🚨 Publication alert🚨 Early humans in South Africa were quarrying stone as long as 220,000 years ago at the site of Jojosi @natcomms.nature.com - specialized, long-term use of a source of a raw material source in Stone Age Africa: Read the paper #openaccess here www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Latest #Artemis image to drop is my newest favourite! "A New View of the Moon" ICONIC! 🔭🧪 📷: NASA images.nasa.gov/details/art0...

We nestle some beloveds into a tiny box atop an explosion, which hurls them farther than any other has ever gone. And we do it …because. To see what we find, see what we’ll learn, about the Moon and Earth and ourselves. It is one of the best, and strangest, things we have ever done. 🌕 #ArtemisII

Deep in the details of a 1985 Nat Geo special issue today, "The Search for Early Man." 📸 Lucy on the move.

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

I love this! The brilliant Holly Dunsworth is reviewing Sapiens, one page at a time, separating myth from fact… Let’s dive in! ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...

It's good to be reminded these days that science, and scientists, still fucking rule. 🚀

I can't tell you how much I love that, sometimes, Homo sapiens does wild stuff because we're curious.

5 Minutes

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If all goes according to plan, in a few hours, a crew of astronauts will begin a journey that will take them on a loop around the moon. Here's a video that NASA put together to help people visualize the journey through space, first orbiting the earth before looping around the moon and flying home 🔭

27 days until my revised book manuscript is due, on a topic I started researching nine years ago. Let's gooo.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.

🧪🦣 🧬 New #Neanderthal genome just dropped! Denisova cave male, c. 120 Ka, some Denisovan ancestry, and living in very small effective breeding population <50. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Super fun to cover this pair of papers, one from @lachiescarsbrook.bsky.social about early dogs! I esp love how they paired genetics with archaeology, to show that dogs were not "used" they were PART of human culture, and got similar funeral practices. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

The last of the three pioneers of great ape studies has died. Galdikas, Fossey, and Goodall dedicated their lives to understanding the lives of these extraordinary creatures.

Key hominin fossils and behaviours in China over the past 2 million years. Source: Yang, Martinón-Torres & Petraglia (2026).

Europe's Late Neanderthals descended from a single population, DNA analysis suggests phys.org/news/2026-03...

🦣🏺 Great paper comparing Gran Dolina TD10.2 monospecific fauna with what turns out to be an equally distinctive lithic signature. Targetted mass-kills + focused stone sourcing = collab bison hunting & communal butchery, in proto- #Neanderthals c. 425-400 Ka. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Given tonight's #2026MMM, you might wonder how do we recover DNA from ancient animals or humans? To find out see www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_y...!

Looking forward to #AABA2026 this week! Can't wait to hear what everyone's been up to. 👀💀🦴

There are an incredible number of books - many of them thick and weighty - on our growing knowledge of human ancestors, and on the people who gained and compiled this knowledge. I own many such books and aim to read all of them in time, and write about them at Tetrapod Zoology... 1/n

Please join me for this free online event. Book launch! March 24th, 5pm PT/8pm ET Register for the event with the marvelous @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social. While you're on their site, you can order a copy of my book or others from their amazing collection. ptreyesbooks.com/event/2026-0...

Holding hands with Ardipithecus for #FossilFriday

🏺 Early hominin quartz selection and provisioning from 10-20 km in Oldowan at Omo, 2.3 Ma www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It's hard to measure the ages of early rock art. It's even harder to know who made it. Was this the work of Denisovans? Island-hopping modern humans? We're still struggling to piece together the early history of our species. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧪 A remarkable photo from Leakey archives of Paranthropus boisei skull being discovered, still with its concretions adhering. Pic taken from this video 👇 (a nice historical-to-present-day review of Leakey-led scientific discoveries) #Fossil #palaeoanthropology www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOT...

A new study suggests the “Neanderthal deserts” on the human X chromosome may be from mate preference rather than natural selection acting on deleterious genes. 🧪🏺

After a brief memorial, laz lit the cigarette at 6:00am. The 2026 Barkley Marathons has begun. #BM100

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

I'm too deep in book revisions to make a cake this year, but last year's Darwin quote cake still fits my mood ;) : "I am tired today & no heart to write & indeed not a word to say. I work a little every day with groans & sighs & am as dull as a pig. It is hopeless & useless." Happy Darwin Day. 😂

"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." Happy birthday to the only and only Charles Darwin. 🧪

Whenever I see pseudoscientific conspiracy theories about ancient aliens or giant petrified trees or ice age satellites or whatever it drives me crazy because THE EARTH IS COOL ENOUGH JUST AS IT IS! WE DON’T NEED TO REACH FOR REASONS TO MAKE IT MORE INTERESTING! HAVE YOU SEEN A TULLY MONSTER??!!

The oldest known image of an owl: More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

"By dint of incessant repetition, the species name Homo habilis has become firmly entrenched in the paleoanthropological lexicon." What an opening sentence. 🏺🧪https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.70145?campaign=woletoc

Charles Lyell's book Antiquity of Man was published #OnThisDay in 1863. It argued that humans once lived alongside extinct animals like mammoths, meaning we have a deep past. It also examined the original Neanderthal.

Founders of modern paleontology, and their contributions to systemic racism, classism and sexism (🧵) Henry Osborn (1857–1935), responsible for naming of Tyrannosaurus & Velociraptor; president of ANHM. Co-founder of the American Eugenics Society. Contributing to books later praised by Hitler.

Charles Darwin began writing The Descent of Man #OnThisDay in 1868. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." 🏺🧪

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT As of January 1st 2026, John and I are **no longer** the owners of Complexly (the educational media company we started 15 years ago that makes Crash Course, Eons, SciShow, Study Hall, and a bunch of other shows.) We have been the sole owners for all that time...

The original Neanderthal fossils were first presented to the scientific world #OnThisDay in 1857, at a meeting in Bonn. The partial skull was then thought to be Homo sapiens; it would be another six years before it was designated Homo neanderthalensis. 🏺🧪

The Taung Child was first mentioned in print today in 1925. 🏺🧪 📸 Len Richardson, Johannesburg Star.

Wonderful Ice Age art! Some 40,000 years ago, this tiny head of a cave lion was skilfully sculpted from mammoth ivory. It is one of the oldest known works of figurative art! 📷 by me #Archaeology

How I'm moving through my manuscript draft today.

Branches sharpened 400,000 years ago shine light on humans’ early toolmaking. https://scim.ag/3McCcdk

Postcranial fossils from the site of Drimolen in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa provide further insights into hominin paleobiology at approximately 2.0 million years ago! New study by Caley M. Orr et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Some great book recs from @powells.bsky.social 👀

Their toolmaking techniques "appear to be well established and involve several intermediate steps, showing evidence of planning and foresight." 🏺🧪

Some inspiration for a cold day during bleak times. Half million year old handaxes from Boxgrove, Sussex, laid out for a photoshoot with Dr Claire Harris at the @britishmuseum.bsky.social #MondayMotivation 🦣🏺

🏺 Some gorgeous lithics from Orozmani, Georgia, just 20km from Dmanisi, also c. 1.8 Ma. (good to remember when dealing with claims of unexpectedly old sites in other places, that even extremely ancient hominins were producing unambiguous artefact assemblages) www.researchgate.net/publication/...