Field Palaeobiology Research Group
@fieldpalaeo.bsky.social
Prof. Daniel Field's bird evolution and palaeontology lab at the University of Cambridge. We watch living birds and write papers about dead ones. Lab website: fieldpalaeo.com
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
🚨NEW PAPER OUT🚨
The anatomy of bird lower jaw bones has been understudied...until now! Here, we examine avian mandibular anatomy, answering some and raising more questions about the phylogenetic affinities of key early crown-group birds. Read on!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The anatomy of bird lower jaw bones has been understudied...until now! Here, we examine avian mandibular anatomy, answering some and raising more questions about the phylogenetic affinities of key early crown-group birds. Read on!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Mandibular morphology clarifies phylogenetic relationships near the origin of crown birds - BMC Ecology and Evolution
Background The phylogenetic relationships of fossil birds near the origin of the avian crown group remain debated, in part due to a limited amount of character evidence from incomplete fossils. The av...
link.springer.com
January 28, 2026 at 2:50 PM
🚨NEW PAPER OUT🚨
The anatomy of bird lower jaw bones has been understudied...until now! Here, we examine avian mandibular anatomy, answering some and raising more questions about the phylogenetic affinities of key early crown-group birds. Read on!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The anatomy of bird lower jaw bones has been understudied...until now! Here, we examine avian mandibular anatomy, answering some and raising more questions about the phylogenetic affinities of key early crown-group birds. Read on!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
Thrilled!
Congratulations to Hanna Kokko for receiving this year’s ASAB medal! Hanna has done extraordinary work and we are so pleased to honour her at #ASABWinter2025
December 16, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Thrilled!
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
🦴New fossil alert🦴 Introducing Aeviperditus gracilis, a possible bowerbird from the Miocene of New Zealand. My first fossil description!
Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)
Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)
October 23, 2025 at 8:55 AM
🦴New fossil alert🦴 Introducing Aeviperditus gracilis, a possible bowerbird from the Miocene of New Zealand. My first fossil description!
Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)
Artwork by the amazing Sasha Votyakova (Te Papa CC-BY-SA) (🧵1/11)
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
Happy to share my first postdoc work published in @funecology.bsky.social ! A huge thank-you to @oliverdemuth.bsky.social @lizzysteell.bsky.social @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social @grumpydrfabre.bsky.social and to @snsf.ch
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Constrained variation in the internal architecture of avian wing bones
Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 14, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Happy to share my first postdoc work published in @funecology.bsky.social ! A huge thank-you to @oliverdemuth.bsky.social @lizzysteell.bsky.social @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social @grumpydrfabre.bsky.social and to @snsf.ch
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
It's been online for a month but now in final format: a new paper I'm on is out today! We analyzed over 200 features from the bird wing and shoulder girdle skeleton to see how they're distributed across the bird family tree. academic.oup.com/iob/advance-... 🪶🧪 (📷 @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social)
August 28, 2025 at 12:58 PM
It's been online for a month but now in final format: a new paper I'm on is out today! We analyzed over 200 features from the bird wing and shoulder girdle skeleton to see how they're distributed across the bird family tree. academic.oup.com/iob/advance-... 🪶🧪 (📷 @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social)
Exciting news at Cambridge! We are launching the Darwin-Hamied Centre to promote research at the intersection of biodiversity and economics christs.cam.ac.uk/news/darwin-.... We are advertising two 5-year Senior Research Fellowships—application deadline 22nd June! christs.cam.ac.uk/vacancies-ch...
May 23, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Exciting news at Cambridge! We are launching the Darwin-Hamied Centre to promote research at the intersection of biodiversity and economics christs.cam.ac.uk/news/darwin-.... We are advertising two 5-year Senior Research Fellowships—application deadline 22nd June! christs.cam.ac.uk/vacancies-ch...
Now available for preorder, Mike Brooke's 'No Island Too Far' describes a career pursuing secrets of seabird biology at the ends of the earth. Mike is my predecessor as Strickland Curator at
@zoologymuseum.bsky.social
and the book is sure to be fascinating! pelagicpublishing.com/products/no-...
@zoologymuseum.bsky.social
and the book is sure to be fascinating! pelagicpublishing.com/products/no-...
May 22, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Now available for preorder, Mike Brooke's 'No Island Too Far' describes a career pursuing secrets of seabird biology at the ends of the earth. Mike is my predecessor as Strickland Curator at
@zoologymuseum.bsky.social
and the book is sure to be fascinating! pelagicpublishing.com/products/no-...
@zoologymuseum.bsky.social
and the book is sure to be fascinating! pelagicpublishing.com/products/no-...
Congratulations, Lizzy!
It's finally out! Together with Allison Yi Hsiang and @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social, we explored relative homoplasy in a range of bird matrices and introduce a new parsimony measure, the relative homoplasy index (RHI) (1/n)
academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...
academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...
Revealing patterns of homoplasy in discrete phylogenetic datasets with a cross-comparable index
Abstract. Investigating patterns of homoplasy can improve our understanding of macroevolutionary processes by revealing evolutionary constraints on morphol
academic.oup.com
May 14, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Congratulations, Lizzy!
Congrats to PhD student Grace Burton! Learn how soft tissue volumes affect estimates of pneumaticity in archosaurs, open access: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10..... Thanks to @paleofox for the invitation to contribute to this special issue! Plus a Calgarian Swainson's Hawk on the cover!
