1/9🚨 New paper out now, open access in JHE 🚨 Can a single isolated arm or leg bone tell you what species it belonged to? This study tests this across all extant great apes — with real consequences for how we identify fossil hominins. sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵👇

Functional constraints mask species-level signals in hominid limbs: Long bone morphology and the challenge of taxonomic identification

Species boundaries are central to evolutionary biology, yet the reliability of skeletal morphology, particularly isolated postcranial elements, for di…

sciencedirect.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

The Assault On Science Funding Continues | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/blog...

The Assault On Science Funding Continues

science.org

1/ The world's songbirds sing in just 8 basic sounds. And where a bird lives decides which ones it uses. My first PhD paper is out now in @science.org (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6239) Here is what we found:

Excited to share our latest study highlighted on the cover of @science.org 🥳Combining a 3D dataset representing 250 taxa spanning the whole Cenozoic, 3D modelling & printing and material testing; we deciphered the form-function relationship in the lower 🦷 of mammals www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Paper alert👏🤩 Our work on the distal humerus of Pliobates was just published in JME. Thanks and congrats also to Ambra Figueroa-Torrejón, @tpuschel.bsky.social, @a-urciuoli.bsky.social, S Almécija, G Raventós-Izard and DM Alba. Featuring lovely artwork by @gamarraptor.bsky.social! rdcu.be/fuc8u

A 5-year PDRA position in "Statistical Modelling in Archaeology" is available @cam-archaeology.bsky.social as part of the FORAGER project. Deadline: 21/8/2026 tinyurl.com/muhcjkfy www.forager-erc.eu

In any other business these would be record breaking 'customer satisfaction' scores. In ours, it's the background music in the VC's "hey well done everybody anyway about the closures job losses and 'voluntary' redundancy schemes ps: you didn't make your research income targets this year lol" email.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 4w ago

'Notably, a record 88.1 per cent of students who completed the NSS are positive about the quality of teaching on their course – with 93.6 per cent agreeing that teaching staff are good at explaining things.' 1/3

🐘 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.

🚨 PhD opportunity 🚨 Join @palevoprim.bsky.social as part of the #ReVol project (@cnrs.fr & Wits Joint PhD Programme)! Spend 3 years investigating the southern African fossil cercopithecoids to reconstruct past ecology and behavior through skeletal morphology and dental microwear.

Hello Hello, If you have some downtime and want to read something excitingly odd, read on the enamel proteins of Homo naledi: www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... Working closely with Alberto, @clairekoenig.bsky.social, @ipatramanis.bsky.social, and the rest of our collaborators was just so wonderful.

Proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 Homo naledi individuals shows no male markers

The morphological homogeneity of the middle Pleistocene hominin Homo naledi is reflected in its dental proteome, with no evidence supporting confident identification of male individuals, and the detec...

cell.com

Scientific American is 180 years old. The most eminent science magazine for the general public. And today, sold off as scrap to stop the staff from unionizing. Many top editors I've worked with for a decade on several articles have been fired. What a disgrace @sciam.bsky.social

Our late Neandertal paper is officially out! 💀❤️🧬 www.nature.com/articles/s41... It was years in the making, a tremendous feat spearheaded by our PhD student Alba Bossoms Mesa and co-led by @janetk.bsky.social and @benmpeter.bsky.social

Very important paper here!! Clarifies issues about the biology of the "fish-into-tetrapod" transtion, and why modern amphibians and their close extict kin are NOT models for stem-tetrapod ontogeny!

J Pardo@jdpardo.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New in @science.org ...since our first discoveries of early tetrapods, they have been thought of as "amphibians" characterized by aquatic larvae. But is this true? For the first time, we report exceptional fossils of stem tetrapod babies that upend this paradigm. 1/n www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sad to hear of the passing of Robert Ricklefs - a giant of Ecology who simultaneously pushed forward big ideas at multiple biological levels yet took time for detailed natural history .. McGill does a nice job summarizing his impressive contributions 🌐🧪 dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/r...

