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/...

We (several of us in our lab, and biomechanics colleague Andrew Biewener) wrote an obituary for the late Alan Wilson. Please read this little window into the life of a truly amazing scientist; one of a kind. It still shocks me to think he's gone. rdcu.be/fvHdX

Alan M. Wilson (1964–2026)

Nature Ecology & Evolution - Visionary comparative biomechanist and physiologist who pioneered experimental methods for laboratory and field research into large-mammal locomotor performance and...

rdcu.be

I am thrilled to introduce seven new species of diamond frogs from Madagascar! A new monograph on the genus Rhombophryne published #OpenAccess in Vertebrate Zoology. 🧪🐸 doi.org/10.3897/vz.7...

My Bachelor's thesis has been published! We examined the problematic taxonomy of Zygorhiza kochii and Dorudon serratus, with implications for the wider taxonomy of the basilosauridae. A small thread:

On the identity of historical specimen TM 8501 and the taxonomy of North American Basilosauridae (Mammalia, Cetartiodactyla, Archaeoceti)

Phylogeny and taxonomy of early whales have always been a complicated matter, partly due to confusing nineteenth-century descriptions and diagnoses and a profusion of given names. A largely complete c...

sciencepress.mnhn.fr

Excited to share our latest study highlighted on the cover of @science.org 🥳Combining a 3D dataset representing 250 taxa spanning the whole Cenozoic, 3D modelling & printing and material testing; we deciphered the form-function relationship in the lower 🦷 of mammals www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’m happy to say the first chapter of my dissertation has just gotten published! Here, we compared the results of two prominent tools for measuring muscle architecture from contrast data, Xfiber and Goodfibes, with some recommendations for each. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Relative performance of automated fiber‐tracking approaches to <fc>3D</fc> muscle architecture and their utility for comparative biomechanics

Muscle architecture is a key determinant of muscle performance, informing the calculation of functional traits such as force production and excursion distance. Due to its importance in understanding ....

anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

#Biomechanics family pictures at #SEBconference in Florence! #SEB2026 @sebiology.bsky.social

[1/2] Thank you very much for this great collaboration on #lagomorphs 🐇 Pillai et al @boehmergroup.bsky.social @uni-kiel.de 2026 Oikos. Home and away: allometry and #climate drive morphology of European #rabbits in their native and introduced range doi.org/10.1002/oik....

Had a great time presenting my final PhD chapter yesterday at SEB 2026 in Florence @sebiology.bsky.social Did you miss it, or just want to discuss dinosaur or emu locomotion? Come find me at the conference!

Do you use (musculoskeletal) physics simulations with contact spheres? Then my new paper in @jbiomech.bsky.social is for you! This is my first single-author paper, and the third published chapter from my PhD at @uugeo.bsky.social 🥳 Paper (open access): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I’m so sad to share that yesterday was my last day at Scientific American. It was an honor to work alongside my incredible colleagues and to speak with researchers across the sciences. If you’re looking to hire staff or freelance, please consider me and my other laid off coworkers (🧵)

Since I got back from 🇦🇺 I've been so focused on finishing my PhD, I nearly forgot to do a follow-up! Spending ~4 months in @cjclemente.bsky.social's lab was an amazing experience, filled with animal biomechanics and of course - fieldwork! Here's one of our drone shots from the Strzelecki Desert

Pasha van Bijlert@pashavanb.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Made it to the Sunshine Coast to visit @cjclemente.bsky.social and (soon) @taylorjmdick.bsky.social for the next three months! We'll full be doing physics simulations and robot experiments in Chris's lab, and even some fieldwork studying the locomotor biomechanics of wild emus and kangaroos

🚨 #preprint alert🚨 Everyone loves high resolution paleorecords, but what determines their temporal resolution and orderedness? New counterintuitive results with implications for #conservation #paleobiology and age depth modeling #sedimentology 1/n eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

Made these in celebration of all the dedicated dads of the animal world, and in memory of my stepdad.

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

@pashavanb.bsky.social zat bij Klokhuis, dus ik mocht in een van de zoogdierendepots rondhangen onder werktijd.

