Newly named dinosaurs of 2025 (except extant birds), arranged phylogenetically.
A new paper I’m on is out today! (Well, it’s been online for a month, but now it’s been properly formatted.) We analyzed over 200 characteristics in the bird wing and shoulder girdle skeleton to see how well they match the phylogenetic relationships of modern birds inferred from recent genomic studies. As it turns out… not very! In fact, the avian wing skeleton appears to exhibit exceptionally high levels of convergent evolution, probably as a result of repeated adaptation to similar functional requirements (such as flight style).
Even so, we were able to find combinations of skeletal features that characterize bird groups previously recognized only using genetic data, which will likely be helpful in identifying fossil birds given that bones of the wing and shoulder girdle are among the most commonly preserved elements in the avian fossil record.
For more details, the paper is open access and available here. (Photo above by my supervisor and coauthor Daniel Field.)
Recent discussions on the Dinosaur Mailing List be like
(Yes, the Dinosaur Mailing List still exists, or more precisely, a new incarnation of it called the Dinosaur Mailing Group or DMG was founded when it became known that the original would cease operations.)
SPOILERS FOR NOBITA’S DIARY ON THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
In the English translation of the Doraemon manga, the bee people who appear at the end of Nobita’s Diary on the Creation of the World gave themselves the scientific name Homo sabees. I find this puzzling…
…because in the Japanese version, their name was Homo habeelis, which would have still worked for an English-speaking audience and is a much better pun!
(I’ll overlook the fact that in our taxonomy, humans and bees would not share the same genus, sapient or not. After all, we don’t know what scientific name the bees use for humans.)
In general, the English translations for scientific terms in the Doraemon manga leave something to be desired. For example…
(In the Japanese version, Dsungaripterus is correctly called a pterosaur and not a “flying dino”. Tuojiangosaurus is also said to be the most complete stegosaur known from Asia, not the most complete fossil of any kind.)
If that weren’t enough, the English version also commits the sin of translating paleontology as “archaeology”!
Looking for more original stories about prehistoric animals? How about a post-apocalyptic tale about our primate ancestors trying to survive after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction? The second-to-last issue of @tmkeesey’s Paleocene comic has only 1 week left to get funded on Kickstarter, so please consider supporting!
Watching papers on megatheropods come out be like:
This is why I study microtheropods, a field where absolutely zero drama occurs.
(Blazing inferno? Where?)
New episode of Through Time and Clades! And… it’s our last one, for now. @killdeercheer and I explain why, look back on our experiences with the show, and discuss what lies in store for the future.
New episode of Through Time and Clades! @killdeercheer guides us through the great diversity of fossil representatives from our hominin lineage, including early members of our own species.