Day 3 of #ICP2026 with these lovely people.

Ancient human DNA from the cave walls! 🤯 Wonderful new paper led by Alba Bossoms Mesa and a great team of people that made this work possible.

ellie_ancient@elenaessel.bsky.social · last mo.

So happy and proud to see this paper out in @natcomms.nature.com today! We show that traces of human DNA can persist on cave walls for thousands of years. Absolutely fantastic work by the wonderful Alba Bossoms Mesa at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and a great team! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A highlight of the Leipzig running calendar every year! www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...

Success at the 2026 Leipzig Firmenlauf

On 17 June, colleagues from across MPI-EVA joined more than 22,000 participants in one of Leipzig’s biggest company running events, achieving strong results in the team rankings

eva.mpg.de

If you're you have experience in working in animal / pathogen #aDNA and are interested in a postdoctoral position as part of my ERC Project HERDPATH, please DM/email me kevin[at]palaeome.org

🦟 Out and on a shiny new cover of Science Advances: we use a novel approach to study malaria impact on early human groups - malaria wasn't just a threat, it shaped human habitat choice in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 74,000 years. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Eleanor Scerri@elliescerri.bsky.social · 4mo ago

1/5 Well over three years of work and I’m thrilled to see it out today in Science Advances: the cover feature no less! Using an innovative pipeline, we show that malaria shaped the spatial organization of human groups in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 74,000 years. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Come join our aDNA community at Trinity College Dublin and explore medieval ruminant genomes! Funded PhD studentship in ancient animal genomics at Trinity College Dublin. Deadline 27th May 2026 Please see the information attached for full description and application process.

Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes. #aDNA

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

biorxiv.org

🖋️ really happy to be a part of @the4facedliar.bsky.social's upcoming issue - can't believe I was highly commended! I'm looking forward to reading the rest 📖

The Four Faced Liar@the4facedliar.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Congratulations to the winning & Highly Commended authors of or Creative Non-Fiction competition chosen by judge Tim MacGabhann! Their work will be published in Issue 4. Thanks to all who entered @writing.ie @irishpen.bsky.social @irishwriterscentre.bsky.social

Interested in goats 🐐? Read our pre-print on ancient Irish goats and their connection to the Old Irish goat breed Just look at this dashing individual, courtesy of the Old Irish Goat society

Kevin Daly@gingerhowley.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Very happy to see our pre-print on ancient Irish goat genetics on bioRxiv #aDNA #spiergorm I want to acknowledge this was only possible through the work of the late Dr. Judith Findlater, along with Prof. Eileen Murphy at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social.

🦠💀🦠 Happy to share our (with @gunnar-u-neumann.bsky.social) new preprint on ancient Salmonella enterica genomes! We analysed 53 new genomes along with published ancient and modern datasets to learn about lineage replacements and host adaptation in prehistory: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Evolutionary history and recurrent host adaptation in ancient Salmonella enterica

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica is an extremely diverse bacterial pathogen causing frequent infections and foodborne disease among human populations. More than 1500 different bacterial strains (se...

biorxiv.org

🌊🏠🌅

Maika Nguyen@maikanguyen.bsky.social · 11mo ago

So my first ever article from my PhD, 'Returning to Home Water(s) in Nostalgie de la rizière by Anna Moï' 🌊🏠, has recently been published in a special issue! It explores Vietnamese diasporic writing, conceptions of home, and is available - open access - here:

Second craziest thing you'll read today: from 2026 I will be leading an @erc.europa.eu Starter Grant project. HERDPATH will explore how livestock and their pathogens co-evolved during the last 10,000 years. PhD advertisements to come! Press release below with one of the few good photos of me.

Shameless promotion from #isba11 - I'll be hiring PhDs to start early 2026 (plus postdocs starting later), using #adna to study livestock and pathogen coevolution, particularly looking at inbreeding and immune gene evolution! Contact me at kevin[at]palaeome.org, full ad to come. Please share!

Turns out imputation of introgressed archaic regions in aDNA works really well — sometimes even better than for the rest of the genome. More on this (and other cool results) in our new preprint 👇 #aDNA #ArchaicIntrogression #imputation doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Archaic ancestry inference in imputed ancient human genomes

When modern humans expanded from Africa into Eurasia, they interbred with archaic hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. This groundbreaking discovery, made in part possible through the genomic...

doi.org

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬 Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

PhD opportunity on ancient humans and pathogens 🦠👀 🤩 #aDNA www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin, listed on FindAPhD.com

findaphd.com

The UK's political and media class has spent years heaping sadism on trans people, and they want to do the same in Ireland next. Calls for civility and calm won't cut it. We need to fight them tooth and nail. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

Séamas O'Reilly: Trans people have spent a decade being attacked in a moral panic

