Paige Madison

🏺 Early hominin quartz selection and provisioning from 10-20 km in Oldowan at Omo, 2.3 Ma

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

a, The proposed modern human migration routes from Sunda to Sahul; the northern route through Wallacea is delineated by the red arrows, and the southern route is delineated by the blue arrow21. The red dots represent the areas with Pleistocene rock art in eastern Borneo and southwestern Sulawesi. b, Map of Sulawesi showing the location of dated rock art sites in Southeast Sulawesi: (1) Liang Metanduno, (2) Liang Pominsa, (3) Gua Kaghofighofine, (4) Madongka 3 rock shelter, (5) Waburi 1 rock shelter, (6) Lia Bunta rock shelter, (7) Gua Anawai, (8) Gua Mbokita and (9) Gua Berlian. m + MSL, metres above mean sea level.

It's hard to measure the ages of early rock art. It's even harder to know who made it. Was this the work of Denisovans? Island-hopping modern humans?

We're still struggling to piece together the early history of our species. 🧪

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

Dr. Wragg Sykes with the receipts!! 😂

A truly wild amount of time.

Screen grab of photo, showing a slightly flattened skull on sandy ground with living humans' hands near it. Concretions are visible on the skull including its orbits.

🧪 A remarkable photo from Leakey archives of Paranthropus boisei skull being discovered, still with its concretions adhering.

Pic taken from this video 👇 (a nice historical-to-present-day review of Leakey-led scientific discoveries)

#Fossil #palaeoanthropology

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOT...

The historian in me also wants people to start contextualizing H. naledi within the team leader's history of making big claims that have turned out to be false. This is a pattern, and I think it's a mistake to treat the burial issue as if it's an isolated incident.

Agreed about the balance, I was disappointed. The video also reported the "fire" with no caveats, if I remember correctly. My jaw hit the floor.

Humans and Neanderthals interbred — but it was mostly male Neanderthals and female humans who coupled up, study finds A preference for pairings between male Neanderthals and female Homo sapiens may answer the question of why there are "Neanderthal deserts" in human chromosomes.

A new study suggests the “Neanderthal deserts” on the human X chromosome may be from mate preference rather than natural selection acting on deleterious genes. 🧪🏺

Amazing! You got this!

After a brief memorial, laz lit the cigarette at 6:00am. The 2026 Barkley Marathons has begun. #BM100

Thank you!

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

Round chocolate cake on a white plate, covered in smooth dark chocolate frosting and placed on a light wooden table. White icing spells out “IT IS HOPELESS TO USELESS – C. DARWIN” across the top in imperfect, hand-piped letters. A softly blurred window and wintry outdoor scene appear in the background.

I'm too deep in book revisions to make a cake this year, but last year's Darwin quote cake still fits my mood ;) :

"I am tired today & no heart to write & indeed not a word to say. I work a little every day with groans & sighs & am as dull as a pig. It is hopeless & useless."

Happy Darwin Day. 😂

Black-and-white portrait of an elderly man with a bald head and a long, full white beard. He faces the camera directly with a serious, contemplative expression. Deep lines mark his forehead and cheeks. He wears a dark, heavy coat, and the plain, softly lit background keeps attention on his face. The photograph has visible scratches and wear,

"There is grandeur in this view of life - that from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." Happy birthday to the only and only Charles Darwin. 🧪

Whenever I see pseudoscientific conspiracy theories about ancient aliens or giant petrified trees or ice age satellites or whatever it drives me crazy because THE EARTH IS COOL ENOUGH JUST AS IT IS! WE DON’T NEED TO REACH FOR REASONS TO MAKE IT MORE INTERESTING! HAVE YOU SEEN A TULLY MONSTER??!!

Photo of the described owl art. It looks like muddy scratch marks on a mottled brown cave wall. The head is very round with two upright lines for ears and a line in the center for a beak. Numerous parallel lines suggest plumage on the wings.

The oldest known image of an owl:

More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees
carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...

An identity for the inscrutable Homo habilis Click on the article title to read more.

