Recognizing leprosy in wild chimpanzees
A story in Science has been making the rounds on my feeds about a newly-recognized problem in chimpanzee populations: “Leprosy, ancient scourge of humans, fo...
Recent Posts
Skills and PhD training
A colleague directed my attention to the text of a recent lecture by Wendy Larner, the outgoing president of the Royal Society Te Apārangi of New Zealand: Pr...
Link: Different approaches to archaeology from African practitioners
The Guardian has an article from archaeologist Sada Mire, reflecting on the different approaches to the past in African cultures and societies: “Here’s why w...
An update to the 23andMe ancestry algorithm, how populations are constructed
The genomics testing company 23andMe has come out with a new algorithm for ancestry assignment from their SNP panel. They describe the new procedure in a blo...
A look at the ethics of ancient DNA sampling in Africa
Nature Reviews Genetics has a short piece discussing the current landscape of ancient DNA sampling in Africa: “African ancient DNA research requires robust e...
Neural connections may underlie intelligence in birds
The health and science-oriented magazine STAT has an article from Sharon Begley on recent research that looks at bird intelligence: “Brainiacs, not birdbrain...
Quote: Matthias Höss on the fascination with ancient DNA
In 2000, Igor Ovchinnikov and coworkers sequenced part of the mitochondrial genome of an infant’s skeleton from Mezmaiskaya Cave, Russia: “Molecular analysis...
People, not clusters
Surveillance of people with infectious diseases is a public health measure, yet such surveillance can lead to serious injustice. In an editorial in the Amer...
Link: Zeresenay Alemseged on race in the U.S.
I want to draw readers’ attention to a personal essay by the paleoanthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged, who reflects on Black Lives Matter and the current raci...
Feral rheas
Audubon magazine has a fascinating story by Sami Emory about how an area of Germany is being overrun by feral rheas: “Inside Germany’s Giant, Hungry, Flightl...
Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials
The archaeological site of Çatalhöyük, in present-day Turkey, is one of the most significant early Neolithic villages to have been excavated. It was occupied...
Getting species diagnoses non-destructively from collagen
A neat paper by Naomi Martisius and coworkers in Scientific Reports: “Non-destructive ZooMS identification reveals strategic bone tool raw material selection...
How mice became house mice
A new paper from Thomas Cucchi and coworkers in Scientific Reports probes the early history of the house mouse: “Tracking the Near Eastern origins and Europe...
Goat immunity modified by introgression during and after domestication
Goat domestication may provide another example in which introgression brought new genetic variations conferring advantages for immunity into a population. A ...
Twins from an adaptive point of view
The biological anthropologist Rebecca Sear looks at the evolution of human twinning in a post for This View of Life: “Solving the Evolutionary Puzzle of Twin...
Link: Online learning metaconversation
I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about how to help students transition more effectively to online learning. Obviously this is a topic on the ...
Replicability and archiving of geological samples
In Nature this week, Noah Planavsky and coworkers, including the present director of the National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson, have an opinion pi...
Tending museums through the crisis
Atlas Obscura has an article by Jessica Leigh Hester looking at how curators and staff are tending museum collections and infrastructure while hallways are e...
When will we have concerts again?
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has an essay in The Atlantic reflecting on our need for live music: “The Day the Live Concert Returns”.
Hunting the ghost dogs with camera traps
Cara Giaimo in the New York Times covers a recent research paper that combines camera trap evidence from across a large swath of the western Amazon to examin...