Lizzy Steell
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lizzysteell.bsky.social
Lizzy Steell
@lizzysteell.bsky.social
91 followers 80 following 28 posts
Birds 🦜 Passerines 🐦 Fossils 🦴 Macroevolution

Post-doc at Girton College and Cambridge University (Sarah Woodhead Research Fellow in Earth Science)
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Reposted by Lizzy Steell
bethanyjallen.bsky.social
I reviewed The Tree of Life by @maxjtelford.bsky.social for @natecoevo.nature.com 🌳
You can access my review for free here: rdcu.be/eOcYY
November 6, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
rspb.bsky.social
A fluffy Long-tailed Tit perched on a bare twig in soft winter sunlight, its white and pink plumage glowing softly. KNOWS WHAT YOU DID 10/10 Nothing scarier than your own past.
October 31, 2025 at 9:24 AM
lizzysteell.bsky.social
Eurasian Jay posing for the camera this weekend ☺️ #birding #photography
A beautiful Eurasian jay sits upright on a branch with a blue sky background Another jay sits amongst the autumn leaves changing colour
October 26, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
nicrawlencenz.bsky.social
www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts...
Ancient bone discovered in New Zealand – and scientists are amazed at what it may belong to | Discover Wildlife
The small foot bone, unearthed in Central Otago, is millions of years old.
www.discoverwildlife.com
October 24, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
nicrawlencenz.bsky.social
What better way to finish off #FossilFriday than to read about the latest discovery from St Bathans of a possible Miocene bowerbird in Aotearoa #NewZealand theconversation.com/a-tiny-fossi... @lizzysteell.bsky.social
A tiny fossil suggests bowerbirds once lived in ancient New Zealand – new research
New Zealand’s ancient bowerbird was smaller and more slender than the species living in Australia and New Guinea today.
theconversation.com
October 24, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
gnavalon.bsky.social
Bowerbirds are Australo-Papuan birds engaging in some of the most flamboyant displays among vertebrates, and they might have been in New Zealand - Aotearoa in the Miocene too!

Amazing descriptive research with a tinge of quantitative flair lead by @lizzysteell.bsky.social

Check it out!

👇
lizzysteell.bsky.social Lizzy Steell @lizzysteell.bsky.social · 22d
🦴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)
An artist's reconstruction of the St Bathans bowerbird. A small bird with long feet, coloured in dark olive green and yellow plumage, with a bright yellow eye. It's holding a thin twig in it's thick, sturdy beak and the bird is perched on a stick.
October 23, 2025 at 9:59 AM
lizzysteell.bsky.social
Check out our @aunz.theconversation.com article covering the St Bathans #bowerbird story!

theconversation.com/a-tiny-fossi...

@nicrawlencenz.bsky.social @atennyson.bsky.social @plubbe.bsky.social
A tiny fossil suggests bowerbirds once lived in ancient New Zealand – new research
New Zealand’s ancient bowerbird was smaller and more slender than the species living in Australia and New Guinea today.
theconversation.com
October 23, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
nicrawlencenz.bsky.social
Welcome to the world Aevipertidus gracilis - the gracile one from a lost age. 14-19 Mya ancient #NewZealand appears to have had a bowerbird. Check out this amazing research mahi led by Elizabeth Steell (www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....). Artwork by Sasha Votyakova/Te Papa CC-BY-SA. 1/9 🧵
October 22, 2025 at 8:44 PM
lizzysteell.bsky.social
🦴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)
An artist's reconstruction of the St Bathans bowerbird. A small bird with long feet, coloured in dark olive green and yellow plumage, with a bright yellow eye. It's holding a thin twig in it's thick, sturdy beak and the bird is perched on a stick.
October 23, 2025 at 8:55 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
fabioalfieri2.bsky.social
And here you can find the plain-language summary🙂

fesummaries.wordpress.com/2025/09/19/w...
Why bird wing bones look so similar inside, no matter how they live
Fabio Alfieri, Oliver E. Demuth, Elizabeth M. Steell, Anne-Claire Fabre, Daniel J. Field This is a plain language summary of a Functional Ecology research article which can be found here. Bones are…
fesummaries.wordpress.com
October 14, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
seananderson.bsky.social
Now available in Systematic Biology, a new paper (and R package) in which we outline an approach to account for non-independence in comparative analyses of lineage-pair traits academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
The Comparative Analysis of Lineage-Pair Traits
Abstract. For many questions in ecology and evolution, the most relevant data to consider are attributes of lineage pairs. Comparative tests for causal rel
academic.oup.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
albertonykus.bsky.social
Flying birds generally exhibit little variation in internal wing bone structure regardless of ecology, but flying vs. flightless species can often be distinguished: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Congrats to @fabioalfieri2.bsky.social! 🪶🧪
Graphs showing variables describing internal structure of wing bones in birds, which are grouped based on ecological traits.
October 14, 2025 at 1:11 PM
lizzysteell.bsky.social
Ever wondered how bird flight ecology shapes the internal bone structure of the wing? Wonder no more because we can tell you! 👇🦅🕊️🦜🪽🐧

