Case Vincent Miller, PhD

#Enantiornithine birds were the dominant birds of the #Cretaceous, and our new study suggests that their #diets were as varied as living birds! Not only that, but they evolved this #diversity in #diet at a rate comparable to that of modern birds! (1/17)

@eusouguiga Fossil animals are, at the end of the day, animals. While we may speculate on their behaviors, it's a safe bet that behaviors seen around the world today extend back into ancient times.

@eusouguiga And the rest we base on animals today. The colors chosen for the bird resemble the Common Kingfisher. Many small birds today can be seen "mobbing" larger birds to defend their territory.

Dúvida genuína, galera. Como os pesquisadores sabem tanto sobre comportamentos de seres que foram extintos há milhões de anos? Eu realmente fiquei curioso pra saber.

And here I am in the credits! An honor to see my name alongside so many people I admire.

Excited for the release of 'The Dinosaurs' on #Netflix! I was tapped as a scientific advisor for Longipteryx (featured in episode 3), so amazing to see it reach the screen!

@Paleojim ...one potentially interesting direction for Pectinodon research would be to investigate what they co-occur with. See if they tend to appear alongside certain other taxa. Our Environmental Evidence section has some citations on past work like this across troodontids.

@Paleojim Our Future Directions section touches on this a bit - Feeding is an activity integrated across the body, and the isolated nature of many troodontid bones limits how informative they are in paleodiet reconstruction, unfortunately. However...

New paper today in #BiologicalReviews! #Troodontids have famously weird teeth that suggest a variety of #paleodiets in the group. In our review, we suggest new studies to explore this hypothesis and that the ancestors of #birds, #raptors, and troodontids were omnivorous! (1/2)

This project was lead by Yui Chi (Audrey) Fan, and this is her very first publication! I'm very excited to see what's next from her 😁 Check out the #OpenAccess paper at #BiologicalReviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/br…

I've gotten married to the most wonderful person in the world 💛

You can find the package on the #PalaeoGames website: palaeogames.com/collections/dr… While you're there, check out the source book (and its upcoming sequel) if you haven't yet. It is by far my favorite 3rd party TTRPG book, with detailed flavor text and gorgeous artwork.

Excited to announce I've helped to adapt Dr Dhrolin's Dictionary of Dinosaurs by @Palaeofox for the #Pathbuilder app! Pathfinder (@paizo) was my first ever TTRPG, and I'm elated for this @scicomm opportunity to bring realistic prehistoric life to the game!

@WryCritic Ah yes the dreaded Dire Panda, scourge of the Mesozoic.

@ja_tobias @CurrentBiology Absolutely agree! I've made a thread too with some points on the Paleo side of this article you might be interested in ;)

Paper out in @CurrentBiology today shows fruit in the guts of a fossilized Mesozoic bird with a toothed beak previously assumed to be a predator. On the one hand this is very cool but I have some thoughts on the spin applied by the authors. 1/7 cell.com/current-biolog…

PS - O'Connor et al's suggestion that Longipteryx used its teeth in intraspecific combat is a really creative one! I’m excited to see how researchers test that hypothesis.

O’Connor et al’s new paper on fruit-ingesting Longipteryx: cell.com/current-biolog… And our work on longipterygid diet: bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

New paper reports #Longipteryx with ingested #fruit! But despite its title, I wouldn’t say it “contradicts morphological proxies for diet”. In fact, our team predicted longipterygids swallowing plants in 2022 (snip below).