Skye McDavid

Skye McDavid

@skyemcdavid.com

scientific illustrator dabbling in paleontological research: pterosaurs, dinosaurs, other fossil reptiles, phylogenetic systematics, zoological nomenclature. French New Yorker. she/her https://www.skyemcdavid.com/links

3.2K followers383 following3.3K posts

This makes me feel so much better about my multiple manuscripts at various stages in the pipeline based on Sternberg specimens

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Inhalers. Budesonide/Formoterol was approved in 2006 and Albuterol/Budesonide in 2023.

Social media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?

It should not be socially acceptable for stores to play Christmas music before Black Friday. Yes I'm a Christmas hater but hearing it in October feels like a microaggression.

Skye McDavid reposted

So this is the newly described tanystropheid Simonettoia tilaventina, which allegedly has a hyperelongate cervical 3 (and only cervical 3), shaded in blue here. I have several reasons to doubt this beyond just how off it looks superficially:

EVILy Thomas 🦤🏳️‍🌈@zhejiang0pterus.bsky.social

I am 99% sure that this new tanystropheid paper has misidentified a femur as a cervical vertebra. Longer argument if y’all want when I get home, but it looks clear cut to me

Skye McDavid reposted

I posted this last week without comment, but I'm going to comment now. The people who established the system of museums in the West had a very specific reason for doing so: they thought that having an appreciation for the wonders of the world was absolutely necessary for being a good citizen.

J Pardo@jdpardo.bsky.social

Posting for your consideration, without comment.

Skye McDavid reposted

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

This is how it feels to have a concussion (minus the hating everyone part, I'm very appreciative of my SO, friends, family, and colleagues who are putting up with my being very poorly and very stupid)

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social

Well, happy Charles Darwin is “very poorly today & very stupid & hate[s] everybody & everything” to all who celebrate, because he wrote those words in a letter to his friend (and author of Principles of Geology) Charles Lyell 161 years ago today

"next time you have a head injury you should go to the hospital right away" is interesting advice to give to someone who didn't know she had a head injury

Anyway I have a concussion... Most likely will be fully recovered by the time SVP rolls around but complicates my plans of preparing for SVP.

I'm one of the scientists here. Sternberg Museum holds one of the most important pterosaur collections in the world. It is extremely important that the collection remains accessible for research, and it would be a tragedy for Kansas if it has to be transferred out of state.

Amanda Peng@amandawpeng.bsky.social

We have received over 150 letters of support from scientists, societies, students, and the public to share with the university administration, which we will be doing today.

Skye McDavid reposted

#fossilfriday An example of why the ANSP and its collections must be saved. Atlantochelys mortoni, a giant protostegid sea turtle - named in 1849 by Agassiz based on the proximal humerus fragment. In 2012, someone found a large distal humerus that FIT ONTO THE SAME BONE in ANSP collections. 1/ 🦖🧪

I rarely make public criticisms of new papers, but Sancarlo & Paul's latest "paper" is nothing more than a brazen act of taxonomic vandalism. And the organization(?) that publishes the "journal' has a 'family photos' section on their website.

And yes, this was scanned the old-fashioned way with an overhead book scanner with care taken not to damage the book. After I scanned it, the book was returned to the library so that people will be able to consult it for decades to come.

Skye McDavid reposted

Yes, yes,I know it’s bad to leak SVP abstracts under embargo but I simply can’t restrain myself. Get ready for a second species of the Scansoriopterygid Yi, this time unearthed in mid-Jurassic Texas. *places 10 gallon hat over tiny dinosaur, fully encasing it* Meet Yi haw.

I got the scheduling info for my talk at #2026SVP! Quetzalcoatlus is not what you think it is. Come see my talk in 26 ABC at 3:30 PM on Friday, Nov 12. See you in Cleveland!

Yep. When ChatGPT first came out, I tried to see if I could use it for phylogenetic matrix editing. And it was less than useless. I asked it to pre-populate an OTU with ? states and it returned a corrupted file. Then I asked it to generate a string of a certain number of question marks so

Prof Susie Maidment@tweetisaurus.bsky.social

ChatGPT is unable to take my matrix and add in characters to that they are correctly formatted for upload into Morphobank. Which leads me to wonder (1) what is the actual point in AI if it can't do this and (2) if it can't do basic text editing, how is it going to take over the world?

Skye McDavid reposted

Meet prehistoric high-flyer 𝘙𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘩𝘺𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪! This pterosaur was abundant in the islands that dotted an ancient tropical sea in what is now Central Europe. 𝘙𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘩𝘺𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘴' sharp teeth may have been used to catch fish along the islands it inhabited. 📍 Dinosaur Hall (Upper Floor), Level 1

Skye McDavid reposted

#SciArtSeptember 2: violet A recently described specimen of Sinopterus dongi showed, for the first time, evidence of iridescent colour in pterosaurs. There were also traces of horizontal stripes on the soft tissue crest. The Mesozoic world is getting more and more colourful. #SciArt