Andrej Spiridonov

The Bible of the biological reductionism and determinism turns 50... and now we need the similarly vivid but opposite in philosophy book on evolution which would recognize all the richness of evolutionary phenomena across scales. 🧪 #EvoBio

What about the risks of the idea and the data leakage when implementing AI-based review? 🧪

The fossil record sets some hard limits on the uniformitarianism and the extrapolationism: "Biogeographers must take advantage of these rich fossil histories to better elucidate evolutionary theory across space and time." royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... 🧪⚒️ #Macroecology #Paleobio #Geology

I didn't know that the radiation works that fast!😱 japantoday.com/category/nat...

The Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at U. of Tennessee, Knoxville is accepting applications for MS or PhD. Admitted graduate students are fully funded through teaching assistantships that cover tuition, fees, and an annual pay of $28,134. Deadline Dec 1 2026. eeb.utk.edu/graduate-stu...

"Climatic niche conservatism is therefore ancient in crocodile-line archosaurs, but not completely static." P.S. I like this "evolution through temperature space" phylogram aesthetic. www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

"Earth entered its ‘bad decades’ after dinosaur-ending asteroid strike" archive.is/eeTDM#select...

Would be interesting to read when the discussed study will be published. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

LIP eruptions and the loss of oxygen during the Great Oxidation Event: "The Paleoproterozoic atmospheric oxygen level can drop sharply to anoxic conditions after LIP emplacement and recover within ~0.5 million years..." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

As see this pattern as cleverness vs intelligence dominance inside the fields. As the AI destroyed problem-solving bottleneck, my conjecture would be that math will change the disruptiveness curve to resemble biology, where synthesis is more important. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪

Kimberlites as deep probes of nitrogen cycle evolution and exchange between spheres: "Kimberlites record isotopically heavy nitrogen only in rocks younger than 180 Ma. Biosphere evolution drove a Phanerozoic perturbation in the deep nitrogen cycle." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Interesting read. For the context: the difference between M 6.9 and M 9.9 earthquakes is approximately comparable to the fart and the explosion of a granade. Sampling, density of the observational network, and assumptions on the structure of the expected signal, all play in early warning accuracy.

pelagornis

How many species there were for any single taxon? The time-discovery accumulation curves is one way to answer this question by means of estimation and extrapolation. It seems such inference is sensistive to the patterns and strcutures in the data. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

The first documentation of lake sturgeon feeding excavations #GreatLakes 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A new "Journal of Statistical Ecology" was just launched. They searching for contributions! "Its goals are to provide an academic journal at the interface between ecology and statistics, and to promote an ethical and inclusive open access publishing model" jse.centre-mersenne.org 🧪 #Ecology #EvoBio

Article tackles the megabias of the diminishing soft-body preservation in the fossil record: The explanation rests on the proposition, that it was caused by the proliferation of colagen enzyme diversity in bacteria and archaea. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Timelapse of ripple migration via surf backwash, Florida panhandle, ca. 2020. 🏝️⚒️

Whaaat? Flightless bird ("Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis... from southeastern China") in the Jurassic? Dude you literally just learned to fly and you are immediately dropping this superpower. Reminds me the story of limb loss in early tetrapods www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Climate simulations spanning centuries to millennia suggest that an El Niño-like climate state could persist for centuries after emissions cease, bringing lasting rainfall shifts and more frequent extreme El Niño events. Net zero ≠ climate reset. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

What a wonderful reconstruction. Two alien-looking stem crocodiles enjoying rather unusual prey -- relatives of Archosaurs--turtles. Reminds us that the evolution of crocodiles was dynamic and current forms cover small portion of their diversity. doi.org/10.1017/jpa.... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

So, apparently the genetic diversity and the presence of structure is not a remedy for the extinction. At least for endemics on islands. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your CV? Paleontologist: You mean the ghost lineage? Look fossilization is rare and we don’t have strata preserving the relevant time period. We can infer it was very impressive and doing lots of things that would make one hirable though…

We must have an energy transition, but in doing so we must not replace fossil fuel colonialism with green colonialism. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

Excited to announce that our study examining trophic mode in fossil marine plankton has been published! 🌍🌊🦠 Read it for free here: royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... (1/3)

For a moment, I thought this was an Ophileta fossil....

Rudists are some of my favorite extinct forms of life. Bivalves which wanted to become corals, while growing to the size of small tree trunks. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

So, the benchmarks are like IQ for humans? Shows something, but mostly bullshit. www.youtube.com/shorts/djsvE...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

#Bretskyan_hierarchy and AI data centers. The space, climate and landscapes strike back. www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ql...

Oh a marvelous post about AI solutions to math problems using dinosaur paleontology as a metaphor. blog.ohaithe.re/post/8299720... 🧪

So, the math will work more and more like the science when building something, we are accepting modules of apparent truth without ever explicit understanding them? Science with AI input will be even more cognitively opaque for humans? Honest mathematician: www.youtube.com/shorts/kV3fn...

"US proposes $100,000 charge for international students to do post-graduate work" But why you would do such foolish thing on yourself? They want to reap money for prestige, sacrificing cheap high-level international tallent intake. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Sediments, geochemistry, taphonomy as well as evolutionary patterns usually point to the same transformative events if you know how to read: "The Choteč Limestone-Kačák Member succession represents ... favorable...preservation of microbial microfabrics." link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Designed to be Forgotten: Visual Anonymization in Ecological Publishing. Bring back the unique personalities of journals. bring back diversity in design, argues @emoqanaki.bsky.social Happy to have published this in the latest Bulletin of the ESA @esajournals.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1002/bes2...

Which recurrence plot you would prefer: 1) Stroke, 2) Lesion, or 3) Normal? 🧪 #Complexity

'Phylogenetic jungle' of early ecomorphologically diverse actinopretygians: "Early actinopterygians are a paraphyletic assemblage of ~600 extinct species divided between ~22 named clades and the “palaeoniscoids,” a..wastebasket" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

As AI systems become more capable in helping in the scientific inference, the challenge becomes the understanding of their inner workings and biases which they can introduce (in arguably different inhuman ways) in the study. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪

ChatGPT is adding the signatures of real New Yorker cartoonists to its AI-generated images. So far, I've found the signatures of more than 15 contributors. "It’s slop, and unlike the other slop that I’ve encountered, this is slop that’s pretending to be me." www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/chat...

"Vrba'ian" approach in understanding evolution connecting morphology, phylogeny, and the development 👇 "the earliest...evidence of the African buffalo lineage...conserved allometry and heterochrony in the evolutionary history of Syncerus" sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/defaul... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Lol, for a moment thought that it was a rogue hacked (or hacking, pun intended) robot incident 😬

'Tug of war' in major bryozoan clades, and the environment-dependence of their dominance: "...lower average temperatures and greater seasonality could give cyclostome bryozoans with relatively slower metabolism an edge in higher latitudes." academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

This really cheared my Friday: Paleoartists you are supported even by the pope 👇 #Paleobio

So in what is unfortunately now an ~annual~ reminder - the Paleontological Research Institution is not presently affiliated with Cornell and was never a part of Cornell. Some PRI folks have taught students at Cornell, but donating to PRI supports Research and Education, and doesn't support Cornell

True. The correct and fruitful identifications of the unknown in the field is the first step in setting and exciting journey of discovery! www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

The temporal inertia, legacy and 'memory' causing regional-scale extinction in the Ordovician: "broad accumulations of linguliformean shells and phosphatic hardground clasts...released phosphorous nutrients into the overlying water." www.lyellcollection.org/doi/abs/10.1... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio