Mario Coiro
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lepidodendron.bsky.social
Mario Coiro
@lepidodendron.bsky.social
2.1K followers 1.1K following 170 posts
(Palaeo)Botanist at Senckenberg Museum Frankfurt. #Cycads, early #Angiosperms, all sorts of #Leaves. Patron of #plantpaleoart. Ronin. Also food, beer, music, boardgames. He/Him. Opinions are my own.
mariocoiro.blog
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lepidodendron.bsky.social
Mario Coiro @lepidodendron.bsky.social · Mar 22
last week my latest paper on #cycads came out.
The article deals with the idea of cycads as "living #fossils", but what does this mean exactly, and what did we actually test? A thread for #FossilFriday!
www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Disparity of cycad leaves dispels the living fossil metaphor - Communications Biology
An analysis of leaf disparity through time in cycads shows that this group has a dynamic and expanding morphological diversity until the present, and thus does not fit the ‘living fossil’ hypothesis o...
www.nature.com
Reposted by Mario Coiro
jgpausas.bsky.social
I'm very sad to say William Bond, of the University of Cape Town & Fellow of the Royal Society (@royalsociety.org ), has passed away. It is a great loss. He was an enthusiastic ecologist and a critical thinker. I learned a lot, and I still had a lot to learn from him. RIP. 😢

🧪🌎🔥🌿🌳🪴🌐 #PlantScience
Three books by W. Bond and collaborators: Fire and plants (1996), Fire in Mediterranean ecosystems (2012), and Open ecosystems (2019).
December 4, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
lewisajones.bsky.social
Are you familiar with the @palaeoverse.bsky.social Lecture Series?

Check out our YouTube Channel for lectures from community experts on method development and application in Palaeontology:

www.youtube.com/@ThePalaeove...

We will be announcing the next set of lectures in the New Year, stay tuned!
Palaeoverse
Palaeoverse (https://palaeoverse.org) is an organisation that aims to bring the palaeobiology community together to share resources, work toward data standards, and improve reproducibility in palaeobi...
www.youtube.com
December 22, 2025 at 11:33 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
aldpaleo.bsky.social
Pas de photo pour ce #FossilFriday mais pour les francophones vous pouvez m'écouter parler un peu de plantes fossiles pour la chronique Micro Labo de Radio Clapas 🌿⛏️
www.radioclapas.fr/portfolio/mi...
Micro Labo - Radio clapas
www.radioclapas.fr
December 19, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
sgn.one
📣 #Forschungsnews: Winzige Archive – Stoffwechsel-Moleküle speichern Urzeitwelt 🦴🌍
Forschende haben erstmals durch die Analyse kleinster Stoffwechselprodukte – sogenannte Metaboliten – in Tierfossilien die Umwelt früher Menschen entschlüsselt.
👉 https://sgn.one/h7n

📷 Bromage, Bin Hu; Schrenk
Fossiles Knochenfragment einer Antilope in Sediment eingeschlossen Aufnahme der Olduvai-Schlucht in Tansania, eine weite Landschaft mit grünen Büschen und markanten roten Felsformationen unter blauem Himmel.
December 19, 2025 at 10:30 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
paleobyliam.bsky.social
After illustrating quite a few ferns, I've now moved on to cycads! Here are some examples of Jurassic cycad morphology. With great thanks to @lepidodendron.bsky.social for his insightful blog post about cycads for #paleoart!
#paleobotany #cycad
December 18, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
restingdinoface.bsky.social
And if you need more prehistoric tales as the year turns over, When the Earth Was Green came out just this year and expands the story.
When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
bookshop.org
December 18, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
restingdinoface.bsky.social
I love that the online copy for Tyrant Lizard Queen says “from the author of the beloved The Last Days of the Dinosaurs” right at the top. I think it is, which is pretty amazing for a story about one of the worst times on our planet.
The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World
bookshop.org
December 18, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
ppaleoart.bsky.social
An excellent article on plant paleoart, its history, its importance in fighting plant blindness, and how we can further the field as a whole! Congrats to @pepecarrion.bsky.social and coauthors!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Plants in the shadows: Bridging the gap in paleoecology and paleoart
Paleoart, long considered peripheral to paleoscience, has become a powerful medium for visualizing extinct life and landscapes. Yet its historical tra…
www.sciencedirect.com
December 18, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
pepecarrion.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1016/j.hi...

The Mismeasure of Neanderthals. Our latest paper, a critical review of Neanderthal iconography through time, with epistemological, paleobiological, ethical, and aesthetic contributions. Thank you for reading and for your comments.
December 4, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
scottzona.bsky.social
Zamia spp. is the host plant for Eumaeus atala caterpillars. Both larvae & adults are aposematic. Zamia contains cycasin, a carcinogenic & neurotoxic glucoside. This toxin is not to be trifled with! 📷: larvae by Judy Gallagher CCBY2 #Zamiaceae #Aposematism #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Photo of two caterpillars (one partially hidden behind a leaflet), which are orange with yellow spots, on a Zamia leaflet. Photo of the adult butterfly, which is mostly black with blue spots, but the abdomen and immediately adjacent wings are orange-red. Photo by Scott Zona CC BY-NC 2.0.
December 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
alexwebblab.bsky.social
#PlantResearch Enjoyed writing with @beverleycubg.bsky.social a perspective about wonderful paper by Valencia-Montoya et al. in this week's Science. Cycads use thermal radiation to affect pollinators. Is this why Cycads are not as diverse as angiosperms? share.google/Xj8iH9E4tqvN...
Infrared as a pollination signal
Relying on infrared communication over visual color could have limited cycad evolution
share.google
December 12, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
aldpaleo.bsky.social
Assistant Professor position in non-seed plant diversity ( #bryophytes, #ferns, #lycophytes) Department of #Botany of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver:
botany.ubc.ca/job-postings...
⚠️ Deadline is soon, December 19.
#Paleobotany is explicitly included 🌿⛏️
UBC
botany.ubc.ca
December 12, 2025 at 7:41 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
evomri.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
The slides for my #messel2025 talk "Connecting paleosciences and society: How Wikimedia platforms facilitate global engagement with the Messel Pit's scientific dimensions" are up on #zenodo under https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17764211 .

