WitmerLab at Ohio University

OU sophomore Stella Kurtz joined our lab this semester and has taken on the mountain of Ohio bobcat skeletons that we've been preparing since the pandemic. The carcasses were collected by the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources as part of a censusing project in collaboration with OU biology professors & students (but not WitmerLab folks), who collected age, sex, size, DNA, & precise locality data. The carcasses were to be destroyed but I swooped in before that happened (bones have stories to tell, too!). I held Bobcat Dissection Parties during the pandemic with the OU Wildlife Club and others, and our team also participated...a LOT. We now have dozens and dozens of data-rich skeletons. Right now, Stella is making sense of the collection, doing much needed curation, and becoming acquainted with the whole project. We are indeed the OHIO Bobcats sports-wise—and our team mascot is Rufus, the bobcat's species name: Lynx rufus—so who'd be better than us to have a nice collection of Ohio bobcats!

Joining our lab this semester is @ohiouniversity.bsky.social sophomore Wildlife & Conservation Biology major Stella Kurtz. She’s taking on the mountain of Ohio bobcat skeletons that we've been preparing since the pandemic, making sense of the collection & doing some curation. See ALT for more info.

Oh no, this is a huge loss for the community and of course for his family and folks who knew him well, like you did, John. I'll keep an eye out for his obit so I can learn more about him.

Evan Doles, geology undergrad in our @OhioU Honors Tutorial College, has been digging into extant anatomy this semester to build a foundation for studying dinosaurs. Lately he’s been dissecting a common extant dinosaur, a domestic pigeon, which he finished today. 🦖🕊️

Loren Babcock from Ohio State's Orton Geological Museum (at left) gave a great seminar today on Thomas Jefferson, Megalonyx & paleo history to the @ohiouniversity.bsky.social Earth & Environmental Geosciences Department. We closed the day by bringing everyone to our lab for a fun tour! #FossilFriday

Issue of the journal Nature depicting on its cover Nanotyrannus together with T. rex (art by Anthony Hutchings). Article by Lindsay Zanno & James Napoli here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09801-6

My News & Views commentary. Here's an easier to read version: https://rdcu.be/eNv94

I should check my mail more often. Nice surprise on #FossilFriday to see an actual print version of the @nature.com issue with my News & Views commentary for the Nanotyrannus cover article by Lindsay Zanno & James Napoli @jgn-paleo.bsky.social. Glad to have been involved! Links in ALT🦖

To follow up on our #SundayCTscanning with @ohiouniversity.bsky.social undergrads Grace Vance & Klazina McKeigan, here are the results from the >14K CT slices: two young intact alligators, three Nile croc skulls, adult male & male pup hooded seals, and a bearded seal. Now the work begins! 🦭🐊

A photo taken through the gantry of the CT scanner at OhioHealth O'Bleness Hospital in Athens, Ohio, featuring an alligator carcass surrounded by Witmer and undergraduate researchers Klazina McKeigan and Grace Vance.

A photo in the control room for the CT scanner at OhioHealth O'Bleness Hospital in Athens, Ohio, with Witmer and undergraduate researchers Grace Vance and Klazina McKeigan.

Freshman undergraduate researcher Klazina McKeigan with an alligator carcass to be scanned at OhioHealth O'Bleness Hospital in Athens, Ohio.

Senior undergraduate researcher Grace Vance with an alligator carcass to be scanned at OhioHealth O'Bleness Hospital in Athens, Ohio.

#SundayCTScanning Spent the morning at @ohiohealth.bsky.social O'Bleness Hospital doing some research CT scanning of seals, alligators, and crocodiles with @ohiouniversity.bsky.social undergrad researchers senior Grace Vance & freshman Klazina McKeigan. Stay tuned for results...! 🦭🐊

So happy to finally meet Gary Vecchiarelli today after being friends on social media for years. Glad to welcome him to @ohiouniversity.bsky.social & give him a lab tour. He's working on a geology master's via OU's online program. And we took in a Bobcats hockey game while we were at it—and we won!

