I should probably hide this paper... From the person who once extracted the oldest DNA, comes a study that got none out of 6,000-year-old elephants. Or 0.01% to be precise. The worst possible PR for using aDNA to study archaeological ivory. But success stories are coming soon... tinyurl.com/5ycwwt66

D. Stefanelli, M. Marino, B. Mecozzi, R. Sardella, A. Zazzera, and M.P. Ferretti (2026) Reassessing diagnostic postcranial traits in Pleistocene elephants: evidence from Palaeoloxodon antiquus and Mammuthus in Italy Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 71(1): 155-171 www.app.pan.pl/article/item...

Anatomy of a perinatal woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) from Niederweningen (Late Pleistocene), Switzerland sjp.pensoft.net/articles.php...

Ooo. New book on one of my favorite rivers...

For anyone keeping track at home....Port Kennedy Cave has some v large samples of Irvingtonian mammal taxa--crying out for modern re-analyses! Megalonyx wheatleyi, Tapirus, Mammut and a whole raft of large carnivores.

A man with a mastodon tusk (3D printed) from @valivingmuseum on #MastodonMonday

Pre-orders help a *lot*, so if this tyrannosaur tale is one you know you’ll read please consider ordering your copy early.

Not as pretty as the old Fisk maps, but Roger Saucier's maps in his Geomophology and Geologic History of the Lower Mississippi Valley (1994) have ages assigned based on radiocarbon dating, and I think a better understanding of the processes involved.

Can some museum just do a blacklight survey party in their collections after hours and report everything that glows? Every 6 months there’s another one of these and I’m starting to think maybe it’s not that special/there are some interesting patterns we could pick up with broad sampling.

It's not everyday you get to shake a dinosaur's hand

Just updated the #SciComm community directory on my website: www.virginiaschutte.com/scicomm-comm... I added the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (@gnsiart.bsky.social) & the Early Career Science Writer Network (www.linkedin.com/groups/12971...) LMK if there's a group you think I should add!

Oxygen supply through the tracheolar–muscle system does not constrain insect gigantism www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy #FossilFriday! Very happy to have a grant-funded summer position open at the Science Museum of Minnesota! Apply here for a great chance to work in our Paleontology Dept + good volunteer opportunities to join us in the field in North Dakota & Montana! recruiting.ultipro.com/SCI1003/JobB...

Third installment of #mammothmarch2026 a cast of a Columbian mammoth footprint found at the Carson City Prison, Nevada. On display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, California. #fossilfriday #naturalhistorymuseumoflosangelescounty #prehistoricnevada #mammoth

#fossilfriday it’s been a very busy week visiting the collections @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social to study the gomphotheres houses here. Enjoy the three holotypes I have had the pleasure of studying/scanning this week: Megabelodon minor, Gomphotherium cingulatum, and Trilophodon simpsoni!

"'There is no 11,000-year-old ash layer underneath the Monte Verde II site," Dillehay told Live Science in an email. "They are studying a different context in the area and are projecting that into the site from elsewhere.'" Another archeology debate that is secretly geology (stratigraphy)....

Democracy isn't a modern luxury—it's a political strategy with deep roots. In our new study for Science Advances, we analyse 40 different societies and develop a framework for measuring human governance along a collective-autocratic axis. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...

A few weeks ago CBC reporter Sheena Goodyear reached out to me for comment on the new Spinosaurus paper. I said I couldn’t, because of Epstein connection Nathan Myhrvold’s involvement with it. We got to talking about how paleontology - especially dinosaur research- remains hostile to women. 🧪

Bummed to have missed the giant bison. Seems they arrived in Chicago after dark because of the weather and left at 9am this morning. Oh well, the photos from Nebraska look cool.

Always lovely to see more elephant mobility work. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Southern tip of Greenland was sunny and beautiful yesterday.

Made sure to say hello to Al Koch's Missourium today when visiting @nhm-london.bsky.social. Bones are probably from 'Koch Spring ' on the Pomme de terre river, Missouri. Perhaps with a few bits from Kimmswick, MO thrown in for good measure. Tour de force of Ozark elephant.

@restingdinoface.bsky.social sighting in the wild at Waterstones UK.

It's a beautiful map. If you're seriously interested in rivers and how they change over time, though, please read the work of later researchers, who had tools like radiocarbon dating that Harold Fisk did not, along with a better understanding of fluvial processes and past climate change.

I’m so excited for this! Who’s going? My talk will be about time, as ecology’s final frontier: dynamics, timescales, resolution and extent, historical contingencies, and the denominator of all ecological processes.

Happy #FossilFriday here is a wee climate paper that I coauthored. We found that 20kya eastern Washington was drying and warming up and chasing away all the pesky pine trees (ew, trees). As usual with pleistocene stuff, my job was figuring out how old all the dirt was (age-depth modelling)

How I always imagined it happened. Dangerous large mammals.

Ah. This is 'that' skull. One of two records of the southern mammoth in North America....or not? (depends on who you ask).

Happy #FossilFriday! This lovely horse tooth from the Wright County Historical Society is the final part of our dozen horse teeth being analyzed for potential Ice Age horses in #Minnesota! Part of research at the Science Museum of Minnesota funded by the MN Legacy Amendment.

🦖 Free Webinar: 200 Years of Vertebrate Paleontology in South Asia Join Dr. Advait Jukar for a fascinating look at the history and future of vertebrate paleontology in South Asia. 📅 March 11 | 12-1 PM ET 🔗 Register: anatomy.org/ANATOMY/Meet...

We did an 8 panel, 2 page comic about 4 fossils we 3-D scanned in January @valivingmuseum.bsky.social

Peak #scicomm. theoatmeal.com/comics/naked...

von Koenigswald, W. Diversity and function of the anterior dentitions in fossil and extant mammals. Palaeobio Palaeoenv (2026). doi.org/10.1007/s125...

With the understanding that I'm a taphonomist, so my worldview is a little bent with regards to such things, I think my decomposing alligators are actually kind of beautiful at this stage of things:

Death, decay, and microbes. elifesciences.org/articles/011...

How many states are crossed out for us now? How many of us have had to flee or suffered because we can’t? And every day we’re told this is both a niche concern, a distraction mattering to few, and a full blown crisis, all at once. We have to help each other because no one else is coming.

I'm having these conversations too (and had them even when I lived in one of those deep red states). And about problematic advisors. And about stupid hero worshipping VP. It's a lot.

How to fall in love with the world, step 1: come to the museum.

Harmful interactions in geoscience field settings are prevalent, and more action needs to be taken. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Roughly 1 in 10 trans people in the US moved states last year, survey shows another 3 in 10 want to. It reminds me of cases in US history of racism forcing people to move. But most trans kids don't grow up in trans families. Help those who need to move, and also fight for rights everywhere. ✊🏳️‍⚧️

Interesting. Especially since I've been bothered about a couple of recent papers where reviewers clearly dropped the ball in my (admittedly niche) area. Reviewer saturation? Maybe.

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

Deep-time preservation of amino acids in mammalian fossil tooth enamel

Camp’s instructor and Cal Berkeley doctoral student Emily Bōgner outlines the process for accessing a museum research collection to collect data! This summer Emily will run our Research Academy Kansas program! #paleontology #fossil #sciencecamp (Edited by Sophie Cajune.)