Z. Jack Tseng
LightNews LightNews
banner
tsengzj.bsky.social
Z. Jack Tseng
@tsengzj.bsky.social
680 followers 290 following 54 posts
Paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Interested in Functional Anatomy and Vertebrate Evolution. Self-proclaimed paleomammalogist.
Posts Replies Media Videos
tsengzj.bsky.social
Safe travels all #2025SVP folks! En route to Birmingham via London…and who am I to argue with the NHM’s kids pack swag? 😁
November 11, 2025 at 9:48 AM
tsengzj.bsky.social
Celebrating #NationalFossilDay with a new paper describing specimens of the most whimsical of weasel relatives, leptarctine ("slender bear") mustelids, from the collections of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social.

Their teeth are so much fun to look at! 🦷
doi.org/10.5070/P9.4...

(Cover image by P. Holroyd)
Image of three brown and black fossil jaw fragments of extinct weasel relatives, Leptarctus, with short but sharp cusps. Open access paper at https://doi.org/10.5070/P9.48360
October 15, 2025 at 9:35 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
Studying wrist and ankle bones for fossil id and found it amusing how carpals have wired names like magnum and unciform but tarsals have tired names like cuneiform 1, 2, 3. Like they ran out of cool names for bones by the time they got to feet 😆
Labeled museum bone specimens representing the foot of a raccoon scattered over a gray table top.
September 19, 2025 at 4:43 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
#FossilFriday Eocene coprolites from the Chocolate Mound locality, Jefferson County, Montana. Not to be confused with its extant counterparts in Washington D.C.
Pieces of grayish white P.O.S. obscuring scientific information provided by an institution of higher education.
April 4, 2025 at 1:20 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
#FossilFriday teaching the @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social non-majors course on Mesozoic life with Jane the teenage T. rex this week, followed by a field trip to see the Wankel T. rex in front of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social!
A brown replica of a T. rex sits on a table in front of a lecture hall with rows of blue seats. Students are seated sporadically throughout. A person in a dark blue shirt holding up a small T rex skull and standing in front of a mounted skeleton of a much larger T. rex. A white spiral staircase wraps around the back of the skeleton and leads to the floor above.
March 14, 2025 at 11:51 AM
tsengzj.bsky.social
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology issues statement on the recent Executive Orders and their impact on the SVP community.
We are now facing unprecedented, systemic challenges to scientific enterprise, its infrastructure, and the diverse people and communities that make it possible. The recent executive orders issued by the Office of the President of the United States threaten to directly harm our discipline and the people in it. As paleontologists, we know that in times of upheaval, ecological communities that fare the best tend to be the most diverse. Analogously, our varied backgrounds and perspectives and our willingness to listen to and learn from each other have enabled us to adapt to challenges facing our discipline and our Society in the past. We believe that the best approach to overcoming these new challenges is to turn to our fundamental values and our mission, which includes facilitating the cooperation of all persons concerned with the history, evolution, ecology, comparative anatomy, and taxonomy of vertebrate animals. We take this moment to specifically support and affirm the right of all of our members and our non-member colleagues to conduct science and live their lives in safety and harmony, no matter their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age, or citizenship status. We encourage members in positions of safety and security to advocate for members who are not. Speak out in favor of research funding, evidence-based policies, and policies that ensure people of all identities receive equitable protections and opportunities. SVP leadership is actively working with other scientific organizations to respond to and mitigate the impact of these government actions on our members. We will continue to prioritize building and maintaining a diverse and inclusive vertebrate paleontology community where all feel welcome and are able to thrive. The mission of our Society is primarily scientific in nature. We seek to advance the science of vertebrate paleontology throughout the world, and foster the scientific, educational, and personal appreciation and understanding of vertebrate fossils and fossil sites. Several executive actions taken by the current presidential administration are antithetical to this mission, including the pause and audit of federal grant funding, the silencing of federal employees, the stripping of climate history data from government websites, the attempts to downsize the federal workforce, including departments charged with maintaining fossils and fossil sites, and attacks on academic freedom, climate change research, disabled people, transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people, immigrants, and endeavors for diversity, equity and inclusion. These actions, if successful, will impede our ability to carry out our mission and harm the broader practice of science. The Society would like to gather additional information regarding the effects of recent federal action on paleontologists on the ground. To help us in this task, we ask that you share your experiences. We would like to know if you have been impacted or may be impacted by these executive actions. We recognize that at this point there is uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the federal funding audit, pending legal challenges, and other aspects of these executive actions, so you may not know the full impacts yet. This uncertainty itself is an impact. If you have been or might be impacted by these executive actions, please fill out this survey. Please also provide any ideas or suggestions, including areas of concern on which you believe the Society should focus. Below we share some resources that you may find helpful when considering ways to support your colleagues and/or take action during these tumultuous times. We appreciate that this is a time full of uncertainty for many of you, especially those located in the United States, and we will do our best to keep you informed of Society actions. In solidarity, Stuart Sumida, SVP President, and the SVP Executive Comm.
February 12, 2025 at 4:30 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
New, NSF-supported research: Emergent network properties link phenotypic modules to ecomorphological divergence in carnivoran mammals doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Also, check out the beautiful original artwork made by one of the co-authors for this study:
A grayscale illustration of a hyena skull on turquoise background, overlaid by letters and a network of circles that represent the complex interconnections of skull bones produced by macroevolutionary change.
February 3, 2025 at 5:49 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
I think deer are among the most festive-looking of mammals, with their fancy cranial ornamentations! Two of my favorite fossil deer right now: Miocene Dicrocerus and Lagomeryx. Specimens under study from the Tibetan Plateau; paleoart by P. Dougalis for the Munich Botanical Garden. #FossilFriday
A fragmentary piece of Lagomeryx antler, triangular in outline, with gritty brown texture. A hand-drawn portrait of two deer busts, both with long upper canine teeth. One has bifurcated antlers and the other has palm-like antlers. A fragmentary antler of Dicrocerus, with broadly separate bifurcating tines. The specimen is light tan in color, with longitudinal grooves on the surface.
December 20, 2024 at 6:25 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
#FossilFriday studying Miocene fossil deer antlers collected from the Tsaidam Basin (Tibetan Plateau) over the past two decades in collaboration with IVPP (Chinese Academy of Sciences) colleagues. Finally giving these cervids some deserved love! 🦌
A hand holding a fossilized partial antler, with more antlers in the background sitting in a specimen tray.
December 6, 2024 at 5:01 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social
I am thankful for clear blue skies over Lake Tahoe and family to share it with!
Lake view with dark mountain silhouette in background and a conifer in foreground, under clear blue skies and dusk colors on the horizon.
November 28, 2024 at 1:23 PM
tsengzj.bsky.social

Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline.
November 17, 2024 at 12:23 AM
tsengzj.bsky.social
#FossilFriday and my first post: a partial dentary of the bone-cracking canid Borophagus from the Miocene Esmeralda Formation in Nevada. From the Riverside collection of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Encountered on my Friday walk in the collections!
November 15, 2024 at 7:16 PM