Deming Yang
@demingyang.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Anatomy at Midwestern University. Hominin evolution, eastern Africa, faunal change, teeth, stable isotopes, and Bayesian models. Practical microbiologist, culinary enthusiast, photographer
New paper out in @pnas.org: Insights into hominin body size, locomotion, and behavior from Early Pleistocene trackways in northern Kenya. Link here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Insights into hominin body size, locomotion, and behavior from Early Pleistocene trackways in northern Kenya | PNAS
The Early Pleistocene fossils of the Koobi Fora Formation, northern Kenya, record two well-documented hominin genera, Homo and Paranthropus, preser...
pnas.org
Thanks also to co-authors Robin Beck and Darin Croft for their contributions to this study and for discussions on mammals and teeth! You can find our Journal of Mammalian Evolution paper here: doi.org/10.1007/s109... 5/6
Dental topography and diet in marsupials and comparisons with primates - Journal of Mammalian Evolution
Dental topography is a powerful tool for investigating the relationship between diet and tooth shape in mammals. Here, we test whether dental topographic metrics (DTMs) can accurately predict diet in marsupials based on 81 lower molars from 43 extant species in 12 families (six of the seven extant orders), and compare them to DTMs of primates with similar diets. DTMs tested included Dirichlet normal energy (DNE) and variants (ariaDNE, convex DNE, and ariaDNE CV), orientation patch count rotated (OPCR), and Relief Index (RFI). We also investigate the use of the ratio of trigonid to talonid height (TriTaHI) as an additional DTM. Notably, RFI and ariaDNE were less sensitive to sample composition and scanning modality than OPCR and ariaDNE CV were. For marsupials, highest dietary classification accuracy of the leave-one-out quadratic discriminant analysis was achieved by combining ariaDNE, RFI, molar size, and TriTaHI of lower second and third molars, resulting in 69.2% accuracy. In contrast, the primate sample of lower second molars reached highest classification accuracy (80.4%) when using only ariaDNE, RFI, and molar size. When using a clade-based cross-validated approach (i.e., using the primate sample to predict marsupial diets and vice versa), only ariaDNE, RFI, and molar size were needed to obtain the maximum classification accuracy (69.7% when classifying primates using the marsupial training set; and 61.8% vice versa). The comparative dataset of this study should prove useful for studies aiming to reconstruct the diets of fossil mammals that lack phylogenetically close extant analogues.
doi.org
NSF has led the way in complying in advance. They don’t need to assume the budget request will be what Congress implements.
Liz Neeley@lizneeley.bsky.social · 4mo ago"At an internal all-hands meeting on Friday, NSF leaders announced that they would dissolve the agency’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate based on the budget request, according to two NSF staff members who shared information anonymously in order to speak freely"
It was great working with folks at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont on this communication article for our recent paper on Cainochoerus. Mini-pig with a big story: bit.ly/4rMinJb. Original article free to access at doi.org/10.1080/0272...
Mini-pig with a big story: A Dog-Sized Pig roamed Ancient Kenya
The extinct pig Cainochoerus inhabited eastern Africa during the late Miocene, around 6 million years ago and was remarkably small compared to modern African pigs. Now, a team of paleontologists reports the discovery of rare fossil jaws and teeth from the Lemudong’o site in the southern Kenyan Rift,...
bit.ly
Meet our fall 2025 research grant recipients! Thanks to our donors, we awarded grants to 30 scientists exploring fundamental questions about human origins, including 17 PhD candidates at the start of their careers.
Introducing the fall 2025 Leakey Foundation research grant recipients
Meet the 30 scientists who received Fall 2025 research grants from The Leakey Foundation to study human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival.
leakeyfoundation.org
I am really excited to share news of this new jaw...until now Paranthropus had been conspicuously absent from the Afar. Fieldwork at Mille-Logya is not easy, and this fossil is the result of years of very hard work (and a lot of days of dry screening by our team)! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus - Nature
With its attribution to Paranthropus, a 2.6-million-year-old partial mandible expands the range of the genus into the Afar region of Ethiopia and adds to our understanding of hominin evolution in east...
nature.com
The MWU Anatomy Department was featured in the 2026 Art Walk! Can you identify the department members by their caricature?
“If you dressed up a Homo habilis individual in clothes and you saw her walking in the distance, would you do a double take? … This study shows us that the answer is YES!” https://scim.ag/4aSsPJT
The earliest Homo species did not look human, partial skeleton shows
Homo habilis, 2 million years old, was known mainly from teeth and jaw bones
scim.ag
A newly published H. habilis skeleton is just the fourth post-cranial skeleton ever found from the species. 🏺🧪
Most complete Homo habilis skeleton ever found dates to more than 2 million years ago and retains 'Lucy'-like features
Scientists have revealed the most complete skeleton yet of our 2 million-year-old ancestor Homo habilis.
livescience.com
Excellent write-up in Science by Ann Gibbons of the exciting new Ileret Homo material: ] www.science.org/content/arti... Check out the original AR article by Frederick Grine and colleagues here: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Proud to be part of this study! Excellent team work from @stonybrooku.bsky.social @mwuanatomy.bsky.social @unm.edu and other institutions.
