I'm incredibly excited to share our recent paper, "Temporal heterogeneity in the animal fossil record driven by proliferation of microbial collagenases", is now available in Current Biology! 📄: doi.org/10.1016/j.cu... 📸: www.cam.ac.uk/research/new... 🧪 (1/8)

🚨Cover reveal🚨: My first non-academic book: How to Find a Martian: A Fossil Hunter's Guide to the Red Planet. Published Spring 2027 by @oneworldbooks.bsky.social (UK/Ireland/Commonwealth, this cover) and @uchicagopress.bsky.social (North America, other cover). 100% human-authored!

Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage

🚨New preprint (not peer reviewed)! Last year, NASA announced "potential biosignatures" on Mars: bleached spots in rust-red rocks. Here, we show that rust-dissolving bacteria really can make spots like these. Next step: see if we can make them without bacteria! #astrobiology doi.org/10.64898/202...

Please consider applying when live for our two roles at UCL, UK! Join an excellent, diverse and friendly team to drive forwards open science and learn lots of new skills!

Lewis A. Jones (he/him)@lewisajones.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨 Pre-announcement! 🚨 We’re hiring for 2 x two-year, full-time roles to join me and the wider @palaeoverse.bsky.social team @es-ucl.bsky.social. - Research Software Engineer (REF: B04-06999): lnkd.in/eNRBiPnP - Community Engagement Coordinator (REF: B04-06998): lnkd.in/ejUACCzn

A bacterial predator, Halobacteriovorax, acts as a living "probiotic" that halts Vibrio-induced disease progression in endangered Caribbean corals. This shows microbial predators are promising new tools for coral disease therapy! #CoralReefs #MicrobialEcology #ISMEJ academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...

Halobacteriovorax halts disease progression in endangered Caribbean corals

Abstract. Predation is a top-down regulator of ecosystem integrity and a key driver of community structure and evolution in plants and animals. Despite our

academic.oup.com

Absolutely delighted to be a recipient of the @thepalass.bsky.social Annual Meeting Poster Prize at #Palass25! It was a pleasure to discuss our new taphonomic approaches with so many of you all.

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to say that I have been awarded a @erc.europa.eu Consolidator Grant looking at selection in #Ediacaran animals. If interested in Ediacaran life, do come and chat at #palass2025 @thepalass.bsky.social

Why is life the way it is? It was a pleasure to share a stage with Nick Lane, @mamaphysikerin.bsky.social, and Cait MacPhee yesterday evening for the @royalsoced.bsky.social seminar event preceding Nick Lane's Gifford Lecture. You can watch the recording here: #astrobiology #evolution #biochemistry

Why is life the way it is?

YouTube video by The Royal Society of Edinburgh

youtube.com

The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.

Signs Referencing Climate Change Along with Web Pages Removed from Acadia National Park

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

barharborstory.substack.com

Quote of the Day, as found in "Comparative Vertebrate and Human Anatomy: Ecology, Evolution, and Function" pressbooks.palni.org/comparativev... Check it out - looks great! #EndlessFishMostBeautiful

New palaeo-PhD opportunity! Will you be the one to figure out the anatomy and function of fossil jawless fish? Come join the team! Application Deadline August 22nd, funding for UK student only (sorry) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

~just to add~ This approach was reproduced by Dr Phil Wilby in 2009 on a Callovian ink sack. The accompanying photoshoot (📸: Phil Yeomans) is iconic.

Dr Thomas Clements@taphonomist.bsky.social · last yr.

One of my favourite #MaryAnning facts™️ is that she would discover fossil cephalopod 🐙 fossils with preserved ink sacks, concoct a dangerous chemical slime to turn them back into gloopy ink, and then use her Jurassic ink to draw exquisite illustrations of the vertebrate fossils she found. Meta.

One of my favourite #MaryAnning facts™️ is that she would discover fossil cephalopod 🐙 fossils with preserved ink sacks, concoct a dangerous chemical slime to turn them back into gloopy ink, and then use her Jurassic ink to draw exquisite illustrations of the vertebrate fossils she found. Meta.

Tom Sharpe@tomsharperocks.bsky.social · last yr.

Of many amazing specimens in the Breaking Ground exhibition @morethanadodo.bsky.social, one of the smallest stands out, a sepia ink sac collected by #MaryAnning and figured by William Buckland in 1836. It’s not from Lyme Regis, but from Watchet in Somerset which was visited by Mary in 1832.

Excellent case where specimen based research and methodological innovation results in cardinal revision of dominants of marine biomass in the Late Cretaceous. Squids were diverse and dominant over other cephalopods and fish! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio

Now published in @agu.org Geophysical Research Letters! What happens to marine archaea when they’re hungry? And what does that mean for the TEX₈₆ paleothermometer? Full paper here: doi.org/10.1029/2025... Thanks to my coauthors and mentors for their support — and stay tuned, more is coming!

A Nutrient Effect on the TEX86 Paleotemperature Proxy

Nutrient stress alters GDGT distributions in marine sediments, resulting in elevated TEX86 ${\text{TEX}}_{86}$ values beyond those related to thermal effects Paleoclimate case studies from the Ar...

doi.org

✨ Excited to share our new paper! ✨ Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition doi.org/10.1098/rsos... @royalsocietypublishing.org @rosspanderson.bsky.social @kelleypaleolab.bsky.social

Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀

Very powerful preprint just went live discussing the different forms of colonialism that act on Mexican palaeo research and how the actions of science can result in political instability and violence. Is our fossil research hurting others? egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...

Decolonial Perspectives on Fieldwork and Collections in Mexican Palaeontology

Abstract. The ways in which we produce scientific knowledge are not objective and are subject to systemic biases with colonial roots. Here, we evaluate the different dimensions of colonialism in Mexic...

egusphere.copernicus.org

Take a look at my group's new paper on distinguishing biological and non-biological tubules of iron-oxide, led by Melanie Podbielski. Yes, the title is a Star Trek reference...

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

Delighted to share that from mid-August, I’ll be joining @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social School of GeoSciences as a PDRA studying bacterial taphonomy with @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Bryne Ngwenya! - this silicified stromatolite isn’t a specimen I’ll be studying, but is a suitably bacterial photo 🧫🦠

Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Using XCT, we got really cool images of a buried zebrafish decaying. You can see the gases build up, escape, and the body cavity collapse - without disturbing the experiment! Sometime you even see them pop and rupture - stinky work but awesome to understand fossils 🐟☠️⚰️ dx.doi.org/10.1111/pala...

New entry into the sponge/ctenophore debate.... Have the chromosome fusions separating ctenophores from all other animals been given too much weight? Beautifully clearly written paper covering complex arguments from @rcply.bsky.social. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Sponges, ctenophores and the statistical significance of syntenies

Shared fusions between ancestral chromosomal linkage groups have previously been used to support phylogenetic groupings, notably sponges with cnidarians and bilaterians to the exclusion of ctenophores...

biorxiv.org

Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less https://go.nature.com/4jLPDwi

Guess how much of the ocean floor humans have explored

Nature - Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less.

go.nature.com

This #FossilFriday our paper on the Slopey G surface at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. Both the E and G surfaces outcrop at two different places 1 kilometres apart which means we can compare how ecological dynamics change over large spatial scales.

Delighted to share our paper on data equity in #palaeobiology as part of Paleobiology's 50th anniversary issue 🥳 We look at how palaeo data is collected, stored, curated & shared, and how equity in these processes is crucial for our field's future (1/n) 🧪⚒️ doi.org/10.1017/pab....

NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume... Download what you need asap and send comments to: ncei.info@noaa.gov