Deep-time preservation of amino acids in mammalian fossil tooth enamel

The massive delays ARC announced for all grant schemes – with longer processing times & 3-month announcement windows – were examined in Senate Estimates recently. Here’s John Ross reporting on it, & the confusing Estimates hearing, for Times Higher Ed👇 www.timeshighereducation.com/news/grant-d...

Caprine dairy exploitation on the Iranian Plateau from the seventh millennium BC

Early humans in central China may have been making sophisticated stone tools as early as 160,000 years ago, according to research in Nature Communications. This discovery challenges the perception that stone tool technology in Asia lagged behind Europe and Africa during this period. 🏺 🧪

Portable ER-FTIR as a non-destructive method to pre-screen collagen for ZooMS analysis in archaeology

An Overview of the Rock Art of AlUla: Tracing Changes in Content and Form Across 12,000 Years of Human History

Mummified cave cheetahs inform rewilding actions in Saudi Arabia www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Out of Africa I revisited: Life history, energetics, and the evolutionary capacity for early hominin dispersals

🧬 #Bioinformatics AEGIS #PostdocJobs in metagenomic pipelines & HPC: Ancient Environmental Genomics at @ucph.bsky.social to reconstruct ecosystems and develop climate-resilient crops. 🌍 Deadline: Jan 4, 2026. Mikkel Winther Pedersen ([email protected]) #AcademicJobs #aeDNA #ClimateChange

New 2-year Postdoc: Ancient #Metagenomics & #Microbiome Sciences! 🧬🦷 Join Prof. @christinawarinner.bsky.social ’s group at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social to study the evolution and ecology of ancient oral microbiota. 📅 Apply by Jan 20, 2026: www.microverse-cluster.de/en/career/jo...

🦙🧬Pleased to present our new paper out in @natcomms.nature.com 🧬🦙 Palaeogenomics of early camelid use in the Atacama Desert (Chile). We used ancient DNA to revisit animals being hunted/herded >3,000 years ago. Manuscript here: rdcu.be/eVwwl #aDNA #popgen Thread below🧵 Reposts appreciated :)

New collagen peptide markers from New Guinea fauna: identifying archaeological bone in the tropics

I'm pleased to announce that Natalie Munro and I have authored an Element through @universitypress.cambridge.org on "The Behavioral Ecology of Food: Bridging the Archaeological and the Contemporary." It will be released in February, and you can pre-order it here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...

Are you an Early Career Scholar? Do you want to learn how to publish in international journals? Together with Archaeological Dialogues & Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, we are hosting a publication workshop @tag2025york.bsky.social today, from 13.10-14.10 in room TFTV/109

Experience in #archaeological #proteomics? Interested in #Roman economy / organic artefacts? Background in data analysis for #ZooMS? Then apply for a 3-year RA post working to join PELLIS project with the wonderful @gtaylortu.bsky.social to investigate Roman leather economy Apply by 12/01/2026

#FieldworkFridayFieldworkFriday. Trying to understand deposits of the Al Wusta Playa, Saudi Arabia, which we published a few days ago (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...).

Postdoc, Great Wall of China www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPR113/p...

I’m so honoured and excited to be leading this international initative together with so many amazing people and organisations news.griffith.edu.au/2025/12/09/g...

Wow! Huge congratulations to @mdpetraglia.bsky.social and everyone else at ARCHE on this massive news, a major Australian Research Council grant to fund the Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research. www.arc.gov.au/news-publica...

Here’s to the next 7 years of research with the newly funded “ARC Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research.” It is truly a privilege to be part of such a stellar team of scholars and partners www.arc.gov.au/news-publica...

👀 Postdoctoral position in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies @auarcher.bsky.social international.au.dk/about/profil...

🚨 #CentresOfExcellence #CE26 announcement: ❗️Outcomes announced publicly for ARC Centres of Excellence 2026❗️ See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ https://rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/Download/Report/a3f6be6e-33f7-4fb5-98a6-7526aaa184cf/288 /bot

Assessing the intensity of Late Quaternary humid phases in the Nefud Desert, northern Arabia

Recovering DNA from ancient plants is tough, but this new method makes it work! A new extraction workflow improves recovery of fragmented endogenous plant aDNA while preserving library complexity and read yield. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #archaeobotany

ARC says they’ll announce Centres of Excellence outcomes tomorrow (Tuesday 9th Dec). This is more than 2 months late, most likely due to the new security checking requirements for ARC grants. Centres of Excellence grants also need to have been approved by the Minister.

