Palaeobiologist in Manchester | Fossils, Parenting, Animal Evolution, Fish, Phylogeny, Existential Despair, Taphonomy, and occasionally Eurovision
Joined March 2013
- Tweets 3,129
- Following 712
- Followers 2,244
- Likes 3,970
968 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
29 Sep 2022
OK, so the world of early vertebrate palaeontology is EXPLODING, with 4 papers in this week's @Nature. Short* thread of why fossil fish-botherers are excited and why you should be too 🐟🦈
Spoiler alert: your evolutionary origins have just stretched further back in time.
ALT Xiushanosteus from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05136-8
ALT Tujiaaspis from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04897-6
ALT Qianodus from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05166-2
ALT Fanjingshania from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05233-8
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18 Jun 2025
The Fossil Files is a new podcast where two palaeontologists explain and dissect exciting new finds. Episode 1: How does your plesiosaur swim? 2/n
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Rob Sansom🐟 retweeted
24 Apr 2024
Another job opening! I am hiring a postdoc in my lab at University College London to work on developing new phylogenetic comparative methods for modeling the evolution of complex phenotypes! Details here: ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/search…
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Rob Sansom🐟 retweeted
17 Apr 2024
Our next event in the Palaeoverse #lecture series will be held Thurs, 25 April at 14:00 UTC! @lauramulvey479 will present a talk entitled "Assessing the adequacy of morphological models used in palaeobiology"
Sign up: bit.ly/palaeoverse-lecture-s…
#computational #palaeoecology
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Rob Sansom🐟 retweeted
27 Feb 2024
📢 Calling all palaeo PhD students!! Registration is now open for #ProgPal2024, our conference run by students for students. Sign up to present to your peers in a supportive student-only environment 👇
26 Feb 2024
#ProgPal2024 📢📢REGISTRATION IS OPEN📢📢
After registration (It’s free!!) you can choose to submit an abstract
We’re looking forward to seeing you register!! Let us know if you have any questions :) link to registration: palass.org/meetings-events/p…
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Rob Sansom🐟 retweeted
28 Feb 2024
This is a really superb opportunity for Early Career Researchers! Why not nominate yourself, you could receive £250 and membership of PalSoc - but better still, it looks brilliant on your CV! #ECR #WomeninSTEM #Palaeontology #Paleontology #blackinpalaeo #womeninpalaeo
4 Jan 2024
Did you publish something in 2023? Why not nominate yourself (or a colleague) for the Edward Forbes Prize? This award for Early Career Researchers recognises contributions to systematic palaeo of British fossils. More info: palaeosoc.org/grants-prizes/… #ECR
ALT Advert for the Palaeontographical Society Edward Forbes Prize, with a deadline of the 28th February 2024.
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14 Feb 2024
JOB! JOB! JOB! Lectureship in biology and zoology (teaching focused) here at University of Manchester, in the School of Biological Sciences 🧑🎓🪲🦋🐸🫏🧬
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2 Feb 2024
Someone has locked their bike to my bike and it’s been stuck since yesterday. What is the protocol or etiquette is here?
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23 Jan 2024
I'm about 300 years late to the party, but Vivaldi's Four Seasons is pure 🔥🔥🔥youtube.com/watch?v=NqAOGduI…
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19 Jan 2024
New week layout:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
GLADIATORDAY
Rest
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Rob Sansom🐟 retweeted
16 Jan 2024
I'm hiring a postdoc for a collaborative @NSF & @NERCscience-supported project! Our US/UK team examines phenotypic and functional diversification in early ray-finned fishes. Work draws on 3D models of mandibles from μCT and synchrotron tomography. Ad: careers.umich.edu/job_detail…
ALT 3D model of Devonian fish jaw with large fangs.
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15 Jan 2024
The danger of inviting students to ask you anything during live lectures via Mentimeter is that they ask you stuff like this:
ALT Are you an unfilled niche in the Cambrian? Coz I'm bout to explode
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15 Jan 2024
But I shall take this as a positive, because to formulate this question means that they have understood about three different specific learning objectives from the unit
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12 Jan 2024
What the HELL is going on with hagfish? These weird slime producing aberrations are unlike any other vertebrate and have always proved an evolutionary conundrum, but now we have GENOOOOME 🧬
Let's take a look at how today's @NatureEcoEvo paper changes things... 1/9
ALT Sixgill Hagfish (Eptatretus hexatrema), Peter Southwood, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish#/media/File:Eptatretus_hexatrema_15727711.jpg
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12 Jan 2024
Here is Champi's longer and better thread and also a link to the paper nature.com/articles/s41559-0…
x.com/PascualAnaya/status/16…
8 Apr 2023
📌After a long time publicly available in @ensembl for everyone to use, I'm glad to share our #biorxiv preprint introducing the first genome reference of a #hagfish (Eptatretus burgeri) one of the only major vertebrate groups w/o a published assembly 🧵1/n
biorxiv.org/cgi/content/shor…
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