First paper of my PhD is out! 🎉 We ran a sensitivity analysis of digital range of motion and found that outcomes can vary a lot depending on how you select the articular surface or define joint centre. General takeaway is share your models alongside results! doi.org/10.1111/joa....

Digital range of motion analysis is sensitive to subjective steps in joint model construction

A systematic sensitivity analysis of a six degree-of-freedom range of motion (ROM) analysis workflow was conducted to evaluate how variation in the subjective steps of the reference pose assembly aff...

doi.org

Muscles don’t just move you - sometimes they slam the brakes 🛑💪 New paper: starting length + temperature strongly reshape the biphasic force response during eccentric contractions

Starting length and temperature dependence of eccentric muscle force–velocity behaviour

Summary: Eccentric muscle force development is highly sensitive to starting length and temperature, revealing distinct effects on contractile and elastic components and providing a framework for more ...

doi.org

Interested in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs? Check out my review!

SICB journals@sicbjournals.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A special June 1st #DinosaurDay post by ICB co author @pashavanb.bsky.social 🙌 A #book review of The Princeton Encyclopedia of #Dinosaurs integrativeandcomparativebiology.wordpress.com/2026/06/01/t... #fossils #dinos #science

So cool! You can see how the chicken switches to a more columnar posture because it's Centre of mass is pulled closer to the hip!

Jay@kakapojay.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Stumbled across this video - really interesting seeing how a chicken walks with a tail that can correctively balance. I bet if you did this with a duck, and strapped half a paper plate to its back, we'd get a decent idea of what Spinosaurus was doing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfsP...

Our work on mammalian hallucal grasping, led by Irene Montañez-Rivera during her time in the @johnnyakatura.bsky.social group, is out now in iScience. A true team effort; thanks to the whole crew for inviting me to contribute a small piece! www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Big day ahead. First live-animal studies I've done in our lab for a while. Alpacas moving through our gait lab including over soil, rough terrain and pressure pad. Lots of tech. Bio-inspired robot foot design with Dr. Sara Abad-Guaman from UCL. Hopefully some alpaca pics and video to come...

For those who want ellipsoid wrapping in their musculoskeletal models, I've worked out a simple implementation in @blender.org that will soon be added to MuSkeMo (github.com/PashavanBijl...).

🚨NEW SCIENCE ALERT!🚨Read our new, open-access publication in Scientific Reports (@nature.com) describing #biofluorescence in #cassowary casques! Very excited to unveil this after keeping it secret for 5 years⬇️ www.nature.com/articles/s41... NYITCOM @akiopteryx.bsky.social @jonathanberman.bsky.social

It'll be emu time soon! (And also human, preying mantis, and guineafowl time!!)

a llama is standing on its hind legs in a desert .

ALT: a llama is standing on its hind legs in a desert .

media.tenor.com

Armita R. Manafzadeh@armanafzadeh.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Join us for our first CNB virtual mini symposium 🐓🏃🏻‍♀️! future events suited to additional time zones coming soon; join our mailing list on our website (link in flyer) to stay in the loop.

At the RVC we are grieving the death of the Structure & Motion Lab's creator, and stalwart comrade, Professor Alan Wilson FRS, from a plane crash in Namibia on Wednesday. He was a giant in comparative biomechanics and an amazing scientist. I'm still reeling. It is utterly shocking and deeply sad.

New #DAWNDINOS paper! We do predictive simulations of vertical height jumping in the Triassic theropod Coelophysis & extant (tinamou) bird Eudromia. Mainly as sensitivity analysis of what parameters are most important. We show how crucial tail mobility is. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Substance Painter Day 3

I've released version 1.2 of my SDF simulations! This update further improves the runtimes: - Simple checking for collision between two meshes run at >150 FPS - Full 6DOF ROM simulations optimising the translations for each rotational pose run at >5.6 FPS - Ligament path estimation run at >5.1 FPS

Look at that head stabilisation!

Thomas Geijtenbeek@tgeijten.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Emu running simulation