Casey Holliday
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crocholliday.bsky.social
Casey Holliday
@crocholliday.bsky.social
Anatomy, morphology, evolutionary biology, developmental biology, biomechanics, paleontology, imaging, maybe crocodiles
Calling Midwest Anatomists and Paleontologists!
Deadlines Extended! Sept 1st for Talks and Posters! Sept 12th for registration. Look forward to seeing you here! @anatomyorg.bsky.social @paleosoc.bsky.social @societyofvertpaleo.bsky.social

www.anatomy.org/.../Meetings...
August 24, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Congratulations to Emma Cooney on graduating with a MS out of the lab. Stay tuned for some wicked cranial
morphology.
May 19, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Happy to meet new people and share our work on imaging and informatics at @bionexuskc.bsky.social in Kansas City.
April 11, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Good times with good people at AAA this week!
April 4, 2025 at 10:55 PM
Reposted by Casey Holliday
Congratulations to our 2025 Class of Fellows! They were recognized at the Fellows reception tonight and received their AAA Fellows pin!🫀🧠

#Anatomy25 #anatomy #education #research #science #aaa #portlandoregon #scientificmeeting #annualmeeting
March 31, 2025 at 4:55 AM
Reposted by Casey Holliday
This project has started a long time ago, but in a galaxy not too far away… Happy to share this new study with @taphonomist.bsky.social looking at the functional morphology and biomechanics of the Rancor. Warning! Nerdy sci fi, palaeo & biomechanics thread following! jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i...
Is a bone a viable weapon when combating a Rancor? Estimating the bite force of an intergalactic mega-predator
Stephan Lautenschlager1,2 & Thomas Clements3 1School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. 2The Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham, UK. 3…
jgeekstudies.org
March 10, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Casey Holliday
New paper out today!

Here we examine how a simple behaviour, head scratching, has evolved in birds. There are some relatively complex changes going on that vary across clades, as demonstrated by @gallinaciega.bsky.social analyses.
www.frontiersin.org/journals/eth...
#birds #ornithology #evolution 🪶
March 20, 2025 at 2:43 PM
If you’re hanging out at the 5th Palaelontolgical Virtual Congress, and you like crocs (or even not!) visit my talk here and join the comments! www.palaeovc.org/6/great-tran...
SPOTLIGHT TALK: GREAT TRANSFORMATIONS IN CROCODYLIFORM EVOLUTION • Palaeo VC
www.palaeovc.org
March 19, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Accompanying our recent paper documenting evolutionary changes in jaw muscles along the line to birds, is a collection of models on Sketchfab illustrating 3D resultant vectors of jaw muscles along with skulls and a few different ways of visualizing data like these. (www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Dinosaur Jaw Muscle Evolution - A 3D model collection by Holliday Lab (@holliday)
This collection shares 3D models of skulls and jaw muscle resultant vectors demonstrating phylogenetic changes in muscle orientation along the lines to modern birds. While temporal muscles shifted to ...
sketchfab.com
March 18, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Happy to share this new paper! We explored the relationships of head shape and feeding mechanics in dinosaurs. A cascade of changes from big brains, to reoriented muscles, to a breakdown of linkages resulted in avian powered kinesis, but not until neognathes.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
March 17, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Movers and shakers in the lab: Chris, Aryan, Corrine, John, Cerise and whiteboard.
March 12, 2025 at 10:31 PM
Catch my talk at #5thPVC! Thanks for the invite! Psst… it’s on croc heads.
11. Unraveling Crocodylomorph Evolution. Insight from fossils and new methodologies.

#5thPVC #paleontology⚒️🧪🐊
March 11, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Lab had a great time at the Columbia Young Scientist Expo. Constant parade of families keen on discovery.
March 11, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Hey folks!!! Come join us at Mizzou this October for a Paleo-Themed @anatomyorg.bsky.social Regional Meeting: PALEO CONNECTED.
Sponsored in part by @paleosoc.bsky.social, we're looking forward to having you all. Watch this space.
February 14, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Who says birds don’t have teeth?
February 7, 2025 at 2:36 PM
We’re cleaning some lab spaces to make way for impending construction. Found an entiantiornithine fossil high up on a shelf with some other skeletons. New taxon methinks.
February 5, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Casey Holliday
SICB is back! Please follow the society's new BlueSky account: @sicb.bsky.social SICB recognizes that the scientific enterprise is only successful because of the people performing that science. Without those people, science and all of the political and economic strength that it provides, stops.
February 5, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Got to see the latest Squirrel-raptor at The Field Museum. Its exquisite preparation was done by Connie Van Beek and Akiko Shinya. Here’s Connie working on a more recent bird from the Green River Fm., a similar type of slab fossil, just ~90degrees of Eocene longitude away and ~90million yrs later.
January 23, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Got to visit the Field Museum Friday. Got my picture with Geology Collections Manager Bill Simpson. Bill helped get me started in this grand adventure in Paleo. I’m forever grateful to him and all the rest of the Sue prep team, who still let me hang in the lab when I show up with my own students.
January 21, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Casey Holliday
I am very proud of the work that went into this new Sanger Lab publication. This paper was led by postdoc Marta Marchini and a number of my lab's undergraduate students, each of which contributed unique skills or effort to the completion of this project.
January 18, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Best lab photo ever
January 6, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Getting hyped for #SICB2025. We'll have a talk and a poster on Pangolin tongues as part of the Hydrostats symposium. Get ready for a multimedia pangopalooza!
December 18, 2024 at 6:18 PM
Meet PhD student Chris Zobek, thanks to @nocturnetwork.bsky.social! Chris has been busy visualizing and measuring the diversity of jaw muscles in snakes. Really cool stuff. nocturnetwork.org/blog/nocturn...
December 8, 2024 at 5:13 PM
Birds are frightening! Ichthyornis AMNH FARB 32773.
December 6, 2024 at 9:45 PM