From https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.70150. FIGURE 10 Life reconstruction of the head of Triceratops prorsus with nasal soft tissues inferred in the present study shown. Soft tissues include the main narial nerves and blood vessels, nasal gland, nasolacrimal duct, and respiratory turbinate. Note that the nasolacrimal duct and respiratory turbinate were inferred mainly in centrosaurines. Artwork by K. Sakane. n & bv, nerves and blood vessels; ng, nasal gland; nld, nasolacrimal duct; rt, respiratory turbinate.

Excited to see this article led by @seishirotada.bsky.social out in @anatrecord.bsky.social. Triceratops and their ceratopsian kin are more than horns and frills! Check out their narial regions! doi.org/10.1002/ar.7...

Witmer poses with freshman undergrad researcher Klazina McKeigan and her brother Alexander and our T. rex skull (AMNH 5027) as part of a tour for Sib Weekend.

It's Sibs Weekend here at Ohio University, and I was happy to help new freshman undergrad researcher in our lab Klazina McKeigan give her brother Alexander (a current high school junior...and future Bobcat?) a tour of the lab this afternoon. More about Klazina's research another time.

This is fantastic work and super-important for those of us interested in evolution of the hearing apparatus and braincase! Well done!

The Accidental Ichthyornis Field identifications are problematic. In mid October of this year the weather in Kansas was still warm enough to extend our dig season. T...

Ah, @mosasaurologist.bsky.social, I think I found the backstory of "The Accidental Ichthyornis."
rmdrc.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-...

It must have been exciting to dig up! Why weird?

Witmer studies a slab of the Cretaceous bird Ichthyornis at the facility in Tsukuba housing the collections of Japan's National Museum of Nature & Science.

Skeleton of the the Cretaceous bird Ichthyornis still in its Niobrara slab at the facility in Tsukuba housing the collections of Japan's National Museum of Nature & Science.

I'm a couple days late for #MuseumSelfieDay but we'll count it for #FossilFriday. Here's one of me studying a lovely specimen of Ichthyornis at the facility in Tsukuba housing the collections of Japan's National Museum of Nature & Science (the public museum is in nearby Tokyo).

Great piece, Andy! Really well done! I also enjoyed working with the Nature editors for my News & Views on the Zanno & Napoli article—altho’ the battles on the title were exhausting! 🤣 And yeah, selecting a hyoid bone for histology was brilliant! Opens up opportunities for other skull-only fossils.

The book The Voices of Nature by Nicolas Mathevon sits on a table surrounded by skulls of the animals depicted on the cover (which were all drawn by the author's dad, Bernard Mathevon!) The skulls are American robin (Turdus migratorius, OUVC 9766), spectacled caiman (Caiman cf. C. crocodilus, OUVC 11550), northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris, OUVC 9581), and spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta, OUVC 10571).

Just finished this awesome new-ish book by @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social on animal communication. It covers a lot of ground with a huge diversity of species—& it's a blast to read! Great for those interested in sensory ecology. (I had skulls of all the cover animals, so I snapped a photo! 😃)

The tiny skull of a ruby-throated hummingbird (OUVC 10851) sits on the tip of a finger. The even tinier humerus of this bird sits in front of the skull.

T. rex is more closely related to this little dinosaur (a hummingbird) than T. rex is to Allosaurus. Also, a hummingbird's humerus is way smaller than it's eyeball. Go home, evolution, you're drunk! 🦖

Cover of the Ohio University student newspaper, 30 years today (Jan 8th).

Project Summary page of an NSF grant proposal submitted 30 years...a grant we got.

Covers of some journals with articles that derived from the NSF grant we got 30 years ago.

30 yrs ago today, a blizzard paralyzed the whole East Coast, closing Ohio University & all roads. But I still had an NSF grant deadline, so I trudged the three miles to campus to get it done and submitted. It was my first major proposal in my new job—dubbed "the DinoNose Project." Got the grant!

Wisdom the Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) — band number Z333 — also known as the mōlī in Hawaiian language, has returned to her nest site on the sands of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. (Credit: Jon Plissner / USFWS / public domain). Photo and caption from https://bit.ly/4qu6IxN

However, in a twist of fate, the chick's passing meant that Wisdom had left Midway before the tsunami, allowing her to return a month ago to start over! May we all have the resilience—and wisdom—of Wisdom in 2026. bit.ly/4qu6IxN 3/3

If you thought 2025 was rough for us humans, an earthquake in July 2025 sent a tsunami that hit Midway late in the albatross breeding season, killing many mōlī. Wisdom had successfully mated and hatched a chick 🥹, but sadly the chick died earlier in the season 😢. 2/3

Disarticulated skeleton of a mōlī (Laysan albatross, Phoebastria immutabilis, OUVC 10448), with the separated bones laid out on a table and spelling "Happy New Year."