The influence of soft tissue volume on estimates of skeletal pneumaticity: implications for fossil archosaurs | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Air space proportion (ASP), the volume fraction in bone that is occupied by air, is
frequently applied as a measure for quantifying the extent of skeletal pneumaticity
in extant and fossil archosaurs....
royalsocietypublishing.org
March 3, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Congrats to PhD student Grace Burton! Learn how soft tissue volumes affect estimates of pneumaticity in archosaurs, open access: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10..... Thanks to @paleofox for the invitation to contribute to this special issue! Plus a Calgarian Swainson's Hawk on the cover!
'Dino Birds' airs on @pbs.org in N. America tomorrow (9pm, 5th Feb.). Follow research from our lab and colleagues around the world revealing the origin of birds. Hope you enjoy it!
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
@stevebrusatte.bsky.social @gnavalon.bsky.social @ksepkalab.bsky.social
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
@stevebrusatte.bsky.social @gnavalon.bsky.social @ksepkalab.bsky.social
Dino Birds
Fossils reveal how birds survived the killer asteroid and became today’s only living dinosaurs.
pbs.org
February 4, 2025 at 9:52 AM
'Dino Birds' airs on @pbs.org in N. America tomorrow (9pm, 5th Feb.). Follow research from our lab and colleagues around the world revealing the origin of birds. Hope you enjoy it!
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
@stevebrusatte.bsky.social @gnavalon.bsky.social @ksepkalab.bsky.social
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vi...
@stevebrusatte.bsky.social @gnavalon.bsky.social @ksepkalab.bsky.social
Embryo development provides mechanistic insight into the evolution of form, so enabling comparable points in development to be compared among species is crucial. Congrats to @evodevoba.bsky.social on this new cross-species staging table for waterfowl! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Morphological Criteria for Staging Near‐Hatching Embryos of the Domesticated Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides)
We devised novel staging criteria for near-hatching embryos of the Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and Swan Goose (Anser cygnoides) based on four easily measurable morphological traits. We show that our...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 30, 2025 at 10:37 AM
Embryo development provides mechanistic insight into the evolution of form, so enabling comparable points in development to be compared among species is crucial. Congrats to @evodevoba.bsky.social on this new cross-species staging table for waterfowl! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Delighted to share this *epic* exploration of extant bird comparative morphology—the centrepiece of
@albertonykus.bsky.social's PhD thesis. Among the most detailed investigations of phylogenetic signal in the avian skeleton. Bravo, Albert! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
@albertonykus.bsky.social's PhD thesis. Among the most detailed investigations of phylogenetic signal in the avian skeleton. Bravo, Albert! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
January 27, 2025 at 9:22 AM
Delighted to share this *epic* exploration of extant bird comparative morphology—the centrepiece of
@albertonykus.bsky.social's PhD thesis. Among the most detailed investigations of phylogenetic signal in the avian skeleton. Bravo, Albert! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
@albertonykus.bsky.social's PhD thesis. Among the most detailed investigations of phylogenetic signal in the avian skeleton. Bravo, Albert! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1....
There have been lots of amazing advances in palaeornithology over the last few years. In this invited review we discuss recent discoveries bearing on the origin of the bird brain, shoulder, palate, and air-filled skeleton. Check it out open access here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
January 22, 2025 at 2:19 PM
There have been lots of amazing advances in palaeornithology over the last few years. In this invited review we discuss recent discoveries bearing on the origin of the bird brain, shoulder, palate, and air-filled skeleton. Check it out open access here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
Reposted by Field Palaeobiology Research Group
If you need a summary of recent advances in the field of bird paleontology, my labmates at @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social have a new paper out reviewing the origins of the avian brain, palate, wing skeleton, and air-filled bones! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 🪶🧪 (📷Field et al.)
January 22, 2025 at 2:12 PM
If you need a summary of recent advances in the field of bird paleontology, my labmates at @fieldpalaeo.bsky.social have a new paper out reviewing the origins of the avian brain, palate, wing skeleton, and air-filled bones! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 🪶🧪 (📷Field et al.)
Our first paper of the year, led by John Peacock, investigates barn owl hearing physiology, which surprisingly remains underexplored despite their extraordinary hearing capabilities. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... Recent shots of Western, Eastern, and American Barn Owls below!
January 15, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Our first paper of the year, led by John Peacock, investigates barn owl hearing physiology, which surprisingly remains underexplored despite their extraordinary hearing capabilities. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... Recent shots of Western, Eastern, and American Barn Owls below!
Arrived in Ecuador today & was greeted by hummingbirds, including this Sparkling Violetear. How apropos that our study on hummingbird bill bending was published today! Led by @ecophysicslab, this project began when I started my PhD... >14 years gestation! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
November 27, 2024 at 11:51 PM
Arrived in Ecuador today & was greeted by hummingbirds, including this Sparkling Violetear. How apropos that our study on hummingbird bill bending was published today! Led by @ecophysicslab, this project began when I started my PhD... >14 years gestation! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
If you're interested in a career working with important zoological collections, the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology is hiring an assistant conservator! www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/46400/. Bonus points if you can tell me where (and when!) this drawer of birds comes from...
November 27, 2024 at 11:16 AM
If you're interested in a career working with important zoological collections, the University of Cambridge Museum of Zoology is hiring an assistant conservator! www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/46400/. Bonus points if you can tell me where (and when!) this drawer of birds comes from...