I am indeed a confirmed ZooMS lover 😋

this study provided some of the rhino bone fragments I tested for aDNA preservation within my MSc! without ZooMS they would’ve remained unidentified!

Our new paper (with @biotay.bsky.social) is out and on the cover story of @currentbiology.bsky.social !!!! Veronika, a Carinthian mountain cow flexibly uses a “multi-purpose tool” to scratch herself. A video and more information will follow in the comments.
www.cell.com/current-biol...

Read our new paper in Genome Biology & Evolution to learn more about how sequencing the genome from a 14,000 year old wolf puppy's last meal yielded novel insights into the woolly rhino's extinction:
academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

📷 Mietje Germonpré

Ancient DNA of the Toronto Subway Deer adds to the extinction list of ice age megafauna Abstract. The Late Pleistocene was a time of global megafaunal extinctions that were particularly severe in North America. The continent lost many mammal t

Starting 2026 strong with the first #MetagenomicsMonday 🧬post this year! Its 1976, deer remains are found in a Toronto subway and its antlers look.. well, different! 🦌 Is it an extinct megafauna species that disappeared by the end of ice age?📄
doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...
#SPAAM #aDNA #paleogenomics

The genomic consequences of domestication for ruminant pathogen evolution and herd diversity across ten millennia | HERDPATH | Project | Fact Sheet | HORIZON | CORDIS | European Commission Palaeogenomics has transformed our understanding of the genetic consequences of domestication, particularly for livestock species, first brought into the anthropological sphere ~10,000 years ago in So...

The Cordis page for my ERC project HERDPATH is live! cordis.europa.eu/project/id/1...

Detection of Clostridium sporogenes in a Roman-era cattle mass grave at Vilauba In the ancient Roman world, cattle played an integral role in daily agricultural tasks, providing the means necessary to plow fields, mill grains, and transport goods. The research presented here d...

aDNA from 14 Roman cattle uncovers Group I Clostridium related to toxigenic botulinum producers and an opportunistic Mycolicibacterium. 🐂🧬 Blind spot in ancient livestock health studies?
doi.org/10.1080/2150...
#MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #bioarchaeology #pathogens

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

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

where it started.. (c. 2019, McGill University, pretending to say something important at a podium)

MSc Defence ✅

I hereby declare war on premature Christmassing.

Any shop caught doing this before 1st December must be shut down and turned into affordable housing.

Choose sanity. Vote Binface.

(Photo dated 9th October 2025)

Congrats to Arianna and co. for a fab paper! Posth lab animal aDNA crew going strong 😋 Some nice damage correction software for non-UDG treated samples is also presented here- which I have had the pleasure of using in my thesis 🤩🧬🐎

Extinct megafauna dominated human subsistence in southern South America before 11,600 years ago The high position of megafauna among the hunting prey of humans in South America reinforces their central role in extinctions.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A monk is seated, working on a manuscript. He is writing in a book and the writing appears to be horizontal lines.

The quickest way to finish an article is to start it. It also helps if you can stay away from social media, tv and the internet. And your cell phone. And other people. You should also fight urges to clean and organise spaces, and to cook big meals.

In other words, it’s difficult to finish articles.

The dragon's out of the bag:

#aDNA gives 146,000 y/o unusual sized and shaped skull of #HomoLongi (a.k.a. #DragonMan), originally found in 1933 in #China and rediscovered in 2018, away as actually: #Denisovan!

www.livescience.com/archaeology/... by @killgrove.bsky.social via @livescience.com

#AllMetalMonday
The extraordinary 57.5cm tall C3 BC Etruscan figure, called (in recent times anyway) Ombre della Sera, as it recalls long shadows cast at the end of day.
Inspiration for Giacometti is pretty clear.....
Now in Volterra's Guarnacci Etruscan Museum, stopping people in their tracks.

INTERVIEWER: If you could be any animal, what would it be?
ME: A horse
INTERVIEWER: Because you work intelligently and quickly?
ME: No because I want a stable job

The genomic legacy of aurochs hybridisation in ancient and modern Iberian cattle After their introduction to the Iberian peninsula, domestic cattle hybridised with mostly male wild aurochs for millennia until human actions likely ended this process about 4000 years ago.

Last week, @elife.bsky.social posted the version of record of our #aDNA study on Iberian aurochs/cattle.

We found a lot of hybridization, probably sex-biased, stabilizing at ~20% about 4000 years ago (co-author Colin Smith coined the term 'cowrochs').

Read more: elifesciences.org/articles/93076

Rapid Proteomic Amelogenin Sex Estimation of Human and Cattle Remains Using Untargeted Evosep‐timsTOF Mass Spectrometry Rationale Sex estimation by analysis of amelogenin peptides in archaeological and fossil material has recently been gaining great traction within the fields of archaeology and palaeontology. Current.....

🧵 Thread: 1️⃣ New paper by‪@jessiehendy.bsky.social‬ Blacka et al. presents breakthrough in rapid proteomic amelogenin sex estimation using Evosep-timsTOF MS. Slashes analysis time to under 20 mins per sample (including prep)! #palaeoproteomics #ZooMS doi.org/10.1002/rcm....

"Scissor Graph" showing men overtaking women in proportional representation in sciences after doctorate

Happy International Women's Day! Despite the efforts, while much more women enter scientific fields, due to numerous factors, few manage to remain in the field or secure senior positions. Support your coworkers, call out harmful systemic behaviour. 😘

Reviving the woolly mammoth isn’t just unethical. It’s impossible | Adam Rutherford At a time when US scientists are under attack from their own government, the illiteracy around these elephantine fantasies is dangerous, says geneticist Adam Rutherford

A mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
I got my views on mammoths down. Enjoy.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

read more here!

formafantasma.com/work/oltre-t...

from formafantasma’s site about their exhibition (and this video)

clip i took frok the exhibition “oltre terra” at the stedelijk museum, amsterdam, discussing the multifaceted interactions (past and present) between humans and sheep

How AI imagery could be used to develop fake archaeology Even before the use of AI, it was widely accepted within archaeology that visualisations of the past are highly fraught and should be treated with caution.

🏺 Many issues have been flagged with AI, including its environmental footprint. What about the potential impact of AI for archaeology ? Colleen Morgan alerts that it "remains imperative that archaeologists engage with and critique all visualisations." #Archaeology

A High‐Throughput Ancient DNA Extraction Method for Large‐Scale Sample Screening Large-scale DNA screening of palaeontological and archaeological collections remains a limiting and costly factor for ancient DNA studies. Several DNA extraction protocols are routinely used in ancie...

A high-throughput aDNA extraction method for large-scale sample screening 🦣🦬🧬
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep The origins and prehistory of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Ge...

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

#adna

from my time excavating at hohle fels! such wonderful scenery 🍀⭐️

an A4 lineart page with a circle of human skulls, with lab tips and lab falcon tubes in the middle, with droplets and dna coming out of the circle

A4 lineart of a neanderthal and human skeletons surrounded by patterned flowers and hearts

So what would be the general interest for a #SciArt adult coloring book? I don't pay much attention because coloring is the worst part of my art, but people like them... or at least they did a few years back.

Some #aDNA pages I did ages ago 💀