Fabien Lafuma
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paleofab.bsky.social
Fabien Lafuma
@paleofab.bsky.social
Doctoral researcher @helsinki.fi | Vertebrate tooth 🦷 #evodevo (Squamata 🦎🐍 & Arvicolinae 🐭) | Interested in #scicomm & #openaccess | All views mine! https://linktr.ee/paleofab
Pinned
🚨New PhD research published in PNAS!🚨

Combining fossils and lab experiments, we found that simple changes in tooth #development explain 6 million years of molar #evolution in #voles 🐭🦷

Shoutout to my coauthors @cnrs.fr @helsinki.fi @gtk-fi.bsky.social!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #FossilFriday
Six million years of vole dental evolution shaped by tooth development | PNAS
Morphological change occurs over macroevolutionary timescales under the action of natural selection and genetic drift combined with developmental p...
www.pnas.org
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Hallucinant. C'est inacceptable. J'ai une ERC, que rétrospectivement j'ai eu la chance de rédiger à l'étranger avec un dispositif bien meilleur que ceux qui sont proposés en France et SURTOUT avec de quoi produire des résultats préliminaires que ce soit en terme de mentiring ou de moyens #esr
Quand notre ministre de tutelle nous insulte devant la représentation nationale. "Bande de nuls" "complètement à la ramasse".
Nous reprocher des taux de réussite faible à Horizon Europe et ERC, quand manquent les moyens pour assurer nos missions de service public. Surtout changez rien!👌
October 31, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Pleased to be a small part of this molecular palaeobiology study by Jialin Wei, led by Marta Álvarez-Presas and Jordi Paps, with help from Davide Pisani. Animals repeatedly used similar genomic solutions to the challenges of terrestrialization @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social @bristolbiosci.bsky.social
November 13, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Happy #FossilFriday! Heading to #PuertoRico for some #fieldwork & R&R! So here's #Elasmodontomys obliquus, an endemic rodent of unusual size that became extinct a few thousand years ago, marking the end of a lineage that reached the West Indies ~33 million years ago!! #ROUS #RodentsoftheCaribbean
November 14, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Our big squamate origins and early evolution review is now fully published as open access! with @marcanthonytollis.bsky.social and F. Burbrink

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Origin and Early Evolution of Squamates and Their Kin: From Fossils to Genomes
Squamates (lizards, including snakes) are the most diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates on Earth today and have an evolutionary history dating back to at least the Middle Triassic (ca. 242 Mya). D...
www.annualreviews.org
November 7, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Superbe reportage sur @franceculture.fr sur le gisement de dinosaures 🦕🦖, mais pas que, d'Angeac-Charente avec de nombres ami.e.s du @cr2p.bsky.social dont Ronan Alain, @lea-db.bsky.social , Lee Rozada, Yohan Despres... Quel gisement !!!!
@recherche.mnhn.fr
➡️ www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...
Déterrer la bête : épisode 1/2 du podcast Angeac : un sanctuaire de dinosaures en Charente
AUDIO • Angeac : un sanctuaire de dinosaures en Charente, épisode 1/2 : Déterrer la bête. Une série inédite proposée par France Culture. Écoutez Une histoire particulière, et découvrez nos podcasts en...
www.radiofrance.fr
November 2, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Faire un bon dans le passé des dinosaures pour comprendre notre présent, c’est le défi que Ronan Allain, paléontologue au Muséum a relevé pour ce dernier épisode de la saison 6 du podcast. 🦕🦖

🎧Ecoutez : urlr.me/UEYRTF
👉Plus d'infos : urlr.me/tC6dJ9

#PQNV #podcast #dinosaures #evolution
November 5, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
November 14, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
These were the dinosaurs that faced the asteroid.

Some of the last survivors. They lived in New Mexico, 66 million years ago. Among them was Alamosaurus, the size of a jetplane.

We unveiled them, and their true age, today in a new paper in
@science.org !
October 23, 2025 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Excited to share our new paper where we find that the rise, decline and fall of clades is not explained by the usual suspects (diversity-dependence, ecological opportunities) but rather by species' insidious loss of macroevolutionary fitness: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/3
Loss of macroevolutionary species fitness explains the rise and fall of clades - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The interplay between speciation and extinction rates shapes clade diversity dynamics. Using a novel phylogenetic model that includes living and fossil lineages, the authors estimate speciation and ex...
www.nature.com
October 17, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Was there ever a better #ToothyTuesday post ladies and gents? 🙌
And damn, on a funnier note, teeth are so cool. Not always the easiest thing to get people excited about, but seriously, they are the perfect window into how evolution works 🦷
October 14, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Many thanks to @hlusko.bsky.social for this wonderful piece recognizing the exciting work of @paleofab.bsky.social and our previous research on bats www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
October 14, 2025 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
On this #fossilfriday, take a few moments to read this.

