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Bob Weir. Thank you for everything. RIP.

Keep your eyes on Sulawesi, some interesting stuff happening there. 👀 www.discovermagazine.com/modern-human... 🏺🧪

🏺🧪 As there are a fair few new people joining here, a reshare of this list might be useful - let me know if you are a professional in this field and I'll add you. #Archaeology go.bsky.app/6hXVX57

This is such a cool finding--the oldest direct evidence of poisoned arrows. Poisoned hunting weapons were a game-changing innovation for our ancestors. Absolutely incredible that researchers found traces of plant toxins on these tiny arrowheads from 60,000 ago 🤯🏹 🧪

An incredibly thoughtful thread on how the new Sahelanthropus analysis helps us think through what the locomotion of the LCA might have been like. 🏺

Fossils dated to 773,000 years ago help close a gap in Africa’s fossil record of human origins. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/s... 🏺🧪

“Our analysis of these fossils offers direct evidence that Sahelanthropus tchadensis could walk on two legs.” Interesting. www.discovermagazine.com/this-7-milli... 🧪🏺

What I'm thinking about today: www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu... 🏺

And here’s my other human origins countdown to close out the year! 🏺🧪

As the year draws to a close, I’m signing off 2025 with a magical find! An ancient amber bear. Carved some 10,000 years ago, it washed up on a beach at Fanø, Denmark, from a submerged Mesolithic settlement in the North Sea. ✨ Happy New Year all! ✨ National Museum of Denmark 📷 by me #Archaeology

Only a few months until The Story of Birds is published! If you can't wait & want one of the first copies, check out this pre-order deal from @barnesandnoble.com Rewards & Premium Members get 25% off Dec 30-Jan 1! Premium Members get +10% off @marinerbooks.bsky.social @harpercollins.bsky.social

One thing I did not anticipate when I started this book was how hard it would be to write about Homo erectus and what it actually is. 📸 Schwartz, Tattersall, Chi 2014

Book writing today includes contemplating this face, skull 5 from Dmanisi. Stunning. 🏺

Been thinking a lot recently about what these encounters might have been like, so this is interesting. 🏺🧪https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/12/the-encounter-between-neanderthals-and-modern-humans-in-the-iberian-peninsula-occurred-in-the-northwest/

Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle began #OnThisDay in 1831. The five-year trek around the world profoundly shaped his ideas about the natural world; he later said the journey was "by far the most important event in my life." #histsci

Did multiple human species make that first journey out of Africa? A new look at Dmanisi teeth suggests there may be more than one species in Georgia, but the ongoing debate feels far from over... www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2025/12/h... 🏺🧪

I think we moved past this too quickly: researchers can’t remove this Neanderthal from the ground without destroying it, so they sent a camera into the nasal cavity instead. And they found that nose doesn't seem cold-adapted after all. www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/s... 🏺

A wonderful roundup of this year's most exciting discoveries: scicomm.plos.org/2025/12/19/t... 🏺

The emergence of Homo erectus was complicated. thedebrief.org/1-5-million-... 🏺🧪

Missing Flores a little more than usual today. It’s wild to think that writing this book means I have visited this place in my mind daily for the last few years.

I love so many things about Kindred, but the one thing I love the most is the way Becky separates her imaginative, intuitive, deeply emotional responses to the archaeology from her clear-sighted critique of the evidence. Best of both worlds. Story, and science ❤️

I had such a great time talking to the researchers at the museum for this 🔥 They also gave me a sneak peek at some of the animal bones they'd uncovered, including the hand bone of a massive lion, foot bone of a bison and the teeth of beavers and macaques! 🦬🦁🦫 www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

BBC coverage of breaking news announcing the earliest evidence for humanly made fire. From Barnham, UK. Quite probably early Neanderthal people with a late Acheulean culture 🦣🏺🔥 www.bbc.co.uk/news/resourc...

