NSF has led the way in complying in advance. They don’t need to assume the budget request will be what Congress implements.

It was great working with folks at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont on this communication article for our recent paper on Cainochoerus. Mini-pig with a big story: bit.ly/4rMinJb. Original article free to access at doi.org/10.1080/0272...

Introducing the fall 2025 Leakey Foundation research grant recipients Meet the 30 scientists who received Fall 2025 research grants from The Leakey Foundation to study human origins, evolution, behavior, and survival.

Meet our fall 2025 research grant recipients! Thanks to our donors, we awarded grants to 30 scientists exploring fundamental questions about human origins, including 17 PhD candidates at the start of their careers.

Afar fossil shows broad distribution and versatility of Paranthropus - Nature With its attribution to Paranthropus, a 2.6-million-year-old partial mandible expands the range of the genus into the Afar region of Ethiopia and adds to our understanding of hominin evolution in east...

I am really excited to share news of this new jaw...until now Paranthropus had been conspicuously absent from the Afar.

Fieldwork at Mille-Logya is not easy, and this fossil is the result of years of very hard work (and a lot of days of dry screening by our team)!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The MWU Anatomy Department was featured in the 2026 Art Walk! Can you identify the department members by their caricature?

The earliest Homo species did not look human, partial skeleton shows Homo habilis, 2 million years old, was known mainly from teeth and jaw bones

“If you dressed up a Homo habilis individual in clothes and you saw her walking in the distance, would you do a double take? … This study shows us that the answer is YES!” https://scim.ag/4aSsPJT

Most complete Homo habilis skeleton ever found dates to more than 2 million years ago and retains 'Lucy'-like features Scientists have revealed the most complete skeleton yet of our 2 million-year-old ancestor Homo habilis.

A newly published H. habilis skeleton is just the fourth post-cranial skeleton ever found from the species. 🏺🧪

Excellent write-up in Science by Ann Gibbons of the exciting new Ileret Homo material: ]
www.science.org/content/arti...
Check out the original AR article by Frederick Grine and colleagues here:
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Proud to be part of this study! Excellent team work from @stonybrooku.bsky.social @mwuanatomy.bsky.social @unm.edu and other institutions.

Our fieldwork is sponsored by @amnh.org National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, @leakeyfoundation.org Our field team came from NMK, U Nairobi and the Enkorica village of Narok

I'm fortunate work with our amazing team that include Kyalo Manthi at National Museums of Kenya, Julia Arenson at Yale, Erin DiMaggio at Penn State, Stan Ambrose at UIUC, Antoine Souron at U Bordeaux, and Ashley Hammond at Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont

Unlike most "mini pigs" on Instagram, Cainochoerus is a true mini pig, standing at ~knee height of a mid-sized human (image below). Unfortunately, it went extinct a few million years back. The fossils that we found consist of jaw fragments and teeth. More in the paper!

The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...

Mini pig cuteness 🚨: we found fossils of a mini pig (Cainochoerus) in the southern Kenyan Rift, near Narok, the first reporting of Cainochoerus at the site (Lemudong’o). Link to the article @jvertpaleo.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1080/0272...

The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya Cainochoerus is an extinct suid (Mammalia, Artiodactyla) taxon of very small size, found in multiple late Neogene sites in southern and eastern Africa. Despite its wide geographic distribution and ...

🚨New Pub!🚨The first occurrence of Cainochoerus (Mammalia, Artiodactyla, Suidae) from the Late Miocene Lemudong’o Formation, Kenya🐷🇰🇪by Yang et al.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Flowstones from the Cradle of Humankind in #SouthAfrica reveal no evidence of intrusion.

New work, led by HERI’s Georgina Luti, counters arguments that the flowstones are uniform & intrusive, adding support for their role in dating fossils.

🔗 www.heriuct.co.za/news-content...

Hey folks out there who ❤️ to #CTscan things and ❤️ museums! the @amnh.org is hiring a Laboratory Manager for their Microscopy and Imaging Facility, a.k.a. the CT lab 🧪

careers.amnh.org/postings/4550

New Publication Alert!
Dr. Jieun Kim, Dr. Erin Leslie, and Dr. Hadiah Kedwaii (DO, MWU alumnus) have a new paper out in Forensic Science International.
"Breaking the 50+ Barrier: Cortical Speed of Sound via Quantitative Ultrasound as a New Age-at-death Estimator in Older Adults"

The MWU Anatomy Department in Downers Grove welcomes our newest faculty member, Dr. Deming Yang! Dr. Yang earned his Ph.D. and M.A. from Stony Brook University and completed postdoctoral research fellowship at the American Museum of Natural History.
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A couple photos from the 2025 CGS Picnic, where the Anatomy Department retained our BEAST trophy for another year, thanks to Tyler Speer (CCOM '28) and Dr. Deming Yang!

RealClimate: The Endangerment of the Endangerment Finding? RealClimate: The EPA, along with the "Climate Working Group" (CWG) of usual suspects (plus Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) at DOE, have just put out a document for public comment their attempt to res...

AI in the DOE report? This ref (p29) is fake:

Lee, S., Byrne, M. P., Loikith, P. C., & O’Dell, C. W. (2024). Zonal contrasts of the tropical Pacific climate predicted by a global constraint. Climate Dynamics, 62(1–2), 229–246. doi:10.1007/s00382-023-06741-7

www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...

Pass this on. I've signed up.

This is what this is about:
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/c...

Anthropology collections manager job at the AMNH @amnh.org in New York! Additional info: A PhD (or PhD candidacy) is required to apply. Prior training in collections management and databases is essential. This is not a research position. Salary range $93-98k/year. careers.amnh.org/postings/4509

Congratulations!

Exasperated leopard seal

Waking up excited hearing that Antarctica is mentioned in international news.

Reading the news: “Antarctica and sub Antarctic islands are the safest place for humans to flee to during WW3”.

Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation - Nature Analysis of data on six stable crops, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories, allows estimation of agricultural impacts and the potential of global producer adaptations to reduce output losses owing to climate change.

Most staple food crops are expected to experience substantial production losses due to climate change, even when mitigation measures to limit the impact of climate change are considered, according to a study in Nature. The study finds that only rice might avoid substantial losses. 🧪

Trump’s Cuts to N.I.H. Grants Are Illegal, Federal Judge Rules The judge accused the Trump administration of discriminating against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. people and ordered the government to restore much of the funding.

A federal judge on Monday declared the Trump administration’s move to cut hundreds of grants issued by the National Institutes of Health illegal, accusing the government of discrimination against minorities and L.G.B.T.Q. individuals. nyti.ms/4jSIjOG

US Global Change Research Program funding summary. GEO programs would lose $325M (-97%) in FY2026 compared to FY2024. OPP would lose $148.6M (-92.6%).

So who are the winners? Very clearly AI takes the cake.
$22M more would be added to AI programs in GEO (>1100% incr) [who really asked for this?]

In contrast, the Global Change cross-cutting program would drop from $335M to $10M (-97%). OPP would drop from $161M to $12M (-93%).

Argh. The P4CLIMATE program solicitation will be archived (the program website itself hasn't been updated) www.nsf.gov/geo/updates/...

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

This is an absolute disaster. If we don't stop this, they will turn NSF into a pawn of the Trump administration. There will be no research on climate, biodiversity, or anything that isn't eugenics or AI or how to more efficiently destroy the planet for profit.

This cannot be allowed to happen.

Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month + AGU logo

Happy Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month from Eos!