Congratulations @fabioalfieri2.bsky.social
October 14, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
albertonykus.bsky.social
New possible Miocene bowerbird from New Zealand, Aeviperditus gracilis: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Congratulations, @lizzysteell.bsky.social! 🪶🧪
Fossilized foot bone of an extinct songbird, shown in multiple views.
October 7, 2025 at 3:14 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
albertonykus.bsky.social
What did we find? Closely related birds don’t always have particularly similar wing bones—in fact, the avian wing skeleton seems to be exceptionally prone to convergent evolution, perhaps due to repeated adaptations to similar functional requirements (like flight style)! 🪶🧪
Bar chart comparing levels of convergent evolution inferred from different anatomical datasets on birds. The dataset for the "present" study exhibits the highest levels of convergent evolution.
August 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
albertonykus.bsky.social
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)
Photo of a mostly white duck (male common pochard) with a rufous brown head and dark neck. It is leaning back on the surface of the water with its wings raised.
August 28, 2025 at 12:58 PM
lizzysteell.bsky.social
A happy afternoon practicing some warbler photography in @rspb.bsky.social Fen Drayton 😊
A photo of a sedge warbler singing, perching in some dead twigs with a dark green background A reed warbler perches amongst the reeds and peeks out
June 14, 2025 at 7:45 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
stubutchart.bsky.social
We've just launched AviList! - the new unified global taxonomic checklist for the world's birds, developed through the Working Group on Avian Classification, including BirdLife, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, IOC and others @birdlifeglobal.bsky.social @birdsoftheworld.bsky.social www.avilist.org
June 11, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
joschuaknuppe.bsky.social
There is no tomorrow for Moa kind.
In this result of yesterdays #paleostream we explore the Holocene of New Zealand, a world we largely lost not even 1000 years ago.
June 9, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
palaeoverse.bsky.social
🚨Palaeoverse Lecture Series🚨

It’s time to announce our Summer 2025 talk schedule 👀
Looking forward to hearing from @spissatella.bsky.social, @sauropodlets.bsky.social, @nmkphylo.bsky.social and @russellgarwood.co.uk!

Sign up here: bit.ly/palaeoverse-lecture-series-2025
A flyer for the Palaeoverse Lecture Series for Summer 2025 June 26th - Dr Katie Collins, Natural History Museum “Both round and upward: Spiral morphometry and how to compare things that are the same, but different” July 31st - Summer break August 28th - Amy Shipley, University of Leeds “Modelling ancient food webs: ecosystem changes across the Pliocene marine megafaunal extinction” September 25th - Dr Nicolás Mongiardino Koch, UC San Diego and Dr Russell Garwood, University of Manchester “The Tree of Life and Death: What do fossil taxa contribute to morphological phylogenetics?”
June 4, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
fernandoblancos.bsky.social
🦏🦣🦌 LARGE paper alert!!! We tracked 60 million years of large herbivore evolution—over 3,000 fossil species—to uncover how ecosystems have changed and reorganized through time. What we found might help us understand the next big tipping point 🧵👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Two major ecological shifts shaped 60 million years of ungulate faunal evolution - Nature Communications
Here, the authors analyze a fossil dataset spanning 60 million years to investigate ecological stability. Their network analysis identifies prolonged stability interrupted by two major functional tran...
www.nature.com
June 5, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
globalchangebio.bsky.social
Fitting the Bill in an Urban World: Hummingbird Beak Shape Responds to Anthropogenic Factors

🔗 buff.ly/vAd0H6v
@lizzysteell.bsky.social
buff.ly
June 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
albertonykus.bsky.social
Do you know whether a falcon is more closely related to a parrot or to a pigeon? Test your knowledge in this quiz on bird phylogeny, designed by me: uquiz.com/quiz/0oXJxF/... 🪶🧪
Bird Phylogeny Quiz
Test your knowledge on the evolutionary relationships among birds. Inspired by Dimetrodone's Ultimate Mammal Taxonomy Quiz.
uquiz.com
May 31, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
hummingbird-the.bsky.social
For #worldparrotday, here's a gorgeous kea I met at Arthur's Pass, New Zealand, this March. What a stunner! 🦜😍🐦🪶 #birds #birdphotography
May 31, 2025 at 2:19 PM
Reposted by Lizzy Steell
afprobert.bsky.social
Two academic (lecturer) positions available at the University of Otago in Aotearoa/New Zealand! One in Conservation Biology, another in Evolutionary Ecology. Links for positions below:
otago.taleo.net/careersectio...
otago.taleo.net/careersectio...
May 26, 2025 at 5:23 AM