@DoubleBeam

A paleontologist who loves to research & share all things sauropod (🦕) related. Curator of Vert Paleo @FrostScience. PhD. FLS. He/Him.

Joined April 2016
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NEW PAPER DAY! After A LONG TIME in the works, I want to share with you all the VERY 1ST CASE of an avian-style RESPIRATORY INFECTION in a non-avian DINOSAUR! You heard me right readers – AND IT’S IN A #SAUROPOD! (Ewan Wolff, Matt Wedel, Sophie Dennison, & @WitmerLab)
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HA! I beat @TomHoltzPaleo *AND* Ben Creisler in posting a new paleo paper!  Just published in @thePeerJ, a paper with @histo_holly, Laura Rooney, & Joe Frederickson on what we believe is the *first* ceratobranchial (aka hyoid) ever found/reported from a pachycephalosaur! 🧵
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We also question hyoids as reliable osteohistological recorders of growth - but we didn't, nor are we wading into any ontogimorph debates (but "Draco" ain't a real thing...)
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It's also neat that for such an iconic group that we've known of for well over 100 years, this is a bone we've never seen before. And 2026 has been a good year for pachycephalosaur 'missing bones', 'cause we've found, and are reporting on, the two that were 'missing' 😎
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If I had a nickel for every paleontologist with a pachycephalosaur tattoo posing with a pachycephalosaur fossil, I’d have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Here's Sally Hurst & I with a HUGE specimen of Prenocephale we're working on.
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(*also, Sally & I did not plan to color coordinate... But, I got to the Institute first that day, so she's the one who needs to change...)
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🎉🎉 *IT'S HUNTER'S BIRTHDAY*!!!! 🎉🎉 My baby boy turns *7* today! 7?! How can it be 7 years already?! Here's a big birthday steak for the big birthday man, and here's to the bestest boy! (and per tradition, the annual birthday growth curve)
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Holy cow! 😲 Here are two great sauropod (🦕) papers that I've completely spaced on mentioning: 1) Anatomical network analysis of sauropodomorph cranial topology. 2) Built for bulk: posture, microanatomy and soft tissue shaped gigantism in Sauropoda. 🧵
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"These findings suggest that sauropod gigantism was sustained by lineage-specific combinations of femoral geometry, internal architecture and articular soft tissues." (fig 6 from Silva Junior et al)
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Which I think is hella cool & goes to show that sauropods just simply didn't get big throughout their evolutionary history. Throughout their history & throughout various clades, there were various ways - & various combos of those ways, that they achieved their immense sizes. -fin
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I swear I was gonna do a tyrannosaur #FossilFriday even before Tromerosaurus dropped! 😅 Each time I'm at the MIP, even I have to admire and drool over the 'baby' Tarbosaurus MPC-D 107/7. Check out the 'chicken wing'-sized articulated arm from this specimen!!!!🤩
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Does anyone out there by chance have a pdf of these two papers? 1) KHOSATZKY, L.I. 1997. Big turtle of the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Russian Journal of Herpetology 4:148–154. And...
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2) Sukhanov, V. B., 2000: Mesozoic Turtles of middle and central Asia. In, Benton, M. J., Shishkin, M. A., Unwin, D. M. and Kurochkin, E. N. eds., The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia, p. 309–367. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Thanks in advance!
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I repeat: 🤮🤮🤮🤮
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