Got to see a second slow worm today! They may look like snakes, but limblessness has evolved many times in Squamates (the snake and lizard family), and this guy is a limbless lizard. Moved across the road after filming.

What mammal has the longest neck?

In terms of the number of vertebrae, it’s not the giraffe. They have 7 neck vertebrae, like us.

Sloths, however, can have up to 10! Three toed sloths are the only mammal group that have more than 7.

Who has the shortest neck?
Also sloths! Two toeds can have 5!

And, like any paper, it was improved by the peer reviewers who volunteered their time to see it towards this published version and the editors and team at Biological Reviews @wiley.com many thanks 😊

As this is a review paper, it rests on the loving treatment given to many individual skeletons and fossils in primary descriptions, and the care for detail of those initial describers who decided the atlas and axis deserved detailed treatment. Thanks to you all out there! #anatomy

The summary figure lays out what we found, a hypothesized sequence of changes to the atlas and axis vertebra through the tetrapod family tree, with most groups of tetrapods independently combining their vertebral components to end up with somewhat similar simpler anatomies #paleontology #newresearch

"It is by love alone that we understand anything" -The birth of Bran, James Stephens

A new study comes from the questions you love to ask. My question "How do vertebral building blocks come together to make different anatomies?" inspired this project ❤️

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Fossil(and more?) Friday. The Staruni Woolly Rhino was incredibly preserved with its skin in a condition good enough to be taxidermied. Her horns, hooves, hair, and guts were all that was lost, but you can see the individual follicles in her skin. #fossilfriday #EAVP2025 #MuzeumPrzyrodnicze

#FossilFriday I made a purely touristic visit to the Trachilos trackway site while in Crete a few weeks ago. The main tracks are covered, but it was still cool to get to see the location of this famous site in person, and the view from it is lovely! #ichnofossils #paleontology

We are pleased to announce the opening of our new Tomography Support Center, now available for all @uu.se employees and students. We welcome collaborations with anyone interested in using microCT and synchrotron scanning.

Learn more here: www.uu.se/institution/...

It is a very happy #fossilfriday as I sent back a revised manuscript last night, a years-in-the-making review that is the reason I find my phone full of pictures like this every time I've been to a museum:
"Asiatosuchus" depressifrons anterior cervical vertebrae (sans proatlas)

#fossilfriday on the road from Belgium today. Saw the awesome Iguanadon display in Brussels yesterday before heading north to give a guest lecture today.

I never met Richard Fortey but his "Life" was what re-sparked an earlier interest in paleontology during my teenage years. This read got my dad to take me on a fossil-hunting trip with the rockounding club at my local library and steered me back towards science as a career. Thanks and RIP.

It's #internationaldayofwomenandgirlsinscience . It's an especially stressful time for many early career scientists as programs in the US are cut and hampered, but we deserve to be celebrated too. There are so many of us out in the world doing awesome work. Here's to all of you!

Slightly late addition for #museumselfieday but right on time for #fossilfriday with a visit to the Smithsonian. Enjoy Greererpeton

If you want plant rep, wild rose.

How often do you see an ichthyosaur fossil from this perspective? They are so frequently preserved flattened that it is easy to forget how massive they must have been. This specimen is at in the Evolutionsmuseet in Uppsala #Fossilfriday

It was! Pistachio paste and pomegranate seed filling using the King Arthur Flour recipe: www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/12...

Last fika before Christmas today.

I authored the first installment of a Children's book series about fossils that won an award this year, that I would love to see get some more traction! It can be purchased directly from danthefishpublishing.weebly.com or Amazon (surprisingly the most favorable alt per the publisher)

New paper out by one of my old lab mates. #ecology #newresearch

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hello Bluesky! I am an early career vertebrate #paleontologist with a PhD on neck vertebrae currently studying early tetrapods in 🇸🇪. Pictured with a rhizodont scale found at Blue Beach last summer. #womeninscience