Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes. #aDNA

Lovely is the right adjective. Writing this was so enjoyable in the company of @acstone.bsky.social @blevinske.bsky.social and Verena Schuenemann. Hope you enjoy.

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...

So happy to see this out! Amazing science and amazing people behind it. Well done!!!

If you need more exciting news about Denisovans, check out our paper on Denisovan ancestry in modern humans through time, out today in Current Biology: www.cell.com/current-biol...! #Denisovan #ancientDNA

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...

Retweet this picture so many times that when someone googles FIFA, this picture shows up.

🇵🇸 Amazing! 180 civil society organisations have endorsed our National March for Palestine. Join us, 12.30pm. We march for sanctions on apartheid Israel and to show our unbreakable solidarity with our Palestinian sisters and brothers. All out! #FreePalestine #SanctionsNow 🇵🇸

Join us on 31st October to celebrate Día de los Muertos with some #ancientDNA from Mexico! Two very exciting talks on 🦣 and 🪴, by Federico Sánchez-Quinto and Marcela Sandoval-Velasco of LIIGH UNAM. Note the later 3pm London time! #aDNA @aarc-community.bsky.social

Very happy to see our pre-print on ancient Irish goat genetics on bioRxiv #aDNA #spiergorm I want to acknowledge this was only possible through the work of the late Dr. Judith Findlater, along with Prof. Eileen Murphy at @qubelfastofficial.bsky.social.

🦠💀🦠 Happy to share our (with @gunnar-u-neumann.bsky.social) new preprint on ancient Salmonella enterica genomes! We analysed 53 new genomes along with published ancient and modern datasets to learn about lineage replacements and host adaptation in prehistory: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🇵🇹Our paper on Portugal's genetic history is now published in Genome Biology. We present Portugal’s largest ancient genome collection, with deeper analyses than our pre-print, revealing migrations, admixture & continuity shorturl.at/TcErC @acadresearch.bsky.social @dnatimetravel.bsky.social

Congrats to @fravasini.bsky.social, @beniamino77.bsky.social and all the coauthors! 🎉

Second craziest thing you'll read today: from 2026 I will be leading an @erc.europa.eu Starter Grant project. HERDPATH will explore how livestock and their pathogens co-evolved during the last 10,000 years. PhD advertisements to come! Press release below with one of the few good photos of me.

Our new paper shows how a multidisciplinary approach (ancient proteins + DNA) reveals the long history of dairy in Armenia! 🥛🐄 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An extraordinary story of archaic introgression🧬: a Denisovan haplotype, introgressed through Neanderthals, selected in the Americas, and linked to an expanded copy number of a tandem repeat. Congrats to @david-peede.bsky.social, Emilia, and the whole team! 👉 Enjoy the read: doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Are you interested in doing a PhD in Copenhagen? Interested in studying Neanderthals and Denisovans which live on in our genomes? Than you are more than welcome to apply to join my group starting Jan 2026 :) candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI... Please reach out if you have any questions!

Thrilled to share our study sequencing genetic data from tropical mammoths 🏝️🦣. First DNA recovered from Columbian mammoths southern than USA shorturl.at/xjIvy. Thanks to all collaborators, you were key to this success! See below a fantastic note covering the paper by the great @rpocisv.bsky.social 👇

A very special paper where we did something NEW! 🔥combining a large genetic dataset 🧬, a large linguistic dataset 💬, and Bayesian multilevel logistic regressions 📈, counting the effects of areal contact (geographic constrains) 🌎. Genetic admixture explains higher levels of linguistic exchanges...

Our paper on the evolution of MUC19 in humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans is finally out today in Science! This has been a six-year effort by 13 authors to weave together 3 separate but related evolutionary stories around this one gene (more on thread 🧵). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨 New paper out in Genome Biology and Evolution! We present new ancient DNA evidence from Central Italy suggesting that Eastern Mediterranean genetic influence predates the Roman Empire. @beniamino77.bsky.social @fravasini.bsky.social 🧵👇 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... 1/

Don't miss the AaRC pre-ISBA event on the 26th of August - anyone interested in ancient DNA in animals is welcome to come along. And if you didn't get a talk at ISBA itself, submit an abstract here!

It’s UNREAL 🤯 what imputation can reveal about archaic Introgression across space 🌎 and time ⏳, and I'm personally STOKED 🤩 to see what the imputation era of archaic introgression will uncover 👀

Interesting new approach developed by @marcocapo.bsky.social and Emilia Huerta-Sanchez to gain new insight into introgression events: Archaic ancestry inference in imputed ancient human genomes 🧪🧬 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Turns out imputation of introgressed archaic regions in aDNA works really well — sometimes even better than for the rest of the genome. More on this (and other cool results) in our new preprint 👇 #aDNA #ArchaicIntrogression #imputation doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🚨 New paper! 🧬 We explore ancestry shifts, kinship ties & Mediterranean links at Mas d’en Boixos (Catalonia), from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. 👨🏻‍🔬A long journey since my master’s! Huge thanks to Cristina, Assumpció & @dnatimetravel.bsky.social! @acadresearch.bsky.social shorturl.at/B8TlB

Postdoc position in my group in Tokyo! Please get in touch if you are interested. And happy to discuss projects - these would range from developing new methods to analysis of new genomes that we are now sequencing in the lab. Job Ad: www.riken.jp/en/careers/r... Lab page: speidellab.github.io

