Jochem Noordzij
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jochemnoordzij.bsky.social
Jochem Noordzij
@jochemnoordzij.bsky.social
81 followers 250 following 1 posts
Enthusiastic biology student at Leiden University and volunteer fossil preparator at the Dinosaur Lab of Naturalis Biodiversity Center
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Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
alinemghilardi.bsky.social
🚨New paper alert!🚨🤩

🧪⚒️Welcome the first filter-feeding pterosaur from Brazil: Bakiribu waridza, from the Araripe Basin!! 🥳

The new species is AWESOME and was discoverd inside a regurgitalite 😱🤍

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A regurgitalite reveals a new filter-feeding pterosaur from the Santana Group - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - A regurgitalite reveals a new filter-feeding pterosaur from the Santana Group
www.nature.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:23 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
whysharksmatter.bsky.social
We interrupt your doomscrolling for a brief rant about scientific journal publishers apparently still not realizing that lots people share scientific journal articles online.

Please enjoy "why do so many scientific journal articles still display weird when shared on social media? 🧪
It’s 2025. Why do so many scientific journal articles still display weird when shared on social media?
Social media is, despite it’s challenges and limitations, an incredibly powerful (and widely used) professional tool for scientists. One common use of social media is to share one’s res…
www.southernfriedscience.com
May 20, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
nomascus.bsky.social
Due to the whites of the eye, humans have a uniquely communicative gaze. Other primates have dark eyes, hiding their gaze from conspecifics. We cooperate, they compete. Common knowledge – right? Yes, but it’s incorrect, as we argue in our new paper 🧵🧪1/11

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Human eye on top, squirrel monkey eye below. Little of the peri-iridal tissues are exposed in the squirrel monkey, which is now understood to derive from simply scaling constraints and human adaptations to horizontal scanning. There is no evidence for social cognition being tied to such differences in eye appearances.
May 15, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
raingerart.bsky.social
the two-headed rex 1/6 🧵
#paleoart #dinosaur #trex
a drawing of a young tyrannosaurus’ skull, split at the back into two heads. a bit of the spine and two brushes are next to it. text reads: Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature
May 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
jackdashby.bsky.social
When it comes to certain parts of anatomy, #museums have been deliberately teaching people the wrong thing.
Most #mammals have a bone in their penis but natural history museums usually remove them from display, as I told @iflscience.com (& wrote in #NaturesMemory):
www.iflscience.com/where-have-a...
The Surprising (And Very Unscientific) Reason Why Penis Bones Are So Rare In Natural History Museums
#NotAllMuseums (but a lot of them) seem have to banished the penis bone. Why?
www.iflscience.com
May 5, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
restingdinoface.bsky.social
When I was a young fossil fan, I loved dinosaur fact cards. Imagine my joy at being asked to write a set of my own!

The Dinosaur Deck is out now, featuring 52 dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles that span the Mesozoic, including some new friends in addition to classic creatures.
The box for The Dinosaur Deck showing a Tyrannosaurus and a pterosaur, cards written by Riley Black Three cards from The Dinosaur Deck, showing the horned dinosaur Wendiceratops, the sauropod Bajadasaurus, and the back of the card for Allosaurus showing stats and fun facts
May 6, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
jopabinia.bsky.social
Timeline cleanse: do you want to see one of the best fossil animations I have EVER seen?

@kiabugboy.bsky.social you are literally a master of the form. BBC or Discovery (whoever pays more) should hire you immediately 🧪🦑⚒️
More Oncocerida from Gotland
YouTube video by Kiabugboy
youtu.be
May 2, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
art-h-ropod.bsky.social
A #TrilobiteTuesday flashback: When I retired from @romtoronto.bsky.social at the end of 2016 one of my museum colleagues (& a good friend) made this for me. Phil isn't here on @bsky.app, but I can still thank him & acknowledge his talents & kindness! #stainedglass #SciArt #PalaeoArt #InverteFest
A human hand holds up a small, back-lit, stained glass panel depicting a graceful swimming trilobite in pale blue tones. It is surrounded by honey-coloured glass in a narrow metal frame.
April 29, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
davehone.bsky.social
With the trailers for both #WalkingWithDinosaurs and #JurassicWorld Rebirth apparently showing swimming Spinosaurus, I thought it might be time to go over why I think these animals were not good swimmers. After all, it's something I've written a fair bit about (with @arctomet.bsky.social) 1/many
April 25, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
mossworm.bsky.social
I've got some GOOD NEWS for once! Surge of donations to the PRI museum in New York is going to let it stay open for at least a few more months. Keep going! ithacavoice.org/2025/04/dona...
Donation spike gives Museum of the Earth new life but future remains uncertain - The Ithaca Voice
ITHACA, N.Y. — Following a surge of donations sparked by The Ithaca Voice’s reporting, the Museum of the Earth — one of the last natural history museums in upstate New […]
ithacavoice.org
April 9, 2025 at 10:46 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
dwbapst.bsky.social
Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses

