NEW PAPER DAY! After A LONG TIME in the works, I want to share with you all the VERY 1ST CASE of an avian-style RESPIRATORY INFECTION in a non-avian DINOSAUR! You heard me right readers – AND IT’S IN A #SAUROPOD!. (Ewan Wolff, Matt Wedel, Sophie Dennison, & @WitmerLab)

RT @DocAtCDI: ICE officers stopped by our farm yesterday. “We need to inspect your property for illegal aliens,” one of them said. I repl….

Here's the OPEN ACCESS paper:.Tom T.P. van der Linden, Michael P. Taylor, Amy Campbell, Brian D. Curtice, René Dederichs, Lucas N. Lerzo, John A. Whitlock, D. Cary Woodruff, and Emanuel Tschopp (2025).Introduction to Diplodocoidea.

I'm a few days late, but NEW PAPER day! 🥳. This paper is a synthesis on our current knowledge about Diplodocoidea (Diplodocus and kin) - ranging from their paleo history, life history, appearance, behavior, so much more.

*WHY* is *EVERY* dinosaur themed beer an IPA?! 😡.(but I love the name)

It's a Saurischian-airport kind of day.

Obligatory* selfie with #Brachiosaurus at #ORD. (* any photo with a sauropod is a good photo)

RT @MeatEaterTV: Every now and then, the good guys win. Thanks to thousands of voices, millions of acres of public land were erased from t….

RT @MeatEaterTV: Public lands stay public because people fight for them. Today’s that fight. 25,000 calls to the Senate. One goal: stop th….

RT @hunterandrupert: 🌊🐾

RT @birdmoder: This is what we should be doing with our public lands instead of selling them. Covering them in bison

RT @Hickenlooper: Here’s the message, plain and simple. To anyone trying to sell off Colorado’s public lands to pay for tax breaks for the….

RT @OutFrontCNN: Former Secretary Ernest Moniz, a key negotiator in the Iran nuclear deal who served under President Obama, speaks one-on-o….

RT @MeatEaterTV: We stand to lose millions of acres of public lands if we don't act now. Here's a detailed map of what's on the table. http….

RT @MeatEaterTV: Sen. Mike Lee’s budget bill would force the sale of 2–3M acres of BLM & Forest Service land across 12 Western states. Thi….

Proud to stand with so many brave people and true patriots at the #NoKings protest in #Miami! No to fascism! Wanna make America great again?. support science, education, human rights, and our partnership on the global stage!

And I'm biased from my own research interests, but Poropat et al find support for things like ontogenetic dietary partitioning and ontogenetic skull changes associated with diet. So, in short, the ontogeny section (Hell, really the whole paper!) is:

This doesn't mean that everything we've said is right, nor does this 'pod equal all 'pods, but it's verification and substantiation that many of the ways we think about sauropods collectively as functioning biological organisms is correct.

Not only does the geochemical work in this paper support the interpretation that this 🦕 ate these plants (IMO), but basically every which way you turn, this fossil substantiates SO MUCH about what we've been interpreting and saying about sauropod paleobiology.

But. collectively, these were somewhat untestable. We can model vertebral movement; FEA on tooth strength and jaw mechanics; we can even model caloric energy released from differing modes of digestion. But we didn't have a fossil to compare these results to. Until now.

Though it's (very) debated, we have some ideas of feeding heights/behaviors for various clades. From tooth shape, we can basically denote if it fed on coarse or soft vegetation. And from wear facets on teeth, we can investigate chewing (or lack thereof). And much, much more!.