🧪🦣 New paper shows that cave lions were widespread in NE Asia during the Upper Pleistocene, and re-identifies large fossil felids in Japan as lion, not tiger 🐅 ➡️ 🦁 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

🏺🧪🦣 New MSA scored/incised ochre site: Kilpdrift Shelter, South Africa. Lots of other ochre use already identified, but also new here is potential heating of Hollandite, a lustrous manganese-rich mineral. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The quiet beauty, the elegance, the... pathetically-slippy-sliding cervid 🦌

Aside from predictable inaccuracy & consequent opposite of time-saving when it all needs to be checked & corrected, WTF are social care settings doing using non-bespoke #AI eg Copilot for highly confidential stuff like transcribing at-risk children's interviews?! www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Great thread! 🏺🗃️

Continuing attempts to promote gen- #AI as proto-conscious are obvs preposterous marketing nonsense BUT it strikes me they provide thought experiments for SETI researchers: is it possible to tell the difference if you're encountering something like this outside the culture that created it?

This really is quite staggeringly, awfully recent…

Now wondering if this character was named in homage to Ayla of #ClanOfTheCaveBear... 🦣 📚

Now wondering if this character was named in homage to Ayla of #ClanOfTheCaveBear... 🦣 📚

🏺 Fascinating site, part of my #Matriarcha research... did you know that Neolithic people in this region had colourful burnished terrazzo floors over 9000 years ago? Pic here from another site, Boncuklu Tarla (Kodaş et al 2025) hal.science/hal-05463659...

Also nearly a generation's worth of colossal damage due to austerity, Brexit & bad covid policy under Tory rule cannot be sorted in a way that turns everything round in a couple of years, no matter who is in charge... Lots to critique (esp comms) but Labour have made big steps already

🏺 Fascinating site, part of my #Matriarcha research... did you know that Neolithic people in this region had colourful burnished terrazzo floors over 9000 years ago? Pic here from another site, Boncuklu Tarla (Kodaş et al 2025) hal.science/hal-05463659...

Never mind cricket clubs, what about schools?

Very sad I can no longer make it down to town for what will be a brilliant lecture by @matthewcobb.bsky.social , BUT YOU STILL CAN! This Thursday, in person or online, book now!

Two years ago, the #DarwinDayLecture was given by @lemoustier.bsky.social. It tackled one of the BIGGEST questions in evolution – when do humans become ‘human’ Chaired by @profaliceroberts.bsky.social. It's always cool to learn neat facts about Neanderthals! www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVuL...

And here's a video - Wild beaches! Cosy house! Gorgeous views! Ammonites galore! Gifts for #MaryAnning! The Cobb! Palaeontology-themed wine!

🏺 Ancient places with half-forgotten histories become liminal spaces for those who cannot easily fit elsewhere.... Makes me think of Neolithic/Bronze Age sites becoming places for deposits including burial much later in the BA/Iron Age, and what this might have meant especially for women #Matriarcha

🏺 Ancient places with half-forgotten histories become liminal spaces for those who cannot easily fit elsewhere.... Makes me think of Neolithic/Bronze Age sites becoming places for deposits including burial much later in the BA/Iron Age, and what this might have meant especially for women #Matriarcha

🏺Amazing opportunity to work at this site (I wrote about it a little in #Kindred)

My extremely talented husband's first batch of knives to sell 🔪 ... Get in touch for details inc sheath options: cefn_digoll_crafts on Insta www.instagram.com/p/DUfpBDCDHO... #artisan #craft

Is the "Stone Age Billionaire" protestor proposing an ostrich eggshell bead currency?

My extremely talented husband's first batch of knives to sell 🔪 ... Get in touch for details inc sheath options: cefn_digoll_crafts on Insta www.instagram.com/p/DUfpBDCDHO... #artisan #craft

Extremely excited to be down in Lyme for the first time (for me !). Utterly gorgeous house, and wonderful to have all four of us back together in one place - first time in over 6 years...

Extremely excited to be down in Lyme for the first time (for me !). Utterly gorgeous house, and wonderful to have all four of us back together in one place - first time in over 6 years...

Buckland wrote this despite understanding that women of his time, whether his wife Mary, or #MaryAnning whose work he benefitted from, were serious, skilled palaeontological fieldworkers & thinkers... Here's the @trowelblazers.bsky.social article on Mary Buckland trowelblazers.com/2014/05/09/m...

