Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! Led by Dr Wei Wang at #IVPP in Beijing, it presents a complete skeleton of #Austronaga, the most marine of all archosauromorphs. To boot, this fossil preserves the oldest complete digestive tract of any reptile! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Spectacular discovery: Researchers, including Dr. @stephanspiekman.bsky.social (Natural History Museum Stuttgart & @unihohenheim.bsky.social) have, for the first time, identified parts of the digestive system in a 245-million-year-old marine reptile from China. Press release: https://t1p.de/7e2wr

🦈 New #Open-access paper 🥳 on the impact of the Permian–Triassic mass extinction 🌋 on marine vertebrates 🐠, from the Dolomites (Italy) together with @aswolniewicz.bsky.social, Carlo Romano & others. We report the first Early Triassic marine reptile from the Dolomites 😎 #FossilFriday

New insights into the extinction and recovery of marine vertebrates across the Permian–Triassic mass extinction event in the Dolomites, Southern Alps, Italy

The impact of the Permian–Triassic mass extinction on marine vertebrates is incompletely understood due to their scarce fossil record. To better understand marine vertebrate extinction and recovery...

tandfonline.com

New paper out in @jvertpaleo.bsky.social! With a team led by @barankarapunar.bsky.social, we report an Early Triassic marine vertebrate assemblage from the 🇮🇹 Dolomites that includes a possible saurosphargid, one of the earliest records of the group in the world! 🐢 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to see our work with @trsimoes.bsky.social and @anniehsiou.bsky.social published in Nature @nature.com 🐍 Early snake evolution was more dynamic than expected, spanning diverse habitats and sensory strategies 🐍 @helsinki-biotech.bsky.social @helsinki.fi www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exceptional brain and ecological diversity in the earliest snakes - Nature

A well-preserved fossil snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil shows early ecological and brain shape disparity in the group.

nature.com

New review paper with Martín Ezcurra just published in @journalsystpal.bsky.social as part of a special issue! Modern reptiles comprise archosaurs 🐊🦉, lepidosaurs🦎🐍, and turtles🐢, but their origins is murky. Where do turtles fit in, really? And most marine reptiles? Choristoderes? Drepanosaurs? ->

Interesting dive into endocast anatomy in some of the closest 'fish' relatives of land vertebrates. Congrats to @draliceclement.bsky.social & team.

The Palaeontological Association@thepalass.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Ethmosphenoid endocasts elucidate evolutionary brain divergences & interrelationships of stem tetrapods onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @draliceclement.bsky.social #PapersinPalaeontology #FossilFriday

The giant #ichthyosaur #Cymbospondylus petrinus from the Middle Triassic of Nevada, USA, recently featured in #SurvivingEarth! The skull alone measured over 1 m, entire animal likely exceed the size of a modern killer whale! Cast in the collections of the Royal Tyrrell Museum 🦎➡️🐬 #FossilFriday

New in @science.org ...since our first discoveries of early tetrapods, they have been thought of as "amphibians" characterized by aquatic larvae. But is this true? For the first time, we report exceptional fossils of stem tetrapod babies that upend this paradigm. 1/n www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Direct development of stem tetrapods across the fin-to-limb transition

Modern amphibians are characterized by an aquatic larval stage that ends abruptly with a period of widespread tissue remodeling (metamorphosis) upon transition to terrestrial adulthood. A transient la...

science.org

Fantastic research led by @lucyroberts.bsky.social examines the evolution of axial skeletal complexity in reptiles. Turns out the textbooks were wrong- highly complex vertebral columns evolve multiple times within amniotes! Roberts, L.E., Head, J.J. Nat Commun (2026). doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Evolution of the reptile spine reveals independent trajectories to axial skeletal complexity in amniotes - Nature Communications

Complex axial skeletal morphology has evolved in mammals and some reptiles. Here the authors combine morphometrics with a maximum likelihood model to find that axial heterogeneity is associated with b...

doi.org

I like ichthyosaurs, they are like if a lizard was also a tuna

🦖 A single, late-stage foetus has been described in detail within the right uterine horn of the early-diverging ichthyosaur Besanosaurus leptorhynchus. 🔍 The orientation of the fossilised remains suggests a tail-first birth took place! ➡️ Find out more: doi.org/10.3897/fr.29.183128

#Throwback to #CSVP2026 at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology! 🦈🐊🦖🦣🇨🇦 It was a pleasure to present my research on Late Triassic #ichthyosaurs from British Columbia, reconnect with friends and meet many new colleagues! 😎 Thanks to the organisers for putting together an excellent meeting!

New paper out now in @fr.pensoft.net! Together with @feikosaur.bsky.social and colleagues based in Germany and Italy, we describe the foetus of the Middle #Triassic #ichthyosaur Besanosaurus leptorhynchus from Monte San Giorgio 🇮🇹 with implications for ichthyosaur taxonomy and reproductive biology! 👇

@feikosaur.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Baby ichthyosaur alert! Here we describe the Besanosaurus foetus for the first time in detail. The holotype of Besanosaurus was thought to preserve embryonic material earlier, but here we studied it in detail. It is a single foetus. lying in tail-first presentation. fr.pensoft.net/article/1831...

In honor of this week's paper providing new anatomical support for a sister-group relationship between archosaurs and turtles, here's the delightfully weird jaw of the Triassic archosauromorph Trilophosaurus (UMMP VP 26419) #FossilFriday

The skull and neck of the early fish-shaped #ichthyosaur Macgowania from the Late Triassic (~220M years ago) of BC, Canada, examined during my recent visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum as part of a research project with Dr Ilaria Paparella funded by MINIATURA 9 from @ncn.gov.pl #FossilFriday

Our paper on turtle origins is finally out in Current Biology, with two major implications for our understanding of reptile evolution 🐢 #Paleontology #Turtles #Evolution www.cell.com/current-biol...