Zach Cofran
@dizachster.bsky.social
Associate professor of Anthropology, HEAD (Human Evolution and Development) Lab @ Vassar College. Bones & brains. lawnchairanthropology.com
New Yorkers had to subsidize the $117 million that the NYPD paid out for misconduct lawsuits in 2025 alone, even though most of them were never personally abused by a cop. Where's your worried op-ed on that one?
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d agoOpinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
It is already the case that taxpayers pay for BOMBS that they will never use, so why not some discounted groceries?
USA TODAY Opinion@usatodayopinion.usatoday.com · 3d agoOpinion: Mamdani's idea may sound appealing, but it's NYC taxpayers who will take the hit, subsidizing discounts they may never even use.
"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.
The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d agoPresident Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v
Looking for an Associate Prof position? Interested in behavioural ecology & cultural evolution? Come join us at the Dpt of Ecology and Evolution in Lausanne🇨🇭 @dee-unil.bsky.social @unil.bsky.social! Great department & great place to live. Pls RP. Apply here: wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...
The story of “The petite bodies of the robust australopithecines” is changing in light of the last 15 years of evidence, and footprints are leading the way. www.johnhawks.net/p/the-big-fe...
The big feet of Paranthropus boisei
New analysis of footprint trackways suggest a larger body size than previously thought for this Early Pleistocene human relative.
johnhawks.net
If you have an academic in your life, please be gentle with them this weekend because they're probably freaking the fuck out.
Joseph M. Adelman@jmadelman.bsky.social · 5d agoBecause the 1st is a Saturday, “How is it August already?!” will be observed today, Friday, July 31, 2026. Please panic accordingly.
Your #FossilFriday fun: new hominin footprints from a 1.4 million year old lakeshore in Kenya: left by a band of big-bodied boisei? Cool new work from @kevinhatala.bsky.social & colleagues Article: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 3D data: www.morphosource.org/media-lists/...
This is a massive scandal. Not "should be," but "is."
Ways and Means Committee Democrats@waysmeanscmte.bsky.social · 6d agoEvery day, this Administration unlocks new levels of corruption never thought possible. At a time when families are struggling to stay afloat, they’re being denied jobs and opportunities by their president because of their political views.
“Reuters found that the map contained a watermark showing it was likely created with OpenAI tools.”
Al Jazeera English@aljazeera.com · 6d agoThe US State Department acknowledged 'an unfortunate error' after the highly inaccurate African map caused a stir.
www.nature.com/articles/d41... "We can almost look through the eyes of the Aurignacian people and see how they viewed the environment around them,” says Amy Clark, a palaeolithic archaeologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
40,000-year-old bird carvings provide clues to how ice age humans flourished
Newly discovered figurines point to skills that might have helped shape early humans’ expansion across Europe.
nature.com
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
Gibbon ready for a talk later this week, about endocranial variation in both fossil hominins and small apes that need more attention
It’s a little nerve-wracking playing in another field’s sandbox, but this was a really fun way to bring some primatology to an ancient Egyptian conundrum.. so if you’re into big baboons, Egyptian dieties, etymological puzzles, &/or spectroscopy of shiny things.. read on! 🧪🏺🐒🌕 tinyurl.com/moonbaboon
Moonlight and the apotheosis of sacred baboons
Thoth was an ancient Egyptian deity of wisdom, writing, magic, and the moon. Manifestations of Thoth took the form of two animal species, the sacred ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus) and sacred baboo...
tinyurl.com
The racist backlash to Chris Nolan’s Odyssey is a kind of stolen valor, an attempt by the right to claim credit for achievements they had nothing to do with in order to justify racial hierarchy in the present. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
The Fear of Black Greeks
White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece.
theatlantic.com
Hahahahaha: there goes all the decades of work of establishing the GOP as the "tough on crime" brand. (Of course, we know that with "crime" they meant "Black people")
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoTom Cotton: "Ultimately, it's not about Prime Minster Netanyahu and Israel -- it's about arresting Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio in the future if they ever travel abroad."
@yalepress.bsky.social has published my reflection on how "The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate", which I mostly wrote in 2022/23, holds up in 2026. Wish it held up worse. yalebooks.yale.edu/2026/07/20/w...
