🚨 Publication alert🚨 Early humans in South Africa were quarrying stone as long as 220,000 years ago at the site of Jojosi @natcomms.nature.com - specialized, long-term use of a source of a raw material source in Stone Age Africa: Read the paper #openaccess here www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Specialised and persistent raw material procurement by humans in the Middle Pleistocene - Nature Communications

The authors here demonstrate that hominins were consistently and specifically procuring a single kind of raw material to make stone tools at the South African site of Jojosi between 220 and 110 thousa...

nature.com

I taught (and co-taught) a course on human population genetics from 2000-2024. Having retired, I'm now making all the course materials public: github.com/alanrogers/p... #popgen #evbio

GitHub - alanrogers/popgen: A course on population genetics

A course on population genetics. Contribute to alanrogers/popgen development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Really cool study looking at how behaviour precedes morphological change across taxa - and implications for human evolution 💀🧪 massive congrats to all the authors, including @vivek123.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution

Dietary shifts and corresponding morphological changes can sometimes evolve in succession, not concurrently—an evolutionary process called behavioral drive. Detecting behavioral drive in the fossil re...

science.org

Very proud of my Master's student, Kim Hofmann, who was awarded the 500€ Rudolf Virchow Prize for her outstanding thesis! The prize was presented by Prof. Raiko Krauss, chairman of the Berlin Society for #Anthropology, #Ethnology, and #Prehistory. Congratulations, Kim!

An amazing study by brilliant colleagues and dear friends. Give it a read!

Manuel Will@manuelwill.bsky.social · last yr.

Published today in @nature.com our new study on the drivers of the successful dispersal of modern humans out of Africa! A huge, interdisciplinary team effort long in the making, headed by @elliescerri.bsky.social . Glad to have contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #archaeology #Evolution

Honoured to serve on the Advisory Committee for the DeMoDa project at @cenieh.bsky.social this week, powered by @hlusko.bsky.social’s ERC project Tied2Teeth – together with eight fellow experts in dental anthropology. www.cenieh.es/en/press/new...

🚨NEW PAPER from the @eegcam.bsky.social!🚨I have never been as proud of something as of the work that finally we can share today: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - we show how a climatically driven Pan African meta population model explains our species genetic and morphological diversity 🧬💀

Pan-African metapopulation model explains Homo sapiens genetic and morphological evolution

Emerging evidence has challenged the traditional view of a single-region origin for Homo sapiens, suggesting instead that our species arose and diversified across multiple geographically distinct popu...

biorxiv.org

Truly honored to have received this award - thank you so much! 🥳 It was a pleasure meeting so many new colleagues and friends at #HumanEvo25 ! @martamlahr.bsky.social @lquintanamurci.bsky.social @aliceleplongeon.bsky.social @cschlebu.bsky.social

Wellcome Connecting Science Learning and Training@eventswcs.bsky.social · last yr.

Congratulations to our poster and short talk prize winners who presented at this week's Human Evolution conference! 👏#HumanEvo25 We're impressed by the quality of the research presented. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors! Thanks to @hpgg-pivot.bsky.social for sponsoring the prizes.

@hannesrathmann.bsky.social Exploring human migrations & demographic change resulting from environ. change. Applying new Pheno-ABC modelling method to skeletal phenotypes 🦷 Results show significant population migration patterns beginning ~47kya, changing ~28kya and again after ~14kya. #HumanEvo25

Ouch! This Celtic warrior took an arrow to the butt 🏹 But thanks to some surprisingly advanced ancient medics, he survived! A peek into healthcare 2,500 years ago: doi.org/10.1002/oa.3... #Archaeology #Anthropology

This week, I presented our research on skeletal trauma prevalence estimation at the Meeting of the Society for Anthropology in Kiel #bioanthropology #skeletaltrauma #paleopathology Our 2024 OA paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415..., co-authored by @hannesrathmann.bsky.social & @matteosanton.bsky.social

Estimating trauma prevalence from incomplete human skeletal remains - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Estimating trauma prevalence from incomplete human skeletal remains

doi.org

Just wrapped up the 15th International Meeting of the Society for Anthropology with a wonderful visit to the #Haithabu Viking Museum. Many thanks to Katharina Fuchs for organizing this interesting conference, where I met many new colleagues and friends.

Visited the stunning #HolleyShelter site in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Super interesting tour by the excavator Gregor Bader

Know a colleague who has made a novel research contribution to dental anthropology? Nominate them for the 2025 Innovation in Dental Anthropology Award! Deadline is March 10. More info here: www.dentalanthropology.org/innovation

🚨Come work with us in charming Tübingen and become a member of our growing Freigeist group! We offer a 2-year postdoc position on the communicative plasticity in wild and captive bonobos, fully funded by @volkswagenstiftung.bsky.social. Applications open until March 15th. bit.ly/4gVa5Je

An important new paper by @beademarch.bsky.social and her team challenges how we use ancient proteins to study the past. Analysis of 1,832 sequences from waterfowl (ducks & geese) reveals why palaeoproteomics isn't the simple solution we hoped for... 👇🧵 1/4 www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-5...