Mark C. Nikolic, Rachel C. M. Warnock, Melanie J. Hopkins
Abstract: The fossilized birth-death (FBD) model has become an increasingly popular method for inferring dated phylogenies. This is because it is especially useful for incorporating fossil data into such analyses, integrating fossils along with their age information directly into the tree as tips or sampled ancestors. Two approaches are common for placing fossil taxa in trees: inference based on morphological character data or using taxonomic constraints to control their topological placement. These approaches have historically been treated as alternatives, though combining the two is theoretically possible. For phylogenetic inference of entirely extinct organisms, additional related fossil taxa other than those for which morphology is available are generally overlooked. Here, we implement a combined approach on an empirical dataset for a group of trilobites. We use a morphological matrix and ages for 56 taxa and age information for another 196 taxa from the Paleobiology Database. To evaluate the effects of a combined approach, we conducted FBD dated phylogenetic analyses using a combined approach with morphology and taxonomic constraints and compared them to analyses of taxa with morphology alone. We find that a combined approach yields topologies that are more stratigraphically congruent, substantially more precise parameter estimates (e.g., divergence times), and more informative tree distributions. These findings are a consequence of the substantial increase in stratigraphic age information and a more representative sample of their temporal distributions.
April 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
lordsovorn.bsky.social
I think the fundamental approach of presenting kids with neat simplified models, with the assumption that some of these kids might be interested or professionally motivated to later learn the underlying complexity on their own, is deeply flawed
lepidodendron.bsky.social Mario Coiro @lepidodendron.bsky.social · Apr 10
This whole "dire wolf" thing makes me even more convinced that we need to teach how biology is complex since school. We cannot simplify things, otherwise pupils will think things are actually simple!
April 10, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
jackdashby.bsky.social
What a treat to see: behind the scenes at @nhm-london.bsky.social are some of the world's oldest #insect collections. Before pinning them in drawers became a thing around 1700, collectors like James Petiver & Leonard Plukenet just squished them in books, or sandwiched them between sheets of mica.
An antique book open to reveal white butterflies glued directly onto the page An antique book open to reveal beetle specimens glued directly onto the page Five butterflies pasted onto a blue sheet in four clear windows of mixa Four sets of butterflies in clear windows on a blue page. A finger lifts one of the windows on a hinge to reveal it is clear on both sides
April 8, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
palaeopete.bsky.social
We just doubled the number of mammoth individuals with #million-year-old DNA! 🎉🦣🧬

Our new study reports 11 new #mammoth mitogenomes that are greater than 126,000 years old, of which two are more than one million years old!

Congrats, Camilo (@jcchacond.bsky.social) and everyone!

See thread below 👇
cpgsthlm.bsky.social Centre for Palaeogenetics @cpgsthlm.bsky.social · Apr 9
New paper 🧵

A team co-led by #cpgsthlm 's researcher @jcchacond.bsky.social has analysed DNA from a large number of mammoths across a million-year timescale 🦣🧬

The findings include the discovery and analysis of the oldest known woolly #mammoth in North America!

