Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Joschua Knüppe

@joschuaknuppe.bsky.social

Result from the Joggins Formation #paleostream! This Canadian site is an absolute classic and even if you are not familiar with its name you probably know at least one of its major players...

February 3, 2026 at 3:54 AM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Skye McDavid

@skyemcdavid.com

Alickmeron Sen & Ray, 2025 is an objective junior synonym of Alwalkeria Chatterjee & Creisler, 1994 @slvrhwk.bsky.social @ijreid.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Timeline of taxonomic history of Alwalkeria maleriensis

February 2, 2026 at 1:03 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Randall Munroe

@xkcd.com

Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/

3-panel comic. (1) [Three small arthropods on ocean floor.] ARTHROPOD 1: Now that we’re multicellular, what are your plans? I’m gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them! ARTHROPOD 2: I’m gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff! ARTHROPOD 3: I’m gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals. (2) [Silence] (3) ARTHROPOD 1: *Dude.* ARTHROPOD 2: Can you *please* just be normal about this? ARTHROPOD 3: *What??!*

January 28, 2026 at 7:57 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Robert Gay

@paleorob.bsky.social

First paper of 2026 is out for #FossilFriday, and the first of probably several ornithischian papers over the next interval. Here my coauthors and I describe some tantalizing bits that suggest that ornithischian diversity in the Morrison Formation is higher than previously recognized.

The first page of the paper described in the post.

January 23, 2026 at 8:34 PM

Cy Marchant

@slvrhwk.bsky.social

Very excited to share Scyllacerta creanae, a new Permian stem-reptile from South Africa known from an aggregation of several individuals. This specimen provides unprecedented detail regarding the anatomy of the early reptile skull. 🦎

(1/🧵)

Graphic illustrating the reconstruction process for Scyllacerta creanae (SAM-PK-K7710). The holotype aggregation specimen (left) comprises four skulls and at least six nearly complete skeletons preserved in lifelike positions. Using synchrotron micro-CT scans of the skulls, the bones could be segmented, digitally isolating them from the matrix and allowing their full morphology to be studied in detail (top center). Combining information from all four skulls, a reconstructed version could be assembled, depicting the likely life appearance (center, with each bone in a distinct color). This reconstruction can be used to make line drawings for science communication and skeletal reconstructions (bottom center). These reconstructions were the basis for a detailed life restoration of the head of Scyllacerta (bottom right, by @LiterallyMiguel). Despite its incredibly small size (top right, compared to a human hand), the known individuals were likely nearing full maturity.

January 23, 2026 at 11:47 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Brandon Peecook

@gondwannabe.bsky.social

This #FossilFriday we are pleased to have published the new younginid taxon Scyllacerta from the late Permian of South Africa 🇿🇦
This beautiful aggregation has the holotype and has been in the literature for 30 years as “juvenile Youngina”.
Photo taken before scanning at the @esrf.fr

A small bit of grey rock containing the entwined and overlapping skeletons of several small lizard-like reptiles. On white foam with a scale bar.

January 23, 2026 at 7:25 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Xavier Jenkins

@semifossorial.bsky.social

Introducing a new Permian reptile: Scyllacerta creanae

With a tympanic fossa on the quadrate and no lower temporal bar, Scyllacerta challenges long-standing ideas about when-and-how hearing evolved in reptiles 🦎👂

🔗 doi.org/10.1111/pala...

Skull of Scyllacerta, reconstructed based on scans of four nearly complete skulls.

January 23, 2026 at 1:56 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

The Palaeontological Association

@thepalass.bsky.social

The origin of the tympanic fossa in reptiles revealed by a late Permian neodiapsid: new species Scyllacerta creanae onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #FossilFriday @semifossorial.bsky.social @morphobank.bsky.social

Top left: photograph of a grey slab containing multiple fossils, with vertebral columns clearly running vertically (SAM-Pk-K7710). This is a group of six Scyllacerta creanae individuals, including the holotype, a late Permian neodiapsid reptile from South Africa (scale bar at top right is 2 cm). Bottom right: a computer reconstruction of the skull based on three of the individuals in the fossil block. Scale bar at top right is 5 mm.

