Robert Sansom
@fossilrob
Palaeobiologist in Manchester | Fossils, Parenting, Animal Evolution, Fish, Phylogeny, Existential Despair, Taphonomy, and occasionally Eurovision
Did a lack of sex hold back the evolution of the first animals? To answer this question, you need some lovely Ediacaran fossils and lots of interesting maths. An x-rated double hitter for @thefossilfiles.bsky.social this week with @egmitchell.bsky.social and @tweetisaurus.bsky.social
Manchester is trapped in a foul smelling blanket of smoke blowing off the wildfires on the moor 😥
We have been fanboying over Myotragus both here and in Manchester. Here is some of Dorothea Bates material:
Tortoises! Live cuttlefish! Pleistocene fossils! Sea grass! Vultures! Our first ecology and palaeontology undergrad field course to Mallorca is off to a strong start
Who’s that at our departmental seminar today? It’s the lovely @macroecoevoale.bsky.social wowing us with dinosaurs, ecology, and global science!
We also found evidence of bony skeletal type tissues in these otherwise squishy vertebrates. nice.
The specific chemistry and distribution shows evidence of a complex eye and a retinal pigmented epithelium, early in our evolution. COOL.
Let's look closer at the eye. The Copper shows a really nice Camera-type eye structure, not seen before with normal light.
The Zinc picks out nicely the eyes, the 'gills', and some mystery unknown structures, but NOT the 'mouth'
Here is that same face, that only a mother could love, visualised in high powered X-rays at the Stamford Synchrotron to show Zinc
Here is Jamoytius's gormless face in fossils from the Early Silurian of Scotland
New paper story time. 👁️🐟🦴🩻 Here is your gormless jawless relative Jamoytius: [1/8]
This student feedback has me dead. Does it mean they want more or less worms?🐛 🪱
🪨💥🌎🦖🦕 What were dinosaurs up to before the asteroid hit? In the latest @thefossilfiles.bsky.social, @tweetisaurus.bsky.social and I sit down with @stevebrusatte.bsky.social to talk about new insights from New Mexico, out now on YouTube or where ever you get your podcasts youtu.be/l4Q6ifORvVY?...
Will AI replace palaeontologists? Can we use AI to find, classify, and interpret fossils? 🤖🦖🐚 New episode of @thefossilfiles.bsky.social looks at just that for #FossilFriday
👀 one of these “Landmarks Papers in Vertebrate Palaeontology” looks familiar! #SVP2025 @systbiol.bsky.social
The tension is building at #SVP2025 in hall 1 as the crowd builds for Nanotyrannus
Here’s a sneak peak where I feebly try to justify the 18 year gap between the genesis and completion of this project with @Emma. Can you beat this gap?
I’d prefer not to be making the final finessing touches to tomorrows talk whilst on the train to Birmingham for #SVP2025, but that is where we are