Cy Marchant
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slvrhwk.bsky.social
Cy Marchant
@slvrhwk.bsky.social
◇ Paleobiology student ◇ Science illustration dilettante ◇ Osteographer ◇ Ancient life reconstructions ◇ PhyloPic contributor ◇ 🦕🦖🦎 ◇ he/him ◇
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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/🧵)
Reposted by Cy Marchant
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
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....
February 2, 2026 at 1:03 PM
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Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/
January 28, 2026 at 7:57 PM
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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.
January 23, 2026 at 8:34 PM
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/🧵)
January 23, 2026 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by Cy Marchant
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
January 23, 2026 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Cy Marchant
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...
January 23, 2026 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Cy Marchant
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
January 23, 2026 at 1:08 PM
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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
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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
November 15, 2025 at 5:13 PM
"Scylla and Charybdis" 🦀
January 9, 2026 at 1:50 AM
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#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
November 16, 2025 at 11:00 AM
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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
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December 29, 2025 at 9:11 PM
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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
December 22, 2025 at 10:07 PM
👀
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
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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
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“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
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.)
November 27, 2025 at 3:38 PM
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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...
November 18, 2025 at 3:51 PM
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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...
November 10, 2025 at 11:29 AM
Reposted by Cy Marchant
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
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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
October 30, 2025 at 8:22 PM
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Did some giraffes and forgot to post them: Canthumeryx, Climacoceras gentryi, Georgiomeryx, and Palaeotragus inexspectatus #paleoart #scieart
October 18, 2025 at 6:42 PM
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Qilin tungurensis- A newly identified new genus of giraffe from the Miocene of Inner Mongolia, China.
September 29, 2025 at 10:24 PM