We have a new episode of the #HEASPodcast on our YouTube and Spotify 👇 The first interview with Prof. Kate Britton from the University of Aberdeen and the second interview with Dr Dennis Wilken. Introduction is by @tommyhigham.bsky.social and interviews by Victoria Oberreiter

Episode 10: Isotopes, Late Pleistocent Living Landscapes, Shipwrecks, and Geophysical Prospection.

YouTube video by HEAS

youtube.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

Ancient DNA from 5,500-year-old burials in Siberia reveals the earliest known plague outbreak. Researchers found Yersinia pestis infected entire hunter-gatherer families, showing devastating epidemics struck small, mobile communities near Lake Baikal. 🧬☠️ www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Ancient DNA provides evidence of earliest known plague outbreak

Discovery in Siberia suggests bacterium from raw marmots devastated hunter-gatherer tribes about 5,500 years ago

theguardian.com

The recording from this talk is now available on the #HEASVienna YouTube channel.

HEAS Seminar - Luc Doyon

YouTube video by HEAS

youtube.com

HEAS@heasvienna.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We are looking forward to welcoming @lucdoyon.bsky.social to #HEASVienna next week for a #HEASSeminar in #HumanEvolutionandthePalaeolithic. More information and registration on our website 👇🔗 www.heas.at/events/heas-...

We are looking forward to welcoming #SahleselasieMelakuAzene to #HEASVienna for a #HEASTalk in the #UBB at @univie.ac.at this Thursday at 13:00 CEST. More information and registration on our website. 👇🔗. www.heas.at/events/heas-...

HEAS Talk - Sahleselasie Melaku Azene - HEAS

We are very happy to welcome Sahleselasie Melaku Azene from the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa to Vienna for a HEAS Talk on Deep Roots in the Rift Ethiopia at the Cradle of Humanity taking p...

heas.at

New Publication! New Article by #HEASVienna members @emesevegh.bsky.social @barbarahorejs.bsky.social @tomhigham.bsky.social et al. on 'Tiny Hopes─Assessing Protein Preservation in Collagen-Depleted Bones' #HEASPublications www.heas.at/research/pub...

Today at 1030 am CE time! If you're into teeth and archaeology, this is for you! Registration for online below:

HEAS@heasvienna.bsky.social · 2mo ago

We are looking forward to welcoming #AlessiaNava to #HEASVienna for the #HEASSeminar in #ArchaeologicalScience. More information and registration is on our website 👇🔗

New Publication! New Article by #HEASVienna member #NicoleGrunstra on Humans are not unique: difficult birth is common in placental mammals. #HEASPublications www.heas.at/activities/n...

Human childbirth is not uniquely difficult among mammals - HEAS

By Nicole Grunstra Human childbirth is widely believed to be uniquely difficult and risky in the animal kingdom. The dominant evolutionary explanation attributes this to the combination two human-defi...

heas.at

Busy week here in Vienna with our Palaeolithic seminar series speaker Ariane Burke kicking things off. We have a HEAS Workshop on Geomorphology at the ÖAW today and tomorrow and then on Thurs Thaís Pansani on the peopling of the Americas. Online and in person. Register: www.heas.at/events/heas-...

HEAS Seminar Series - Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic - HEAS

As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Human Evolution and the Palaeolithic, Ariana Burke from the Université de Montréal will give a talk on Adapting ecological modelling techniques to investigate the...

heas.at

Nice recent article in Nature about sediment DNA and its impacts on human evolution and archaeology, featuring two of our great colleagues here in Vienna, Pere Gelabert and Ben Vernot @heasvienna.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

How DNA in dirt is shaking up the study of human origins

Researchers are pulling clues from genetic material in ice age soils and rewriting chapters of human history.

nature.com

We are looking for a DNA lab manager! The position is for a Senior Scientist (maternity replacement) in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology here in Vienna. Come and work with us in the wonderful fields of ancient DNA and archaeology!! 🧬💀 Link below: jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Senior-S...

We have a new #HEASBlog on our website! #HEASVienna member #ThomasBeard writes about the MicroStratDNA Group visit to the ESRF over the Easter break this year. @stahlschmidtmc.bsky.social www.heas.at/activities/b...

