Phil Vixseboxse
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philvixseboxse.bsky.social
Phil Vixseboxse
@philvixseboxse.bsky.social
230 followers 470 following 7 posts
Fourth year PhD student at the University of Cambridge 🎓 MSc Palaeobiology & BSc Geology graduate from the University of Bristol. Views my own. LGBTQ+ 🏳️‍🌈 They/He

https://sites.google.com/view/philipvixseboxse
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philvixseboxse.bsky.social
Phil Vixseboxse @philvixseboxse.bsky.social · May 15
Delighted to share that from mid-August, I’ll be joining @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social School of GeoSciences as a PDRA studying bacterial taphonomy with @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Bryne Ngwenya!

- this silicified stromatolite isn’t a specimen I’ll be studying, but is a suitably bacterial photo 🧫🦠
A field photograph of a heavily fractured Cambrian blue-grey limestone, containing multiple, reasonably large (up to 20cm across) peach-pink silicified stromatolites in cross section. The largest dome, in the centre of the photograph, shows evidence of internal laminae.
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
seanhmcmahon.bsky.social
Why is life the way it is? It was a pleasure to share a stage with Nick Lane, @mamaphysikerin.bsky.social, and Cait MacPhee yesterday evening for the @royalsoced.bsky.social seminar event preceding Nick Lane's Gifford Lecture. You can watch the recording here: #astrobiology #evolution #biochemistry
Why is life the way it is?
YouTube video by The Royal Society of Edinburgh
www.youtube.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:07 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
jacquelyngill.bsky.social
The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.
Signs Referencing Climate Change Along with Web Pages Removed from Acadia National Park
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.
barharborstory.substack.com
September 23, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
fishevodevogeno.bsky.social
Quote of the Day,

as found in "Comparative Vertebrate and Human Anatomy: Ecology, Evolution, and Function"
pressbooks.palni.org/comparativev...

Check it out - looks great!

#EndlessFishMostBeautiful
July 31, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
fossilrob.bsky.social
New palaeo-PhD opportunity! Will you be the one to figure out the anatomy and function of fossil jawless fish? Come join the team! Application Deadline August 22nd, funding for UK student only (sorry)
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Lepidaspis by Nobu Tomura
July 31, 2025 at 9:40 AM
philvixseboxse.bsky.social
~just to add~
This approach was reproduced by Dr Phil Wilby in 2009 on a Callovian ink sack. The accompanying photoshoot (📸: Phil Yeomans) is iconic.
Dr Phil Wilby poses with the ink sketch of Belemnotheutis antiquus. Dr Phil Wilby, face to face with the fossil ink sack. Dr Phil Wilby stares into your soul, over the fossil ink sack in the foreground.
July 15, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
taphonomist.bsky.social
One of my favourite #MaryAnning facts™️ is that she would discover fossil cephalopod 🐙 fossils with preserved ink sacks, concoct a dangerous chemical slime to turn them back into gloopy ink, and then use her Jurassic ink to draw exquisite illustrations of the vertebrate fossils she found.

Meta.
June 25, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Excellent case where specimen based research and methodological innovation results in cardinal revision of dominants of marine biomass in the Late Cretaceous. Squids were diverse and dominant over other cephalopods and fish!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio
Digital fossil-mining of squid beaks Stratigraphic distribution and diversity pattern of early squids Relative abundance of squids throughout the Albian-Maastrichtian
June 26, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
paleolipidrr.bsky.social
Now published in @agu.org Geophysical Research Letters!

What happens to marine archaea when they’re hungry? And what does that mean for the TEX₈₆ paleothermometer?

Full paper here: doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Thanks to my coauthors and mentors for their support — and stay tuned, more is coming!
A Nutrient Effect on the TEX86 Paleotemperature Proxy
Nutrient stress alters GDGT distributions in marine sediments, resulting in elevated TEX86 ${\text{TEX}}_{86}$ values beyond those related to thermal effects Paleoclimate case studies from the Ar...
doi.org
June 21, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
kellyetingle.bsky.social
✨ Excited to share our new paper! ✨

Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

@royalsocietypublishing.org @rosspanderson.bsky.social @kelleypaleolab.bsky.social
June 19, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
gcorso.bsky.social
Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀
June 6, 2025 at 1:46 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
taphonomist.bsky.social
Very powerful preprint just went live discussing the different forms of colonialism that act on Mexican palaeo research and how the actions of science can result in political instability and violence.

