During the Jurassic, ca.180 million years ago, some crocs called thalattosuchians moved from land to water, becoming open-ocean swimmers. Just like whales did 100+ million years later.

Our team has a new study out today in @PNASNews, detailing this evolutionary transition. We looked at the vestibular system of the inner ear, which senses balance and equilibrium. To do so, we CAT scanned dozens of fossil and modern crocs.

For #FossilFriday, here's another recent paper from our lab, on the skull evolution of *the weirdest dinosaurs of all*, the oviraptorosaurs (like Tongtianlong in the image below). Led by my former Master's student @FionMaWS. Fion studied several oviraptor skulls and jaws, and used various methods to quantify their shapes and sizes.

After the @NewYorker broke the 'dinosaur graveyard' story last week, the @PNASNews peer-reviewed research paper on the end-Cretaceous Tanis site is officially released today. These are my current thoughts: The site is amazing. Potentially a discovery of enormous magnitude. The geology seems credible to me: it records a catastrophic event at or near the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact. The fish fossils are *astounding*. Congrats to the team!