Happy New Year from your friends at WitmerLab! 🎉
As hope for 2026, here's the beautiful skeleton of a mōlī (Laysan albatross). May it bring us all the wisdom of Wisdom, the 75-yo mōlī—the oldest known wild bird who still returns to Midway Atoll annually to nest & breed! 1/3

Here's our #TopNine #Top9 posts on BlueSky for 2025 based on engagement metrics. More theropod dinosaurs—especially tyrannosaurs—this year than in previous years. We posted about other things, but these are what y'all seemed to go for. Looking forward to what 2026 brings to our lab!

From all your friends at WitmerLab at Ohio University, have a Merry Christmas, a happy holiday season, and a safe and productive new year! 🎄 ☃️🎅

This year, Jane the tyrannosaur received the special gift of being designated the holotype of a new species of Nanotyrannus, N. lethaeus! 🦖

Why Santa's elves hate dinosaurs...! 🎄🎅🦖. A Santa's hat hangs from the jaws of a festive Tarbosaurus.

Why Santa's elves hate dinosaurs...! 🎄🎅🦖

Getting in the spirit...! The bony foot of the ornithomimosaur Gallimimus busts through a Christmas stocking with the caption "Dinosaurs make the best stocking stuffers...!"

Getting in the spirit...! 🎄🎅🦖🎁

Apparently Bill Simpson, longtime Collections Manager of fossil vertebrates at the ⁦‪@FieldMuseum‬⁩ in Chicago, is retiring—after 46 yrs! Bill has always been so helpful, including pulling out the skull of ⁦‪@SUEtheTrex‬⁩ for study multiple times! Happy Retirement, Bill! 🎥: Emily Rieff #FossilFriday

Earlier this week, John Noble Wilford (1933–2025)—giant of science journalism & Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the @nytimes.com for 50 yrs—passed away. I almost froze when he phoned me to report on my 2001 article in @science.org. Few science reporters like him remain today.

Volume renderings of CT scan data of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541). The top image is mostly a left lateral view. The bottom image is a ventral view showing the caudal half of the hyoid bone preserved in place.

Additional images (all in ventral view) of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541). The top right image is from the original 1946 article by Charles Gilmore showing the full ceratobranchial hyoid bone in place. The bottom photograph (that I snapped in 2005 when I had the skull on loan for study & CT scanning) shows the caudal half of the hyoid bone preserved in place. The top left image is similar to the bottom image but is grayscale except for the hyoid bone.

The main photograph (again, that I snapped in 2005 when I had the skull on loan for study & CT scanning) shows the caudal half of the hyoid bone of Nanotyrannus (CMNH 7541) preserved in place, but it's more of a front view. Notice the broken end of the ceratobranchial in a close-up in the inset.

#FossilFriday The awesome new article in Science by
@griffinlabpaleo.bsky.social et al. adds more evidence for the validity of Nanotyrannus by showing that the hyoid bone in the holotype has adult bone histology. Here are some more images showing the ceratobranchial bone in place in the skull. 🦖

The book "Unearthing the Dragon" published in 2005 by Mark Norell (1957–2025)and Mick Ellison, with a blurred T. rex skull cast in the background. The T. rex is a specimen (AMNH 5027) from the American Museum of Natural History where Mark worked for many years.

I learned from the wonderful obit of Mark Norell in Current Biology by Pete Makovicky, Jim Clark, & @stevebrusatte.bsky.social (bit.ly/4rtBlEP) that Mark "was most proud of Unearthing the Dragon," so I pulled it off the shelf & read it cover to cover. It was like hearing Mark's voice again. 🥹

#HappyThanksgiving from WitmerLab! You have your holiday traditions, and we have ours! Yes, we CT scanned our turkey on our best turkey platter. Science has never been so delicious! And like any good dinosaur biologist, I prepared and accessioned the skeleton—OUVC 10789. 🦃🦖