Out today is our paper 'Genomic history of early dogs in Europe', in which we uncover the identity of the dogs that lived in Europe before agriculture—during the Paleolithic & Mesolithic periods: doi.org/10.1038/s415.... A thread ⬇️ (10) @biouea.bsky.social @crick.ac.uk @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social

A fitting memory to Emilie. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

🚨 #PaperAlert! #Neanderthals were elephant gourmets, but also not picky eaters! Our new study at Lehringen (~125 ka) shows evidence of elephant butchery associated with a wooden spear, alongside the exploitation of bears, beavers, and ungulates. Flexible hunters with everything on the menu 🐘🍽️ 🦣🏺🧪

Beavers doing more to combat climate change than many humans.

We often link symbolic complexity to the Neolithic, but it starts earlier. Between ~15–11.6 ka, the first sedentary societies in the #Levant were already making clay ornaments, experimenting with identity and social expression, and even involving children in craft production 🏺🧪 👇

#Neanderthals at Neumark-Nord (~125 ka) clearly had a taste for #elephant 🐘 But where did these giants come from? A new study reveals the life histories and mobility of straight-tusked elephants! Some individuals may have roamed hundreds of km before ending up at this famous hunting site 🦣🧪🏺

How accurate were Paleolithic artists when drawing cave lions? 🦁🎨 A new study compares prehistoric depictions with a life-size reconstructed cave lion and morphometric analyses, revealing surprisingly precise anatomical knowledge and shifts in artistic conventions through time. So cool!

Please find the ICAZ International Committee's official statement on the current humanitarian situation in Gaza below. You can find more detail in our latest Newsletter alexandriaarchive.org/icaz/icaz_we... #ICAZ #zooarch

What Your DNA Reveals About the Sex Life of Neanderthals @carlzimmer.com www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/s...

#Language may not trace back to one “language gene.” A new study finds cumulative evolutionary changes in synaptic genes, with a key burst in the ancestor of #Neanderthals, #Denisovans & modern humans, suggesting language emerged from enhanced neural processing also in other human species! 🧠✨ 🦣🧪🏺

In which I provide a few thoughts on the new Spinosaurus species, S. mirabilis. www.newscientist.com/article/2516... I also stressed the deep connections between one of the study authors - Nathan Myhrvold - and Geoffrey Epstein to New Scientist. They didn't mention it, neither has anyone else.

🚨 Job alert! The University of Tübingen announces a W3 (Full) Professorship in Early Hominin Evolution in the framework of the DFG Cluster of Excellence 'HUMAN ORIGINS': uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet... Application deadline: 11.03.2026 🚨

It's a week of great discoveries!

Usually, stones and bones get all the attention, but wood was part of the toolkit too, and the evidence is growing! 🪵 A new paper by @annemiekemilks.bsky.social et al. reports the earliest handheld wooden tools (~430 ka) from Marathousa 1 (Greece)! @harvatilab.bsky.social 🦣🧪🏺

🧪🏺 WOWWWW New dates in SE Asia for rock paintings - major implications: - nature of early aesthetics, innovations - relationship to oldest known Australian settlement? - and (IMO) impacts claims that cave art in Europe >50 Ka is necessarily work of #Neanderthals www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am really excited to share news of this new jaw...until now Paranthropus had been conspicuously absent from the Afar. Fieldwork at Mille-Logya is not easy, and this fossil is the result of years of very hard work (and a lot of days of dry screening by our team)! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Have you ever wondered if the Arctic actually supports “mammoth-like” megaherbivores again? A new study estimates the amount of #mammoth food remaining in the modern Arctic and calculates the potential carrying capacity of up to ~0.38 mammoths/km²! Wild stuff #Rewilding #Prehistory 🧪🦣❄️

Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments. www.cell.com/current-biol...

“For too long, a significant part of our past held beyond everyday reach of Indonesian society. Scholars discussed it, museums displayed it, global narrative was shaped around it, yet the Indonesian people could not see them at home. That era ends today.” -Fadli Zon 🏺

It seems the actions of EAA are designed to have a UISPP-WAC type split. I wonder by when we will have an EAC? Reading tip for EAA board 🏺: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi... Academic freedom is not "anything goes". 1/3

🧠🔥 NEW! Fossils from Morocco dated to ~773,000 years ago reveal an ancient African population close to the root of Homo sapiens! This pushes our story deeper in Africa and sheds new light (and questions) on our shared ancestry with Neanderthals #Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution 🦣🧪🏺

A new study shows that Austronesian seafarers transported pigs across the Pacific ~3,500–2,000 years ago 🐖 ⛵️ ! Using genetic and skeletal evidence, the study trace ancient pigs (and humans) migration routes from Island Southeast Asia to Polynesia-highlighting the scale of early ocean voyaging! 🏺🧪

Really happy to have joined this study, published in November, that finally sorts out the hunting lesion question at Boxgrove 🐎 and adds much-needed experimental reference data for future studies. A big thank you to @annemiekemilks.bsky.social, @mattpope.bsky.social, and all the other co-authors! 🦣🏺

My colleague Ryan McRae and I wrote our annual round up of top discoveries in human evolution from this year for the @plos.org Sci Comm blog - enjoy! scicomm.plos.org/2025/12/19/t...

New collagen peptide markers from New Guinea fauna: identifying archaeological bone in the tropics

So excited to announce the publication of this paper which is the first to come from my PhD! Combing data from the PleistoHERD and DeerPal project we analyse carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in ungulate bones from the Aquitaine Basin dating between the Ante-Quina and Quina periods.

