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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

@daveyfwright.bsky.social

3.1K followers 140 following 1.5K posts

Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, & punk rock enthusiast. Assistant Professor & Curator of Invertebrate Paleontology. U Oklahoma/Sam Noble Museum of Natural History. Macroevolution, phylogenetic methods, echinoderms https://daveyfwright.wordpress.com

daveyfwright.wordpress.com

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · Sep 2

New updated preprint! Many thanks to reviewers for their suggestions and helpful advice for improving our manuscript. Check it out if you're interested in fossils, phylogenies, and modeling morphologic evolution! 🧪

Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data

Understanding the evolution and phylogenetic distribution of morphologic traits is fundamental to macroevolutionary research. Despite decades of major advances and key insights from molecular systemat...

www.biorxiv.org

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 17h

👀 well look at OU as a powerhouse of paleobiology

Paleobiology Research Group at OU @oupaleobiology.bsky.social · 17h

🧵The Geological Society of America / Paleontological Society annual meeting is next week! Here's a thread of research presentations involving OU Paleobiology:

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · Sep 2

I'm hoping to take 1 MSc & 1 PhD student next year in the areas of Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology. Please reach out if you are interested in joining the @oupaleobiology.bsky.social, especially if interested in working on fossil echinoderms. Link for more info below. 🧪

News

PhD and MSc positions in Phylogenetic, Computational, and/or Evolutionary Paleobiology [Posted September 2025. Deadline is January 15, 2026. See below for information about the lab, student opportu…

daveyfwright.wordpress.com

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely jaw dropping, spectacularly preserved & beautiful fossil crinoid (left) and blastozoan (right) echinoderms. These fossils are from the Bromide Fm of Oklahoma and nearly all specimens shown here are from the type collection at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History 🧪

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Sean A. S. Anderson 🍉 @seananderson.bsky.social · 1d

Now available in Systematic Biology, a new paper (and R package) in which we outline an approach to account for non-independence in comparative analyses of lineage-pair traits academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

The Comparative Analysis of Lineage-Pair Traits

Abstract. For many questions in ecology and evolution, the most relevant data to consider are attributes of lineage pairs. Comparative tests for causal rel

academic.oup.com

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 1d

This is a cool paper led by OU undergraduate researcher Colby Higdon, who examined * thousands * of paracrinoid blastozoan specimens in the Invertebrate Paleontology collection at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Paleobiology Research Group at OU @oupaleobiology.bsky.social · 1d

New paper from Dr. Selina Cole's lab!

"Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA)"

Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA) | Journal of Paleontology | Cambridge Core

Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA)

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Paleobiology Research Group at OU @oupaleobiology.bsky.social · 1d

New paper from Dr. Selina Cole's lab!

"Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA)"

Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA) | Journal of Paleontology | Cambridge Core

Competition or coexistence? Ecology and niche partitioning of pelmatozoan echinoderms from the Late Ordovician Bromide Formation (Oklahoma, USA)

www.cambridge.org

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Andrew Hipp @andrewlhipp.bsky.social · 2d

A clear illustration of at least one reason why inferences from macroevolutionary (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck) adaptation models don't reliably predict microevolution.

Schluter D. 2024. Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society 3: kzae016.

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Figure 3. A, a hypothetical adaptive landscape with multiple adaptive peaks (+) oriented along a corridor, some of which are occupied by species (grey ellipses). Contours represent population mean fitness as a function of population mean in two traits. The direction of maximum genetic variation within species (gmax) is indicated by an arrow. The heavy dashed line indicates the major direction of the corridor of adaptive peaks. I assume the hypothetical species occupying the landscape are broadly sympatric (otherwise adaptive peaks from different regions would need to be superimposed somehow). B, the OU stationary distribution or ‘surface’ estimated from the means of the five species in A superimposed on the same adaptive landscape. Species means are indicated by filled circles. Contours indicate probability density of the fitted bivariate Gaussian OU distribution. The grand mean is indicated by θ. The stationary distribution was estimated using the mvMORPH package (Clavel et al. 2015) in R 4.3.2 assuming a random phylogeny for the five species.

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 2d

One of my all-time favorites by The Ramones

Ramones - "Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)" - Too Tough to Die

YouTube video by The Ramones

www.youtube.com

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 2d

Species description by ChatGPT

Marjorie James Keenan @unenthusiast.com · 3d

In honour of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand.

rm -rf ~/

hammancheez @hammancheez.bsky.social · 3d

"The chancellor approved it"

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 3d

I know I'm a broken record on this but god I hate AI so much

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 3d

OU vs Texas means it's a Pentaceratops horns down kind of day

Pentaceratops skeleton depicted with its skull (and horns) down

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4d

incredible how older taxonomic literature in paleontology will describe geologically old, plesiomorphic (and potentially paraphyletic) taxa as "an important root-stock in evolution"

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · May 16

The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History has an absolutely spectacular collection of fossil crinoids, including these beautiful late Paleozoic eucladids #FossilFriday🧪

A beautiful specimen of the calyx and arms of the fossil crinoid Agalocrinus oklahomensis (OU 7337)

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 4d

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." ― George Orwell, 1984

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 5d

Truly bizarre this is often the case and rarely questioned

they/them might be giants ☭ @babadookspinoza.bsky.social · 5d

Show me a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and I’ll show you a warmonger.

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 5d

Those of us who are systematists still cite papers from >100 years ago because of their significance to taxonomy (good species descriptions never die) & following correct citations for zoological nomenclature. That's a good point about AI slop, too.

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 6d

It's important to focus on the things that bring you joy. For example, the New York Yankees suffering a crushing defeat

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 6d

Somehow I signed up to author/co-author six abstracts for the upcoming GSA/Paleontological Society meeting and boy do I have some work to do

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 6d

I used to think it was because they got so hyper-focused on ontology they forgot everything about epistemology, but their grasp of epistemology is somehow even worse

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 6d

Sometimes I (blissfully) forget there was a group of hardcore cladists that philosophized so hard they rejected even parsimony-based phylogenetics and inadvertently became science nihilists

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Reposted by Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬

Esther Schindler @estherschindler.bsky.social · 8d

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

"AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations"

JB_AU @jbau.bsky.social · 16d

This whole section really.

Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations:

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 9d

I love how nature documentaries sound like they're describing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting when talking about plants and animals doing totally normal stuff

"In the deep dark forest, one animal begins an epic quest into the abyss where the trees cast spells and zombies roam the woodlands"

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Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 10d

Surprisingly (to me), I found this Hutchinson line from a 1957 article titled, The Future of Marine Paleoecology

Dr. Davey F. Wright ⛏️🦕🧬 @daveyfwright.bsky.social · 10d

"Uninspired prophecy is notoriously dangerous; all that we can do is to assess probabilities, in full confidence that the improbable will sometimes happen." - G. Evelyn Hutchinson 🧪

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