Robert Ricklefs – in memoriam

Robert Ricklefs, a giant of ecology, passed away on Sunday. It is hard to overstate the extensive impact Bob had on the field. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the US,…

dynamicecology.wordpress.com

Move over, elephant graveyards - this whale necropolis extends 1,200km along the Indian Ocean seafloor at depths from 4,600-7,000m; has accumulated at least 476 fossil whale carcasses over the past 5m years; and has 5 active whale falls. Paper in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A 5.3-million-year-old deep-sea whale necropolis in the Diamantina Zone - Nature

Researchers uncovered an enormous deep-sea accumulation of whale remains in the southeastern Indian Ocean, showing long-term, specialized ecosystems and an extensive fossil record that offers new insi...

nature.com

Professor Joe Felsenstein FRS is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. After initially working on population genetics theory of recombination, of migration, and of speciation, his main focus has been on phylogenetic inference. #RSFellows https://royalsociety.org/people/joseph-felsenstein-38106/

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

"While an unconventional background is not necessarily disqualifying, it does require greater scrutiny of the nomination by Congress.” AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh urges the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions to hold an open hearing before voting to confirm James O'Neill.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 3mo ago

The largest general science group in the U.S. called on Thursday for the Senate to hold a public hearing on the nomination of Jim O’Neill to head the National Science Foundation and questioned his credentials to run one of the top funders of basic research.

Despite not knuckle walking ourselves, human wrists share features with primates that do—possibly pointing to how our ancestors once moved. https://scim.ag/3RkfJgU

New study strengthens idea that humans evolved from knuckle-walking ancestors

Analysis charts evolution of the joint that made our species so nimble

scim.ag

Continental breakup shaped eastern Africa's 'Cradle of Humankind', our new @natcomms.nature.com study on the Turkana Rift’s evolution led by (my little brother) @crowan-tectonics.bsky.social ⚒️🦴⛰️ www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/contine...

Eastern Africa's Cradle of Humankind is Tearing Apart

Cambridge palaeoanthropologist teams up with his brother to understand Turkana's rich record of human evolution

arch.cam.ac.uk

📣 Work with us! 📣 The McDonald Institute invites applications for the fifth annual Fellowship in archaeology (broadly defined) aimed at candidates of Black Identity or Heritage. 📅 Closing date: 25 May 2026 👉 More info here: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

New paper out! doi.org/10.1073/pnas... We examined how historical legacies of evolution history, environmental dynamics, and past species losses have shaped today's mammal food webs 🐅🐆🦁 🦌🦓🐗across the globe. #MammalFoodweb #DietaryNiche #Extinction #MacroEcoEvo #EcologicalNetwork

Giants that vanished 10,000 years ago triggered ripple effects that are still felt today, and here’s where

Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, many of the world’s largest mammals disappeared. Picture creatures like saber-toothed cats with 7-inch fangs and elephant-sized sloths. A new study reveals h...

eurekalert.org

Excited to share our new paper published today in @natcomms.nature.com! We find that the crust beneath the Turkana Rift is extremely thin, and that the rift’s maturation played a key role in shaping the accumulation of Turkana’s world-famous hominin fossil record. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Necking of the active Turkana Rift Zone and the priming of eastern Africa for continental breakup - Nature Communications

This study indicates that the East African Rift System in northern Kenya may be closer to breaking apart than previously thought and that its development played an important role in the preservation o...

nature.com

Study by LDEO researchers/colleagues finds that Earth’s underlying crust in Turkana Rift region has been significantly thinned, presaging Africa’s eventual breakup—and with that finding, new perspective on how Turkana’s world-famous fossil record of human evolution came to be: https://bit.ly/41QD4ZC

We are delighted to share that @alnorwood.bsky.social has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship @ec.europa.eu for her REHO project, and will be hosted by @jjrowan.bsky.social here in Cambridge. 👉 Find out more: www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/dr-alex...

Dr Alexandra Norwood awarded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship

arch.cam.ac.uk

🦟 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/...

🚩 #PhD #joboffer #Taxonomy and #phylogeny of the #hominins from Fejej (Ethiopia): a comparative analysis of #cranio-dental remains at the UMR 7268 ADES in Marseille @univ-amu.fr Submission of applications before 3 May Please note that funding for this PhD is not yet guaranteed (see details ⏬)

Important read by @victorerikray.bsky.social about the anti-intellectualism centers popping up at universities across the US. Also critical to point out universities are hypocritically & simultaneously shutting down departments born from ‘movements for broader inclusion in mainstream American life.’

Opinion | Beware conservatives promoting “intellectual freedom”

Victor Ray: This conservative lie about schools like mine is furthering authoritarianism

ms.now

Hi! I'm not here very often, but I just launched my brand new lab website! I'm also hiring a !!! three-year !!! Postdoc. Interest form link can be found under "The Team" section. (Current domain name is temporary haha. FormorphologyLab dot com coming soon!) badger-mustard-h5jf.squarespace.com