Day 3 of #ICP2026 with these lovely people.

Ancient human DNA from the cave walls! 🤯 Wonderful new paper led by Alba Bossoms Mesa and a great team of people that made this work possible.

A highlight of the Leipzig running calendar every year! www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...

If you're you have experience in working in animal / pathogen #aDNA and are interested in a postdoctoral position as part of my ERC Project HERDPATH, please DM/email me kevin[at]palaeome.org

🦟 Out and on a shiny new cover of Science Advances: we use a novel approach to study malaria impact on early human groups - malaria wasn't just a threat, it shaped human habitat choice in sub-Saharan Africa in the past 74,000 years. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Come join our aDNA community at Trinity College Dublin and explore medieval ruminant genomes! Funded PhD studentship in ancient animal genomics at Trinity College Dublin. Deadline 27th May 2026 Please see the information attached for full description and application process.

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

🖋️ really happy to be a part of @the4facedliar.bsky.social's upcoming issue - can't believe I was highly commended! I'm looking forward to reading the rest 📖

Interested in goats 🐐? Read our pre-print on ancient Irish goats and their connection to the Old Irish goat breed Just look at this dashing individual, courtesy of the Old Irish Goat society

🦠💀🦠 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...

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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.

Shameless promotion from #isba11 - I'll be hiring PhDs to start early 2026 (plus postdocs starting later), using #adna to study livestock and pathogen coevolution, particularly looking at inbreeding and immune gene evolution! Contact me at kevin[at]palaeome.org, full ad to come. Please share!

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...

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬 Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

PhD opportunity on ancient humans and pathogens 🦠👀 🤩 #aDNA www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

The UK's political and media class has spent years heaping sadism on trans people, and they want to do the same in Ireland next. Calls for civility and calm won't cut it. We need to fight them tooth and nail. www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

The way the algorithms keep us hemmed into a handful of news stories has really been bothering me recently www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

🐐 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​

#AncientMetagenomeDir is expanding to include C14 dating & detailed archaeological/historical info for all samples! 📜✨ 🗓️ Join our Hackathon on April 29th from 10-17 CEST and contribute to this groundbreaking project! 🙌

🚨 New release of #AncientMetagenomeDir! (v25.03.0, Historic Centre of Cordoba) github.com/SPAAM-commun... It is a community resource of #metadata of >2K shotgun-sequenced #AncientMetagenome or ancient microbial genome enriched samples & >5K libraries. Stats below (🧵 1/5)

I'm beyond excited to share our new paper in Nature! We sequenced the first ancient human autosomal genomes from the Central Sahara, two ~7,000-year-old individuals from Takarkori in Libya, revealing a long-isolated North African lineage: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Here's a short thread: (1/n)

🎓 PhD Position Available in the Population and Evolutionary Genetics group at Trinity College Dublin ☘️ . More details👇

Interested in human-pig-boar interactions? Read our new paper on human-pig-boar relationships in Neolithic Europe 🐷🐗🧬. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How did Europe's first farmers interact with their pigs and local wild boar? @jolijnerven.bsky.social has a new paper addressing just that using 11 ancient suis genomes! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We really want this to be an event that ECRs can share their research in front of a friendly audience of other animal palaeogenomics enthusiasts. Please, the more weird and wonderful the submissions the better! #aDNA

Finally getting some of my research for my PhD out there! Hopefully soon in a journal near you ;) Ancient Y. pestis infection from a sheep falls on the LNBA lineage, previously only known from humans! +molecular evolutionary analysis to leverage the ever increasing number of ancient genomes known!

“So why would I go through the pretense of peer review if the process is ultimately outsourced to an algorithm? I do not care for the aesthetics of peer review. We are not children playing academics. We are supposed to be doing substantive, not performative work.”

Very cool work on recent demographic history in Ireland and Britain - congratulations Ashwini Shanmugam and Ross Byrne! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thread and open access version to come- Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep | Science search.app/gtSKYHF5HqRa... #adna

Delighted that our new paper on female-centred kinship in Celtic Britain is out in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am very happy to share our new paper on the genetics of some of the first modern humans who ever lived in Europe! We sequenced nuclear DNA from 13 specimens from Ranis in Germany, and found that they belonged to at least 6 individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

Are you an Early Career Research (PhD, postdoc, new group leader) working in Animal Ancient DNA? Want to present your work to the @aarc-community.bsky.social community? Express your interest in participating in our AaRC TikTalk Seminar series with the link below! #aDNA

I am happy to share my latest article published on @uk.theconversation.com, written for a broad audience, where I summarise our review about the Denisovans! 🧬✨ Discover their fascinating genetics and how they shaped human history. theconversation.com/their-dna-su...

Armenian demographic history from @anahit19.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...