Matt Friedman
@friedmanlab.bsky.social
970 followers 720 following 290 posts
Vertebrate evolutionary biologist | Professor University of Michigan | Director & Curator UMMP | he/him/his
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Reposted by Matt Friedman
fishfetisher.bsky.social
Showing off the @ummnh.bsky.social Fish Collection for ID Day! #TeamFish
Emily standing at a table filled with fish specimens Fish specimens on a tray. From left to right: pike, seahorse, monkfish, bamboo shark Small preserved boxfish on a tray. Preserved fish on a table. Top is a large swordfish skull. Bottom are left to right: porcupine pufferfish,  burrfish, batfish
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Great paleo showing at today's ID Day at the U-M Museum of Natural History!
Group of smiling people squinting in bright sunlight standing in building atrium in front of large pterosaur model. Three people sitting behind a table with assorted specimens, including partial bison skull. Large window behind table shows a university campus in bright sunlight. Photograph of building atrium taken from second floor. Large pterosaur is suspended from ceiling, with tables covered in specimens along the walls of the first floor.
Reposted by Matt Friedman
tsengzj.bsky.social
New preprint: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction. #Paleontology #Mammals #Extinction

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TLDR: S. China mammals diversified dentally, tracked environment, then leveled up bite mechanics all within the first 10 m.y. post K-Pg.
Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction
The first 10 million years (Myr) following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction marked a period of global greenhouse conditions and dramatic rise of placental mammals. Because ~80% of known...
www.biorxiv.org
Reposted by Matt Friedman
khaichung.bsky.social
So excited and grateful to receive R24 NOA from NIH ORIP to create an integrated #zebrafish omics, histology and microCT 3D atlas!

Looking forward to an exciting work with Dr. Postlethwait of U of Oregon, who is the co-PI of the grant.
Reposted by Matt Friedman
liujuan.bsky.social
Excavated from the Pisces Point locality of Scollard Formation in Alberta, Canada, ~67 million years old, Acronichthys maccognoi, newly reported in @science.org, was recovered from ancient water body that flipped seasonally between fast-flowing channels and quiet, still pools.
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Another fish gig!
justineasmith.bsky.social
Job Alert! Assistant Prof of Fish Ecology at
@wfcbucdavis.bsky.social, with a focus on freshwater and anadromous coldwater fishes. This is a wonderful and supportive place to work. Please share with your fishy friends! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07351
Assistant Professor of Fish Ecology
University of California, Davis is hiring. Apply now!
recruit.ucdavis.edu
Reposted by Matt Friedman
clarkeocrinus.bsky.social
This is the only "complete" crinoid in my collection, from holdfast to crown.

It's easy to see why they are sometimes called sea lilies, even though they are animals related to starfish and sand dollars.

This is Abatocrinus gallatinensis from the Mississippian Lodgepole Fm of MT.

#FossilFriday
Crinoid with "feathered" arms, long stem and holdfast root system.
Reposted by Matt Friedman
liujuan.bsky.social
New in @science.org, meet Acronichthys maccagnoi, a new species from Late Creatacous Canada that changes what we know about the origins and evolution of one of the most successful fish groups on Earth.
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Check out this rare faculty-curator position at OU:
daveyfwright.bsky.social
🚨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
Reposted by Matt Friedman
abbiestev.bsky.social
If any of you fine folks are planetarians in (or want to be in) mid-Michigan, the Abrams Planetarium is hiring a full-time-staff position for the first time in 11 years!! Come work with the astro, scicomm, and informal ed folks at MSU!! 🔭 🧪 (reskeets welcome) careers.msu.edu/jobs/educati...
Educational Program Coordinator II - East Lansing, Michigan, United States
Position Summary The program coordinator will maintain the planetarium, present live shows, and create new planetarium visualizations. In addition, this position will assist customers, assist in educa...
careers.msu.edu
friedmanlab.bsky.social
And giving tours is definitely one of the highlights of this gig.
fishfetisher.bsky.social
Always fun to get a @friedmanlab.bsky.social tour of @ummnh.bsky.social research collections. A new one for me was a whole preserved elephant bird egg.
Large football sized egg in a container Small turtles in a jar Snakes wrapped inside a collection jar Some kind of tropical frog in a jar
Reposted by Matt Friedman
Reposted by Matt Friedman
fishevodevogeno.bsky.social
Hello #fish 🐟 🐠 researchers and PIs of tomorrow! We would be excited to sponsor you for an Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) Presidential #Postdoc Fellowship application @michiganstateu.bsky.social. Application deadline is Nov 10, so get in touch soom!

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful
Reposted by Matt Friedman
climateages.bsky.social
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid ended the dinosaurs

But their disappearance didn’t just change life, it changed the land

Without them, forests spread, rivers stabilized, and Earth’s landscapes flipped

We’re the ecosystem engineers now
What world will we leave behind?
🧪
buff.ly/4KhsAJk
Dinosaurs Didn’t Just Disappear; They Took Entire Landscapes With Them
When dinosaurs vanished, forests spread, rivers stabilized, and Earth’s landscapes flipped Let’s travel back in time. We’re now at the end of the Cretaceous period,...
climateages.com
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Alas, I don't think that'll happen. Their braincases are too "open plan": not much mineralized beyond the occipital arch and bits of the otic capsules 😔
Reposted by Matt Friedman
friel.bsky.social
Two new species of African suckermouth catfishes just dropped! Say hello to #Chiloglanis kinsuka from the lower #Congo River at the Kinsuka rapids below Pool Malebo, and #Chiloglanis wagenia, from the Wagenia Falls at Kisangani, more than 1600 km upstream.🐟🧪

digitallibrary.amnh.org/items/3ad0dd...
Dorsal, lateral, and ventral views of Chiloglanis kinsuka, new species, holotype, AMNH 283315, 69.7 mm SL, female, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, Kinsuka Rapids. Photo by T.R. Vigliotta. Scale bar equals 0.5 cm. Inset photo, lower right: coloration in life, AMNH 268960. Dorsal, lateral, and ventral views of Chiloglanis wagenia, new species, holotype, CUMV 95972, 45.4 mm SL, male, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Orientale, Lualaba River at main portion of Wagenia Falls. Photo by T.R. Vigliotta. Scale bar equals 0.5 cm.
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Platysomus also shows how the tongue bite was built bit-by-bit, starting with the several separate plates in the “tongue” of our specimen, to consolidated plates in later species, to truly massive, robust plates in Bobasatrania.
Cladogram depicting steps associated with the origin of the robust tooth plates of Bobasatrania, plus other evidence linking this group with Platysomus.
friedmanlab.bsky.social
Apart from highlighting functional diversity in early ray-fins, this work helps clear up a systematic problem. This complex apparatus–combined with other features found inside the head of Platysomus–firmly link ‘platysomids’ and bobasatraniids (deep-bodied fishes that survived the P/T extinction).
Line drawing of skull anatomy of the Early Triassic Bobasatrania from Nielsen (1952).
friedmanlab.bsky.social
This kind of mechanism has evolved many, many times in actinopts. But it seems like Platysomus was the first ray-fin to figure it out. (N.B., a lineage of lungfishes were even earlier–in the Middle Devonian–because early lungfishes were evolutionary overachievers).
Diagram showing stratigraphic ranges of ray-finned fishes with tongue bites or similar mechanisms.