[Insert joke about contemporary masculinity crisis]

🦣🏺 Wow I did not realise Levallois appears so late in this region. Interesting to consider in terms of potential interaction or not between East Eurasian hominins & #Neanderthals, out at their eastern-most range (which is often assumed to be Denisova based on skeletal remains, but need not be...)

🏺🧪🦣 Huge thanks to Steve Burrow of @amgueddfacymru.bsky.social for my little revisit yesterday to the Coygan Cave collection - so nice to see the beautiful #Neanderthal bifaces again, and furtle in the hyaena coprolite box - look at that little one, must be from a pup who pooped +40,000 years ago 💩

What ice fishing can teach us about making foraging decisions. It's mostly about social cues. Social density increases likelihood of sticking with a location. Environmental factors had little influence. arstechnica.com/science/2026...

🏺 Great @henebtwa.bsky.social panel, I championed #archaeology as crucial for helping people engage with cynefin & placemaking for community identity, and argued that it should at the centre of how children learn about & encounter the past - history has been privileged in curriculums for too long!

This looks interesting!

This thread is humorous but just so predictably depressing. Govt pouring money into #AI "support" that is not only full of corporate presence, but also virtually pointless for users AND those who have to encounter what users then produce. And all of it could be delivered by humans, helping humans.

🏺 Great visit yesterday to St Fagan's Amgueddfa Cymru /Museum of Wales. Inventive themed galleries, including a close encounter with Pontnewydd #Neanderthals of 270,000 years ago.

🧪 Press release was from Geol Soc Am, but they apparently did not provide an image. Lesson? If you're putting out research to media, give them pics. And consider a "no #AI" requirement, whether images or text, in media coverage of your work...

Good morning from Senedd Cymru /Welsh Parliament 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Here for @henebtwa.bsky.social launch event, speaking about why #archaeology matters. (Love that there's a giant torc here at the centre of Welsh political power!)

🧪 Press release was from Geol Soc Am, but they apparently did not provide an image. Lesson? If you're putting out research to media, give them pics. And consider a "no #AI" requirement, whether images or text, in media coverage of your work...

🏺🧪 Very exciting new wooden artefacts, and I think the first ID of alder and willow species being used in earlier Palaeolithic contexts 🌳

I love these contemporary celebrations and the way they build pasts of community and adventure. We need a fire festival more than ever this year

🏺 Any archaeologists who are based in Crete? Planning a trip in May and would love to connect with people to potentially meet for museum/site visit...

♥️ I will accept 3 word questions about #Neanderthals (4 word answer not guaranteed)

🧪🏺 See also gen- #AI for art, whether intended for media articles to go with your latest research paper, or for #scicomm content more broadly... it's NOT worth it

🧪 Ooh it's won the Festival's 2026 Alfred P. Sloane Award 🏆 for "an outstanding feature film that focuses on science or technology as a theme, or depicts a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character" !! (warning, link has plot spoilers...) festival.sundance.org/program/film...

🏺🧪 Loads of fantastic talks & speakers coming up, all free, streamed online

🏺 Ancient Sounds!

One ref it 'cites' for this (actually a paper written by us!) says re: our outreach that we've "spoken to wide audiences as diverse as the Skeptics in the Pub and the UK Womens Institute"... I guess this confused it because – say it all together – gen-AI is NOT ACTUALLY INTELLIGENT 🙄

🏺🎥 I'm a writer, but I also ♥️ creative collaborations, and do a lot of consultancy. This film #InTheBlinkOfAnEye, which I advised on a while ago, is finally coming out and has a showing at Sundance: a connections-through-time story which includes #Neanderthals... Out Hulu next month then Disney+

Well @lemoustier.bsky.social, what beautiful serendipity … guess what I’m reading right now! For my new book, on winter in Britain and Ireland (from the Ice Age to present). So, couldn’t be more delighted you’re enjoying #thecuckooslea ☺️ @jimspim.bsky.social @chiffchat.bsky.social #naturewriting

🧪🏺 I've always loved the livestream culture of some deep ocean research, here with a species ID coming in over YouTube comments. Why don't we do this more in #archaeology? Invite colleagues & public onto live excavation /lab study "visits"?

"I have no big fears because I have faith in my heart" vs. "I bought an apocalypse-escape vessel" 🙄 www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Hi @lemoustier.bsky.social & @jimspim.bsky.social fab read! Spread the word that @drmjwarren.bsky.social is with us in the #Cotswolds 2pm 7 May with #TheCuckoosLea #booksky General booking from 1 Feb www.campdenmayfestivals.co.uk/literature/e...