Arsinoitherium skull with two giant horns
We’re looking for researchers in any discipline of natural history: if you have a paper coming out and you want to pitch @pbseons.bsky.social on a potential episode about it, send me a DM! #scicomm #paleosky #FossilFriday
(Arsinoitherium says please and thank you!)
🚨 Publication alert🚨 Early humans in South Africa were quarrying stone as long as 220,000 years ago at the site of Jojosi @natcomms.nature.com - specialized, long-term use of a source of a raw material source in Stone Age Africa: Read the paper #openaccess here www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Earth sets at 6:41 p.m. EDT, April 6, 2026, over the Moon’s curved limb in this photo captured by the Artemis II crew during their journey around the far side of the Moon. Orientale basin is perched on the edge of the visible lunar surface. Hertzsprung Basin appears as two subtle concentric rings, which are interrupted by Vavilov, a younger crater superimposed over the older structure. The lines of indentations are secondary crater chains formed by ejecta from the massive impact that created Orientale. The dark portion of Earth is experiencing nighttime. On Earth’s day side, swirling clouds are visible over the Australia and Oceania region.
Latest #Artemis image to drop is my newest favourite!
"A New View of the Moon"
ICONIC! 🔭🧪
📷: NASA
images.nasa.gov/details/art0...
We nestle some beloveds into a tiny box atop an explosion, which hurls them farther than any other has ever gone.
And we do it …because. To see what we find, see what we’ll learn, about the Moon and Earth and ourselves.
It is one of the best, and strangest, things we have ever done. 🌕
#ArtemisII
Side-by-side sequence of a small-bodied hominin skeleton (Lucy) shown in multiple stages of movement, progressing from an upright standing posture to a forward-leaning running stride. The skeleton has a rounded skull, short stature, long arms, and a wide pelvis. As the sequence moves right, the torso tilts forward, arms bend and swing, and legs extend into a stride, illustrating a transition from standing to a running gait against a plain reddish-brown background.
Deep in the details of a 1985 Nat Geo special issue today, "The Search for Early Man."
📸 Lucy on the move.
That's home. That's us.
This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew.
Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right.
Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman
I love this! The brilliant Holly Dunsworth is reviewing Sapiens, one page at a time, separating myth from fact… Let’s dive in!
ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2026/03/sapi...
It's good to be reminded these days that science, and scientists, still fucking rule. 🚀
I can't tell you how much I love that, sometimes, Homo sapiens does wild stuff because we're curious.
5 Minutes
🚀🌖
If all goes according to plan, in a few hours, a crew of astronauts will begin a journey that will take them on a loop around the moon. Here's a video that NASA put together to help people visualize the journey through space, first orbiting the earth before looping around the moon and flying home 🔭
Thank you! And if I haven't said this already, Vanished is absolutely wonderful.
Power from you? I'll take it! Thanks for the support, friend!
Side view of a fossil skull replica of Homo floresiensis, showing a low cranial vault and thick brow ridge. The bone surface is rough and brown. The jaw is intact with several worn teeth visible, and the face projects slightly forward. The skull rests on a reflective surface against a softly blurred background.
27 days until my revised book manuscript is due, on a topic I started researching nine years ago. Let's gooo.
Right?!
Interior view of Liang Bua Cave, a large limestone cavern with a high, jagged ceiling lined with stalactites. The cave floor is broad and sandy with scattered rocks and patches of green moss. Sunlight pours in from a wide opening on the right, illuminating a small area where two people sit near a low stone wall.
Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat.
Figure 1 from Paabo et al 2026 paper, titled "A high-coverage Neandertal genome from the Altai Mountains reveals population structure among Neandertals". Image shows a map, photo of fossil fragment, and data on DNA. Caption text: "Neandertal D17 and its relationship with other Neandertals. (A) Locations of high-coverage Neandertal genomes used in the study. (B) Picture of the undiagnosed bone fragment from Neandertal D17. (C–F) Relative derived allele sharing between Neandertal genomes, computed using D-statistics of the form D-(ind1, ind2; ind3, Mbuti), where ind3 is either (C) Neandertal D17, (D) Neandertal D5, (E) Neandertal Chag8 or (F) Neandertal Vi33.19. In each panel, ind1 and ind2 are indicated at the Left and Right of the graph. Positive values indicate greater allele sharing between ind3 and ind1; negative values indicate greater allele sharing between ind3 and ind2. |Z-score| ≥ 3 are in red. (G) Schematic phylogenetic relationships among Neandertal D17, other archaic genomes, including the Denisovan D3, and modern humans inferred from autosomal DNA analyses using branch shortening and demographic modeling with cecast and F(A|B) statistics (SI Appendix, SI Appendix 6, 10, and 12). (H) Schematic mitochondrial (mt) DNA inferred from a Bayesian tree estimated using BEAST2 from previously published study on D17 mtDNA (11). (I) Y chromosome phylogeny as inferred from a Bayesian tree estimated using BEAST2 including previously published Y chromosomes of the Denisovan Denisova 8 (D8) and Neandertals Mezmaiskaya 2 (Mez2) (12) and Chagyrskaya 2 (Chag2) (7) (SI Appendix, SI Appendix 18).".
🧪🦣 🧬 New #Neanderthal genome just dropped!
Denisova cave male, c. 120 Ka, some Denisovan ancestry, and living in very small effective breeding population <50.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Super fun to cover this pair of papers, one from @lachiescarsbrook.bsky.social about early dogs!
I esp love how they paired genetics with archaeology, to show that dogs were not "used" they were PART of human culture, and got similar funeral practices. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...
The last of the three pioneers of great ape studies has died. Galdikas, Fossey, and Goodall dedicated their lives to understanding the lives of these extraordinary creatures.
Key hominin fossils and behaviours in China over the past 2 million years.
Source: Yang, Martinón-Torres & Petraglia (2026).
Europe's Late Neanderthals descended from a single population, DNA analysis suggests phys.org/news/2026-03...
Screengrab of two stone tools from figure. Against a black background, one on the left is an assymetric scraper, the one on the right is a déjeté scraper, made of lovely fine-grained, pale grey chert.
🦣🏺 Great paper comparing Gran Dolina TD10.2 monospecific fauna with what turns out to be an equally distinctive lithic signature.
Targetted mass-kills + focused stone sourcing = collab bison hunting & communal butchery, in proto- #Neanderthals c. 425-400 Ka.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
I was just writing about this moment the other day - Jungers bringing a cast of Lucy to Jakarta and putting her sacrum up to the hobbit's innominate. The arm had just been recovered (a year after the og find), revealing a humerofemoral index identical to Lucy's.
From doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...
I don't know of any -- but I think we desperately, desperately need them. Espec comparison with Lucy since she is *so* similar in size. The closest I have seen is this one, from a news & views piece: doi.org/10.1038/5341...
Given tonight's #2026MMM, you might wonder how do we recover DNA from ancient animals or humans? To find out see www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp_y...!
Yes I'll do what I can to keep you all updated, for sure!
Looking forward to #AABA2026 this week! Can't wait to hear what everyone's been up to. 👀💀🦴
