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We know that birds have hollow bones, but what are the exact benefits of filling bones with air?🦆 A new study from the Field Palaeobiology Research Group group, led by Grace Burton, is the first to peer inside the bones of a wide range of birds in search of answers #palaeobiology

"Our work provides a clearer illustration of the extent of avian skeletal pneumatisation than we had before, clarifying a number of long-standing questions related to the functional benefits of filling the avian skeleton with air." Read more here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

Direct quantification of skeletal pneumaticity illuminates ecological drivers of a key avian trait #ProcB #OpenAccess ow.ly/IvZg50NiEfi #Biomechanics #Evolution Field Palaeobiology Research Group

Quantification of avian humeral pneumaticity: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs… Congrats to Grace Burton for getting her Master's project published! #birds #dinosaurs

Ides of March delivered two publications from junior lab members—Grace Burton published her master's research on the evolution of hollow bird skeletons, and Joel Gayford published his final-year undergrad project on shark growth! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs… academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/adv…

New on our blog, PhD student Lizzy Steell of our Field Palaeobiology Research Group group writes about her museum trips to look at teeny fossil birds! 🦜🪶🦴 For her, “Palaeontology isn’t all about adventuring into the desert to dig up rocks." Quite often archive collections can be treasure troves.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jm… I am glad to share my first first-author paper -- talking about the importance of fossils in the ancestral reconstruction under the quantitative framework and evolutionary pattern of galloanseran quadrates.

Cambridge Earth Sciences must be quieter than usual this week! Wrapping up the last presentation from our group at #SAPE23 in Málaga—13 presentations covering almost 100 million years of bird evolution! Nice work everyone especially Grace Burton who gave her first ever conference talk!!

First conference talk complete ! ✅ Thanks for listening to me speak about pneumaticity at SAPE 2023

Group picture! What a fantastic bunch! #SAPE23

Our lab in summer 2023! Unfortunately it was one of those weird biogeography days so we kept getting photobombed—this is the best we could do... Dept of Zoology Museum of Zoology, Cambridge Cambridge Earth Sciences

Extremely pleased to share our team’s latest #BirdAgenda work in nature - hawks and other soaring birds use their lungs to enhance their flight muscles: nature.com/articles/s4158…

There have been lots of advances in palaeornithology over the last few years. In this invited review (thanks @Tweetisaurus and NHMdinolab) we discuss recent discoveries bearing on the origin of the bird brain, shoulder, palate, and air-filled skeleton. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

Pleased to announce a special theme issue in Philosophical Transactions B on avian respiratory biology, that I co-edited with John Maina. royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/2025/… There are 17 contributions ranging from paleo, development, anatomy, to immunology!