Why don’t whales, elephants, or naked mole-rats get more cancer? 🐋🐘🐀 Evolution may already have cracked the code — and we’re learning from it. 🔗 “Animal instincts: Exploring nature’s oncologist” by @atjcagan.bsky.social → news.cancerresearchuk.org/2025/10/27/a...

New preprint from another part of my PhD! 📝👇 Some mutations arise after fertilisation 🧬, so early they can appear in both a parent’s body and their germ cells. By analysing family trio genomes 👪, we built one of the largest catalogues of these “hidden” inherited variants yet. tinyurl.com/mvns2ytv

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

Tuesday evening with Chris Stringer Everybody welcome LIVE and ZOOM

FINALLY we understand why lactase persistance spread! Effects of ancestry, agriculture, and lactase persistence on the stature of prehistoric Europeans: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

The fitness costs and benefits of hunter-gatherer locomotor engagement | Evolutionary Human Sciences | by George Brill and Mark Dyble. Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Yunxian, el origen de Homo longi y la línea evolutiva denisovanos-sapiens (Esp & Eng) Yunxian, the origin of Homo longi and the denisovan-sapiens evolutionary line wp.me/p4Bi9E-4W8

great work @dnatimetravel.bsky.social and team!

😁 Very happy about this and looking forward to working with old and new colleagues!!!

🏹🌿Discover how Indigenous Environmental Knowledge is evolving. Visit the brand-new website of our @erc.europa.eu project #IEK_CHANGE for insights from the Amazon and join the conversation. Led by our researcher Álvaro Fdez Llamazares ➤ iek-changes.eu #AmazonResearch #IndigenousKnowledge

Excited to share our latest work on the factors that determine what genes we find (and don't find!) in GWAS and burden tests. We describe a critical concept that we call *specificity*. Led by Jeff Spence and Hakhamanesh Mostafavi:

BehaveAI is live! Our biologically inspired video analysis tool sees motion as colour. Track animals or objects, classify their behaviour, and handle complex natural scenes with ease. Semi-supervised annotation, no GPUs required, user-friendly, free & open source. Pre-print tinyurl.com/BehaveAI

Thrilled to be joining the @haam-community.bsky.social as Vice Chair 😍. Stay tuned for news on our summer school, radio webinar series and more! Join our chat: matrix.to#/#haam-commu... for news, discussions or to ask questions to other aDNA researchers! haam-community.github.io/steering_com...

Ancient DNA studies usually link changes in lifestyle and language in the past to population movements. But not always! A new study in @nature.com reveals a South American ancestry that stayed steady for 8,500 years, despite major cultural and linguistic shifts. @science.org 🏺 🧬

The backdrop to human evolution: an increasingly erratic climate. 🏺 #paleosky www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK9P...

@robertosaezm.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Another great PhD opportunity: An ERC-funded project on “Children as agents of cultural evolution,” lead by @sheinalew.bsky.social at Durham University. Come do fieldwork with Mayan groups in Belize with her, @dorsaamir.bsky.social, and I! One of three, 3-year PhD positions starting Fall 2026.

Exciting new discoveries and theories emerging out of China and Eastern Asia about the course of human evolution

Simplistic stories about the dangers of polygamy can be compelling & intuitive, but what is the evidence that monogamous marriage is advantageous for society? theconversation.com/rethinking-p...

Check out the new 'most read' tab at EHS (Evolutionary Human Sciences), currently topped by this paper by @olkcampbell.bsky.social et al on sex ratio and violence against women

Excited to finally have this article out with @robingnelson.blacksky.app. Although we have nominally centered populations as our unit of evolutionary analysis in biological anthropology, we have no coherent understanding of what a population is. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

In a new paper led by Jiaqi Yang we trace the distribution of Denisovan introgressed DNA in ancient modern human genomes over time. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Came across yesterday this 2022 @aeon.co essay on speciation that I think is fantastic aeon.co/essays/why-e...