We’re excited to share more about the 1st Annual HAAM Meeting — a hybrid pre-ISBA event! 📅 Aug 26 | 🏛️ Turin & 💻 online 🧬 HAAM updates 💼 Career panel w/ Lehti Saag, Monica Kelly, Éadaoin Harney & Zuzana Hofmanová ⚡ Flash talks — submit your abstract by July 11 (extended deadline‼️) 👉 shorturl.at/8LZsr

Are you attending ISBA & working on ancient animal DNA? On Tuesday 26th ~2-4pm we will Board the AaRC with an in-person event! Join us for seminars, a round table event, and of course networking! If you'd like to attend and/or present, sign up below @isba11.bsky.social @aarc-community.bsky.social

Get excited for ISBA11! The conference program is now online! www.isba11.com/programme #ISBA11 #biomoleculararchaeology #Archaeology #Archaeology #archaeologist @isbarchaeology.bsky.social @archaeobiomics.bsky.social

Our next AaRC TikTalk is Friday 25th July, 2pm GMT - two exciting talks on crane genomics, and archaeological perspectives of human-dog relations!

ArchEvo project has been funded by @researchireland.ie Pathway at the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, @tcddublin.bsky.social to study #archaic-introgression in #aDNA💀! Thanks to my mentor Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, collaborators Flora Jay & Léo Planche and the PhD student Martina. We’re ready to start!🚀

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, James Lawless, has today announced €23 million in funding to support early-career researchers through the Research Ireland Pathway Programme. Read more: www.researchireland.ie/news/pathways/ #ResearchIreland

Three of RCSI’s early career researchers have secured €1.94 million in funding under Research Ireland’s Pathway Programme. The funding aims to support the next generation of independent research leaders in Ireland. Read more ⬇ www.rcsi.com/dublin/news-... #RCSIdiscover

A pleasure to welcome Kevin Daly @gingerhowley.bsky.social to @ucl.ac.uk for our UCL Genetics Seminar series. Kevin gave a great talk on reconstructing the relationship between animal herding and pathogen evolution using paleogenomic techniques.

Israel's attack on the UK, France, Netherlands, Spain, Norway, Italy and Canada should not be overlooked, immediate sanctions and Israeli ambassador recalls need to happen in each country. Serious consequences are needed.

🧬 The First Annual HAAM Meeting is coming on August 26, 2025 in Turin🇮🇹 (and online)! ✨ Flash talks, career panel & community updates. 📅 Submit your abstract for a flash talk by June 15 📢 We're looking for volunteers to join the organizing team #HAAM #ISBA2025 @isbarchaeology.bsky.social

Happy to announce an open call for a funded PhD position! 📊 Research project: Elucidating the fine-scale demographic history of the Eastern Baltic by incorporating haplotype-based analyses and modelling 📍 Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu 📩 Application period: 1st–15th May 2025

Excited to share our study on and with Picuris Pueblo! It’s a true honor to have worked alongside the community. Combining oral history and genomics, we show a long-standing continuity in the US Southwest and challenge ideas of pre-Columbian population collapse. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

So glad to see this out! Incredible work by @tpinotti.bsky.social —an outstanding example of how aDNA research can benefit Indigenous communities. Well done! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Bella Ciao is the anthem in Italy today — this version with an Irish lilt. I'm deeply attached to this song — it's also the anthem of my birthday. I wish freedom to all who seek it, from Palestinians to our colleagues in US universities. Ora e sempre, resistenza! www.youtube.com/watch?v=55yC...

Interested in imputation of #adna and its application in domestication history? See @jolijnerven.bsky.social's thread and our new pre-print on ancient #goat 🐐 imputation

🐐 New preprint out with @gingerhowley.bsky.social The VarGoats Consortium and many others! We explore how genotype imputation can enhance low-coverage ancient goat/Capra🐐 genomes, shedding light on early domestication and herd management. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #aDNA #Domestication​

In these dark times, it is necessary to be part of the contagion of courage. I gave this speech on the UC-Berkeley campus today in protest of the Trump regime’s attacks on higher education and the foundational principles of America. https://youtu.be/ge5wsaTpuz8?si=szfG-gFoMnrX6pN0

Dates are now confirmed for the 2025 SMBE Satellite Meeting in Chile: Molecular Mechanisms of Adaptation and Experimental Evolution. Join us in Puerto Varas for the latest advances in evolutionary biology. Check more details: smbechile2025.cl 📅: 6 – 8 th October 2025 📝 Deadline: July 31

Our work on the molecular basis of the genetic correlation between BMI and brain morphology has now appeared in PLOS Genetics journals.plos.org/plosgenetics... Thanks to @danifusco.bsky.social, Camilla Marinelli, @mathilde-andre.bsky.social, Lucia Troiani, Martina Noè, and Fabrizio Pizzagalli

ESHE 2025 goes to Paris, France! Join us in person for talks and posters from Sept 25–27, with a public keynote on Sept 24. Excursion details are coming soon. More info on the meetings page this March! #ESHE2025

Interested in learning how to process and analyse human aDNA? Join our #HAAM summer school! 📝 Application deadline is in 10 days (17th of April). ❌ No extension ❌ #aDNA #course #popgen

A final request for those involved in the Ancient Biomolecule Communities: If you follow the activities of AaRC, HAAM, PAASTA, SPAAM and LAARD, help us improve our understanding of our communities with this short survey! #aDNA #palaeoproteomics #biomoleculararchaeology #ZooMS #ancientDNA

Register now to get the early bird rate for ISBA11! www.isba11.com/registration/ #archaeology #biomoleculararchaeology #ISBA11 #archaeologists @archaeobiomics.bsky.social @isbarchaeology.bsky.social