Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

🚨New paper out in Palaeontology! Check it out if you're interested morphological evolution, fossil phylogenetics, and macroevolution 🧪 "Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data"

Absolutely incredible set and show by AFI. They're one of my all time favorite bands and my god they nearly took the roof off of Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Every professor I know is trying to figure out training in this environment. How do you teach someone to vet the output when they don't have 20 yrs of experience behind it.

"The present does not reflect the past: geographic mismatches between fossil and modern records are widespread across the tree of life"

I'm not an expert in this research area but it's very cool if true! "A fully marine stem amphibian from the Late Triassic of China"

Something I wish more people would realize.

The Dropkick Murphys still know how to write a punk rock anthem

If you want to add to the fun: "Extinction can be estimated from moderately sized molecular phylogenies" doi.org/10.1111/evo.... "Challenges in the estimation of extinction from molecular phylogenies: A response to Beaulieu and O'Meara" doi.org/10.1111/evo.... And so on....

Macroevolution senior seminar should be fun next week

"Snake Oil Salesman Promise War Hounds for War Pigs"

Someone on Twitter once said that a Richard Dawkins tweet is like an episode of Game of Thrones There are 140 characters and something unimaginably awful happens.

Maybe we can quit taking all that deextinction noise seriously and treat them like all the other tech companies that lied to credulous VC funders for 5 years and after failing to develop the product they were promising ran to the safety govt contracts

The fundamentals of science and mathematics are essential skills to learn and cannot be skipped. If you're solving a scientific problem, it's important to actually understand how things work. I don't want to be among the last generation of scientists interested in understanding how things work

I've been thinking a lot this year about human-driven extinctions and the modern biodiversity crisis (for public outreach & an upcoming museum exhibit), and I can't escape the overwhelming cosmic sadness I feel for those species no longer with us.

🧪 “The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times.” www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/u...

Incredible day for my lab group. One manuscript newly submitted, another manuscript re-submitted following minor revision, another manuscript received page proofs, & another one was accepted for publication. I may never experience such a thing again but I'm so glad to get to do the science I love! 😎

I'm not sharing the article but I can't help but wonder: If the purpose of a system is what it does, what is the purpose of the Chronicle of Higher Education? 🤔

Still waiting to learn the outcome of the Paleontological Society's Clash of the Clades contest held during the GSA meeting last week. Echinoderms FTW!

Seasons are changing. The leaves are turning. With mirthless laughter: it's time put the the despair back in [morphological] disparity

I’m excited to share our work on brachiopods! We use phylogenomics to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of living brachiopods and their relationships with other lophotrochozoans. Huge thanks to all my co-authors and collaborators! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

More than 700 extant species with substantial morphological & ecological disparity and yet folks continue to mistakenly refer to crinoids as "living fossils"

There are about 731 described living crinoid species, but only two have been assessed for the IUCN Red List, and both are still in review. More broadly, only 5% of the whole phylum have been Red List assessed, most (almost 70%) are classified as Data Deficient.

NEW PUBLICATION ALERT IUCN SSC Marine Star Specialist Group (MSSG) Co-Chair Dr. Angela Stevenson and member Dr. Meg Veitch have published a new book chapter on crinoids, also known as feather stars and sea lilies.

"What if we made a machine that ruins careers."

AI researchers warn technology 'months away' from being able to get reimbursement using Concur

Aside from the fossils themselves, something else cool about this poster is that this research, which is led by two @oupaleobiology.bsky.social PhD students, builds on previous work each of them have done individually and those papers are accepted and in press 😎

oh no my ai went rogue and ordered another two margaritas for me at chilis happy hour

Come see @oupaleobiology.bsky.social graduate students Alysha Zazubec (Cole lab) and Kiera Crowley (Wright lab) present their poster describing new fossil crinoids from the Ordovician of Anticosti Island!

If you are not familiar with it, PearTree is the replacement for the increasingly creaking FigTree phylogenetic tree viewer. Available as a desktop app and a webapp (which can be embedded in other sites). github.com/artic-networ... for more details. There is even a manual: peartree.live/manual

If you're at GSA come visit my undergraduate student Camden Pringle present his research about quantifying skeletal completeness of the crinoid fossil record!

Our time has come

If you're at GSA, come see Kiera's talk highlighting this research in the Phylogenetic and Computational Paleobiology session today at 1:30!

One day I will get some sleep and finally recover from extreme jet lag resulting from continuous international and cross country travel, but today is not that day. Hello, Denver and GSA/PaleoSoc folks!

Neil Landman, Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, reflects on his journey into paleontology, the aesthetic beauty and biology of #ammonites, and his groundbreaking research on post-impact survival near the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction boundary.

Natural history museums are at an inflection point that started with the auctioning of dinosaurs. If Fort Hays State (Sternberg) or Drexel (Acad.Nat.Sci.) think they can monetize collections (i.e., sell natural history specimens); museums become safety deposit boxes instead of research institutes.

Incidentally, this is the 40th paper I've authored (with a growing lineup of manuscripts in review/revision, too). I'm so lucky to be a paleontologist and get to do what I love

It's important to focus on the things that bring you joy. For example, the New York Yankees suffering a crushing defeat

Huge congrats to my student @crowleyk.bsky.social, who just had the first paper of her graduate research accepted for publication today (and first 1st authored paper)! Looking forward to sharing her fantastic work on the phylogeny, macroevolution, & biogeography of flexible crinoids with the world!

Hot off the presses! I reviewed the history of early ray-finned fishes, with a focus on their morphology, fossil record, and taxonomy. My principal goal is a guide for other workers to make the rich record of early actinopterygian evolution more broadly available. dx.doi.org/10.1002/jmor...

Absolutely exhilarated by this workshop, which featured an incredible lineup of fantastic scientists from around the world. Many thanks to the organizers and fellow participants. I'm looking forward to the ways in which we can move this exciting research forward! 🧪

"Nothing prettier than a deceased leaf hanging from a tree in its final few moments on earth. It makes me want to wrap an oversized scarf around my neck and take a walk through the carnage." buff.ly/2vXkd3o

Hi! My World View in Nature Reviews Biodiversity was published today! Read about my three main aims when educating people about topics in natural history. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Just listened to this great piece on @scifri.bsky.social about the importance of collections. www.sciencefriday.com/segments/are... Consider making a donation at any level to support your local natural history collection. Support @utkherbarium.bsky.social here herbarium.utk.edu/give/