@philvixseboxse
Fourth year PhD student at the University of Cambridge 🎓 MSc Palaeobiology & BSc Geology graduate from the University of Bristol. Views my own. LGBTQ+ 🏳️🌈 He/they https://sites.google.com/view/philipvixseboxse
Our paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below!
Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage
🚨New preprint (not peer reviewed)! Last year, NASA announced "potential biosignatures" on Mars: bleached spots in rust-red rocks. Here, we show that rust-dissolving bacteria really can make spots like these. Next step: see if we can make them without bacteria! #astrobiology doi.org/10.64898/202...
Please consider applying when live for our two roles at UCL, UK! Join an excellent, diverse and friendly team to drive forwards open science and learn lots of new skills!
A bacterial predator, Halobacteriovorax, acts as a living "probiotic" that halts Vibrio-induced disease progression in endangered Caribbean corals. This shows microbial predators are promising new tools for coral disease therapy! #CoralReefs #MicrobialEcology #ISMEJ academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Two time series of decay, showing the decomposition of a sea anemone (top) and shrimp (bottom) over 72 and 144 hours respectively.
Absolutely delighted to be a recipient of the @thepalass.bsky.social Annual Meeting Poster Prize at #Palass25! It was a pleasure to discuss our new taphonomic approaches with so many of you all.
This #FossilFriday I am delighted to say that I have been awarded a @erc.europa.eu Consolidator Grant looking at selection in #Ediacaran animals. If interested in Ediacaran life, do come and chat at #palass2025 @thepalass.bsky.social
Why is life the way it is? It was a pleasure to share a stage with Nick Lane, @mamaphysikerin.bsky.social, and Cait MacPhee yesterday evening for the @royalsoced.bsky.social seminar event preceding Nick Lane's Gifford Lecture. You can watch the recording here: #astrobiology #evolution #biochemistry
The federal government has censored the work of dozens of scientists, including work by my lab, on the impacts of climate change on Acadia National Park. Signs have been removed from Cadillac and Great Meadow. They’re also removing signs about the Wabanaki’s sacred connections to Cadillac.
Quote of the Day,
as found in "Comparative Vertebrate and Human Anatomy: Ecology, Evolution, and Function"
pressbooks.palni.org/comparativev...
Check it out - looks great!
#EndlessFishMostBeautiful
Lepidaspis by Nobu Tomura
New palaeo-PhD opportunity! Will you be the one to figure out the anatomy and function of fossil jawless fish? Come join the team! Application Deadline August 22nd, funding for UK student only (sorry)
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
~just to add~
This approach was reproduced by Dr Phil Wilby in 2009 on a Callovian ink sack. The accompanying photoshoot (📸: Phil Yeomans) is iconic.
One of my favourite #MaryAnning facts™️ is that she would discover fossil cephalopod 🐙 fossils with preserved ink sacks, concoct a dangerous chemical slime to turn them back into gloopy ink, and then use her Jurassic ink to draw exquisite illustrations of the vertebrate fossils she found.
Meta.
Digital fossil-mining of squid beaks
Stratigraphic distribution and diversity pattern of early squids
Relative abundance of squids throughout the Albian-Maastrichtian
Excellent case where specimen based research and methodological innovation results in cardinal revision of dominants of marine biomass in the Late Cretaceous. Squids were diverse and dominant over other cephalopods and fish!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #Geology #EvoBio
Now published in @agu.org Geophysical Research Letters!
What happens to marine archaea when they’re hungry? And what does that mean for the TEX₈₆ paleothermometer?
Full paper here: doi.org/10.1029/2025...
Thanks to my coauthors and mentors for their support — and stay tuned, more is coming!
✨ Excited to share our new paper! ✨
Sustained shift in the morphology of organic-walled microfossils over the Ediacaran–Cambrian transition doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
@royalsocietypublishing.org @rosspanderson.bsky.social @kelleypaleolab.bsky.social
Excited to unveil Boltz-2, our new model capable not only of predicting structures but also binding affinities! Boltz-2 is the first AI model to approach the performance of FEP simulations while being more than 1000x faster! All open-sourced under MIT license! A thread… 🤗🚀
Awesome work! How well does this model predict affinities for halide and metal ions?
Very powerful preprint just went live discussing the different forms of colonialism that act on Mexican palaeo research and how the actions of science can result in political instability and violence.
Is our fossil research hurting others?
egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/20...
Take a look at my group's new paper on distinguishing biological and non-biological tubules of iron-oxide, led by Melanie Podbielski. Yes, the title is a Star Trek reference...
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth
this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...
A field photograph of a heavily fractured Cambrian blue-grey limestone, containing multiple, reasonably large (up to 20cm across) peach-pink silicified stromatolites in cross section. The largest dome, in the centre of the photograph, shows evidence of internal laminae.
Delighted to share that from mid-August, I’ll be joining @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social School of GeoSciences as a PDRA studying bacterial taphonomy with @seanhmcmahon.bsky.social and Bryne Ngwenya!
- this silicified stromatolite isn’t a specimen I’ll be studying, but is a suitably bacterial photo 🧫🦠
Interested in Developmental biology? Imaging? Marine invertebrate body plans? Then this three year postdoc in my group @sotonbiosciences.bsky.social is for you! Join our team to decypher how signalling molecules shape skeletal phenotype in juvenile sea urchins. jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...
Using XCT, we got really cool images of a buried zebrafish decaying.
You can see the gases build up, escape, and the body cavity collapse - without disturbing the experiment!
Sometime you even see them pop and rupture - stinky work but awesome to understand fossils 🐟☠️⚰️
dx.doi.org/10.1111/pala...
New entry into the sponge/ctenophore debate.... Have the chromosome fusions separating ctenophores from all other animals been given too much weight? Beautifully clearly written paper covering complex arguments from @rcply.bsky.social.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Hint: it’s less than 1% — a lot less
https://go.nature.com/4jLPDwi
This #FossilFriday our paper on the Slopey G surface at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland, Canada. Both the E and G surfaces outcrop at two different places 1 kilometres apart which means we can compare how ecological dynamics change over large spatial scales.
Simplified flowchart illustrating generalised steps in palaeobiological research processes and the various factors that introduce inequity with regard to data collection, storage, study, analysis, publication, and reuse.
Delighted to share our paper on data equity in #palaeobiology as part of Paleobiology's 50th anniversary issue 🥳
We look at how palaeo data is collected, stored, curated & shared, and how equity in these processes is crucial for our field's future (1/n) 🧪⚒️
doi.org/10.1017/pab....
NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume...
Download what you need asap and send comments to: ncei.info@noaa.gov
Last day of the IRATE workshop in Erlangen. See the happy faces! Looks like everybody had a good time and hopefully fruitful discussions... can't wait to see the outcomes published ^^ (no pressure at all ;))
