David Levering

@biogeoverse

Paleontologist --> Educator --> Program Director Founder and leader of the @sternbergcamps.bsky.social national science education program. Co-Chair of the @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social Communications Committee Determined progressive. He/Him.

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Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y biogeoverse.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

David Levering@biogeoverse· 13d

Finally meeting @suethetrex.bsky.social!

David Levering@biogeoverse· 13d

First time back at the Field Museum since I came with my grandparents in ~1993!

David Levering@biogeoverse· 29d

*Assuming* the reporting is correct that Adam Driver is our new Magneto in the modern day MCU, my guess is that this iteration will be a survivor of the ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War of the early/mid 1990s. I’m not necessarily advocating for this approach, but it would solve the age problem.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jul 4

Me every morning when I open my news feeds

David Levering@biogeoverse· May 17

Me as I'm teaching myself new capitalism skills to hopefully make science careers a little more accessible to underprivileged kids in a capitalist hellscape

David Levering@biogeoverse· Apr 18

Currently a thunderstorm stretching from Oklahoma to Canada is blowing its way across North America. Wild.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Apr 8

Regarding potential virtual paleontology meetings. (I built and ran the 2023 SVP virtual meeting.)

If there’s a desire for an online-based robust virtual paleontology “meeting”, my honest best advice is the folks that really really want this to happen aggregate a leadership team and make it happen. This isn’t a dig (🥁) at all, but it’s not going to happen through SVP this year. I ran the 2023 virtual meeting and promise there just isn’t enough time on the calendar to go the SVP route.

If a team of 8-12 highly motivated, reliable individuals can be brought together on this and establish 10-point lists of benefits, challenges, and deliverable targets, I will enthusiastically help however I can in a consulting capacity. Please understand though that however much work you think this will be, double that and you might be close. Not trying to discourage anyone, but that’s the reality of these things. That said, accessibility is crucial and this overall concept is definitely worth pursuing.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Apr 4

Some thoughts on our vertebrate paleontology community health and paths forward.

Another year, another noticeable overall drop in female enrollment in our high school programs.

Things making paleontology seem hostile to personal safety or career viability, especially things that get wide reach in social media spaces, are absolutely going to harm our ability to recruit and retain talented, motivated, serious potential future colleagues. Some of my best recent female students have been migrating out of paleo in college, citing concerns about health of the field as a safe, serious career space. Fair or unfair, that’s the message reaching them through their various information channels.

This is a nesting-doll of a problem, starting with how we police our own professional spaces for bad behavior and apply accountability. No matter how much progress we’ve seen over the past 20+ years, we are still far from where we need to be. Communities are like gardens. If you leave them to grow unattended or only focus attention on a small part, you’ll soon lose those spaces to the wilds.

It’s also an emotional awareness problem. Telling angry people their frustration or outrage must take a backseat to the written letter of policy just turns people away or angers them against you further. It’s avoidable bad community management strategy. Listening, adjusting and empathetically explaining policy is a good start. Explaining and providing sincere, accessible, tangible pathways to channel community sentiment one is hearing into action also helps.

In 12 years building and running the Sternberg Camps operation, I’ve had my own instincts and policy approaches called out from pretty much every angle. Sometimes the input is underinformed, sometimes it’s misplaced and asking the program to be something it isn’t. Other times it’s frustratingly presumptuous or accusatory. But best of all, sometimes it’s correct and speaks to a need that just wasn’t adequately on my radar. This has been especially true as the program has grown post-COVID. In those cases, sometimes it’s something small I can fix myself. In other cases it’s a big issue that I simply don’t have the bandwidth to absorb solo. What’s the answer? Delegation, management, communication, and trust. If the person bringing me the issue is down to help me solve it, I hire them part time to figure out how to tangibly address that problem with me. They learn how to tackle their concern effectively, they teach me a lot about my former blindspot, and we make progress on a problem that helps future staff and students. I’ve done this ~6 times since 2023 and this has absolutely been the most successful operational strategy I’ve applied in recent years. Delegation and empowerment mean giving up some control, which can be scary. Good leadership though means prioritizing operational success and stability for the long-term health of the organization.