Had such an amazing and inspiring time at the HEIRS Opening Symposium at ICArEHB in Faro (@icarehb.bsky.social). Don’t miss out on their new exciting funding opportunities for synthesis projects in human evolution:[ heirs.icarehb.com/calls-traini...

Interesting read: The skeleton from the Octagon at Ephesos isn't Cleopatra's sister Arsinoë after all. It's a Roman boy with growth disorders. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The cranium from the Octagon in Ephesos - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - The cranium from the Octagon in Ephesos

doi.org

1/ #NewPaperAlert: Thrilled to finally share our new paper on #Fumane Cave after a long and time-consuming research process! 🏺 #Archaeology #Anthropology #Paleolithic #StoneTools #HumanEvolution #FlintFriday #FossilFriday Link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Refitting the Context: A Reconsideration of Cultural Change among Early Homo sapiens at Fumane Cave through Blade Break Connections, Spatial Taphonomy, and Lithic Technology - Journal of Paleolithic A...

High-resolution stratigraphic frameworks are crucial for unraveling the biocultural processes behind the dispersals of Homo sapiens across Europe. Detailed technological studies of lithic assemblages ...

link.springer.com

This is the exciting paper drop. New aDNA science out of Dublin. Matrilineal descent systems demonstrated for Late Iron Age Dorset. Building on the work of Mel Giles (2012) who first spotted the potential for it in the archaeology of Middle Iron Age Yorkshire. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Continental influx and pervasive matrilocality in Iron Age Britain - Nature

An analysis of ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA shows evidence of matrilocal communities in Iron Age Britain.

nature.com

Happy to share my latest work with archaeologist @manuelwill.bsky.social on lithic flake variability at the Middle Stone Age site of Sibhudu, South Africa. As a bioanthropologist, this was my first non-bone paper, and I loved the interdisciplinary journey! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exploring the utility of unretouched lithic flakes as markers of cultural change - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Exploring the utility of unretouched lithic flakes as markers of cultural change

nature.com

Science reporting on the mass resignation of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution, highlighting some of the problems with commercial scientific publishing. OA PaleoAnthropology journal (www.paleoanthropology.org) highlighted among JHE's successors #openaccess #humanevolution

Journal editors’ mass resignation marks ‘sad day for paleoanthropology’

Exodus from the Journal of Human Evolution leaves a flagship journal in crisis

science.org

‪ Can we use mere stone flakes to track cultural change? @hannesrathmann.bsky.social and I test this with simple flake attributes & a newly developed statistical method! All data, methods and code are #openaccess www.nature.com/articles/s41... #archaeology #statistics #openscience Feedback welcome!

Exploring the utility of unretouched lithic flakes as markers of cultural change - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Exploring the utility of unretouched lithic flakes as markers of cultural change

nature.com

Let’s make 'thinking time' for scientists a year-round habit, not just a luxury of the Christmas holiday season. 🧠🎄

Our new paper announcing a freely available database of 3D scans of primate skeletal material--a major effort led by Sergio Almécija & his team at the American Museum of Natural History. 🧪 🏺 #paleosky #anatomy #primates #anthropology #morphology #zoology #paleoanthropology #openscience

Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource

nature.com

A great new #anthropology read in @currentbiology.bsky.social for anyone interested in human dental morphology and variation: 🦷 www.cell.com/current-biol... The study identifies novel genetic variants influencing tooth crown dimensions, some of which were introgressed from Neanderthals.

PITX2 expression and Neanderthal introgression in HS3ST3A1 contribute to variation in tooth dimensions in modern humans

Tooth morphology varies through evolution and in modern human populations, but little is known about the genetics of this variation. Li et al. identify genes associated with tooth crown dimensions and expressed during dental development. Variants in one gene stem from Neanderthal, suggesting their role in human dental evolution.

cell.com

It was a pleasure to be part of this June 2024 study on ancient #Celts of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. Using #archaeology, #DNA, #isotopes, and #anthropology, we found that status and power were inherited along maternal lines. Congrats to J. Gretzinger and team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What an incredible line-up! Truly honored to have my name included among so many outstanding researchers. 🙌✨ See you there!

ICArEHB@icarehb.bsky.social · 2y ago

📢 The Scientific Program for the #HEIRS Opening Symposium is out! Early bird registration closing soon. Join us to explore #ResearchSynthesis & collaboration in #HumanEvolution! 👉 heirs.icarehb.com/symposium-ou...

The first Biological Anthropologists Starter Pack has reached its limit! I've created a second starter pack. Let me know if you'd like to be added! 🧬📚 #BioAnthro #Anthro go.bsky.app/DMNUzHV