @taylorjmdick.bsky.social for the next three months! We'll full be doing physics simulations and robot experiments in Chris's lab, and even some fieldwork studying the locomotor biomechanics of wild emus and kangaroos

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Liverpool EMB lab @livevobiomech.bsky.social · 24d

‼️📄 Two new papers out today in @jexpbiol.bsky.social lead by @jamescharles90.bsky.social, all about locomotion and load-carrying across different working dog breeds! ⤵️ 🐕 🏋️‍♂️

🦮 (1/4)

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Armita R. Manafzadeh @armanafzadeh.bsky.social · Sep 2

I'm recruiting a PhD student to join the lab at @gtsciences.bsky.social in Fall 2026! Broad taxonomic and topical freedom under the umbrella of vertebrate joint form and function. Information here: www.manafzadeh.com – please share 🦴🩻

Armita R. Manafzadeh @armanafzadeh.bsky.social · Jul 2

✨Some news✨: after finishing my postdoc, I’ll be starting my lab as an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech. Join us in Atlanta to study how joints work and where they come from!

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Narimane Chatar @narimanechatar.bsky.social · Aug 27

New paper out today lead by @tsengzj.bsky.social where we test the 150-year-old hypothesis that the unique jaw torus in Nimravus is an adaptation to resist bite forces using FEA🦁🔪our results highlight some functional advantage of the torus, which are amplified at larger gape doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

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Prof Susie Maidment @tweetisaurus.bsky.social · Aug 27

Hi all, me, @richardjbutler.bsky.social and the amazing UK-US-Moroccan team are delighted to announce that.. we have a new specimen of Spicomellus AND IT'S WAY WEIRDER AND WAY COOLER THAN WE EVER IMAGINED!!

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 24

Nee dat basisinkomen is er helaas niet ( 🤞ooit wel). Maar mijn punt is dat AI aan banden leggen (voorbij legitieme plagiaat en klimaatzorgen) symptoombestrijding is. Zie ook zelfscankassa's, veel soorten fabriekswerk, enz, maar nu beïnvloedt het white collar ipv blue collar jobs.

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 24

AI tools excelleren juist in admin taken, programmeren, spellchecking, enz, en hebben meer (in)correcte info paraat. M.i. kan dat niet een docent vervangen, want leren is niet louter info-overdracht. Een bot kan niet inspireren, connecten met studenten, etc. Info kan ik ook uit een boek halen.

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 24

Volgens mij kun je ieder's bestaan ook vergemakkelijken met een ruim basisinkomen. Het probleem is dat (historisch en nu) automatiseringswinsten alleen maar naar hyperkapitalisten stromen. Ik zou eerder daartegen pleiten, dan tegen automatisering te pleiten.

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 24

Nb is Bas Haring geen "tech bro", en zegt ie ook uitdrukkelijk dat je niet alle taken aan de chatbot kan overlaten. Maar een begeleider moet bijvoorbeeld soms ook simpele dingen als spelling en grammatica controleren, terwijl een chatbot dat gewoon beter en sneller kan

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 24

Dat je een baan moet hebben voor bestaansrecht is net zozeer een voorbeeld van neolib/kapitalistisch efficientiedenken.

Is het niet beter saaie taken weg te automatiseren, en dan iedereen een basisinkomen te garanderen zodat ze geen dingen hoeven te doen die een computerprogramma ook kan?

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 21

We were recording an outreach video at @naturalis.bsky.social, when I realised we accidentally recreated the T rex chicken meme (with an emu of course ❤️ 🐦❤️)

T skeleton facing an emu skeleton with the text "Remember who you are"

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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · Aug 16

This new #RSOS study explores the biomechanical and behavioural significance of tails in sauropod #dinosaurs, focusing on the caudal series of the Late Jurassic species Giraffatitan brancai: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #palaeontology @daniajinn.bsky.social @pashavanb.bsky.social

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Aug 13

We just published a Giraffatitan tail wagging paper, led by @daniajinn.bsky.social!

Interested in bone-on-bone range of motions? Have a look!

Fun fact: the Jurassic Park's Brachiosaurus was at least partly based on Giraffatitan

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 28

The github also links the preprint, the video tutorial, and the manual. You can do a lot in MuSkeMo (landmarks, reference frames, shape fitting, plotting moment arms, visualizing simulations, etc.). The horse is a newer version of the model from: doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

Muscle-Driven Predictive Physics Simulations of Quadrupedal Locomotion in the Horse

Synopsis. Musculoskeletal simulations can provide insights into the underlying mechanisms that govern animal locomotion. In this study, we describe the dev

academic.oup.com

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 28

I construct all my models using MuSkeMo, and after running simulations in OpenSim, I import the trajectories back into Blender for visualizations. MuSkeMo is not OpenSim specific, it also includes importers for Mujoco and Gaitsym. You can download it from my Github: github.com/PashavanBijl...

GitHub - PashavanBijlert/MuSkeMo: Build and visualize musculoskeletal models in Blender

Build and visualize musculoskeletal models in Blender - PashavanBijlert/MuSkeMo

github.com

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 28

For everyone at #ISB2025 interested in musculoskeletal modeling, I'm giving a talk about MuSkeMo, my model construction and visualization tool, Tuesday 11:30 in Room A1 (Session 6A - Musculoskeletal Model Personalization).

MuSkeMo is my tool for musculoskeletal model construction in Blender.

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I Post Animal Vids... 😊 @realjfairclough.bsky.social · Jul 23

Why does this look like a live Looney Toons cartoon?? 👀😅🤣

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Stephan Spiekman @stephanspiekman.bsky.social · Jul 23

I am proud and grateful to present a dream project today in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meet #Mirasaura grauvogeli, a #wonderreptilewith skin appendages that rival feathers and hairs, challenging our view of reptile #evolution🪶🦎

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 18

Josephine Low interviewed me for ICB, discussing the challenges of studying the biomechanics of dinosaurs (and other animals) 🎉🦖🎉

SICB journals @sicbjournals.bsky.social · Jul 18

ICB's #fossilFriday
#Biomechanics Reveals the Secrets of Animal Movement
with @pashavanb.bsky.social
by Josephine Low
"... what if you could see a T. rex in motion, powerful muscles flexing as it stalked the earth?"

integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2025/07/18/b...

#dinosaurs

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Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 18

I misrembered, I use bmesh in other situations but not for the object fitters. I don't use ellipsoids either, but some people like it for the human scapulothoracic joint (they fit the ribcage), and for certain articular surfaces.

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 17

My implementation works by converting the whole object to a Bmesh, not via vertex selections, but that seems an easy thing to port to your addon

Pasha van Bijlert @pashavanb.bsky.social · Jul 17

Just saw this post. If you want to add an ellipsoid fitter, you could adapt the Blender Python implementation which lives in MuSkeMo's source code: github.com/PashavanBijl...

Used with permission from Mark Semple, based on Yuri Petrov's Matlab code shared under a BSD-2 license.

MuSkeMo/scripts/joint_panel.py at ed57f9af5da9973c9a5100f3145e16eaeaee509b · PashavanBijlert/MuSkeMo

Build and visualize musculoskeletal models in Blender - PashavanBijlert/MuSkeMo

github.com

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