Wow! 🔥 New milestone in human evolutionary studies! New clear evidence of deliberate fire-making (and not just fire use) some 400,000 years ago, at a site in ancient Britain! #fire 🦣🧪🏺

A New study shows bears' diet dynamically shifts the omnivore-herbivore spectrum depending on #ecosystem productivity. Basically, #bears 🐻 adjust their diet with climate + resource availability 🌿. And this has huge implications for modern conservation and interpretations about past ecosystems 🧪🦣

Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published! We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes. Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In a cave in Liguria, ca. 14 thousand years ago, a group of humans and a single dog walked together in a cave and explored its depths. Their overlapping footprints and tracks are one of the oldest direct evidence of human-dog interactions 🐾🐕 #DogDomestication 🦣🏺🧪

New paper on #Neandertal #cannibalism from Goyet 👀🦴 Turns out the victims were mostly short-stature females & juveniles, likely outsiders. More than survival cannibalism evidence points to inter-group predation or deeply social conflict... #Paleolithic #Paleoanthropology

So proud to see our new paper out in PNAS spearheaded by @emilypigott.bsky.social She found a tiny 46,000 yr old Neanderthal bone at Starosele (Crimea). DNA work revealed long-distance connections across Eurasia, supported by stone tool evidence @heasvienna.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"We found no evidence of migratory behavior in species that exhibit this behavior today. Ancient foragers likely hunted prey that were available year-round, consistent with zooarchaeological and genetic evidence for reduced mobility at the end of the Pleistocene." 🏺🧪🦣

A new landmark study of fossil teeth confirms that adaptable generalists survived Pleistocene climate shifts, while specialized picky eaters went extinct. This warns that modern conservation must prioritize habitat diversity to build the resilient ecosystems essential for survival. #Conservation 🧪🦣

New fossils reveal the hand of Paranthropus boisei🏺🧪 C. Mongle, Meave Leakey, @louiseleakey.bsky.social et al www.nature.com/articles/s41... Suggests P. boisei capable of tool making and use in some capacity while also supports proposed dichotomy of dietary adaptations between Paranthropus and Homo

Turns out #hippos 🦛 lived in Europe much more recently than we thought! Fossil & genetic evidence from Germany shows they roamed 50,000–31,000 years ago, right in the middle of the last #iceage 🥶🌨️ Same species as today’s African hippos, thriving during warmer periods. 🦣🧪🧬

Wow! This is a nice news 👇

"I do know that when talking to people who perhaps think very differently, the only chance you have of getting them to think in a different way is to touch the heart." — Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025) Thanks, Jane, for touching our hearts.

Schöningen never stops to amaze! Scientists have just recovered 300,000-year-old #horse #aDNA from the site 🤯 the oldest ever found in open air. And those horses? Ancestors of all modern horses 🐎🧬 🧪🏺🦣 Links here 👇 Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Press: uni-tuebingen.de/en/universit...

New discovery! Here @mariaguagnin.bsky.social and our team report on 12,000-year-old life-size camel rock art engravings in the Saudi desert. #GreenArabia @griffith.edu.au www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The oldest use of blue pigment in Europe! 💙 At Mühlheim-Dietesheim (Germany), traces of azurite were found on a Final Palaeolithic artefact challenging the idea that blue was absent from Ice Age art. So interesting! 🤔 Why hasn’t it been found elsewhere? Body paint, lost contexts? 🦣🏺🧪 #Paleolithic

Thrilled to have won the Student Poster Prize at #ESHE2025! 🏆 Grateful for the opportunity to share my work on Lebanese fauna and for all the inspiring conversations throughout the conference!

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting my poster on large carnivore 🐆 exploitation in Lebanon at #ESHE2025. Such a great venue for it, with so many interesting posters around! I also got the chance to chat with lots of amazing people! #Paleolithic #zooarcheology 🏺🦣🧪

Great talk @armandofalcucci.bsky.social! Impressive depth of data analysis, and I really appreciated the open science approach. Finally, robust evidence that the Ahmarian and Protoaurignacian aren’t directly linked #Paleolithic #lithics 🏺🦣🧪

#ESHE2025 kicks off on 24 Sept with tours at the NHMN in Paris, followed by a keynote panel on the 25th, conference talks, posters (25th to 27th) & an excursion to Resson and Grotte à la Peinture on the 28th. More info here: bit.ly/3G9CeiQ

#AI is opening a window into #animal #communication, bonobos build phrases, whales craft alphabets 🐒🐋 It’s thrilling to imagine talking back, but... what if our words change their world forever? Here is a good read to stay updated

Imagine a rhino horn longer than most people are tall… Woolly rhinos had them! Record-breaking 1.65 m nasal horn found in Siberia belonged to a 40+ year-old female 🦏❄️ #Paleontology #IceAge #Prehistory 🧪🦣 Paper 👇 zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A new cool research using AI reveals that Homo habilis fossils 💀 show #leopard bite marks 🐆 For decades, Homo habilis was cast as a toolmaker, meat-eater, or even predator. But this study shows that at least some were actually leopard prey! #AI #Archeology 🧪🏺🦣

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age out later this year... such a thrill to put this series together, oh my goodness are you in for a treat :) Hopefully news on events and publicity coming soon! Sloths, cats, rhinos, glyptodonts AND SOOOO MUCH MORE!!