I'm happy to present our paper in which we describe hominin postcrania from Drimolen. Many of these specimens sat in a drawer at Wits Uni for > 20 years. It's amusing to me that the image here includes two fossils in that drawer that were labeled "hominin" but that we decided are not! 1/
Awesome find! Congrats Andrew!
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...
This is great. It's not as in depth as the suggestions here, but at my JC in grad school we always asked two questions at the end: "What is the most valuable thing we can take from this paper?" and "What's the next step we would take related to that most valuable thing?" It was fantastic.
The book The Voices of Nature by Nicolas Mathevon sits on a table surrounded by skulls of the animals depicted on the cover (which were all drawn by the author's dad, Bernard Mathevon!) The skulls are American robin (Turdus migratorius, OUVC 9766), spectacled caiman (Caiman cf. C. crocodilus, OUVC 11550), northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris, OUVC 9581), and spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta, OUVC 10571).
Just finished this awesome new-ish book by @nicolasmathevon.bsky.social on animal communication. It covers a lot of ground with a huge diversity of species—& it's a blast to read! Great for those interested in sensory ecology. (I had skulls of all the cover animals, so I snapped a photo! 😃)
The figure used in my News & Views commentary. I generated the CT-based rendering of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), based on a recent scan. The lower image was done by the Nature art department.
Here's the free link to the print version that I'm permitted to share: https://rdcu.be/eNv94. You can't download it but you can screen-capture its two pages if you really need a copy.
Our casts of (bottom) the holotype of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), (middle) the newly named holotype of N. lethaeus (BMRP 2002.4.1), and (top) T. rex (AMNH 5027). We published on CMNH 7541 in 2010 (http://bit.ly/3X5nCGm).
Today's bombshell in @nature.com by Lindsay Zanno & James Napoli @jgn-paleo.bsky.social (bit.ly/4qBE6ng) shows that putative juvvy T. rex fossils actually are Nanotyrannus. I reviewed the manuscript, so Nature invited me to write the News & Views commentary. Free link: rdcu.be/eNv94 🦖
Amazing! Congrats Caley!!
New craniodentally associated P. boisei post crania! ✋ 🦶 from Koobi Fora 🔥 Congrats to carriemongle.bsky.social caleyorr.bsky.social et al!
Like you, I've read so many nice things about Jane Goodall's amazing life and legacy today, but this video of the realease of the chimp called Wounda is beyond words ♥️
If only we could find the will to stop destroying the extraordinary natural world around us...
youtu.be/ClOMa_GufsA?...
Interested in the functional morphology of mammal heads and want to come join us in Liverpool? Apply for this exciting new PhD project with Alana!
Grateful to Dr. Jasmine Pan and @commsbio.bsky.social for the opportunity to share my journey of using art as a gateway into science.
It was a pleasure to discuss how creativity can shape and enhance scientific exploration! www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Thank you!
Thank you!
I'm excited to share that next fall, I'll be joining the faculty at Fairfield U as an Asst Prof in Biology! 🦌
I'm deeply grateful for my time at the AMNH and as part of the Bio Anth Lab. I look forward to continuing and expanding on these collaborations in this next chapter! 💀👂🧠
Check out this month's Editor's Choice author interview featuring @jordynneal.bsky.social and Dr. Allison Bronson: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/editors-...
Read more about their exciting research on shark skeletal labyrinths here:
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Figure 1 from Berg et al (2025): Three-dimensional polygon models derived from surface scanning of DNH 43. A) sacrum (DNH 43A) with arrow indicating cranially-directed deformation of the left side of the sacral plateau; B) bisection and reflection of the relatively undistorted right side to reconstruct the left side; C) medial view of the two refit pieces of the os coxae (DNH 43B); D) anterior view of the articulated pelvis with the reconstructed sacrum and the right os coxae reflected to reproduce the left side; E) superior view of the articulated pelvis; F) lateral view of the articulated pelvis.
Our 3D scans of the ~2.0 million-year-old hominin pelvis (DNH 43) from Drimolen (Cradle of Humankind, South Africa) publicly available at this link. Species is most likely Paranthropus robustus. Please use scans & cite Berg et al (2025). #paleoanthropology 🏺🧪
human-fossil-record.org/index.php?/c...
New paper from my lab & Drimolen team (@ozarchaeomaglab.bsky.social) on the DNH 43 hominin pelvis. I first saw it in 2019. Given the importance of the pelvis in the evolution of human locomotion and birth, I was surprised only a basic description had been published. 1/ #paleoanthropology 🏺🧪
Excellent opportunity for any students interested in ear evolution! 👇👇
New paper is out! We used microCT to reanalyze the partial cranium of Plesiolestes nacimienti - the oldest plesiadapiform cranium currently known!
@purgatoriidae.bsky.social
nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...
New paper co-led by Maddy Lang and myself, providing the most comprehensive analysis of the evolution of olfactory bulb size in living and fossil euarchontoglirans. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Fascinating new research from @a-urciuoli.bsky.social using the inner ear to dig deep into Neanderthal evolution. Check it out!!
Image from Skinner et al (2025) showing the SK 46 fossil specimen (a cranium typically attributed to Paranthropus robustus) from Swartkrans, South Africa. The specimen is depicted in sagittal section from the microCT image (top right) and as surface renderings of the cranium in anterior view (top left), lateral view (bottom left), and inferior view (bottom right).
An open-access collection of early fossil hominin scans from Swartkrans, South Africa was recently published in the journal PaleoAnthropology by Skinner et al. Both Paranthropus robustus & early Homo are represented in the assemblage.
paleoanthropology.org/ojs/index.ph...
🏺🧪🦣
#paleoanthropology
New paper alert! Kimi_Chapelle, lab PI Chris Griffin, and Diego Pol try our best to review everything we know about dinosaur ontogeny and reproduction in under 2k words in an invited contribution to Biology Letters
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
🚨 ICYMI: We've launched 6k+ 3D skeletal scans of primates, freely accessible! Led by my AMNH mentor, Sergio Almécija, it's a game-changer for biology, anthropology, & conservation research.
nature.com/articles/s41...
NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!
I started writing this paper in 2020 and it's come a long way since. We went in trying to figure out why braincases in headbutting animals looked bumpy, we found... 🧪 🧠 👩🔬
#SICB2025
a 3d rendering of the skull and cranial muscles of the Eurasian oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus)
turns out you can do some pretty cool stuff with the power of diceCT, SPROUT (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), and the SmARTR pipeline (www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...)
Our new paper announcing a freely available database of 3D scans of primate skeletal material--a major effort led by Sergio Almécija & his team at the American Museum of Natural History.
🧪 🏺 #paleosky #anatomy #primates #anthropology #morphology #zoology #paleoanthropology #openscience
Haha thanks Jeff!
Thanks Zach!
