Nick Freymueller
banner
smilodontology.bsky.social
Nick Freymueller
@smilodontology.bsky.social
Paleoecology postdoc based in 🇩🇰/🇦🇺. I study past/present extinctions so we can stop future ones. Currently working on Arctic megafauna 🐋. Alaskan. FRY-myoo-ler
Pinned
Yesterday I successfully defended my joint-PhD between the University of Copenhagen and the University of Adelaide! I am now officially Dr. Nick!

And I also received favorable reviews and minor revisions on my two in-review chapters the same day!

#phdone 🐋🐋
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Nice to see conservation policy outcomes from simple ideas

20+ yrs ago I had access to remote areas of Kuwait/Iraq, & saw its potential as bull shark 🦈 nursery habitat

Then spent 10+ years collecting evidence to back this up shorturl.at/0Cm0f

Now designated an Important Shark & Ray Area
November 24, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Historical sources such as the excellent Tourists in Wales website can provide valuable information for ecologists studying longer-term aspects of species and environments

sublimewales.wordpress.com/introduction/
TOURISTS IN WALES 1700-1900
A boat used to take tourists down the Wye, a two-day journey from Ross  to Chepstow, stopping at Monmouth for a night. This expensive trip became very popular from the early 1750s. People began to …
sublimewales.wordpress.com
November 6, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Yesterday I successfully defended my joint-PhD between the University of Copenhagen and the University of Adelaide! I am now officially Dr. Nick!

And I also received favorable reviews and minor revisions on my two in-review chapters the same day!

#phdone 🐋🐋
November 5, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Reposting this today to give it some more attention. Working on this paper with other @palaeoverse.bsky.social folks was a great experience 😄. Hopefully this will serve as a great resource for paleontologists in the future!

It even comes with R code that you can copy/paste: tenrules.palaeoverse.org
October 27, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Happy #FossilFriday! Interested in fossil data handling & building analysis-ready databases? New paper out today in Palaeontology @thepalass.bsky.social with @palaeoverse.bsky.social team led by @lewisajones.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Hope it helps! 💻📊📈🦐🦪🦣🐚🪸🦕🦖🐋🐊🐟🦑🐢🐍🦎🐦‍⬛🦂
Ten simple rules to follow when cleaning occurrence data in palaeobiology
Large datasets of fossil occurrences, often downloaded from online community-maintained databases, are a vital resource for understanding broad-scale evolutionary patterns, such as how biodiversity h...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 24, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Humpbacks in the Great Barrier Reef. Read the full story here: buff.ly/YhLPmzt
Photo by @smilodontology.bsky.social
#WhaleTales #humpback
September 20, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Have you heard the whalely good news?

The High Seas Treaty, a legally binding global agreement to protect marine life in the high seas, is officially entering into force!

Is it perfect? No-but it’s an incredible milestone for the ocean

I’ll dive deeper into this in my next Ocean Brief newsletter
a large whale is swimming in the ocean with a white background
Alt: humpback whale swims up to the sea surface and jumps out
media.tenor.com
September 20, 2025 at 9:32 AM
🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭 MASSIVE NEW FOSSIL DATABASE 🐋 🐻‍❄️ 🦭

Our FAMM (Fossil Arctic Marine Mammal) database has now been published #OpenAccess in Global Ecology and Biogeography!

Come learn about the cool stuff you can do with #Arctic #fossil material and bio-molecular archives! ☢️ ⚛️ 🧬

Link and thread below!

🧵 1/🦴
September 19, 2025 at 4:10 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
☠️🧬 2-yr Postdoc in in Genomic Simulations and Extinction Risk Modelling!
Let's figure out the Genomic signs of Extinction @DTU in Denmark.

Start: Feb 2026 (flexible)
Application deadline: 24 Oct 2025

For details click here: tinyurl.com/BioExtPD

Reposts appreciated 😁
September 12, 2025 at 11:52 AM
🐋 Big commercial whaling paper (and my last PhD chapter) just submitted to PNAS! 🐋
September 12, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
It's well known that Bowheads live to be 200+ years old but here's a bonkers thing that we didn't realize until we had Nick on the pod - that means a whale alive today could potentially have been alive before whaling started AND they lived through the decades of whaling & the century of recovery🤯
September 8, 2025 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Raise your hand if you want to go to Ancient Marine Mammal Park with us! 🙋‍♀️🐋🦴
buff.ly/GHt2fcY