Is our fossil research hurting others?

egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...
Decolonial Perspectives on Fieldwork and Collections in Mexican Palaeontology
Abstract. The ways in which we produce scientific knowledge are not objective and are subject to systemic biases with colonial roots. Here, we evaluate the different dimensions of colonialism in Mexic...
egusphere.copernicus.org
June 6, 2025 at 10:26 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
seanhmcmahon.bsky.social
Take a look at my group's new paper on distinguishing biological and non-biological tubules of iron-oxide, led by Melanie Podbielski. Yes, the title is a Star Trek reference...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
May 18, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
alexkirshner.com
this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth
May 16, 2025 at 3:25 AM
philvixseboxse.bsky.social
Delighted to share that from mid-August, I’ll be joining @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social School of GeoSciences as a PDRA studying bacterial taphonomy with @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Bryne Ngwenya!

- this silicified stromatolite isn’t a specimen I’ll be studying, but is a suitably bacterial photo 🧫🦠
A field photograph of a heavily fractured Cambrian blue-grey limestone, containing multiple, reasonably large (up to 20cm across) peach-pink silicified stromatolites in cross section. The largest dome, in the centre of the photograph, shows evidence of internal laminae.
May 15, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
echinerd.bsky.social
Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
May 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
taphonomist.bsky.social
Using XCT, we got really cool images of a buried zebrafish decaying.

You can see the gases build up, escape, and the body cavity collapse - without disturbing the experiment!

Sometime you even see them pop and rupture - stinky work but awesome to understand fossils 🐟☠️⚰️

dx.doi.org/10.1111/pala...
May 14, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
maxjtelford.bsky.social
New entry into the sponge/ctenophore debate.... Have the chromosome fusions separating ctenophores from all other animals been given too much weight? Beautifully clearly written paper covering complex arguments from @rcply.bsky.social.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Sponges, ctenophores and the statistical significance of syntenies
Shared fusions between ancestral chromosomal linkage groups have previously been used to support phylogenetic groupings, notably sponges with cnidarians and bilaterians to the exclusion of ctenophores...
www.biorxiv.org
May 12, 2025 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
nature.com
Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less

https://go.nature.com/4jLPDwi
Guess how much of the ocean floor humans have explored
Nature - Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less.
go.nature.com
May 11, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
egmitchell.bsky.social
This #FossilFriday our paper on the Slopey G surface at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. Both the E and G surfaces outcrop at two different places 1 kilometres apart which means we can compare how ecological dynamics change over large spatial scales.
April 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
emmadnn.bsky.social
Delighted to share our paper on data equity in #palaeobiology as part of Paleobiology's 50th anniversary issue 🥳

We look at how palaeo data is collected, stored, curated & shared, and how equity in these processes is crucial for our field's future (1/n) 🧪⚒️

doi.org/10.1017/pab....
Simplified flowchart illustrating generalised steps in palaeobiological research processes and the various factors that introduce inequity with regard to data collection, storage, study, analysis, publication, and reuse.
April 23, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
chillocean.bsky.social
NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume...
Download what you need asap and send comments to: ncei.info@noaa.gov
Notice of Changes
Notices of changes are formal public announcements of planned services changes to applications and other products.
www.nesdis.noaa.gov
April 17, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
paleosynth.bsky.social
Last day of the IRATE workshop in Erlangen. See the happy faces! Looks like everybody had a good time and hopefully fruitful discussions... can't wait to see the outcomes published ^^ (no pressure at all ;))
April 11, 2025 at 10:10 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
jobium.bsky.social
If anyone needs a multi-disciplinary Raman & FTIR expert starting in early 2026, let me know!
April 3, 2025 at 7:23 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
taphonomist.bsky.social
Fantastic news that 'Sue', the weird 444 million year old inside out arthropod, is finally published!

Named after Sarah's mum, I remember this fossil sitting on a desk at all of my PhD supervisory meetings - so proud of Sarah for persevering - 20 years of study!!!

www.itv.com/news/central...
www.itv.com
March 28, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Reposted by Phil Vixseboxse
orlabe.bsky.social
Just read a great paper by McMahon et al. 2025, "Remarkable fossils on unremarkable bedding planes? The role of true substrates in the fossil record of the Ediacaran macrobiota"
@philvixseboxse.bsky.social #Ediacaran #Palaeontology

Check it out: www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Remarkable fossils on unremarkable bedding planes? The role of true substrates in the fossil record of the Ediacaran macrobiota | Geological Society, London, Special Publications
Strata from the late Ediacaran Period (∼579-539 Ma) host fossils of Earth's earliest assemblages of diverse macroscopic organisms: the Ediacaran macrobiota. Many Ediacaran macrobiota taxa are preserve...
www.lyellcollection.org
February 19, 2025 at 9:25 AM