Michael Deak

My first peer-reviewed publication is finally out! After 5 years in the making from conception to completion, now I can finally tell the full story in the form of a thread. It'll probably be a long one, but if you want to read the paper instead: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Crystal palace Trex Vintage Baryonyx Retro Yutyrannus

@NatSciChannel @ausar_the I still wonder if any Colossal money went into making this museum. I'd honestly be very surprised if they didn't contribute a single cent to it.

@ausar_the This is also because of Dr. Kenneth Lacovara, who is one of their paleontologists. Most experts who are involved with Colossal pretend not to see the blatant issues with it.

Does anyone know if the Colossal Foundation is a specific subset of Colossal Biosciences? It seems to have its own distinct website/URL from that of the whole company, even though they’re obviously connected. I spotted this at the Edelman, so…

@MarianoCanale11 @TomHoltzPaleo @MayuraTavus @TheDJ_King But said projects can be funded by less problematic people.

@deak_michael @TomHoltzPaleo @MayuraTavus @TheDJ_King My friend, every project needs money, and when someone offers it, it's certainly tempting... but you can't speak with certainty until you're leading a research group of that size and facing financial difficulties that could be serious for you.

Colossal Biosciences just used an actual nazi to promote their "science". This company needs to be shut down. Immediately. instagram.com/p/DWFBeMKEYmj/

@MarianoCanale11 @TomHoltzPaleo @MayuraTavus @TheDJ_King You do know that George Church, Colossal's founder, had ties to Epstein, right? This isn't necessarily about dismissing research, it's not supporting terrible people.

@TomHoltzPaleo @MayuraTavus @TheDJ_King Frankly, I find that a rather immature example... I don't see the point in trying to dismiss research of this magnitude just because it's funded by someone from a political spectrum you don't like.

@MiloGaillard3 Ah, Heck [cattle].

That’s…rather…fascinating…

TLDR: Just as a lack of soft tissue preservation can skew our interpretations of reconstructing extinct animals in paleoart, it can also skew any "genetic reconstructions".

Unfortunately, we don't have any dire wolf fur to say one way or another. So, in absence of soft tissue preservation, and knowing that a lot of hybridization was going on, how do we know which genes were phenotypically expressed and which ones were not?

#FossilFriday musings: A recent revisiting of a 2021 paper on #mammoth genetics, and the recent uptick in Colossal talk in the paleo community has got me thinking about some stuff. A brief thread: nature.com/articles/s4158…

@Daspletosaurid @Paleonyx_Art The authors even note that this could be advantageous for other large endotherms in deep time. And yet, Bell et al. (2017) did not cite this.....go figure.....

@Daspletosaurid @Paleonyx_Art It creates more surface area akin to pins on a radiator. journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Kinda miss back in the 2010s when people were embracing the idea of a feathery T.rex, both for accurate reconstructions and stylised designs Before some penny-sized scale impressions somehow got everyone to abandon the idea entirely

@Paleonyx_Art Also, some of these alleged patches are unlikely to be tyrannosaurid in origin.

Getting alot of comments about it, so gonna leave this here These are (afaik) the only scale impressions we have of T.rex. Mostly tiny patches from areas usually depicted as scaly even in feathered depictions. There's plenty of room left for speculative feathering

In the past 7 months, we have seen *3* animals drastically challenge long held hypotheses on melanosome diversity, insane!!!!!! 🌈

Another trip around the sun completed.

Statement from Paul Sereno / University of Chicago Fossil Lab regarding Nathan Myhrvold: paulsereno.uchicago.edu/news/fossil_la…

@MesozoicDream @Tommyplodocus No need for the quotation marks around Nanotyrannus these days.

@Tommyplodocus Based on short and triangular snout, it's most likely based on 2 year old Tarbosaurus. So I think it's safe from any revision, cause it referenced juvenile of closest relative, rather than "Nanotyrannus" or "Stygivenator."

A #FossilFriday throwback to when I attended a Tyrannosaurus rex exhibition, featuring this baby T. rex model… or is it Nanotyrannus now? I’m so confused!