🔥The 9th Round of Easy Loan, Earn $40 Reward is in progress❗️ ⏰ Promotion Period: January 15th - Feburary 15th, 2025 👉 Register now and check more details at gate.io/campaigns/358

A week ago I passed my PhD Viva!! Firstly, I would like to thank the examiners for the great discussion and their suggestions, and my supervisors Davide Pisani, Phil Donoghue Ana Riesgo 👩🏽‍🔬🧬🔬 for guiding me through this marvelous and difficult journey on sponges' evolution! #PhDone

A new monographic study led by our student Nicolas BRUALLA 🦇📸 sheds light on the diversity and evolution of the vocal apparatus in bats 🦇. This study provides a robust foundation for future research into the evolution of echolocation in bats. Open access! doi.org/10.1093/zoolin…

Evolution of the #beak is related to reduction of #teeth, but does not explain toothlessnes #edentulism Aguilar-Pedrayes et al 2024 Royal Society Publishing The coevolution of rostral keratin and tooth distribution in #dinosaurs doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2…

Exploring biomechanics of Proterochampsa sheds light on unique features compared to modern crocs. Despite differences in adductor chamber, Proterochampsa's bite forces rival Alligator, revealing adaptations in S. Amer. archosauromorphs Simão-Oliveira et al doi.org/10.1002/ar.253…

Read this month's Editors' Choice: The dual function of prokinesis in the feeding and locomotor systems of parrots by melody young, Michael Granatosky Michael Granatosky & co @nyitanatomy @nyitcomdo Alec Wilken Armita R. Manafzadeh journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/22…

Very pleased to announce that as of today, I am now an associate editor Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology! Looking forward to seeing exciting new fossil marine mammal papers being sent my way! Many thanks to Olivier Lambert for the opportunity, and to @SaberCatWoman and Mike for the JVP welcome!

Check out our new preprint and this awesome thread by Nicolás Mongiardino Koch on the use of chronospaces to assess the impact of methodological choices over time calibration of phylogenetic trees! biorxiv.org/content/10.110… github.com/mongiardino/ch…

Just trying something fun - the reconstructed evolutionary pathway of the jaw, from the ancestor of modern crocs to the American Alligator

For centuries, paleontologists have had to rely on intuition re whether reconstructed joint poses "look right." Today in Nature Communications: we created a way to formalize & test that intuition, & discovered that articular surface interactions distinguish locomotor poses in dinosaurs 🧵

Fantastic work from Vanessa Thomas' Honours research. Stay tuned for the manuscript just accepted in Journal of Morphology. Natalie Warburton Murdoch University

New paper about the functioning of saber teeth led by the amazing Dr Tahlia Pollock 🥳 combining 3DGM with biomechanical testing we identified functional optimality as a key driver underpinning the repeated evolution of extreme saber-tooth morphologies 🔪🦁 cell.com/current-biolog…

A new UoB Palaeobiology study reveals why sabre-toothed predators repeatedly evolved. Sabre-teeth evolved because they were optimal for puncturing prey - their blade-like teeth giving them a serious advantage. 🔪 brnw.ch/21wPTny Monash University Dr Tahlia Pollock

How do you test just how lethal the extraordinarily long canines of sabre-toothed cats like Smilodon were?

Dr Tahlia Pollock UoB Palaeobiology Evans EvoMorph Lab It turns out that classic sabre teeth would puncture flesh with up to 50 per cent less force than the other teeth could, which shows why these weirdly long canines were so useful and evolved again and again. Read more about this New Scientist here: newscientist.com/article/246340…

Functional optimality underpins the repeated evolution of the extreme “saber-tooth” morphology: Current Biology cell.com/current-biolog…

Really cool work on sabre teeth here; produced by a fantastic group at UoB Palaeobiology! Congrats to all authors. Great stuff! 😁🐅🦷

The long, sharp, blade-like canines found in many extinct predators evolved at least five times throughout history. Dr Tahlia Pollock Monash University theconversation.com/new-research-r…