Cy Marchant
@slvrhwk.bsky.social
◇ Paleobiology student ◇ Scientific illustrator ◇ Osteographer ◇ Ancient life reconstructions ◇ PhyloPic contributor ◇ 🦎🦕🦖 ◇ he/him ◇
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/...
Proud to share our latest paper in out in Nature today on the origin of #snakes. We present Tametara mirim, an articulated 3D preserved stem snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. Tametara helped us re-tell the story of snake origins in a novel way... 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
Reconstructed skull of Eunotosaurus africanus, an early reptile from the Permian of southern Africa. 🐢 Long hypothesized to be an ancient ancestor of turtles, recent work led by @semifossorial.bsky.social shows this curious creature is instead a 'turtleized' millerettid. (1/🧵) #FossilFriday
A fossil thought to be key to turtle evolution turns out to be something else - which clarifies where our shelly friends came from. Today’s free newsletter is out (short article + my latest writing + upcoming events + ear perks from the week).
Friday Fragments #15
Turns out a proposed turtle ancestor isn't, but that makes the origins of our shelly friends clearer.
buttondown.com
Thanks to researchers at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, ISU, and their colleagues around the globe, we’ve got the answer to a question perplexing paleontologists for years: What exactly is a turtle? More at www.isu.edu/news/2026-sp.... @gondwannabe.bsky.social #idahostateucose #STEM
IMNH, ISU Researchers Upend Understanding of Turtle Origins
Thanks to researchers at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, Idaho State University, and their colleagues around the globe, we’ve got the answer to a question perplexing paleontologists for years: Wh...
isu.edu
Here's some of what i was commissioned for this study! Skeletal reconstruction of Protorosaurus, a rather plesiomorphic archosauromorph (with completely unique caudal vertebrae though) And the bizarre, basal turtle relative: Pappochelys:
Literally Miguel 🇻🇪@literallymiguel.bsky.social · 2mo agoA very important open access study (doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.…) led by @semifossorial.bsky.social on the ancestry of turtles was published! Eunotosaurus' similarities are just a case of evolutionary convergence, & pantestudines might have a close relationship to sauropterygians within archosauromorpha
A very important open access study (doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.…) led by @semifossorial.bsky.social on the ancestry of turtles was published! Eunotosaurus' similarities are just a case of evolutionary convergence, & pantestudines might have a close relationship to sauropterygians within archosauromorpha
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...
The resemblance is uncanny! What a perfect name for this awesome fish. 🐟🧪
Prosanta Chakrabarty@prosanta.bsky.social · 3mo agoMy goodness this is cute. Short & Harasti (2026) named a new pipefish species after Snuffleupagus (the giant elephant muppet) Image of Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov. by David Harasti. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Result from the Zechstein sea #paleostream! This famous deposit from the late Permian of Central Europe (mostly Germany) has a special place in paleontology history and incidentally has a locality not even a km from where I sit right now.
And with the tiniest little scleral ring I ever did see 🥹
Claude ✡️🦖🦕@cascoclauda.bsky.social · 4mo agoLOOK AT THE BABY LYSTROSAURUS
🎨 "Karoo Life in the late Middle Permian", by Maggie Lambert-Newman 📄 Bordy & Groenewald (2026): "The Karoo Supergroup: Modern insights from the ancient archive of Gondwana" doi.org/10.25131/saj...
Eunotosaurus has a plesiomorphic inner ear shape & few distinct traits that could link it to turtles specifically. Our dataset shows inner ear shapes contain phylogenetic signal, but also many shapes that likely evolved convergently. @olorotitan.bsky.social created this beautiful reconstruction
New paper: we describe the inner ear anatomy of Eunotosaurus africanus, based on a specimen that has not been published previously. Open access @journalsystpal.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
🦕 A new species of baby dinosaur discovered from South Korea's Aphae Island has been named after one of the country's most beloved cartoon characters: Dooly. 🔗 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐭: blog.pensoft.net/.../fossil-x... ➡️ 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲: fr.pensoft.net/article/1781...
Fossil X-ray Reveals New Species of Baby Dino Named after Iconic Korean Cartoon | Blog
Named Doolysaurus huhmini, this baby dinosaur was discovered on South Korea's Aphae Island.
blog.pensoft.net
Fossil evidence suggests Sonselasuchus cedrus, an ancient crocodile relative, transitioned from walking on four legs as a juvenile to bipedal locomotion in adulthood during the Late Triassic. doi.org/hbrtbx
'Peculiar' crocodile ancestor started life on four legs before learning to walk on two
A "peculiar" ancient relative of the crocodile which experts believe began life on four legs before, in adulthood, it learned how to walk on just two has been revealed in a new study.
phys.org
Results from the #paleostream! Arctognathus with Arctops, Tanyka, Nannippus (with giant puffer fish) and Caninosaurus.
Contribute to PhyloPic—researchers use it a lot! www.phylopic.org/images/6a38b...
Tyrannosaurus rex by Manuel Brea Lueiro (CC0 1.0) - PhyloPic
A free silhouette image of Tyrannosaurus rex Osborn 1905 by Manuel Brea Lueiro (License: CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication).
phylopic.org
manubl.bsky.social@manubl.bsky.social · 5mo agoBiggest achievement so far is having my old (and slightly inaccurate) tyrannosaurus silhouette used in this paper in Nature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Scientists find 2 marsupial species, thought to have gone extinct 6,000 years ago, living in the forests of New Guinea www.livescience.com/animals/land...
Scientists find 2 marsupial species, thought to have gone extinct 6,000 years ago, living in the forests of New Guinea
The pygmy long-fingered possum and the ring-tailed glider, two marsupials believed to have died out thousands of years ago, are still alive in Papuan Indonesia.
livescience.com
New paper! How weird could Permian animals get? Turns out, pretty weird. Meet the stem tetrapod Tanyka amnicola from the Pedra de Fogo Formation of northeast Brazil royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Sketch: dacentrurine and stegosaurine stegosaurs coexisting in the Morrison Formation
Just published: A very unusual fish, described here as a new genus and species of loach, and the first groundwater-dwelling fish reported from Northeast India. Meet 𝑮𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒌 𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒂𝒏𝒂! Open access article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Did some work for Dr. Dan Ksepka on some neat fossil birds. Nice to see the creative way the team that just published this paper put these two together.
Ksepka Lab@ksepkalab.bsky.social · 6mo agoAnd it was only about as big as a pigeon! Here is nice size comparison by @jaimeheaddenart.bsky.social showing Rhynchaeites mcfaddeni and a modern Glossy Ibis.
"I believe In evolution, except for the whole Triassic period"
Literally Miguel 🇻🇪@literallymiguel.bsky.social · 5mo agoEVERY CURRENT ART OF THIS ANIMAL IS WRONG!!!!!!! for this to have the normal tail its usually depicted with, it would need a string of like 150 caudal vertebrae, instead of the expected 30-40 it had big manual claws and a big bone support for a MEAN angry brow over the eye