A touching tribute to the life, career, and discoveries of Mark Norell, from his long-time friend and field companion, Mike Novacek. In @nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Mark Norell obituary: palaeontologist who showed that dinosaurs still walk among us — as birds
Through fieldwork and innovative research, he transformed how scientists and the public perceive the prehistoric world.
www.nature.com
October 10, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Honoured to see @hlusko.bsky.social’s thoughtful new PNAS commentary highlighting our work on how tooth development shaped vole molar evolution—alongside research by @aigverte.bsky.social. Great perspectives on non-model animals and the future of #evodevo! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #ToothyTuesday
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
October 7, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
A new Jurassic fossil from Scotland, Breugnathair elgolensis, shows a combination of snake-like jaws and teeth with a lizard-like body and limbs, providing direct evidence of diverse squamate traits early in their history.
#Paleontology #Evolution #Fossils
🧪🐍🦴⚒️
Paper
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Scientists uncover a mysterious Jurassic lizard with snake-like jaws
A strange Jurassic lizard discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Skye is shaking up what we know about snake evolution. Named Breugnathair elgolensis, the “false snake of Elgol” combined hook-like, python-s...
www.sciencedaily.com
October 4, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Is it a lizard? Is it a snake? Maybe a 'false snake'?? As that's what its name means in Gaelic!

Hello to Breugnathair, a new fossil from the Jurassic of Skye with a curious mix of snake & lizard features, showing that early squamate evolution was complex

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Fossil found on Skye is new species of fanged Jurassic reptile
Experts say the lizard-like creature, which has been given the Gaelic name Breugnathair elgolensis, had lived about 167 million years ago.
www.bbc.co.uk
October 2, 2025 at 1:29 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
I was honored to create this illustration to accompany the discovery of Breugnathair elgolensis a newly discovered genus of reptile that shares traits of both lizards and snakes.
Congratulations and special thanks to the authors!
You can read the paper using the link below
doi.org/10.1038/s415...
October 5, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Many animals can reshape and shed their teeth – and now scientists have traced this ability back 380 million years #Bullerichthys #GogoFormation #Devonian

theconversation.com/many-animals...
Many animals can reshape and shed their teeth – and now scientists have traced this ability back 380 million years
A new study of ancient, extinct fish known as placoderms provides another piece of the evolutionary puzzle about our deep time, aquatic ancestors.
theconversation.com
October 1, 2025 at 3:08 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
New paper out yesterday "New specimens of the arthrodire Bullerichthys fascidens Dennis and Miles 1980 show incipient site-specific osteichthyan-like tooth addition and resorption"

Read it now in Swiss Journal of Palaeontology: sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10....
New specimens of the arthrodire Bullerichthys fascidens Dennis and Miles 1980 show incipient site-specific osteichthyan-like tooth addition and resorption - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology
The arthrodiran placoderm Bullerichthys fascidens, from the Late Devonian Gogo Formation, Western Australia, was originally described from an incomplete headshield with only the spinal and interolater...
sjpp.springeropen.com
September 23, 2025 at 4:12 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.
October 5, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Our latest paper, now how to conciliate apparently discrepant evolutionary rate patterns in squamates, but which may well apply to any study system with Stephanie Pierce and
@7brumas.bsky.social
#macroevolution

academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
Evolutionary rate incongruences in squamates reveal contrasting patterns of evolutionary novelties and innovation
Abstract. Understanding the rate of phenotypic evolution can reveal fundamental aspects of organismal evolutionary trajectories. Hence, several studies hav
academic.oup.com
September 28, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
Super excited to share our new paper, out today @pnas.org 'Teeth outside the jaw: Evolution and development of the toothed head clasper in chimaeras' @karlycohen.bsky.social 👻🦈 🦷 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Teeth outside the jaw: Evolution and development of the toothed head clasper in chimaeras | PNAS
Chimaeras (Holocephali) are an understudied group of mostly deep-ocean cartilaginous fishes (Chondrichthyes) with unique characteristics that disti...
www.pnas.org
September 4, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Fabien Lafuma
New paper is officially out!
Ratfish have a second jaw on their foreheads - CT + histology show they’re real teeth, built from the same tissues and signals as oral teeth.

www.washington.edu/news/2025/09...
This common fish has an uncommon feature: forehead teeth, used for mating
New findings call into question one of the core assumptions about teeth. Adult male spotted ratfish, a shark-like species native to the eastern Pacific Ocean, have rows of teeth on top of their heads,...
www.washington.edu
September 4, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Salut les francophones 👋 Vous aimez la science et les animaux mignons ? Alors j’ai ce qu’il vous faut !

Dans ce fil, je vous explique ce que les molaires des campagnols nous apprennent sur l’ #évolution (le post n°16 va vous surprendre !) 🐭🦷🤯

#vulgarisation #thèse #paléontologie
Notre dernier article montre que le mode de développement des dents a influencé des millions d’années d’évolution des campagnols, menant à des molaires très complexes.

Qu’est-ce que ça nous apprend sur l’évolution ? 🧵👇 1/21 #evodevo #vulgarisation

📷 Hanna Knutsson (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)/Lafuma et al.
September 13, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Notre dernier article montre que le mode de développement des dents a influencé des millions d’années d’évolution des campagnols, menant à des molaires très complexes.

Qu’est-ce que ça nous apprend sur l’évolution ? 🧵👇 1/21 #evodevo #vulgarisation

📷 Hanna Knutsson (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)/Lafuma et al.
September 12, 2025 at 6:07 PM