Xavier A. Jenkins

Our paper on turtle origins is finally out in Current Biology, with two major implications for our understanding of reptile evolution 🐢 #Paleontology #Turtles #Evolution www.cell.com/current-biol...

The hollowing out of taxonomic expertise is the silent crisis in our profession. And the worse sin is those who aren't even the slight bit *curious* about learning basic identifications.

Does anyone affiliated w a museum collection that holds extant specimens has the means to CT scan a shell+non-shell postcranium of Pseudemys floridana (skull a plus if available)? I can pay for the CT scan+labour. I have a surface scan, but it doesn't provide the level I wish for a phylo question.

Quick sketch of Westlothiana lizziae, grabbing some lunch in early #Carboniferous Scotland. Formerly known as an early reptile-like amniote or maybe an amphibian, “Lizzie” was just reinterpreted as more early-diverging tetrapodomorph, possessing fishy gills and spiracles. #sciart #paleoart #fishart

These frogs “see” prey with their star-shaped toes. Learn more: https://scim.ag/4daOBJh

View-only link for those who don’t have access to Nature: rdcu.be/xRNEAAmp9zha

I did the art for this!!! It’s nice to finally be able to talk about this

Important reading: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper with @cisneros.bsky.social and colleagues. We report here a new deep-bodied ray-finned fish from the early Permian of northeast Brazil. Meet Nazaria limnica. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

"Where do turtles belong on the reptile family tree?" is one of those questions that seems like a no-brainer. In actual fact, when you take a step back, turtles are *extremely* weird! I wrote about it for National Geographic

Proud to share our latest paper in out in Nature today on the origin of #snakes. We present Tametara mirim, an articulated 3D preserved stem snake from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. Tametara helped us re-tell the story of snake origins in a novel way... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New review paper with Martín Ezcurra just published in @journalsystpal.bsky.social as part of a special issue! Modern reptiles comprise archosaurs 🐊🦉, lepidosaurs🦎🐍, and turtles🐢, but their origins is murky. Where do turtles fit in, really? And most marine reptiles? Choristoderes? Drepanosaurs? ->

Reconstructed skull of Eunotosaurus africanus, an early reptile from the Permian of southern Africa. 🐢 Long hypothesized to be an ancient ancestor of turtles, recent work led by @semifossorial.bsky.social shows this curious creature is instead a 'turtleized' millerettid. (1/🧵) #FossilFriday

I feel like this is going to be a constant narrative for a while now

Dimetrodon's Daydream #berensart2026 #paleoart

🔵🟠KNICKS IN 5!*🟠🔵

Led by the incomparable Sanaa El-Sayed, a study out today in Science Advances throws open an important new window on marine fish diversity during the critical few million years following the K-Pg mass extinction. Below: artistic vision of the new fauna by Ian Baylatry.

New paper. Modern hagfishes (Myxiniformes) have radically reduced eyes. When did these reductions happen, and how? Leveraging the diverse hagfish fauna from Mazon Creek, we show this happened gradually in animals occupying shallow marine environments royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...