January 23, 2026 at 1:08 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Literally Miguel 🇻🇪

@literallymiguel.bsky.social

Got encouraged to do one of these lol

#Portfolioday #paleoart

I love pretty scenery and accurately depicting animals in their enviroments!!! :P

January 13, 2026 at 7:04 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Gen

@trigonotarbida.bsky.social

Well this is as done as it's going to get. Tiliqua frangens, a megafauna skink from pleiocene and pleistocene australia with large pointy scales feeding on spring wildflowers. #palaeoart #palaeoart #reptile #lizard

Digital illustration of a brown skink with white markings with large pointy scales, it is eating wildflowers and there are vegetated sand dunes in the background.

November 15, 2025 at 5:13 PM

Cy Marchant

@slvrhwk.bsky.social

"Scylla and Charybdis" 🦀

Semi-stylized watercolor + ink sketch of the swimming crab (Portunidae) species Scylla serrata (aka 'mud crab' or 'black crab'). The crab is uncolored, shown from the front, with its front limbs raised. The background features wavy stripes of red, orange, and yellow, alternating with sepia. #NoAI

S. serrata is found throughout coastal regions around the Indian and Pacific oceans, from South Africa to Hawaii. Like many other portunids, this species is economically valuable and is common in aquaculture for human consumption.

Semi-stylized watercolor + ink sketch of the swimming crab (Portunidae) species Charybdis smithii. The crab is uncolored, shown from the top, facing the viewer. The background features wavy stripes of green, blue, and purple, alternating with sepia. #NoAI

C. smithii is found throughout coastal regions around the Indian Ocean, prevalent from South Africa to India.

January 9, 2026 at 1:50 AM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Brandon Peecook

@gondwannabe.bsky.social

#2025SVP was a hit for Idaho and the IMNH, with a big showing for Peecook Lab members past and present! @garyonyx-mcgoy.bsky.social @slvrhwk.bsky.social @zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social @paleorob.bsky.social
@idahostateucose.bsky.social

An unintentionally well-coordinated bluish purple group of smiling paleontologists.

November 16, 2025 at 11:00 AM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Prof Susie Maidment

@tweetisaurus.bsky.social

Out in @nature.com today, we shake up the ornithischian family tree. Remember those weird Late Cretaceous iguanodontians, the rhabdodontids? Well they're weird because they aren't iguanodontians. They're ceratopsians. Well, at least some of them are... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A hidden diversity of ceratopsian dinosaurs in Late Cretaceous Europe - Nature

New results indicate that rhabdodontids and the previously described Ajkaceratops are actually distinctive European ceratopsians, a group better known from Asia and North America.

www.nature.com

January 7, 2026 at 4:57 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Randall Munroe

@xkcd.com

Sauropods

xkcd.com/3185/

Comic. [Top panel: Long-necked dinosaur with red X over it.] [Bottom panel: two smaller dinosaurs the same shape except their neck isn’t long, while in the background there’s an extremely long neck criss-crossing the frame like a snake. Green check mark in center.] [caption] Thanks to modern paleontological reconstructions, we now know that most sauropods had short necks, and all those extra vertebrae belonged to the sauropod colony’s queen.

December 29, 2025 at 9:11 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Jay

@kakapojay.bsky.social

After four months and 36 illustrations, I present the final Kem Kem chart – a look at of one of the most incredible ecosystems the world has ever seen.

Short thread below!

#sciart #paleoart

Size comparison between Araripesuchus, Xericeps, Siroccopteryx, Rebbachisaurus, an indeterminate leptocleidid, Galianemys, Laganosuchus, Neoceratodus, an indeterminate iguanodontian, Hamadasuchus, Alanqa, Spinosaurus, an indeterminate titanosaur, Anhanguera, Ornithocheirus, Nicorhynchus, Aidachar, Elosuchus, Afrotapejara, Carcharodontosaurus, Onchopristis, Norisophis, Simoliophis, Bawitius, Apatorhamphus, Deltadromeus, Leptostomia, an indeterminate abelisaur, an indeterminate noasaurid, an indeterminate dromaeosaur, Concavotectum, Axelrodichthys, Tribodus, Haimirichia and myself.

December 22, 2025 at 10:07 PM

Cy Marchant

@slvrhwk.bsky.social

👀

Skye McDavid @skyemcdavid.com · Dec 9

The good news is that I've had another manuscript accepted.

The bad news is that it's another boring nomenclatural note that approximately 3 people will care about.

The good news is that it has a cool skeletal diagram infographic that @slvrhwk.bsky.social made!

December 10, 2025 at 5:55 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Tess Gallagher

@tessasaurus.bsky.social

Excited to announce that my second manuscript, “Fossilised Melanosomes Reveal Colour Patterning in A Sauropod Dinosaur” has been published in
@royalsociety.org !! Diplodocus scales are complex and diverse, and it turns out their color patterning was even more so. A 🧵🦕 1/26

December 10, 2025 at 3:14 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Curtis Lanaghan

@clanaghan.bsky.social

“Dragging a ladder through long rows of bookshelves can be exhausting. It’s much more efficient to have a co-worker who’s able to reach the top shelves on their own or at least give you a boost climbing up.”

#miragaia #stegosaur #dinosaur #paleoart #library #librarian #books

October 27, 2025 at 3:14 AM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Alberta Claw

@albertonykus.bsky.social

New species of jewel-babbler, the hooded jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa urrissia), described based on individuals pictured in camera trap photos: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🪶🧪 (📷Woxvold et al.)

Sequence of camera trap photographs of songbirds on a forest floor. In the topmost photo, two birds are shown in a single photo, whereas the remaining photos show a single bird each. The birds have grayish bodies and black-and-white faces, with a brown "hood" on the top of the head and neck.

November 27, 2025 at 3:38 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Xavier Jenkins

@semifossorial.bsky.social

Buffa et al.’s paper on the enigmatic Permian reptile 🦎 Galesphyrus and the origin of Neodiapsida is out in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology! Read the thread 👇 for some important takeaways from our study

@valentinbuffa.bsky.social

#Paleontology #Reptile #Permian

doi.org/10.1080/1477...

The holotype of Galesphyrus, an articulated skeleton of a small stem reptile preserved as a mold. It is beautifully preserved, but decided to lose it’s skull prior to discovery

A diagram showing the evolutionary relationships of early reptiles found in this study. Importantly, this study places Galesphyrus as sister to Millerettidae + Neodiapsida, reconciling postcrania and cranial data for support of Parapleurota!

November 18, 2025 at 3:51 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Aline Ghilardi

@alinemghilardi.bsky.social

Nosso bebê nasceu 🥹

Uma nova espécie de pterossauro do Araripe, encontrada dentro de um vômito fossilizado de dinossauro 🤍. A natureza é linda! Kkk

Seja bem-vindo, Bakiribu waridza!

Acesse o artigo: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Digital paleoart scene showing two pterosaurs with long, comb-like teeth standing in shallow water, using their jaws to filter food. Several similar pterosaurs fly in the background and a large theropod dinosaur resembling Irritator walks along the shore chasing them. The landscape is semi-arid with distant mountains under a cloudy sky.

Photographs and interpretative drawings of a fossil regurgitalite from the Romualdo Formation (Araripe Basin). Panels A and B show part and counterpart of an oval limestone concretion containing disarticulated and partially digested remains of pterosaur bones and fish. Panels C and D are line drawings highlighting bone clusters and digestive residue, illustrating the internal organization of the regurgitated mass.

November 10, 2025 at 11:29 AM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Henry Thomas 🦤🏳️‍🌈

@zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social

JUST PUBLISHED!!!! A major azhdarchoid phylogeny paper coauthored with @skyemcdavid.com - the fruit of years of work - is now out in @journalsystpal.bsky.social! New clades, reconstruction of size evolution, and more. Full thread to come soon!

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Enter the dragons: the phylogeny of Azhdarchoidea (Pterosauria: Pterodactyloidea) and the evolution of giant size in pterosaurs

Azhdarchidae is a clade of pterosaurs which includes the largest-ever flying animals. The evolutionary history of this clade and its closest relatives remains incompletely understood and highly deb...

www.tandfonline.com

November 5, 2025 at 2:01 PM

Reposted by Cy Marchant

Skye McDavid

@skyemcdavid.com

An interesting quirk of today's taxonomic revision is that one jacket from the Jane Quarry, long assumed to contain specimens of famous species, actually contained what would become two holotypes of two distinct species — Infernodrakon hastacollis and Nanotyrannus lethaeus