When in Rome: White Nationalists, Ancient History, and the White House - Yale University Press
Ancient Greece and ancient Rome have provided grounds for white nationalist ideas to take root in an age of classical education.
yalebooks.yale.edu
What they don't teach you about heatwaves: It's not just heat. It's: • Your crops dying • Your river drying (Rhine is low again, disrupting shipping) • Your lungs burning from wildfire smoke • Your power grid collapsing It's everything at once.
Total vindication for the Immortal Science, tho...
Marie Vibbert@reasie.bsky.social · 3w agoNo science fiction could have prepared us for just how stupid the end of the world can be. "The environment was on the brink of collapse, and so, rather than deal with that, we burned what fuel we had left getting computers to scam each other for money."
Women are more resilient than men during Army Ranger training…but let’s do go on denying women in the military their earned promotions while simultaneously completely misunderstanding the physiological role & variation of testosterone. Stupidity & cruelty are an incredibly dangerous combination.
Men at Ranger School face greater hormonal changes than women, study finds
Army researchers found that Ranger School had a greater impact on men's hormones and physiological responses than on women in the course.
taskandpurpose.com
Our #HERIspotlight shines brightly on @Dr Wendy Black. A founding member of HERI, Wendy helped shape our direction and impact. As she turns to a new role at @Iziko, we celebrate her contributions and say THANK YOU! Read more: www.heriuct.co.za/news-content/herispotlight-wendy-black
JOB ALERT! We are recruiting at @ucl-c4ia.bsky.social - a lecturer (Grade 8) or associate professor (Grade 9) in primate or human evolutionary anatomy (research and teaching). Contact Susan Evans or myself for further details. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRZ412/l...
Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy at UCL
Searching for an academic job? Explore this Lecturer / Associate Professor in Primate or Human Evolutionary Anatomy opening on jobs.ac.uk! Click to view more details and browse other academic jobs.
jobs.ac.uk
Truly the worst thing about the American Century of Humiliation is that we're not just getting roasted by rising economic powers like China, but by countries like Belgium, whose median age is like 400 years old, whose major export is blood diamonds and who still won't take down King Leopold statues.
Hoodlum 🇺🇸@nothoodlum.bsky.social · 4w agoThe Belgian soccer team trolled Donald Trump by mimicking his “jerk-off” dance.
✨Wonderful news from our diamond open access, community owned PaleoAnthropology journal! 🎉
PaleoAnthropology Journal@paleoanthjourn.bsky.social · last mo.The PaleoAnthropology journal is pleased to announce that we have been selected for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals! For more information see here: doaj.org/toc/1545-0031
We're hiring an associate/full professor in paleoanthropology in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University - As Katie Hinde says - come join our science party in the desert!!
careercenter.americananthro.org
🐘 check out our newest paper from Liang Bua! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Did H. floresiensis hunt Stegodon? 🔪 Did they also had control use of fire? 🔥 We tested these early claims of complex behavior using taphonomy, experimental archaeology, and zooarchaeology of the Stegodon assemblage.
doi.org
Incredible moment where Fox News puts up a graphic with all the reasons it opposes the DSA and why people should be afraid of them
Were the hobbits of Flores clever hunters, or were they merely scavenging dragon leftovers? My latest for Nat Geo covers fascinating new work from @egveatch.bsky.social and the team at Liang Bua: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti... 🧪🏺
Our ancient ‘hobbit’ cousins ate dragon leftovers
Researchers fed a Komodo dragon a goat to figure out if Homo floresiensis truly were the hunters they were originally thought to be.
nationalgeographic.com
Interesting review & reconciliation of fossil and molecular data re: the chimp-human evolutionary split. I was fascinated by this issue when I started grad school 20 years ago, love that something seemingly so simple is still so challenging to pin down #FossilFriday link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Parting ways: Pan-Homo divergence revisited - Primates
The timing of divergence between hominins and the bonobo-chimpanzee clade has been at the core of palaeoanthropological debate for over a century. The earliest molecular studies indicated divergence t...
link.springer.com