A great and legendary science reporter for the NYT has passed away. Can't begin to count how many of his articles I read. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/s...

One of these days, I'm going to roll my eyes so hard they just disappear.

The recording from this talk is now on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l2...

The human ancestor Orrorin tugenensis was announced at a press conference in Nairobi #OnThisDay in 2000. The find consisted of a femur, humerus, and teeth, including small canines. 🧪 📸Australian Museum

Palate-cleanser: just one stunningly beautiful AND accurate human-made archaeological image (by the extraordinary @tombjorklundart.bsky.social) 🏺 "Lola", a girl whose DNA was extracted from c. 6000 yr old chewed birch tar (& she's in #Matriarcha!) museumlollandfalster.dk/en/stiftsmus...

In case you missed it, my story about Lucy's first-ever European showing: www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

Wrote strange a story for @sciam.bsky.social about where on Earth you'd put a time capsule if you wanted to find it as far in future as possible. Maybe bury a laser-etched zircon in Namibia and hope it erodes out of central mountain range of Pangaea Ultima? www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

#OnThisDay in 1929, paleontologist Pei Wenchung was digging in a freezing, 40-meter-deep crevasse at Zhoukoudian - hammer in one hand and candle in the other - when he uncovered what became the first Peking Man skull. 🏺https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/pei-wenzhong/

New open access paper in AJBA led by my former PhD student Jesse Martin now @cam-archaeology.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... "The StW 573 Little Foot Fossil Should Not Be Attributed to Australopithecus prometheus"

Australopithecus deyiremeda 🤝 Burtele foot www.sciencenews.org/article/foot... 🏺🧪

Archaeologists discover that Neanderthals ate the women and children first. 🧪🏺

The marvelous Lucy was discovered #OnThisDay in 1974 in Ethiopia. At more than 3 million years old, she was the oldest, most complete ancestor found to date. 🏺 📸Don Johanson & Maurice Taieb piecing the fossils together

“There is grandeur in this view of life - that from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published today in 1859. 🧪

Celebrating an incredible coincidence of history today: #OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and 115 years later, to the day, Lucy was found. 🏺

#OnThisDay in 1953, the Piltdown man fossils were declared a “perfectly executed and carefully prepared fraud," concluding a hoax that had lasted over forty years. 🏺🧪

🧪🏺🦣 Hugely important new data here, I need time to digest it (🙃), but this kind of detailed contextual work is EXACTLY what we need to avoid stereotypes that #Neanderthal body processing & cannibalism were simply "brutal massacres"

Hello internets, there's a paleontological museum in danger of being closed. Please help.

Every few months: “Are the hobbits still out there?” 🤦‍♀️ www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...

Excellent write-up of a remarkable exhibition by @fossilhistory.bsky.social - glad I could provide some commentary on it!

Lucy traveled from Ethiopia to Prague in a custom box, with police escorts, to meet her great-great-great grandchildren (of sorts) in Europe for the first time. Hundreds of thousands showed up. Me for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social 🏺

Over the next few hours/days I'll be uploading lots of new #paleoart to Patreon. First up is this #Neanderthal fellow looking whimsically over his shoulder, wondering if he locked the door to his cave. Lots of discussion about his appearance and clothes at www.patreon.com/posts/142405... #sciart

#OnThisDay in 2004, we were introduced to "a stranger from Flores," a new species of human called Homo floresiensis. @chrisbstringer.bsky.social's thoughts at the time on the big (or small) surprise: go.nature.com/34s9xbM 🏺🧪

'Excavated with colonial labor and shipped to the Netherlands, the famous fossil is being repatriated to Indonesia along with 28,000 other fossils.' 🏺

The fossils of a potential ancestor, Orrorin tugenensis, were found #OnThisDay in 2000 in Kenya. The bones give us hints about early experiments in walking upright. 🏺

Prang, T.C., Tocheri, M.W., Patel, B.A. et al. Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins. Commun Biol 8, 1454 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s420...