Finally, we reach the communication problem. Taking good positive steps is spectacularly less impactful without an empathetic, robust listening and messaging strategy in place. I do this through the Camps’ Discord server, social media, and by keeping in regular contact with current and former staff and students. Constant honest temperature-checking to make sure the value and values I’m aspiring to deliver on are coming through effectively. Yes, it’s a huge amount of work. It also means I have a pretty good (though certainly not perfect) view of the landscape I’m navigating, emerging problems, and things that went well that I should do more of for certain audience segments.

If paleo wants to see healthy, robust, safe community growth, that’s going to mean collaborative, proactive, multifaceted strategy to actively make it that way. This would be a learning process, and would undoubtedly bring its own emotional flareups along the way. Listening and deliverable-focused collaborative problem-solving are our way forward, one way or another. Otherwise we give our community up to the viscousness of the wilds.

Thanks for reading. ❤️

David Levering@biogeoverse· Apr 2

SVP is a really important organization to me, so understand that this is all in effort to make it a safer community space long-term. I may not do much research, but I know a thing or two about community interface and brand management. So those are the skills I’m bringing to this ongoing problem.

Hi folks! Despite outward appearances, the Horner+Epstein debacle and its wider implications are still being discussed and attended to as SVP assesses potential paths forward.

I am working on an angle of this. Right now what I really need is data. So if you made a post about this in the past two months, I would super appreciate screenshots of your post, screenshots of comments, shares by others, reaction ratios, and any info from the “insights” section of the post. DM me as much as you have. I’m really looking for an accurate read on reaction volume and audience reach. Feel free to pass this request on to others as well.

This is not meant to instigate a fresh round of inflammatory outrage. This is case-building. Appreciate the assistance of anyone and everyone who can contribute.

Edit: If you have anecdotes or just occurrence data from DMs, that would be helpful too. I actively don't want names, just info preferably with timestamps if possible.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 24

Dwayne "The Locks" Johnson

Maybe he's born with it. Maybe it's Te Fiti

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 19

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 17

College football awareness coming in clutch on a zoom call with some southern parents this week! 🏈🦖

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 16

Sneak peak of a work in progress…

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 8

@paleeoguy.bsky.social with some refreshing proactive problem-solving proposals for improving and formalizing paleo field and lab skills training. #PaleoFest2026

David Levering@biogeoverse· Mar 7

At the Burpee Museum of Natural History #PaleoFest2026 this weekend visiting Jane and all the scientists, some of our former staff, and even a couple Sternberg Camps students in attendance!

These are not "T. rex hands", these are "N. lethaeus" hands!

Posing with Jane at the Burpee Museum.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Feb 21

This is a post about the United States, and academic paleontology.

Policies and cultures that fail to engender trust, safety, and equity amongst our most vulnerable absolutely must be overhauled to meet the reality we find ourselves in. If we are not prioritizing the security of our entire community to flourish over the whims of the powerful, then we are failing our future.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Feb 16

Text or no text?

David Levering@biogeoverse· Feb 14

New art commission from the fantastic @clanaghan.bsky.social!

Mosasaur swimming at the surface with a group of summer camp kids plus the adult leader riding on its back. Three Nyctosaurs fly over them.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Feb 8

Regarding events of last week in SVP and the wider vertebrate paleontology community.

First, I want to be very clear that I am not speaking in any official capacity for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) with this post. I’ll be speaking of the society of course, but this is not an organizational official statement. I’m also not going to speak super directly to the details of the Epstein Files revelations that erupted over the weekend and still continue. I believe the stories I’ve heard from numerous female SVP members about other behaviors, words and actions by accused individuals and many other men. There should be a robust Ethics Committee investigation that includes the possibility of bannings and revocations as potential consequences for a totality of offenses both recent and otherwise. This goes for any SVP member, not just those with outsized influence or media presence.

Communications Committee (which I am co-chair of) was not involved in crafting the statement released by SVP earlier this week. We are discussing how to better integrate relevant committees in future situations that require precise, expeditious official commentary from SVP. While the technical legalistic language in that statement is correct, IMO it severely missed the mark on understanding and acknowledging the hurt and anger amongst membership. The community response appeared to be in part driven by decades of women in membership feeling their real experiences with harassment, objectification, and assault continue to be minimized and ignored. Due to structural inequities, legal fears and power imbalances we especially see influential repeat-offenders relegated to whisper-network warnings rather than face any true professional or personal consequences. As anyone with a shred of empathy can understand, this has over time led to intense and even angry frustration, members quitting the society, and others avoiding membership altogether.