Photo courtesy of my collaborator Arthur S. Dyke

#WhaleTales #WhaleTalesPodcast @smilodontology.bsky.social
September 3, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Super nerdy episode this month! We sit down paleoecologist and biogeographer with Nick Freymueller to talk Bowhead Whales, Arctic fossils, his research on how species respond to climate change and many other nerdy things. 🦴🐳🦖

Cue up the theme to Jurassic Park & let's dive right in!
buff.ly/Cuk4X0L
August 27, 2025 at 4:24 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
I use BHL every single day in my research and teaching. I could not write my books or articles without it, I don't know what my students would do without it, and I would have to radically rethink my career without it. This is more critical with funding cuts. Please, please someone support BHL.
Foundations: please step up and take over the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This is an absolutely essential scanned archive of all of the old journals and books from the 1500s to about 1920. Has been indispensable for my research.
about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup...
Call for Support: – About BHL
about.biodiversitylibrary.org
July 3, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Finally submitted this puppy, yesterday after nearly four years. Defense coming in September. #PhDone
June 21, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Stoked to finally see this one out in the wide world: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Tube-nosed #seabirds in #Aotearoa #NewZealand have been largely driven extinct on the mainland, since the arrival of humans. Our paper shows just how dramatic this collapse likely was...(1/4)
Burrowing Into the Past: Extending Niche Space Models of Procellariiform Breeding Grounds by Merging Fossil and Historic Data
Aim Predicting species' potential distributions and niches requires multi-scale data encompassing the past and present. Increasingly, researchers have advocated using historical context to inform ec...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 5, 2025 at 9:52 PM
🚨🚨 POSTDOC ALERT!!! 🚨🚨

The Global Change, #Ecology, and #Conservation Lab at the Uni of Adelaide is hiring a 2-year #postdoc on #mammal declines in #Australia using #eDNA, #museums, & ecological models 🧬🦘🐨🇦🇺!

Come work in our interdisciplinary lab!

Details 👇
careers.adelaide.edu.au/cw/en/job/51...
Learn more about South Australia's new university for the future.
careers.adelaide.edu.au
June 3, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Whales, Greenland, and some really old mud. My first PhD chapter now published in @natcomms.nature.com reveals 12,000 years of marine mammal history around Northern Greenland through DNA hidden in marine mud. Check it out: rdcu.be/emdYS
#sedaDNA #Greenland #Arctic #whales #seals
May 18, 2025 at 3:17 PM
🐋 ANOTHER ONE 🐋 !!!

We have a hot new #bowhead #whale preprint out now on @biorxiv-bioinfo.bsky.social, co-led with @mick2474.bsky.social !

We show what is possible when you integrate genomic and ecological data to tell an insightful story about this charismatic #Arctic endemic! 🧬

Thread: 1/🐋
May 28, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
#printPromptMonday theme was #magic. As a scientist, believe magic lies in the astounding interconnections of wildness. Here’s a bowhead whale and her calf, whose songs fill the Arctic Ocean.
April 1, 2025 at 6:49 PM
🐋 WHALE PAPER ALERT! 🐋

My 2nd #PhD Chapter is now out #OpenAccess in @ecol-evol.bsky.social where we built a 11,700 year-long ecological baseline of #bowhead whales in the #Arctic

Thread 1/🐋
May 21, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
We apologize for the length of this post, but we felt it was important to share the full details with you.
April 17, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
🦒🧬 New preprint🦒🧬
We investigated the degree of admixture, genetic diversity and inbreeding in ex situ giraffes using WGS data from the famous Marius, 12 zoo giraffes, and a data set from 71 wild giraffes.
#ConsGen #PopGen #Genomics #Giraffes #Marius
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
April 16, 2025 at 7:47 AM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Sedimentary ancient DNA from caves: Challenges and opportunities doi.org/10.1002/jqs.... , first publication from the PhD research of @siobhane13.bsky.social - congratulations!
Sedimentary ancient DNA from caves: Challenges and opportunities
Caves are unique depositional environments that hold great potential for long-term preservation of DNA due to their typically cool and stable internal climates, buffered from external climate extreme...
doi.org
April 15, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Nick Freymueller
Looks like it is going to happen. If you need the Paleoceanography data from NCEI, I wrote a script to download it all. github.com/evangowan/EJ...
April 15, 2025 at 3:11 AM