Andrej Spiridonov
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andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Andrej Spiridonov
@andrejpaleo.bsky.social
4.4K followers 2.6K following 1.1K posts
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
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andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Egg-stealing dinosaurs (Manipulonyx) were a thing in the Mesozoic. Unique combinations of resources enable unique niches and unique body plans.
www.zin.ru/journals/tru...
🧪 #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
Reconstruction of the position of forelimbs of Manipulonyx reshetovi
December 26, 2025 at 9:21 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
A great article (which I was lucky reviewing) which shows the importance of our assumptions on the geometric properties of fitness landscapes. Non-Lipschitz continuous dynamics and punctuated evolution.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🧪 #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
The mathematical engine of evolutionary change.
December 26, 2025 at 3:59 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Merry Christmas!
Christmas tree
December 25, 2025 at 3:15 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
The perimeter of the Baltoscandian ice sheet was banded by a giant sand belt, something of the "frozen Sahara". We still have in Lithuania and Poland, now overgrown by pine forests, huge northern dune fields...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
kirj.ee/earth-public...
🧪 #Geology ⚒️
European Sand Belt Georadar (GPR) map of a portion of southern Lithuania. Field of Pleistocene sand dunes crossed by the Ūla river.
December 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Interesting article on the evolution of views of Stephen Jay Gould in relation to punctuated equilibria.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio
Non-technical Summary of the "Punctuated equilibria in the 1970s: Stephen Jay Gould between biological improvement and irreducible hierarchy"
December 22, 2025 at 3:06 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
I really love the sense of landscapes of the #PrehistoricPlanetIceAge and how this megafauna is placed there. During glacial maxima, continental interiors (except southern North America) were much drier, colder and harsher - almost Mars but with oxygen.
🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio
Mammoth herd in the cold desert. Mammoth herd in the frozen landscapes Last Glacial Plant biomes
December 22, 2025 at 12:40 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Sometimes archeological and fossil records preserve incredible evidence of past interactions: human who lived in what is now Bulgaria, was attacked by the European lion, survived, and was cared for.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 #Geology ⚒️ #Paleobio #Archeology
Trauma on human paleoskull and the matching to the lion bite. Comparison of the mould of the human skull and left carnassial teeth of the lion and cross-sections.
December 21, 2025 at 6:32 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Complex causes of the "the first" mass extinction from the point of view of graptolites:
"Thus, the LOME involved intense species selection and the wholesale alteration of the clade diversity structure of a major element of the zooplankton."
doi.org/10.1017/9781...

