#2025SVP @kristinakocakova.bsky.social: Found that younger taxa are more susceptible to extinction. Could this be due to the broadening of geographic range over time? No sharing results.

#2025SVP Loughlin: Ecological niche modeling effectively recreates modern distributions, and can predict fossil occurrences In recent time intervals, but less reliable for predicting occurrences further back in time.

#2025SVP @cretaceous-cass.bsky.social: Mesozoic ecosystems often had multiple species of large carnivorous theropods coexisting. How did they achieve this? Looked at tooth wear to determine dietary specializations of large theropods. No sharing results.

#2025SVP Rawson: No sharing the next part.

#2025SVP Rawson: Based on CT data, Brasilodon lacked a dentary–squamosal joint, contrary to earlier descriptions. Yet Riograndia, a more distant relative to mammals, exhibits dentary–squamosal contact, likely convergently. Recently another independent acquisition reported in a tritylodontid.

#2025SVP Riegler: These specializations are found in the stem-rhineurid fossil record as far back as the Eocene. “Once a rhineurid, always rhineurid.”

#2025SVP Riegler: New data shows that Rhineura has an akinetic skull (unlike other squamates) as an adaptation for burrowing, unique innervation of the frontal region, musculature permitting use of the head as a spade, and lack of an optic nerve (therefore blind).

#2025SVP Riegler: Rhineurids are the extant sister group to other modern amphisbaenians. They are the deepest burrowing squamates and possibly deepest burrowing reptiles, having been found 6 m underground. However, skull anatomy essentially undescribed.

#2025SVP San Román: “If we scale the scales to the same scale…”

#2025SVP San Román: After accounting for taphonomy, looked at the diversity of body shapes in Las Hoyas teleosts to diagnose distinct taxa. No sharing results.

#2025SVP San Román: Teleosts are known from thousands of fossil specimens at Las Hoyas, but highly understudied. Often exhibit exceptional preservation of soft tissues.

#2025SVP San Román: Extant teleosts are incredibly diverse and morphologically disparate, but early forms are relatively uniform and generalized, making it difficult to understand their early evolution. (”To make is easier, they look like a sardine.”)

#2025SVP Viñola-López: Isotopic data have potential to shed light on how human arrival affected mammal ecology over time. It is known that humans moved Caribbean rodents from island to island; some are still kept as pets today. Shows photo of a tame hutia snuggling with a dog… used to hunt hutias.

#2025SVP Viñola-López: Looked at carbon isotopes in Caribbean mammals (rodents, sloths, nesophontids, etc.). Isotopic niche breadth was reduced by extinction, with open habitat species being most affected, but species loss preceded large-scale deforestation (“empty forest syndrome“)