Showing posts with label Year end review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Year end review. Show all posts

Monday, February 2, 2026

Review of 2025

Ugh... is it being fashionably late to post a year-end retrospective in February? I suppose I've never been a fashionable sort anyway, so I will settle for plain old late. Three papers I co-authored were published last year, including a study on the embryonic development of galloanseran skulls, a comparison of mandibular morphology among early crown-group birds, and (most notably in terms of my personal involvement) a nearly 90-page treatise on the phylogenetic utility of the avian wing skeleton. I would have liked to write about all of this research on here, but... to put it simply, amidst the many professional and personal happenings as of late, making time for this blog has been very challenging. I also wanted to review Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, which came out in November of last year, much like I did for the Mesozoic seasons. Alas. At least I was able to assemble a Bluesky thread on the surprisingly plentiful birds featured in the series. Another consequence of my preoccupations (among other things) was that my co-host Joan and I decided to put our podcast Through Time and Clades into retirement.

Pectoral girdle and forelimb bones of the Australian owlet-nightjar, one of the 75 modern bird species we examined in Chen et al. (2025). (Scale bar = 5 mm. Photo of the live bird is not to scale.)

Given that I'm here though, the least I can do is uphold the tradition of looking back on the past year in maniraptoran research. As always, my coverage of papers about modern birds is necessarily going to be incomplete, so I put more focus on those that have more direct connections to paleontology, such as studies on anatomy, ontogeny, and higher-order phylogeny. 

General and non-paravian maniraptorans

Select bones and schematic skeletal of Duonychus tsogtbaatari, from Kobayashi et al. (2025).

General and non-neornithean paravians

Holotype of Shri rapax, from Moutrille et al. (2025).

Avialan fossils from the Prince Creek Formation, from Wilson et al. (2025).

General and miscellaneous crown birds

Chart showing that wing and hindlimb bone proportions are more tightly interlinked in precocial than in altricial birds, from Orkney et al. (2025).

Wings of embryonic chickens showing developing feathers, from Cooper and Milinkovitch (2025). When feather development is inhibited (B–D), the feathers become shorter and lack branches.

Graphs showing that small migratory birds fly higher during desert crossings than sea crossings, and how flight altitude correlates with morphology, from Dufour et al. (2026).

Skull of Vegavis, from Torres et al. (2025).

Paleognaths

A slaty-masked tinamou, from Morais et al. (2025).

Galloanserans

Holotype of Gracilisgallus linxia, from Yu and Li (2025).

Miscellaneous neoavians

Phylogeny of pigeons showing the position of the blue-headed quail-dove, from Oswald et al. (2025).

Cursorimorphs

Phaethoquornitheans

Plotopterid skull from the Lincoln Creek Formation, from Mayr et al. (2025).

Strisoreans

Telluravians

Northern harrier in foraging flight, photographed by Bob Bowhay, from Citron et al. (2025).

Holotype of Consoravis turdirostris, from Ksepka et al. (2025).

Phylogenetic distribution of hidden black and white feather layers that enhance bright colors in passeriforms, from Price-Waldman et al. (2025).

Phylogeny and rates of skull evolution in vangas, from Auerbach et al. (2025).

Phylogeny of songbirds showing correlation between cavity nesting and territorial aggression, from Lipshutz et al. (2025).

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Monday, January 27, 2025

Review of 2024

Last year was a fairly productive one for me. Two research papers I co-authored came out, one on the scientific importance of fossil avialans from the Maastricht Formation and the other on the jaw anatomy of Asteriornis, with more to come. I also co-wrote an article on the evolution of birds for the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology (slated for release in print later this year), was invited to give a talk for paleoartist Joschua Knüppe's PaleostreamCon, and consulted for the educational studio Kurzgesagt on their new poster depicting dinosaur phylogeny. An interview with me about recent advances in bird paleontology (conducted in English but translated into Finnish) was published in the magazine Tekniikan Maailma.

Kurzgesagt's "Map of Dinosaur Evolution" poster depicting the phylogeny of dinosaurs (and other reptiles).

One obvious side effect of all this is that activity on this blog plummeted to an all-time low. For the first time, I didn't even get around to writing up a conference report about an in-person SVP that I attended. It's not for a lack of topics to write about, and I always find science outreach to be enjoyable and immensely rewarding. However, the fact of the matter is that for me, blogging is an unpaid hobby that I need to do in my dwindling spare time, so if I happen to be more motivated to spend that time on, let's say, drawing Doraemon fan art... then that is most likely what I'm going to do. In similar vein, I decided to retire New Dinosaur Alert at the beginning of this year, and will be moderating (though continuing) my involvement with Through Time and Clades. I think this has been good for me in certain ways at least. By some metrics, I did more drawing for leisure last year than I have in a very long time. 

If you're really wondering: SVP 2024 was fun, especially when you have friends who know exactly what presents to get you.

Was 2024 also good to maniraptoran research more broadly? Let's take a look. As always, my coverage of papers about modern birds is necessarily going to be incomplete, so I put more focus on those that have more direct connections to paleontology, such as studies on anatomy, ontogeny, and higher-order phylogeny.

General and non-paravian maniraptorans

Relative body sizes of alvarezsaurs, with taxa organized by geographic distribution and geological age, from Meso et al. (2024).

Skeletal reconstruction and holotype of Oksoko, from Funston (2024).

General and non-neornithean paravians

Microraptorian tracks from the Jinju Formation suggested to record evidence of wing-assisted locomotion, from Dececchi et al. (2024).

Holotype of Navaornis hestiae, from Chiappe et al. (2024).

General and miscellaneous crown birds

Phylogeny of crown birds, from Stiller et al. (2024).

CT scan of a red-tailed hawk with the respiratory system (a) and specifically the subpectoral diverticulae (b–c) in blue, from Schachner et al. (2024).

Asian weaver ants, photographed by Tuan Cao, under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Paleognaths

Brain endocast of Lithornis, from Widrig et al. (2024).

Galloanserans

Skull reconstruction of Genyornis, from McInerney et al. (2024).

Examples of bare parts in galliforms, from Zhao et al. (2024).

Miscellaneous neoavians

Holotype of the Negros fruit dove, from Nash et al. (2024).

Cursorimorphs

Carpometacarpus of Vanellus madagascariensis (A) compared to that of an extant blacksmith lapwing (B), showing the very large wing spur, from Goodman and Rasolonjatovo (2024).

Phaethoquornitheans

Bill tips of procellariimorphs (a–c) compared to that of a gull (d) and a tinamou (e), from du Toit et al. (2024).

Strisoreans

A male Timor nightjar, photographed by James Eaton, from King et al. (2024).

Telluravians

Phylogeny of accipitrids (in part), from Catanach et al. (2024).

Diagram showing a parrot performing beakiation, in which the beak is used to help travel along the underside of a perch, from Dickinson et al. (2024).

Illustrations of display behavior in Victoria's riflebird by Joris de Raedt, from MacGillavry et al. (2024).

Skulls of cowbirds, from Gómez and Lois-Milevicich (2024).

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