🧪 #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
Diversity patters of graptolites across GOBE Dynamics of environments and the graptolites macroevolution.
December 20, 2025 at 9:26 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Popular in Lithuania science books. Did you recognized yours? 😉
Popular science book titles
December 18, 2025 at 3:19 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Mamamlian spatio-temporal synchronization:
"identified two Balkanatolian island-hopping routes across the Western Neotethys potentially enabling the dispersal of small-bodied Asian primates, rodents and artiodactyls to Afro-Arabia."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
Middle and late Eocene paleogeographic reconstructions of the Neotethyan realm at 41.5–41 Ma (A, D), 40–38 Ma (B, E) and 34–33.5 Ma (C, F), and potential dispersal routes and mechanisms for mammalian fauna (B, C, E, F). The squares delimit the debated areas, reconstructed differently in Scenarios 1 and 2.
December 18, 2025 at 11:26 AM
Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov
ninadavtian.bsky.social
Another new @egubg.bsky.social highlight paper for @climatecerege.bsky.social, with my colleague @lucbeaufort.bsky.social!
A foram- and coccolith-based story led by the former @unibremen.bsky.social @marumunibremen.bsky.social PhD student Pauline Cornuault:
doi.org/10.5194/bg-2...
🧪 ⚒️ 🌊 👩‍🔬
#PaleoSky
Orbital-scale variability in the contribution of foraminifera and coccolithophores to pelagic carbonate production
Abstract. Throughout the Cenozoic, calcareous nannoplankton and planktonic foraminifera have been the main producers of pelagic carbonate preserved on the seafloor. While past variability in pelagic c...
doi.org
December 17, 2025 at 7:01 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Cool to see conodonts as "legal" vertebrates on the European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists 2026 conference logo! 😃
Thank you @darjadankina.bsky.social 😅
eavp2026.weebly.com/about.html
🧪 #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
EAVP 2026, Vilnius logo
December 17, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov
orcasketcher.bsky.social
#InkTober2025 Day 17: Ornate. A Palaeoloxodon for today, just realized that’s the third elephant species I have drawn this InkTober. Think it’s clear what my favorites are ;)
Brushpen, Copic and white pastel pencil.
#inkdrawing
An inkdrawing of a Palaeoloxodon, an prehistoric elephant.
October 17, 2025 at 9:46 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Ecotypes: stable attractors or interrupted continuous phenotypic gradients? 🤔
www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...
🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio
Uses of the ecotype concept beyond ecology and evolution. Models of ecological divergence and sources of isolation.
December 16, 2025 at 11:50 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Whaat? Tetrapods were apparently absent from a fourth of a supercontinent for tens of Ma??
"Diverse assemblages of Carboniferous and Permian tetrapods ... in eastern Pangaea (east of the Ural seaway)...only become abundant from the mid-Permian onwards."
doi.org/10.1016/j.ea...
🧪 #Geology #Paleobio
Distribution of Roadian tetrapods.
December 15, 2025 at 9:15 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Cool study and talk at #Palass25 with significant ramifications for punctuated dynamics of clade diversification and the inference of macroevolutionary patterns from molecular data.
🧪 #Geology #Macroecology #Paleobio #EvoBio
December 14, 2025 at 12:16 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Great talk by Arindam Roy at the #PalAss25 #conference about explainable AI pipeline for the automatic CT scan 3D reconstructions. First big steps on freeing paleontologist from labor intensive specimen reconstruction toward the work on higher level questions.
Arindam Roy explains automated CT segmentation and the 3D fossil reconstruction
December 13, 2025 at 9:59 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
This study deserves it's own meme
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧪 #Paleobio #Climate
Meme about plant transition and the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.
December 11, 2025 at 7:15 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Starting my journey to the #PalAss25 #conference . A new bar at the Vilnius Airport -- 'uppercrust' -- that's where most of the fossil record resides 😅
Bar 'uppercrust'
December 11, 2025 at 3:35 AM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Cool study - now we can have glimpses of coloration of non-feathered dinosaurs too.
archive.is/VsIZe
🧪 #Paleobio
Headline "Dinosaurs like Diplodocus may have been as colourful as birds.
December 10, 2025 at 1:07 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Save dates for this excellent interdisciplinary meeting 👇
🧪 #Ecology #Macroecology #Paleobio #EvoBio
pdmannion.bsky.social Phil Mannion @pdmannion.bsky.social · 18d
We'll be hosting a joint Crossing the Palaeontological–Ecological Gap (CPEG) meeting & Conservation Paleobiology Symposium @ucl.ac.uk in London in August 2027, which aims to bridge spatial and temporal gradients between palaeontology, ecology, and conservation: www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical...
December 8, 2025 at 4:16 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Ice age - doesn't mean that only warm-blooded and cold-resistant mammals and birds prowled the world. Many places around the equator were hot and humid. On the opposite, Carboniferous period usually imagined as the warm-humid, actually was a a time of a severe ice age.
🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio
Carboniferous forest. Reconstruction taken from: https://www.deviantart.com/holplok/art/carboniferous-close-up-4-1245931327
December 8, 2025 at 1:35 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
"...enhance models, highlighting opportunities such as incorporating time-varying connections, adaptive topologies, and multilayer structures to better represent the temporal dynamics and multilevel interactions characteristic of biological systems."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧪 #EvoBio
Multilayer networks. Each layer represents a different level of organization, type of interaction, or even time snapshot. Connections exist both within and between levels. Context dependence and network nodes
December 7, 2025 at 11:41 PM
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Glad to share our new article which is dedicated to the stratigraphy and paleoenvironments (facies)of the Ludfordian (late Silurian) in relation to the largest carbon isotopic excursion of the Phanerozoic — Lau Extinction Event
1/5
www.geology.cz/bulletin/ful...
🧪 #Geology #Macroecology #Paleobio
Stratigraphical Ludlow (late Silurian) section in the Lapgiriai-1 core.
December 5, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov
svalver.bsky.social
Why does every decade promise a method, a language, or now #AI that will “fix” #software #complexity?

Software never behaved like an engineered artifact.

Our research shows it evolves like an #ecosystem.

A thread ↓
December 4, 2025 at 12:46 PM