Alessio Capobianco
@acapomorphic.bsky.social
82 followers 110 following 10 posts
Vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, currently postdoc at LMU Munich. In a love-hate relationship with phylogenies :D
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Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
djbirddanerd.bsky.social
Just in time for #FossilFriday 🦖 What are the big questions in #paleontology today?

dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2025.10042

Nearly 200 scientists worldwide came together to map where our field is headed. Here’s the story 👇
Identifying the Big Questions in paleontology: a community-driven project | Paleobiology | Cambridge Core
Identifying the Big Questions in paleontology: a community-driven project
dx.doi.org
Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
macroecoevoale.bsky.social
What are the biggest questions in #paleontology? New paper out today in Paleobiology led by Smith & Kiessling with ~200 coauthors on the relevance of our field, methods, & museum collections to climate & biodiversity research🦖 #FossilFriday @paleosoc.bsky.social 🔗: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
acapomorphic.bsky.social
I'm afraid we forgot to mention any lemurs there... 😅 But I hope you're still using them for Analytical Paleo! 😁
acapomorphic.bsky.social
Thanks Jeff! The VP lecture slides definitely left an impression, I had to use the bird somewhere 😅
Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
basantakhakurel.bsky.social
Ever wondered how to incorporate fossils as tips in a phylogenetic tree?
Our new paper provides a comprehensive guide!

#EarlyFossilFriday
#FossilFriday
#TipDating
#Phylogeny
#EvolutionaryBiology
acapomorphic.bsky.social
I am extremely happy to see that our review on fossil tip-dating is out in early view in Systematic Biology! A huge thanks to all the authors of this massive project (@heckeberg.bsky.social, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social, Gustavo Darlim, and @hoehna.bsky.social)! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
acapomorphic.bsky.social
We hope that our contribution will not only be a useful reference for all researchers wanting to perform a tip-dating analysis on their favorite group of organisms, but also a starting point of discussion to further improve this class of methods and its application to empirical data!
acapomorphic.bsky.social
Non-exhaustive list of things you can find in our paper:
- A survey of all fossil tip-dating studies published until 2023
- A flowchart with all the steps to set up a tip-dating analysis
- Detailed discussion of all the elements making up a tip-dating analysis, from molecular alignment to FBD models
acapomorphic.bsky.social
I am extremely happy to see that our review on fossil tip-dating is out in early view in Systematic Biology! A huge thanks to all the authors of this massive project (@heckeberg.bsky.social, @basantakhakurel.bsky.social, Gustavo Darlim, and @hoehna.bsky.social)! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
acapomorphic.bsky.social
We (me, @barankarapunar.bsky.social, @sinjinis.bsky.social and @harriedrage.bsky.social) organized a symposium for the next IPC (Cape Town 2026!) on evolution, diversity and ecology in marine ecosystems throughout the Phanerozoic.
Contact us if you would like to participate or to know more about it!
ipc7.bsky.social
Symposia 🔍

Among our 29 themed symposia + 1 open symposium, we are pleased to feature:

✨ Life in the Phanerozoic Oceans: Evolution, diversity and ecology in deep time marine ecosystems✨

📩 To participate in this symposium or get more information, contact the conveners: 👇
Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
pimientoc.bsky.social
No, it is not a dream. This actually happened!!! We had a *fantastic* #CPEGCPB26 meeting and I cannot articulate any other adjective to describe it until I recover from it. Thanks to everyone who attended and everyone who helped making this happen. @kristinakocakova.bsky.social
Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
cpeg-cpb25.bsky.social
The CPEG & CPB meeting is officially underway! 🎉

We kicked things off with two fantastic workshop sessions:

📊 R-based open data science in palaeobiology and ecology
🧠 Deep learning for macroevolutionary analyses

Big thanks to all our speakers and participants - spot yourself below!

#CPEGCPB25
acapomorphic.bsky.social
According to our analysis, Elasmotherium (the "Siberian unicorn") and modern rhinos share a common ancestor in the Oligocene (more recently than previously thought), and they are more closed related to each other than to our aceratherine from the High Arctic.
acapomorphic.bsky.social
Our protein-based tip-dated phylogenetic analysis (a combination of words that would have been totally absurd until recently) shows that this aceratherine ("hornless rhino") belonged to an early-diverging lineage in the rhino family tree.
acapomorphic.bsky.social
We now have protein sequences from rhino enamel that are >20 million years old! I am extremely excited and grateful to have been part of this project. The incredible thing: these sequences are informative enough to place this ancient species in the rhino tree! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Phylogenetically informative proteins from an Early Miocene rhinocerotid - Nature
Protein sequences from fossil tooth enamel of a rhinocerotid from Canada’s High Arctic are used to develop phylogenetic frameworks from a specimen too old to preserve ancient DNA.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Alessio Capobianco
friel.bsky.social
Moderate extinctions and slow recovery of non-marine teleost fishes across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, with a systematic appraisal of early Paleocene teleost fishes from Saskatchewan, Canada, and Montana, USA. Palaeontologia Electronica, 28(2):a28. 🐟🧪

palaeo-electronica.org/content/2025...
Higher-level taxonomic patterns of relative abundances of teleosts through the Hell Creek Formation and lower half of the Tullock Member of the Fort Union Formation, Garfield County, Montana, USA. Data from the Pine Cree Park (PCP) locality of the Ravenscrag Formation, Saskatchewan, Canada was included to fill the temporal gap (Puercan 2 NALMA substage or Pu2) in the Montana record. Percent relative abundances are based on centra per locality (vertical stacked columns; see Table 1 and Brinkman et al. [2021, table 2 and figure 20] for details), with each locality identified at the top of the figure and their total sample size (N) indicated in parentheses. Taxa are listed at the bottom of the figure, with their total sample sizes (N) per geologic unit indicated in parentheses; the first value (to the left of the first forward slash) is the total sample size from the Hell Creek Formation, the middle value is from the Tullock Member, and the last value is from the PCP locality of the Ravenscrag Formation. The colorized box next to each taxon name corresponds to the colorized portions in the vertical stacked columns. See the caption for Figure 22 for an explanation of the chronostratigraphic framework. Figure modified from Brinkman et al. (2021, figure 20). Abbreviations: FH, Fox Hills Formation; K-Pg, Cretaceous-Paleogene; Ma, million years; Mbr./Fm., member or formation; NALMA, North American Land Mammal “age”; Pmag., geomagnetic polarity chron; Pu1, Pu2 (gray because Pu2 fauna has not been found in the local area), Pu3, Puercan 1, 2, 3; Strat. (m), stratigraphic position in meters relative to the K-Pg boundary; To1, Torrejonian 1.