Despite robust cultural and operational changes within SVP over the past 20+ years, the outcomes we are experiencing are still deeply problematic. If the outcomes are chronically proven inadequate, that means the systems producing those outcomes are inadequate, and should be fixed where appropriate or thrown out in favor of a complete rebuild. I have not arrived at these conclusions lightly. I have been in private conversation with current and former SVP members (mostly women) nearly constantly since this past Sunday. Everyone from students who only joined very recently, early careers expressing dismay at the silence of more senior figures, established mid-career members, and those who have left membership in frustration. The act of leadership relies most on listening, and I’ve been doing my best to do that where I can this week. In light of this assessment, and with the help of extensive dialogue which I am immensely grateful for, I have submitted the following action items to SVP leadership to be included in discussion at an upcoming followup town hall meeting:

1) Strongly consider an overhaul to our Code of Conduct rules regarding interpersonal behavior, ethics reporting, and ethics violation policies within the bounds of technical legal protections required for all parties. This includes but is not limited to banning from meetings, banning from society membership, and revocation of Society awards as official potential consequences. If our current systems for dealing with abusive or unprofessional behavior are not getting the job done, we should fix them.

2) Assemble comprehensive, expansive strategies that SVP leadership can implement with the goal of addressing the underlying unprofessional actions and attitudes that lead to misconduct behaviors propagating in our community. In function, the goal is to educationally inoculate against toxic and unprofessional behaviors.

3) SVP will produce a media series that guides members through the full start-to-finish ethics violation reporting and administrative action processes. We believe empowering membership with this information will help us all hold each other accountable and make SVP as safe and welcoming as possible to those wishing to contribute to the betterment of our professional community. (This one is more directly under my control and thus I can speak more assertively about it.)

4) SVP should provide quarterly progress updates on initiatives to address member safety as well as violation accountability procedures. This *would not* mean a change in policy for public disclosures on the details of ongoing ethics violation investigations. It will mean providing members with updates on process overhauls and finding new ways to provide allowable transparency to membership without creating legal vulnerabilities.

We are a society of incredibly smart, talented, generous and hardworking people. Circumstantial excuses do not protect our community members. These chronic problems are fixable if we have the collective will to do so.

Thanks for your time if you made it all the way through. I look forward to working with anyone with good-faith interest in making the changes our organization clearly still needs.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jan 27

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jan 19

Governor Ventura, it's time for you and that mustache to come out of retirement. Minnesota needs you!

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, ready to make 🧊 a literal descriptor.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jan 15

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jan 12

You know a really fabulous place for nerdy kids to boost their social skills? @sternbergcamps.bsky.social! Registration is now open!🦕

David Levering@biogeoverse· Jan 10

Artist credit: Andrew Precker

Blue bird styled like the Minnesota state flag thrashing the "don't tread on me" snake which has been decapitated by the birds righteous burning laser-eye-beams. 🤘🏻

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 23

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 15

Let's get ready to baaaannnqquuueeettt!!! #2025SVP

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 12

Lovely time at the #2025SVP welcome event at the Lapworth Museum of Geology!

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 12

Pretty much standing room only for @jgn-paleo.bsky.social presenting on the Dueling Dinosaurs and recent Nanotyrannus publication. Starting out providing context for Nanotyrannus research and controversy. #2025SVP

Hall 4 at the 2025 SVP meeting during Zanno & Napoli talk on recent Nanotyrannus publication.

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 12

Yara Haridy on Ordivician vertebrates and the origin of bone remodeling: Synchrotron scanning tech really shines when used with tiny fossils such as those from jawless fish. This includes bony scales on the body of Astraspis. Investigation shows bone remodeling predates osteocytes! #2025SVP

David Levering@biogeoverse· Nov 12

Starting #2025SVP talks with the Synchrotron Radiation Micro-CT Scanning in Paleontology symposium in Hall 1! I always love seeing the talks on advances in this technology and its applications in paleo.