Jeff Thompson

Cook up a storm with our researchers and discover how small food choices can make a big difference as part of our #BSF26 event exploring the humble but mighty chickpea. Enjoy recipes, tips & sustainable food inspiration. 📍20 Sept, 12-5pm Guildhall Square britishsciencefestival.org/event/chickp...

The PROGressive PHYLOgenetics LAB is now officially open and I'm looking to hire at all levels!! If you are interested in phylogenetics and macroevolution, and enjoy any/all of the following: fossils, morphology, genomics, simulations, or method development, please reach out to me :)

Looking forward to participating in the 12th European Conference on Echinoderms #ECE12 www.euroechino.net at UCL @ucl.ac.uk next week and meeting fellow echinodermologists from all around the world.

Hey look: A job! @echinerd.bsky.social and I are looking for a research technician to work on sea urchin development. If you are good at segmenting CT scans and want a chance to work on some super cool organisms, this job here at UCL is for you! apply now: bit.ly/4o2qccY

Interested in Historical Ecology and Conservation Palaeobiology? 🪸🦀 Steve Pates and I are offering a PhD project on Unlocking Palaeo-Historical Biodiversity Data to Inform Ecological Baselines @es-ucl.bsky.social @uclcber.bsky.social 🗓️ Apply by 19th January 2026 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Could chickpeas, lentils and sunflowers become the new normal for UK farmers? With harvests already being lost due to extreme weather, our researchers are leading a new network to prepare the UK food system for climate change. Find out more 👉 tr.ee/hhd3au

It’s finally out! Extremely pleased to share the last chapter of my dissertation to be published! In this study, we take a deep dive into the 242 million-year squamate 🦎🐍 fossil record to quantify factors that lead to the mostly fragmentary specimens in collections today: doi.org/10.1017/pab....

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

New paper led by @aniekebrombacher.bsky.social using x-ray CT and laser ablation to detect plastic environmental responses in fossil individuals www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2421549122 featuring @jamesmulqueeney.bsky.social @clivetrue.bsky.social @thefosterlab.bsky.social

🌟 Fossil find of the week! @echinerd.bsky.social new paper in Current Biology reveals how Cambrian echinoderms evolved from bilateral ancestors to the star-shaped sea creatures we know today. 🧬🌊 🔗 Read more: www.cell.com/current-biol... #Echinoderms #Evolution #Cambrian

Delighted to share our paper in @currentbiology.bsky.social iology.bsky.social‬ with a palaeo-evo-devo perspective on the evolution of symmetry in echinoderms. Led by Steffi Woodgate with Frankie Dunn, @echinerd.bsky.social, @laurentformery.bsky.social & Sam Zamora www.cell.com/current-biol...-5

Our brittle star patterning study is now out at EvoDevo! 🥳 doi.org/10.1186/s132... @lowelab.bsky.social

🚨🚨🚨!Post doc opportunity! 🚨🚨🚨 35 month post doc on niche modelling of migratory whales in my lab with Katrina Jones. Job advert below: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... Please get in touch with questions!

Just under two weeks left to apply for this 3 year postdoc looking at how signalling shapes skeletal development in sea urchins! Please reach out if you’re interested! For lovers of imaging, skeletal development, biomineralization, in situ hybridization, and marine invertebrates!

Lovely day in the field at Culver Cliff (Isle of Wight) with @echinerd.bsky.social and PhD student Chia-Hsin Hsu. We looked at the beautifully bedded Cenomanian-Turonian #chalk, finding plenty of echinoderms, bivalves, serpulids and even a nice nautilid!

🚨 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...

Very pleased to have co-edited the latest version of Elements Magazine (www.elementsmagazine.org) "Biomineral Geochemistry" with @amoeba-lab.bsky.social and Ros Rickaby. Topics range from controls on CaCO3 polymorph to the role of amorphous intermediate phases and "vital effects". 🧪🌊🪸⚒️

Today in the Amoeba lab - an initial step on our path to building a new dedicated foraminifera culturing facility. Here are our first images of live foraminifera!

New preprint out with @echinerd.bsky.social et al. on total-evidence dating showcasing: 1) Sea urchins (the best clade) 2) Lyrics by Peter Gabriel-era Genesis (the best prog band) 3) Extreme effect of the type of relaxed clock on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences (a bit scary honestly)

Very excited to use my first @bsky.app post to announce @echinerd.bsky.social and I's new paper in Proc B! 🎉 We used a dataset of Palaeozoic echinoids from 33 museums worldwide to see the impact museum ‘dark data’ has on biogeographic and evolutionary patterns in deep time! doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

For #FossilFriday, I'm delighted to share this amazing new specimen donated to the NHM. The slab preserves over 100 specimens of the Middle Jurassic crinoid Isocrinus nicoleti. This is the subject of ongoing research with Tim Ewin, Ebony Cutcliffe, @egmitchell.bsky.social & @echinerd.bsky.social .

Job alert! Director of Oxford University Museum of Natural History: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DKV017/d...

For #FossilFriday, here is a quick volume rendering of a 450-million-year-old fossil starfish from the Lady Burn Starfish Beds of Girvan, Scotland. Scanned by @agneselanzetti.bsky.social at the Natural History Museum.

My PhD student Jake Kleboe is not only an awesome Raman wrangler but he also regularly bakes to raise money for Movember. Today he is going to bake 200 loaves of banana bread in 24 hours! Live stream starts at 10am UK m.twitch.tv/kleboes_kitc... please donate here: uk.movember.com/mospace/1337...

Migrating back to the good place... and speaking of good places, why not consider coming to the University of Southampton to do a PhD in coral reef palaeoecology??! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...