We should be learning from other countries...

The Beths - "Til My Heart Stops" (Official) YouTube video by The Beths

Lush.

My favorite scene from the Bible

Mmm, not sure, but most of the lakes I know are formed over the last 10-14,000 years, but of course there are much older lakes going back >1 million years. The extent of DNA preservation is another question...

It's wonderful to live in an era where you can extract ancient genomes from lake sediments and obtain this kind of information! Amazing what can be revealed with sedaDNA.

µCT scanning effects on aDNA and a multi-step workflow for archaeological petrous portions The petrous portion of the temporal bone (often informally referred to as the “petrous bone”) is a key element in human evolutionary studies due to its exceptional preservation of biomolecules and mor...

New study of the effects of micro-CT scanning on ancient DNA preservation in ancient bones: no significant effect on conventional preservation metrics.

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

A few years ago, using palaeoproteomics, we identified a tiny hominin bone from Denisova Cave and named it Denisova 17 (D17).

A rather unremarkable sliver.

At the time, I wondered, could it be Denny’s sibling (the Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid we had just reported)?

Well, turns out: no. 🧵1/4

PhD defended @univie.ac.at @vdsee-univie.bsky.social @heasvienna.bsky.social 🎓

What a time the last three years has been at the Higham/Douka Lab under the supervision of @tommyhigham.bsky.social 🧪

I am eternally grateful for everyone who was part of my journey 🦴

He basically says the same thing over and over again. Every 30 seconds he repeats. Bring on the midterms and then for goodness sake impeach and remove him.

Conference information Key information Abstract submission deadline: 31 March 2026 Link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/auth?redirect=/stages/81289/submitter Sessions Radiocarbon & Diet Methodology: Advances, applications...

🚨🔈 More information on the 14C & Diet & CLARa conferences happening in Chile through link:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Abstract deadline on the 31 March! Bear with us on registration pricing; currently working to make the fee as affordable as possible.

Please share!

HEAS Seminar Series - Ancient Genomics - HEAS As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Ancient Genomics, Elena Irene Zavala from the University of Copenhagen will give a talk on Human Identification with Sediment DNA on the 23rd February 2026 at 10:...

Kick off your week with the latest #HEASVienna seminar, this time in Ancient Genomics, with Dr Elena Zavala who will be talking about sediment DNA and humans! Can't wait! Tomorrow 1030 am CE time!

More information and registration below: 👇
www.heas.at/events/heas-...

I see the University of York is offering a fixed-term post in public history for the same salary (£37k) I earned for a fixed-term post in public history, also in Yorkshire, in 2012. Had the rate risen with inflation it would now be £53k.

Detection of the historical hybrid zone between Neanderthals and modern humans. The analysis is based on 32 groups of paleogenomes older than 10,000 years retrieved from the AADR database 78.

More than just a one-night stand.

We May Now Know Where Humans And Neanderthals Hooked Up – And It Was All Over The Place

Tracing the Neanderthal–Modern Human hybrid zone using paleogenomic data 🏺🧪
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Link to our new paper on the 14C chronology of Bulgarian site of Kozarnika. We focused on lyr 6/7, the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, and found it dated from 48,500–44,050 cal BP. It contains Homo sapiens remains as well as Levallois lithics of Mid Pal origin.

paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.ph...

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich.

But what about the 14C production rate?!

🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On a two-word scientific paper, and a fascinating (heated) exchange I’ve blogged before about the shortest scientific papers. Very short papers (a handful to a few dozen words) are usually amusing, but they’re often not very effective at communication. But I’ve jus…

Enough already.

Every American needs to watch this:

Several exciting PhD opportunities here in the University of Vienna STEM-call. In our department fully funded positions in biomolecular zooarch, Pleistocene felid diversity and admixture, sedaDNA and popgen, and archsci and AMS 14C dating.
Apply below now!

careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/s...

I'm afraid I don't know of anything on that no...interesting question. Gill Thompson in Bradford might know, she is very knowledgeable on SE Asia botany?

Dealing With Inbuilt Age: A Bayesian Approach to Radiocarbon Dating of Rice, Bamboo and Charcoal From Non Ban Jak, Thailand New radiocarbon determinations from rice grains and bamboo have been obtained from Non Ban Jak, Northeast Thailand. These, along with charcoal, date a late Iron Age building sequence. The results com...

My dad and I published this paper this week in Archaeometry. It shows how you can avoid old wood effects when dating charcoal by using a bespoke Bayesian outlier model developed by my friends Mike Dee and Chris Ramsey a few years ago. We applied it to a Thai site.
doi.org/10.1111/arcm.70105

Thanks Mike, I hope so. We are testing quite widely to see what works best and what type of bone is most amenable to this method and what the impact is on other biomolecules. so far so good!

Minimally Destructive Radiocarbon Dating of Bone Rationale Bone is commonly used in radiocarbon dating in archaeology and other disciplines. Despite advances in collagen extraction protocols, the process remains destructive, requiring sawing, dril.....

We have a new paper out in Rapid Comms in Mass Spectrometry about 14C dating bone using a minimally destructive approach.
analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

HEAS Seminar Series - Ancient Genomics - HEAS As part of the HEAS Seminar Series in Ancient Genomics, Robin Allaby from The University of Warwick will give a talk on Evolutionary genomics of Andean maize on the 26th January 2026 at 10:30 CET in S...

We are looking forward to welcoming #RobinAllaby to #HEASVienna for the #HEASSeminar in #AncientGenomics taking place online and in-person in the #UBB at @univie.ac.at

Registration and more information on our website 🔗👇

www.heas.at/events/heas-...

Denisovans did it.

Hahaha!!! Trust me I'll never do that again!

I'd love to get Jeremy Paxman out of retirement to interview this orange clown.

Fully funded PhD studentship here with @katerinad.bsky.social on palaeoproteomics. Apply below!

jobs.univie.ac.at/job/PhD-Stud...

Female researchers: interested in a postdoc at @univienna in #sedaDNA, #metagenomics or #ancientDNA? Apply via the E-STEEM fellowship through my group. Projects are flexible and can be shaped together!
careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e...