The Anatomical Record@anatrecord.bsky.social · 7mo agoKNM-ER 64061, most complete Homo habilis skeleton yet (Koobi Fora) shows primitive limb proportions: long forearms, thick cortices, small body mass & ~160 cm stature. Upper limbs like early Homo, but proportions differ from H. erectus Grine et al anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Mini pig cuteness 🚨: we found fossils of a mini pig (Cainochoerus) in the southern Kenyan Rift, near Narok, the first reporting of Cainochoerus at the site (Lemudong’o). Link to the article @jvertpaleo.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1080/0272...
The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya
Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...
doi.org
🚨New Pub!🚨The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya🐷🇰🇪by Yang et al. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya
Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...
tandfonline.com
Flowstones from the Cradle of Humankind in #SouthAfrica reveal no evidence of intrusion. New work, led by HERI’s Georgina Luti, counters arguments that the flowstones are uniform & intrusive, adding support for their role in dating fossils. 🔗 www.heriuct.co.za/news-content...
Hey folks out there who ❤️ to #CTscan things and ❤️ museums! the @amnh.org is hiring a Laboratory Manager for their Microscopy and Imaging Facility, a.k.a. the CT lab 🧪 careers.amnh.org/postings/4550
Laboratory Manager
The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, and has as its mission to discover, interpret and disseminate information about human cult...
careers.amnh.org
New Publication Alert! Dr. Jieun Kim, Dr. Erin Leslie, and Dr. Hadiah Kedwaii (DO, MWU alumnus) have a new paper out in Forensic Science International. "Breaking the 50+ Barrier: Cortical Speed of Sound via Quantitative Ultrasound as a New Age-at-death Estimator in Older Adults"
The MWU Anatomy Department in Downers Grove welcomes our newest faculty member, Dr. Deming Yang! Dr. Yang earned his Ph.D. and M.A. from Stony Brook University and completed postdoctoral research fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History. (1/4)
A couple photos from the 2025 CGS Picnic, where the Anatomy Department retained our BEAST trophy for another year, thanks to Tyler Speer (CCOM '28) and Dr. Deming Yang!
AI in the DOE report? This ref (p29) is fake: Lee, S., Byrne, M. P., Loikith, P. C., & O’Dell, C. W. (2024). Zonal contrasts of the tropical Pacific climate predicted by a global constraint. Climate Dynamics, 62(1–2), 229–246. doi:10.1007/s00382-023-06741-7 www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
RealClimate: The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding?
RealClimate: The EPA, along with the "Climate Working Group" (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to res...
realclimate.org
Pass this on. I've signed up. This is what this is about: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/c...
Energy Dept. Attacks Climate Science in Contentious Report
nytimes.com
Andrew Dessler@andrewdessler.com · last yr.🚨 If you're interested in working on a coordinated response to the DOE climate report, please enter your info on this google form 🚨 Please RT this so as many people see it as possible. forms.gle/BL9xUAfRxA...
Anthropology collections manager job at the AMNH @amnh.org in New York! Additional info: A PhD (or PhD candidacy) is required to apply. Prior training in collections management and databases is essential. This is not a research position. Salary range $93-98k/year. careers.amnh.org/postings/4509
Curatorial Associate
The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, and has as its mission to discover, interpret and disseminate information about human cult...
careers.amnh.org
Waking up excited hearing that Antarctica is mentioned in international news. Reading the news: “Antarctica and sub Antarctic islands are the safest place for humans to flee to during WW3”.
Most staple food crops are expected to experience substantial production losses due to climate change, even when mitigation measures to limit the impact of climate change are considered, according to a study in Nature. The study finds that only rice might avoid substantial losses. 🧪
Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation - Nature
Analysis of data on six stable crops, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories, allows estimation of agricultural impacts and the potential of global producer adaptations to reduce output losses owing to climate change.
go.nature.com
A federal judge on Monday declared the Trump administration’s move to cut hundreds of grants issued by the National Institutes of Health illegal, accusing the government of discrimination against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals. nyti.ms/4jSIjOG
Trump’s Cuts to N.I.H. Grants Are Illegal, Federal Judge Rules
The judge accused the Trump administration of discriminating against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people and ordered the government to restore much of the funding.
nyti.ms
So who are the winners? Very clearly AI takes the cake. $22M more would be added to AI programs in GEO (>1100% incr) [who really asked for this?] In contrast, the Global Change cross-cutting program would drop from $335M to $10M (-97%). OPP would drop from $161M to $12M (-93%).
Argh. The P4CLIMATE program solicitation will be archived (the program website itself hasn't been updated) www.nsf.gov/geo/updates/...
This is an absolute disaster. If we don't stop this, they will turn NSF into a pawn of the Trump administration. There will be no research on climate, biodiversity, or anything that isn't eugenics or AI or how to more efficiently destroy the planet for profit. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund
science.org
20 years ago, on April 22, 2005, Misha the zoo elephant was moved from Vallejo, CA to Salt Lake City, UT. Her relocation inspired a suite of studies about isotope turnover, including my recent one published in @commsbio.bsky.social Learn more about the study here: www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Strontium isotope mapping of elephant enamel supports an integrated microsampling-modeling workflow to reconstruct herbivore migrations - Communications Biology
Comparisons of 87Sr/86Sr data from the tusk and molar enamel of a zoo elephant suggest that a microsampling-modeling workflow is the best practice strategy for geospatial reconstructions of seasonal m...
nature.com
BREAKING from @science.org: The Trump admin is seeking to kill nearly all climate research at NOAA, its climate science agency. Its near-final budget proposal would end all NOAA research labs, academic institutes, and regional climate centers. And it wants to fully end the NOAA Research division.
Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency
White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted
science.org
