New preprint from the lab!

A new face for ‘Little Foot’, the most complete Australopithecus skeleton to date @ameliebeaudet.bsky.social theconversation.com/a-new-face-f...

Many living people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, remnants of ancient interbreeding events, with uneven distribution across chromosomes. New work by @sarahtishkoff.bsky.social lab suggests patterns are most consistent with Neanderthal contribution to human populations being highly male biased.🧪

🚨CALL FOR PAPERS!🚨 @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social and I are running a session (S17) at PanAf2026 in Mozambique, titled: Pan-African Homo sapiens evolution: linking processes with data. More info: panaf2026moz.com/panaf-sessio... & submit an abstract: panaf2026moz.com/paper-submis... deadline March 15th

🚨EVENT & CALL for ECR speakers 🌍🧬 HAAM Radio Webinar - Reconstructing past demography, interactions, and social organisation in Africa 📅 28 Jan 2026 ⏰ Short-talk call extended to 14 Jan 🔗 shorturl.at/YzqMS

New paper alert! 🚨 🐌 We studied historic Antarctic fossils from the Zinsmeister Collection to assess whether the K-Pg extinction, as recorded on Seymour Island, was sudden or gradual. We found that benthic life thrived in the 4 million years before the K-Pg. doi.org/10.1016/j.pa...

EMBO Population Genomics course: Are you a postgrad student or a postdoc starting a population genomics project? This course aims to give you the tools to answer questions for your project. Registration deadline: 10 February 2026 meetings.embo.org/event/26-pop... #EMBOpopgen

Esta semana, en "Sausage of Science" de @humbioassociation.bsky.social, hablo sobre mi, y sobre cómo el proyecto que hicimos en @eegcam.bsky.social cambia nuestra visión sobre el origen de nuestra especie en África 🤗https://open.spotify.com/episode/1aQzqEBgILUm2DQUmWWrmS?si=EcGBdjvHROaSd5ges_V9Zg

Huge congratulations to Zhe and everyone involved! 😊

#newpreprint: "Climate Shaped the Global Population Structure of Leopards and their Extinction in Europe": www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! Leopards are charming big cats but there are many mysteries around them. Thread 🧵

#newpaper out in @natecoevo.nature.com on Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds, co-led by @jameskennerley.bsky.social when he was a PhD student at @eegcam.bsky.social . Nice summary on the @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/birds-all-ov...

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I couldn’t be more excited about being given the chance to present some of the work we do at @eegcam.bsky.social this November & to listen to the talks by such an incredible line up of speakers! 🤩

The distribution of early human settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa might have been influenced by avoidance of mosquitoes that spread malaria A new #prelight of Alejandra Leffer's group talks about the preprint by @margheritac17.bsky.social , and the team.

Thank you @prelights.bsky.social & Alejandra Leffer's group for choosing our preprint on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social and for this chance to talk about human- #malaria coevolution!🦟 @eegcam.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social @MPI_GEA

3 exciting job opportunities at the new "HUMAN ORIGINS" Cluster of Excellence at Tübingen, for which I am an external PI. We are looking for early career researchers ready to launch their independent group and ask some exciting questions!

🚨🧬New #preprint and R package from the lab out in @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social🧬🚨: 'tidygenclust' combines the functionality of ADMIXTURE, fastmixture and Clumppling into R - allowing for reproducible clustering analyses and plotting all in one place! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Stone tools from Sulawesi at least a million years old may be even more ancient than those found on Flores, suggesting an even earlier presence of hominins on Wallacea www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What a fantastic new paper out today in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... - and what a great resource, summarising the climatic niche of primates and tackling the hypothesis on whether primates evolved in warm tropical forests 😍

#newpaper showing how depth mediates the population dynamics of soft corals in Fiji, led by @nis38.bsky.social (with @huwiceandstuff.bsky.social‬, @rowanwhittlebas.bsky.social‬, and @egmitchell.bsky.social‬) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#Newpaper: the African Humid period through the lenses of pollen-based and mechanistic-based #palaeoclimate reconstructions! Thanks @ecologypast.bsky.social, @markuslfischer.bsky.social, @paleoclimategirl.bsky.social and all coauthors!

New paper with a pollen and mechanistic model perspective on the African Humid Period – www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Pollen-based reconstructions and a mechanistic climate model tell a similar story on the Africa Humid Period; @mikleonardi.bsky.social‬ and Andrea contributed to a proxy-model comparison paper led by @ecologypast.bsky.social‬ in Quatern. Int.: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

TODAY!!