Monangai making a helmet explode

In case you missed it, sharing again our recent review of the megafaunal extinction debate, led by @stewiestewart.bsky.social www.frontiersin.org/journals/mam...

If you missed the four tenure track positions' deadline (today) in my department, there's another position in Geography @ucalgary.bsky.social as Assistant Professor in Climate Change and the Critical Zone. Come be my office neighbour! careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1710469... 🧪⚒️

Two PDRA openings in modelling of volcanic flows and fluids, as part of @volcanojenni.bsky.social new NERC Large Grant 'Ex-X Expecting the Unexpected'. The first: 24 month, Senior Research Associate post in Volcanic Plume Modelling, University of Bristol. Closing date – 11 Dec #HEJobs

doi.org/10.1016/j.hi... The Mismeasure of Neanderthals. Our latest paper, a critical review of Neanderthal iconography through time, with epistemological, paleobiological, ethical, and aesthetic contributions. Thank you for reading and for your comments.

The ARC is due to appear before Senate Estimates tonight. As usual, they're last on the schedule, at 9pm (Canberra time) ▶️ parlwork.aph.gov.au/committee/de... ("live" schedule). I hope the committee asks about the job losses & restructure the ARC are proposing👇

#ARCschedule Dec25 Outcomes expected … at some point, for Centres of Excellence – now 5 weeks late! Other events: 🔹Close: Discovery Projects Expressions of Interest 🔹Take a damn break; you’ve more than earned it! Data ▶️ docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

PhD studentship in geoarchaeology at University of Reading, focusing on agro pastoralist systems during the Middle Ages: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPP800/p...

Final call for abstracts for ICP2026! 🧬 Submit here: icp2026.palaeogenomics.org/abstracts/ ⏰ 4.5 hrs remaining... ⏰

Cool work from my colleagues @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social just dropped! Merlin Szymanski, @janetk.bsky.social et al. developed quicksand, a fast, accurate and beautifully designed Nextflow pipeline for taxonomic classification of mammalian mtDNA from ancient sediment DNA. doi.org/10.1093/molb...

The debate on when people first arrived in Australia continues! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Zooarchaeologist MOLA Salary: £30,048 - £33,164 (depending on location and experience)) Closing Date: December 12, 2025 Location: Northampton www.bajr.org/job-ad/zooar...

Here's a report from Jenny Sinclair @jsresearchpro.bsky.social on the low success rate for DECRAs this week, driven by high demand and low Government funding for early career researchers in Australia. [Free article in @resprofnews.bsky.social]

I taught (and co-taught) a course on human population genetics from 2000-2024. Having retired, I'm now making all the course materials public: github.com/alanrogers/p... #popgen #evbio

The ARC will soon be overhauling its entire grants system. They've never undertaken such a huge set of changes. Doing it while sacking existing staff and restructuring … I just … 🤯😡

Have been running around China looking at fossils and haven't had a chance to post this yet. Check out our latest article published last week in PLOS Novel archaeological and palaeontological findings in cave and palaeoriver landscapes of inland northeast Arabia dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

Are the job losses and restructure being considered by the ARC because of this?

🚨 #LIEF #LE26 announcement: ❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities 2026❗️ See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ https://rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/Download/Report/a3f6be6e-33f7-4fb5-98a6-7526aaa184cf/287 /bot

ARC says they’ll announce DECRA and LIEF outcomes tomorrow (Tuesday 25th Nov). In recent times these announcements have been around 11am Canberra time. With 2 schemes on the same day, I assume they’ll announce one of them later in the day (probably DECRA first).

Charles Darwin University is looking for a Lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges and Heritage, which will suit an anthropologist or archaeologist with a focus on Australia. Continuing Full Time, Teaching Focused, Level A/B A$76,604 – A$137,659 pa Details here: www.cdu.edu.au/careers-cdu

‘Pry open the jaws of Treasury’ to fund CSIRO amid hundreds of job losses, Labor MP Ed Husic tells own party

Join the course "Proteomic Methods for Species Identification" by Transmitting Science, taught by Dr. Michael Buckley from Dec 12-19. Learn peptide mass fingerpr… https://www.transmittingscience.com/courses/genetics-and-genomics/palaeoproteomics-and-zooarchaeology-by-mass-spectrometry-zooms/ #course

A high-resolution digital map allows people to plan their routes along the ancient roads of the Roman Empire go.nature.com/4nHZmoM

Collagen fingerprinting and sequence analysis provides a molecular phylogeny of extinct Australian megafauna