Next Tuesday at UCL 😊

A sneak peak of our forthcoming article! Led by Mathew Stewart and @huwgroucutt.bsky.social. www.frontiersin.org/journals/mam...

Great summary of the Paranthropus hand paper and its implications. One key message: should we be paying more attention to gorillas as a model for understanding early hominin movement? www.nature.com/articles/d41...

¿Comían los neandertales carne putrefacta con larvas de mosca y gusanos? (como algunas sociedades de cazadores recientes) Neanderthals, hypercarnivores, and maggots: Insights from stable nitrogen isotopes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

My newest for The New Yorker! I wrote about the project, centuries-old and surprisingly successful at times, of recovering lost mythologies that still resonate in modern storytelling.

Very interesting study on a very interesting hominin!

Neanderthals were procuring flint from places >250km apart? Has mobility been a key part in the evolution not only of our species but also of our closest relatives?

Interesting new publication on the genomes of living apes, suggesting the split between humans and chimps is more recent than previously thought. “Our analyses dated the human–chimpanzee split between 5.5 and 6.3 million years ago (Ma; minimum to maximum estimate of divergence)” 🏺🧪

Huge congratulations to Zhe and everyone involved! 😊

African harps as units of cultural evolution: a cladistic analysis on their morphology. New paper by Salome Strauch et al| Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️ Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion rdcu.be/eJi3g

#newpreprint out! Have a read of this thread explaining what we found, and massive congrats to Zhe Xue for leading this great project 🤗

If you are around @ucl.ac.uk later this month, I’ll be giving a talk on Spatial Population Dynamics and Human Evolution on the 28th 🤩 www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...

🚨 The first HAAM elections are now open! 👥 Meet the candidates: haam-community.github.io/election2025/ 🗳️ Cast your vote: forms.gle/6PKTRkqKn57J... 🔒 Voting closes 10 Oct, 23:59 CET!

www.newscientist.com/article/2497.... I think the best pop-sci explanation of the Yunxian study and its implications I’ve read so far, as often, by @michael-marshall.bsky.social

Some of my initial comments on the most interesting Yunxian 2 study and its implications. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Would love to hear/read thoughts (beyond mainstream media) about the Yunxian paper out this week (esp in relation to the two recent papers on the paleoproteomics and mtDNA of Harbin). Exact dates aside, do we need to ask new questions about how members of these clades behaved/ were differentiated?

🎙️ 📻 New Heredity Podcast! We talk with @caitismuheil.bsky.social and Jessica McNeill about their work showing the sensitivity of meiosis to temperature and what this might mean for populations in a warming world. @ncstate.bsky.social @gensocuk.bsky.social Episode: shows.acast.com/heredity-pod...

I discuss the ~1 million year old Yunxian cranium.. youtu.be/YmtjPnuaUro?...

Very important paper out today for Homo sapiens origins 🤩

Nice story on Reich's research on ancient DNA "Claims of pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no." 🏺🧪 news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

‼️📣Extremely proud to see this great collaborative work out! Oldest Shell Ornament Workshop in Western Europe at Saint-Césaire: www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1... #Prehistory #Archaeology #Chatelperronian #Shells #Beads #Homosapiens #Neandertal #Ornament Details of discovery & implications ⏬ 🧵 1/20

We are looking for someone to review this great book for @ishe-society.bsky.social 😊 Please DM me for details!

New Sausage of Science episode! Dr. Luisa María Rivera is a critical biocultural anthropologist whose work examines how social inequality, trauma, and structural violence shape reproductive and maternal–infant health. Listen Here: soundcloud.com/sausageofsci...

At @ishe-society.bsky.social, we are looking for someone to review @mgurven.bsky.social new book, "Seven decades" for Human Ethology. It looks terribly interesting! DM/email for details (and to get a hard copy 😊) @princetonupress.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Released today! SEVEN DECADES: HOW WE EVOLVED TO LIVE LONGER Now available at your favorite bookseller. Leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon if you can. Please help spread the word! #sevendecades @princetonupress.bsky.social

💙New paper!💙 How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society? With @danielredhead.bsky.social we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...