Molecules from 20-million-year-old rhino's teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced. New @nature.com paper by Professor Andrea Manica and @mikleonardi.bsky.social @eegcam.bsky.social out now: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Andrea and @mikleonardi.bsky.social contributed to a @nature.com paper recovering phylogenetically informative proteins from a ~21M year rhino: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper in collaboration with @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social and @jblinkhorn.bsky.social, with several of us involved (@mikleonardi.bsky.social @margheritac17.bsky.social @andreavpozzi.bsky.social) shows that downscaling palaeoclimate models doesn't necessarily improve coherence with proxy data.

New paper out, in collaboration with @jblinkhorn.bsky.social @elliescerri.bsky.social and @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social

After a week of intense population genomics, lots of tired but still smiley faces. Thank you @embo.org for funding another edition of our Population Genomics course in Naples. And thank you to the trainers and participants for making this eight edition another success! #EMBOpopgen

Excited to kick off the 2025 EMBO Population Genomics course in Naples, Italy. #EMBOpopgen

Last week, Andrea sat down with Dr Chris Smith of Naked Scientists to talk about our paper on the expansion of the human niche 70k year ago: www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/int...

We are excited to announce that tidypopgen – a new package for rapid population genetic workflows in R – is now available at evolecolgroup.github.io/tidypopgen/ 🧬💻 Read more in the preprint describing its features here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #popgen #Rpackage #genetics 1/2

Cambridge University (my uni!) plans to axe Dr Chris Smith of Naked Scientists. Without him, we would lose an important channel to explain our research to the broader public. If you don't think this is a smart way to cut costs, make your voice heard: www.thenakedscientists.com/sos-cambridg...

Human environmental niche changes in Africa >15,000 yrs ago

Published today in @nature.com our new study on the drivers of the successful dispersal of modern humans out of Africa! A huge, interdisciplinary team effort long in the making, headed by @elliescerri.bsky.social . Glad to have contributed! www.nature.com/articles/s41... #archaeology #Evolution

About 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests, our species learned to live just about anywhere. Later, that ability helped our ancestors expand from Africa across the world. Here’s my story on the human niche [Gift link] nyti.ms/3ZBc7ID

Thank you @carlzimmer.com for this great piece covering our new @nature.com paper!

I could not be more proud of my lab, and my fantastic colleagues for the study they just published in @nature.com revealing a massive expansion of our species' niche before dispersing out of Africa. Have a read, because it's an amazing paper 🤩

after 6 years, finally out in @nature.com! ‪Huge expansion of the human #niche in Africa ~70kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with unique ecological flexibility co-led with Emily Hallett @eegcam.bsky.social & @elliescerri.bsky.social #prehistory #humanevolution #paleoecology #SDM

Around 70,000 years ago, our ancestors in Africa began exploiting different habitats. Flexibility to survive in deserts to rainforests enabled their successful spread ‘Out of Africa’. Find out more about the study co-led by Andrea Manica @eegcam.bsky.social 👇 bit.ly/4e6i9H7

1/5 Why do all non-Africans descended from a group that left Africa 50k ago? In @nature.com we model 120k years of human niche dynamics. From 70ka, a big expansion of the human niche in Africa likely equipped later OOA dispersals with a unique ecological flexibilty. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#newpaper now out in @nature.com! A huge expansion of the human niche in Africa ~70 kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with a unique ecological flexibility. www.nature.com/articles/s41... led by Emily Hallett, @mikleonardi.bsky.social, Andrea Manica, @elliescerri.bsky.social 1/4

#newpreprint The last few weeks have been busy at @eegcam.bsky.social! @ceciliapad.bsky.social et al. published on @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social a wonderful work integrating #paleoecology, #genetics and #morphology to reconstruct the evolution of H. sapiens. I'm so happy I could be part of this! 😍

🚨 NEW preprint🚨 Our latest study @HPS MPI-GEA @elliescerri.bsky.social & @eegcam.bsky.social models #malaria risk over the past 74,000 years revealing its powerful role in shaping human habitat choice and dispersal since the late Pleistocene in sub-Saharan Africa 🦟🌍 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🔊 ¡Llamado a pensar la evolución desde el sur! Invitamos a estudiantes de maestría y doctorado en biología evolutiva de Sudamérica a postularse a EvoSur. 🧬 Un espacio para intercambiar ideas, debatir evolución y tejer redes científicas con todas las voces, todas: sites.google.com/view/evosur2...

🔬 Uploading or finding ancient DNA data a headache? Help fix it! Join our Standards in Human ancient DNA metadata workshop 🧬 🗓️ June 19, 2025 🕐 13:00–16:00 CET 💻 Online | 💰 Free 💬 Feedback = co-authorship possible! 👉 Register: shorturl.at/D3j6i

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Now published in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hello, Our paper on enamel proteins from Paranthropus robustus has finally been peer reviewed, please have a read here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Paranthropus robustus has been puzzling scientists since its discovery in 1938 in South Africa, where a high number of fossils have been found.