Vera Weisbecker (she/her on Kaurna land)

Basically every major rock pile in Australia has a different species of rock wallaby on it😉

@DRexMitchell shows that the littlest rock wallabies pack a punch when it comes to biting hard. We call it the "Little Wallaby Syndrome". Rock wallabies are awesome to study skull adaptation because they are a recent radiation yet found across Australia. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

Why is a gecko 🦎 tail like a cactus 🌵? Because their bulbous tail stores resources for uncertain times Parallel evolution of expanded tails in monsoonal tropics lineages of an Australian gecko radiation in ⁦@ZoolJLinnSoc⁩ doi.org/10.1093/zoolin… flic.kr/p/DG41CE

@aemarcy I thought you'd appreciated the pun 😄

A wonderful, picture-filled explanation of a new theory to explain an odd pattern among mammals (and other vertebrates). Why the long face indeed!

This Christmas, give the gift of Science by donating to Kits-Mas! For every $600 raised, DeadlyScience will send Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner classrooms a deadly microscopy kit. Visit ow.ly/p6Ik50Qhg8w and donate today.

But this review isn't just about skulls. We show how phylogenetic tests of allometry can be a problem when size correlates with phylogeny. As one reviewer said, it's like throwing the baby out with the bathwater! @DrEmSherratt @WeisbeckerLab onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/br…

The gist of it is – long-faced mammals can afford it. Read up the long and short of it in our @TheConversation article: theconversation.com/why-the-long-f…

We’ve known for a while that larger mammals often have longer faces (think of deer vs. moose), but we couldn't fully explain why. @DRexMitchell sized up the answer in our new open-access review. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/br…

Several years in the making with two of the biggest brains in the field! @WeisbeckerLab @DrEmSherratt We unpack the who, the what, the where, the when, and the how of mammalian skull proportions and how they change with size across species. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/br…

Ever wondered why large mammals have long faces? Biomechanics explains it 😊 Thanks for the fun discussions @DRexMitchell and @WeisbeckerLab #allometryrules @ConversationEDU theconversation.com/why-the-long-f…

Our manuscript on island biodiversity is out! Islands today are more similar to each other than they were in a pre-human past, because of 1) extinctions, 2) introductions of the very same species everywhere @newbiogeo @naturalis @SUNY 🏝️🐘=gone🐀=new escholarship.org/uc/item/5b14f5…

Nice article by ABC's Emma Haskin about the newly-discovered 25 million year old koala fossils that we published on! abc.net.au/news/2023-09-0… via @ABCaustralia

Anatomy education is a rare academic area with more jobs than qualified people. I strongly advise grad students in my research field (biological anthropology) to get solid anatomy training. It will dramatically improve prospects for livable employment. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/as…

This week saw the launch of VAMP; the Virtual Australian Museum of Palaeontology. sites.flinders.edu.au/vamp @VAMP_Palaeo #dinosaur #dino #dinosaurus #fossil #fossilskeleton #fossilfriday #palaeontologists #paleontology #jurassicpark #vertebrates #museums #Australia

@VAMP_Palaeo launched tonight so now we’ve all got free digital access to hundreds of Aussie fossils 🐾🦴 huge congrats to the team @DrAliceClement @Zoelenotherium @DiprotoRon

@stevieflorent 100% agree! @cclemente4 and colleagues have done FGM work on this for urban stress on roos, which I suspect would totally work...esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100…

Read more on theconversation.com/newly-describe…

@Zoelenotherium ambulating us through how surface scanning can help us find out about Australia's incredibly weird extinct megafauna.

@DiprotoRon talking about 3D scanning of footprints- things you just can't take home from the field- at today's @VAMP_Palaeo launch @fupalaeosoc @cabahCoE .