Professor of paleontology and Earth systems at Vilnius University. My interests are: theoretical paleontology, evolution, geology, stratigraphy, philosophy of biology and geology, climate at scales great and small. https://twitter.com/AndrejSpiridon4
"appearance of the new apex predator cf. Saurosphargidae relatively soon after the [P\Tr] extinction event coincides with the reappearance of predatory cephalopods and precedes the full ecological and taxonomic recovery of benthic groups in the Dolomites" tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio
Dark palynomorphs from the dark period of the history of life: "Continental-scale fern savannah wildfires during the end-Triassic mass extinction suggests ...heat stress, and periods of prolonged drought alternating with extreme precipitation..." www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio
Happy to share this 'capstone' project from my time as a postdoc @umich.edu, where we show that hierarchically nested bursts of body-shape evolution may underlie much of perching-bird diversification over ~50 million years. Free access link here: rdcu.be/fuxB1
Rates of passerine body plan evolution in time and spaceNature Ecology & Evolution - A reconstruction of the evolutionary history of passerine body plans over the past ~50 Myr shows rare bursts of phenotypic innovation near the origin of major...rdcu.be"...results contrast with the common view that the geo-logically stable Proterozoic Era experienced little eukaryotic evolutionary innovation and indicate that all current supergroups were already established in the Mesoproterozoic." 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio
Miguel Méndez SandínApparently the "boring billion" was actually exciting! We provide molecular evidence of complex Mesoproterozoic eukaryotic communities. So happy to see this out 🥳 Thanks to @phoebefossil.bsky.social , Hélène Morlon & @fburki.bsky.social for a lovely collab! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
The natural history collections at the University of Texas, holding maybe 5 million specimens, is partly closed down because our buildings are falling apart and UT is doing the bare minimum of life support. We could fix it for 1/5th the price of a vanity purchase of a single dinosaur specimen.
AFP News Agency🦖 A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton nicknamed 'Gus' sells for $50.1 million at Sotheby's in New York, making it the most valuable dinosaur fossil bought at auction after a 10-minute battle between seven bidders u.afp.com/SKv4