👉 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...
Pictures of a woolly mammoth molar dated to 216kya. The earliest in North America.
April 9, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
restingdinoface.bsky.social
Shrimps is bugs? No, it’s kinda the other way around. Insects are technically crustaceans, which highlights the importance of systematics in understanding how evolution unfolds. My latest for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social.
You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea. But a Remarkable Discovery Shows the Opposite: Bugs Are Actually Shrimp of the Land
A recent study suggests that insects branched out from crustaceans on the tree of life
www.smithsonianmag.com
April 9, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
aukeflorian.nl
NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀

Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯

A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛

Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x
Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet. A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra
April 9, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
lincolnsavi.bsky.social
I'm seeing stuff about #PortfolioDay. Cool! Allow me to share. I make realistic animal models that are usually 3D-printed. I sell files on my site too (savimade.ca)
April 8, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
cisneros.bsky.social
This. Since I begun studying and speaking publicly about science colonialism and illicit fossil trafficking I suffered several attacks. And I became a target from a certain palaeontological association that is more concerned with protecting smugglers and pirates than with science. +
emmadnn.bsky.social Emma Dunne @emmadnn.bsky.social · Apr 7
But we have also encountered challenges.

Because of the attention our work has received, we and our colleagues have become accustomed to threats. When our work appeared in a German news outlet, I received death and r*pe threats and was even reported to the police... (4/n)
April 8, 2025 at 12:30 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
princessquatris.bsky.social
🚨 I'm super happy to announce that our new paper is finally out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social! 🚨

We used the ecological approach of occupancy modelling to investigate the structure of the dinosaur fossil record prior to the K/Pg mass extinction!

www.cell.com/current-biol...
The structure of the end-Cretaceous dinosaur fossil record in North America
Dean et al. examine the fossil record of North American dinosaurs prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Estimates of detection probability from occupancy models decrease prior to the extinction...
www.cell.com
April 8, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
tetzoo.bsky.social
In 1981, author-editor Dougal Dixon devised the idea of using 'future animals' to illuminate evolutionary processes. His book - After Man - was a sensation and resulted in him beginning the face of what we now call Speculative Zoology. An interview with the main himself... tetzoo.com/blog/2025/3/...
Selection of books on Dixonian speculative zoology, including the After trilogy, manga versions and the two Greenworld volumes. Dixon painting of predator rats attacking a rabbuck. Dixon drawings of gigantelopes. Images from 1988's The New Dinosaurs, showing lank and balaclav.
April 8, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
self.agency
in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to work with others to “conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people.” The Department of the Interior is excited about the potential of “de-extinction” technology and how it may serve broader purposes beyond the recovery of lost species, including strengthening biodiversity protection efforts and helping endangered or at-risk species. The Endangered Species List has become like the Hotel California: once a species enters, they never leave. In fact, 97 percent of species that are added to the endangered list remain there. This is because the status quo is focused on regulation more than innovation. It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation. Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list - not additions. The only thing we’d like to see go extinct is the need for an endangered species list to exist. We need to continue improving recovery efforts to make that a reality, and the marvel of “de-extinction” technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk. Since the dawn of our nation, it has been innovation – not regulation – that has spawned American greatness. The revival of the Dire Wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of “de-extinction” can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation. The Dire Wolf revival carries profound cultural significance as it embodies strength and courage that is deeply encoded within the DNA of American identity and tribal heritage. Breakthroughs of this nature will inspire leading minds and future generations of innovators to chase the impossible, capture it, and unleash its potential! The Department of the Interior looks forward to a vibrant future full of innovation that advances core missions such as wildlife conservation.
April 8, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
corviforms.bsky.social
dinosaurs are still with us 🪺
drawing of an american robin nesting in the mouth of an Edmontosaurus skeleton
April 8, 2025 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
uglyfossils.bsky.social
This robin has excellent taste in real estate.

(That’s 'Monty,' the bronze cast of an Edmontosaurus on UTK's campus.)

📸 McClung Museum
2 different angles of a bronze cast of an Edmontosaurus skull where an American robin has nested in its mouth.
April 7, 2025 at 9:28 PM
Reposted by Jochem Noordzij
paulvdvijver.bsky.social
#Tegelwippen | Zelfs kleine geveltuinen (1 à 2 m2) hebben zeer positief effect op populaties, blijkt uit onderzoek @unileiden.bsky.social 💧In 65 geveltuintjes vonden we 235 planten- en 154 insectensoorten, die anders niet zouden voorkomen op deze plek - Ecoloog Joeri Morpurgo in NRC 4/4 📷M.Krijgsman
April 4, 2025 at 6:25 AM