The MicroStratDNA Group visits the ESRF - HEAS

By Thomas Beard   What is the ESRF?: The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is a circular particle accelerator that is capable of a varied range of radiation-based analyses, which in the E...

heas.at

We should be learning from other countries...

Lush.

The Beths - "Til My Heart Stops" (Official)

YouTube video by The Beths

youtu.be

My favorite scene from the Bible

It's wonderful to live in an era where you can extract ancient genomes from lake sediments and obtain this kind of information! Amazing what can be revealed with sedaDNA.

Ernst Johnson@officialernst.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Very excited to share our study of an ancient environmental genome extracted from lake sediment! It originates from a brown bear that lived around 9,600 years ago close to the last ice-sheet remains in northern Sweden, and has an unexpected mitochondrial haplogroup. 1/7 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New study of the effects of micro-CT scanning on ancient DNA preservation in ancient bones: no significant effect on conventional preservation metrics. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

µCT scanning effects on aDNA and a multi-step workflow for archaeological petrous portions

The petrous portion of the temporal bone (often informally referred to as the “petrous bone”) is a key element in human evolutionary studies due to its exceptional preservation of biomolecules and mor...

journals.plos.org

A few years ago, using palaeoproteomics, we identified a tiny hominin bone from Denisova Cave and named it Denisova 17 (D17). A rather unremarkable sliver. At the time, I wondered, could it be Denny’s sibling (the Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid we had just reported)? Well, turns out: no. 🧵1/4

PhD defended @univie.ac.at @vdsee-univie.bsky.social @heasvienna.bsky.social 🎓 What a time the last three years has been at the Higham/Douka Lab under the supervision of @tommyhigham.bsky.social 🧪 I am eternally grateful for everyone who was part of my journey 🦴

Kick off your week with the latest #HEASVienna seminar, this time in Ancient Genomics, with Dr Elena Zavala who will be talking about sediment DNA and humans! Can't wait! Tomorrow 1030 am CE time! More information and registration below: 👇 www.heas.at/events/heas-...

HEAS Seminar Series - Ancient Genomics - HEAS

As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Ancient Genomics, Elena Irene Zavala from the University of Copenhagen will give a talk on Human Identification with Sediment DNA on the 23rd February 2026 at 10:...

heas.at

I see the University of York is offering a fixed-term post in public history for the same salary (£37k) I earned for a fixed-term post in public history, also in Yorkshire, in 2012. Had the rate risen with inflation it would now be £53k.

More than just a one-night stand. We May Now Know Where Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up – And It Was All Over The Place Tracing the Neanderthal–Modern Human hybrid zone using paleogenomic data 🏺🧪 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Link to our new paper on the 14C chronology of Bulgarian site of Kozarnika. We focused on lyr 6/7, the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, and found it dated from 48,500–44,050 cal BP. It contains Homo sapiens remains as well as Levallois lithics of Mid Pal origin. paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.ph...

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich.

🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Enough already.

On a two-word scientific paper, and a fascinating (heated) exchange

I’ve blogged before about the shortest scientific papers. Very short papers (a handful to a few dozen words) are usually amusing, but they’re often not very effective at communication. But I’ve jus…

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

Every American needs to watch this:

Several exciting PhD opportunities here in the University of Vienna STEM-call. In our department fully funded positions in biomolecular zooarch, Pleistocene felid diversity and admixture, sedaDNA and popgen, and archsci and AMS 14C dating. Apply below now! careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...

My dad and I published this paper this week in Archaeometry. It shows how you can avoid old wood effects when dating charcoal by using a bespoke Bayesian outlier model developed by my friends Mike Dee and Chris Ramsey a few years ago. We applied it to a Thai site. doi.org/10.1111/arcm.70105

Dealing With Inbuilt Age: A Bayesian Approach to Radiocarbon Dating of Rice, Bamboo and Charcoal From Non Ban Jak, Thailand

New radiocarbon determinations from rice grains and bamboo have been obtained from Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand. These, along with charcoal, date a late Iron Age building sequence. The results com...

doi.org