#openscience #worldheritage
Fig. 1 of Koenigswald, W.V., Lehmann, T. & Wappler, T. Extraordinary occlusion of caniniforms in the Eocene Masillabune martini from Messel. Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12549-025-00672-3 .
December 11, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
scaldararu.bsky.social
Our department's Quantitative Botany Journal Club has chosen its best paper of the year.

🥁🥁🥁🥁

It is "Using machine learning to link climate, phylogeny and leaf area in eucalypts through a 50-fold expansion of leaf trait datasets" by Guo et al besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Using machine learning to link climate, phylogeny and leaf area in eucalypts through a 50‐fold expansion of leaf trait datasets
This image illustrates the initial step to extracting leaf area from a specimen image using a new machine learning method. The authors used this novel method to reveal that the relationship between l...
besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 11, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
sarahmackattack.bsky.social
Alright! We have just a few of these shirts left.

In Orange, we have M, 2x, and 4x
In Magenta, we have everything between small and 3x.

Designed by the unparalleled @franzanth.bsky.social!
Thank you @davis.social for being our model!

Get one before they're gone at SquidFacts.net!
A man wears a shirt than says "Biology is Bigger than Binaries", in pink, with a bee, clownfish, and lily
December 12, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
sheardcat.bsky.social
Anyone looking for a Australia-based postdoc? Like animal behaviour / coding / birds? My fantastic collaborator, Iliana Medina, is advertising a position researching bird nests:

unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/UoM_Ex...
Research Fellow in Behaviour and Ecology
Role type: Full Time; Fixed Term for 2 years Faculty: Faculty of Science Department/ School: School of Biosciences Salary: Level A: $87,266 - $118,416 (PhD Entry Level - $110,319) plus 17% super Colla...
unimelb.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com
November 19, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
pablidopsis.bsky.social
Apply if you're interested in using mathematical modelling to learn about plant development 👇 Rea is a fantastic boss and supportive mentor, can recommend 100%
December 12, 2025 at 5:38 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
willgearty.bsky.social
Very proud of the work that the @palaeoverse.bsky.social team has done up until now and very excited for what's to come over the next few years! Watch this space!

#rstats #palaeontology #paleontology
December 10, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
newphyt.bsky.social
#Evolution of #conifer seed cones

📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
#TansleyReview by @kmatsunaga

@WileyPlantSci #PlantScience
Morphology of extant conifer seed cones.
December 7, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
drmambobob.bsky.social
I have a funded PhD studentship on offer on the phylogenetics and evolution of living and fossil felids. Deadline is 19 Jan 2026.
#paleontology #PhD
Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of Reading on Fi...
PhD Project - Bayesian and Machine Learning Approaches to Reveal the Evolutionary Synamics of the Early Diversification, Dispersal, and Adaptive Evolution of Living and Fossil Felidae at University of...
www.findaphd.com
December 3, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
scottzona.bsky.social
Many leaves (or parts of leaves, such as the leaf tip or leaf margin) are modified into sharp defensive armaments. Modified leaves or leaf parts are spines. This Osmanthus heterophyllus 'Sasaba' has wonderfully spiny foliage. 📷: Arb O'Retum CCBYNCSA2. #Oleaceae #spine #Botany 🌾🧪🌱
Alt: Photo with POV looking down on the shoots of this plant with opposite leaves. Each leaf is three-lobed, and each lobe ends in a spine tip.
December 3, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
paleobyliam.bsky.social
Continuing my exploration of Jurassic paleobotany, this time with ferns of the family Dipteridaceae. Fossil taxa like Clathropteris have a really interesting shape that for me is pretty difficult to get right.
#paleobotany
December 1, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
alexisrastier.bsky.social
#Paleobotany #Devonian #Fern
Last week, I attended the EMBO workshop in Vienna on early land plants and terrestrialisation.
There, I presented my research on rhacophytalean evolution, focusing on a reappraisal of the genus Cephalopteris from the latest Famennian of Bjørnøya. 🌿🌿
December 2, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
shellygaynor.bsky.social
New paper just posted with @rschley.bsky.social et al: doi.org/10.1111/nph.... (1/n)
The frequency and importance of polyploidy in tropical rainforest tree radiations
The presence of two or more copies of the genome in an organism, termed ‘polyploidy’, is a crucial force in plant evolution, generating genetic, phenotypic and ecological diversity. The Amazonian tr...
doi.org
November 24, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by Mario Coiro
paleobyliam.bsky.social
More paleobotanical studies - this time the Mesozoic dipteridacean fern Hausmannia. Another example of how ferns during this time exhibited a diversity of forms that can spice up #paleoart
#paleobotany #sciart
December 2, 2025 at 5:15 AM