PaleoSynthesis

✨New day, new adventure✨! Today marks the start of a two-day deep dive into the fascinating world of phylogeny. With Rachel Warnock at the helm—or rather, at the keyboard—our students are unlocking 🔐 the code to evolutionary history and learning how to piece together the 🌳 of life.

And as a special bonus? We have some mysterious "hidden instructors" working behind the scenes this time!

Passing the mic🎙️ Following Adam Kocsis's intro, Prof. Wolfgang Kiessling kicked off his section yesterday, diving into the core fundamentals of paleobiodiversity analysis.

The time has finally come: Summer School 2026 is kicking off! ☀️🚀

After a warm welcome from Prof. Kießling, Adam Kocsis takes the reins and guides our students through Day 1.

We wish all participants an exciting week full of new insights and every success! 💡🙌

The Analytical Paleobiology School (aka ☀️ Summer School ☀️) is fast approaching! In less than two weeks, we’ll once again welcome PhD students from all over the world. We look forward to supporting them on their educational journey. We’ll also be receiving active support from our external instructors once again. Thank you in advance for that! And thank you to the Volkswagen Foundation for its financial support. ℹ️ https://www.paleosynthesis.nat.fau.de/science-schools/ (image: google gemini)

was amazing and we could represent PaleoSynthesis as a team. Loads of chats about the project and upcoming workshops! Exciting times ahead 🤩

✨ AND THE AWARDS GO TO... ✨
We had an absolute 🎉 blast at , but the highlight was definitely seeing our team get recognized for their hard work! 🥳 Congrats to all three on well-deserved recognition! 👏
🖼️Joel Koelewijn won the Poster Award! 🎙️Aldo Benites Palomino delivered the best talk by Senior Scientists! ⭐Bastian Seidl snagged the Young Scientist Award!

Ready for ? 🏔️🦕 It kicks off this Sunday, and PaleoSynthesis is ready!
Find us: 🔥 Monday | Symposium S3: Big Paleontology led by PI Prof. Kiessling and PostDoc Dr. Dimitrijevic. Don't miss it! ℹ️ Questions? Visit the Helpdesk! Project coordinator, Dr. Seuss, will be there to answer your questions and chat about the project.
Come by, say hi, and let’s connect! 👋

🪸 Is photosymbiosis a coral superpower? Not always!

New research (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.253224212) shows that the symbiotic relationship modern reef-building corals rely on wasn't always a winning strategy. Before the Triassic, symbiotic corals actually lagged behind non-symbiotic ones and struggled during extinctions.

Everything changed with a massive evolutionary shift in the Triassic. The rise of calcareous plankton altered global ocean chemistry, flipping the conditions for coral diversification.

The big takeaway? Evolution is context-dependent. The advantage of photosymbiosis today isn't a fixed superpower—it depends entirely on the state of the oceans. 🌊

📉Why are marine animals shrinking?
A new study compiling ~9,000 body size records confirms the "Lilliput Effect". The biggest driver? Warming 🥵. The hotter the ancient climate got, the smaller the species became. This has major implications for our modern warming oceans. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2505564123

And the winners are... 🥁✨ The decision has been made for our first call of 2026, and we couldn’t be happier to congratulate two outstanding workshop teams: SEA-SURGE (Scale, Evolution, and Arms-races: Shifting Understanding of Revolutions in Global Ecosystems) and PHOTON (How habitat-forming photoautotrophs shaped the Earth system: a marineterrestrial perspective)!
We are ready to kick off ⚽ this collaboration and dive deep into some fascinating new topics with them.

🪱 New research alert from the BITE workshop! Paula Dentzien-Dias & colleagues discovered tapeworm eggs in Permian coprolites (fossilized p**p), shedding new light on prehistoric parasites. 🔬The paper is completely ! Dive into the deep history of parasites here: 📖 http://doi.org/10.4202/app.01294.2025