The poor provision of unisex children’s facilities— which reinforces gender stereotypes and inconveniences women and men both — was, incidentally, an issue I remember being quite talked-about a decade...

irishexaminer.com

The way the algorithms keep us hemmed into a handful of news stories has really been bothering me recently www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Patrick Freyne: Returning home from Chad, I feel there’s a glitch in western empathy

The Sudan war is the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster, but it seems our human compassion is taken up by other conflicts

irishtimes.com

🐐 New preprint out with @gingerhowley.bsky.social The VarGoats Consortium and many others! We explore how genotype imputation can enhance low-coverage ancient goat/Capra🐐 genomes, shedding light on early domestication and herd management. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #aDNA #Domestication​

Inferring domestic goat demographic history through ancient genome imputation

Goats were among the earliest managed animals, making them a natural model to explore the genetic consequences of domestication. However, a challenge in ancient genomic analysis is the relatively low ...

biorxiv.org

#AncientMetagenomeDir is expanding to include C14 dating & detailed archaeological/historical info for all samples! 📜✨ 🗓️ Join our Hackathon on April 29th from 10-17 CEST and contribute to this groundbreaking project! 🙌

🚨 New release of #AncientMetagenomeDir! (v25.03.0, Historic Centre of Cordoba) github.com/SPAAM-commun... It is a community resource of #metadata of >2K shotgun-sequenced #AncientMetagenome or ancient microbial genome enriched samples & >5K libraries. Stats below (🧵 1/5)

Release v25.03: Historic Centre of Cordoba · SPAAM-community/AncientMetagenomeDir

Release v25.03.0 includes 8 new publications, representing 132 new ancient host-associated metagenome samples, 33 new ancient microbial genomes, and 0 new ancient environmental samples. This brings...

github.com

I'm beyond excited to share our new paper in Nature! We sequenced the first ancient human autosomal genomes from the Central Sahara, two ~7,000-year-old individuals from Takarkori in Libya, revealing a long-isolated North African lineage: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here's a short thread: (1/n)

Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage - Nature

Pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion into the Green Sahara, where an isolated, distinct North African ancestry persisted.

nature.com

🎓 PhD Position Available in the Population and Evolutionary Genetics group at Trinity College Dublin ☘️ . More details👇

Interested in human-pig-boar interactions? Read our new paper on human-pig-boar relationships in Neolithic Europe 🐷🐗🧬. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Archaeogenomic insights into commensalism and regional variation in pig management in Neolithic northwest Europe | PNAS

The relationship between humans and pigs has changed dramatically since their domestication in southwest Asia and subsequent human-induced introduc...

pnas.org

How did Europe's first farmers interact with their pigs and local wild boar? @jolijnerven.bsky.social has a new paper addressing just that using 11 ancient suis genomes! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Archaeogenomic insights into commensalism and regional variation in pig management in Neolithic northwest Europe | PNAS

The relationship between humans and pigs has changed dramatically since their domestication in southwest Asia and subsequent human-induced introduc...

pnas.org

We really want this to be an event that ECRs can share their research in front of a friendly audience of other animal palaeogenomics enthusiasts. Please, the more weird and wonderful the submissions the better! #aDNA

AaRC@aarc-community.bsky.social · last yr.

Abstract submission is open for the online #AaRConference! Join us and invited speakers Laurent Frantz and Evon Hekkala on May 30th to present your research about animal #aDNA and discuss them with the community. All topics #aDNA related are welcomed! 🧪🧬🏺

Finally getting some of my research for my PhD out there! Hopefully soon in a journal near you ;) Ancient Y. pestis infection from a sheep falls on the LNBA lineage, previously only known from humans! +molecular evolutionary analysis to leverage the ever increasing number of ancient genomes known!

Felix M Key@keyfm.bsky.social · last yr.

Many zoonotic diseases are believed to have emerged during prehistory, but can we actually identify their past host range using ancient DNA? In the first publication of the Key Lab we present a 4000y old Yersinia pestis genome reconstructed from domesticated sheep. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

“So why would I go through the pretense of peer review if the process is ultimately outsourced to an algorithm? I do not care for the aesthetics of peer review. We are not children playing academics. We are supposed to be doing substantive, not performative work.”

Timothée Poisot@ctrlalttim.com · last yr.

We finally got a ChatGPT generated review on a manuscript. So I wrote about how we handle these reviews is a sign of whether we have given up on peer review altogether.

Very cool work on recent demographic history in Ireland and Britain - congratulations Ashwini Shanmugam and Ross Byrne! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A genetic perspective on the recent demographic history of Ireland and Britain - European Journal of Human Genetics

European Journal of Human Genetics - A genetic perspective on the recent demographic history of Ireland and Britain

nature.com

Thread and open access version to come- Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep | Science search.app/gtSKYHF5HqRa... #adna

Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep

The origins and prehistory of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Ge...

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