"By dint of incessant repetition, the species name Homo habilis has become firmly entrenched in the paleoanthropological lexicon." What an opening sentence. 🏺🧪https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.70145?campaign=woletoc

Black-and-white engraved illustration labeled “Fig. 3” showing the side view of a cast of a partial human skull from the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. The skullcap is long and low with a pronounced brow ridge at the front and a receding forehead, tapering toward the back with a rounded occipital area. Lettered labels mark anatomical features including the superciliary ridge and glabella, the coronal suture, the apex of the lambdoid suture, and the occipital protuberance. A caption beneath reads: “Side view of the cast of a part of a human skull from a cave in the Neanderthal near Düsseldorf.”

Book page from an 1863 scientific volume showing two engraved views of a large flint handaxe labeled “Fig. 8.” The tool is teardrop-shaped and bifacially flaked, with broad, symmetrical edges and visible chipped facets. The left view shows the full face of the implement; the right view shows a narrow edge-on profile emphasizing its thickness. Surrounding text identifies it as a “Flint implement from St. Acheul, near Amiens, of the spear-head shape,” reproduced at half size, about seven and a half inches long. The page header reads “Flint Implements in Valley of the Somme.”

Charles Lyell's book Antiquity of Man was published #OnThisDay in 1863. It argued that humans once lived alongside extinct animals like mammoths, meaning we have a deep past. It also examined the original Neanderthal.

The first attempt to reconstruct Tyrannosaurus rex, in the 1905 paper in which Osborn named it and a panel mount of the skeleton (middle), from the 1916 paper in which Osborn described and named it.

Founders of modern paleontology, and their contributions to systemic racism, classism and sexism (🧵)

Henry Osborn (1857–1935), responsible for naming of Tyrannosaurus & Velociraptor; president of ANHM.
Co-founder of the American Eugenics Society. Contributing to books later praised by Hitler.

The aged, cream-colored title page of a book. The main title, "THE DESCENT OF MAN," is printed in large, serif capital letters. Below it is the subtitle, "AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX." The author is listed as "By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., &c." The page indicates it is the "SECOND EDITION (ELEVENTH THOUSAND), REVISED AND AUGMENTED." At the bottom, it lists the publisher as "LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET" with the year "1875." The paper shows some aging spots throughout.

A black-and-white portrait of Charles Darwin in his later years. He is seated and facing left in a three-quarter profile. He has a very long, full white beard, a balding head with wisps of white hair at the sides, and deep-set, contemplative eyes. He is wearing a dark, heavy overcoat. The background is a solid, dark, out-of-focus texture.

Charles Darwin began writing The Descent of Man #OnThisDay in 1868. "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." 🏺🧪

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

As of January 1st 2026, John and I are **no longer** the owners of Complexly (the educational media company we started 15 years ago that makes Crash Course, Eons, SciShow, Study Hall, and a bunch of other shows.)

We have been the sole owners for all that time...

Black-and-white scientific illustration of the Neanderthal 1 fossil skullcap from the Neander Valley discovery, shown in two views. The top drawing shows a side (profile) view of the elongated, low cranial vault with a sloping forehead and thick brow ridge area. Below it, a frontal view shows the broad, arched brow ridges and wide, low shape of the skull. The bone surface is cracked and incomplete along the edges, indicating the specimen is a partial cranium.

The original Neanderthal fossils were first presented to the scientific world #OnThisDay in 1857, at a meeting in Bonn. The partial skull was then thought to be Homo sapiens; it would be another six years before it was designated Homo neanderthalensis. 🏺🧪

Black-and-white composite image. On the left is a newspaper clipping with the bold headline “MISSING LINK” and subheadings including “MAN-APE PERIOD” and “FOSSIL SKULL FOUND,” followed by text reporting the discovery of a fossil skull at Taung and describing it as intermediate between humans and apes. On the right is a side view of the Taung Child fossil skull (Australopithecus africanus), a small juvenile cranium embedded in rock matrix, showing a rounded braincase, short face, visible teeth, and a long crack running across the surface.

The Taung Child was first mentioned in print today in 1925. 🏺🧪
📸 Len Richardson, Johannesburg Star.

Lol I'm not totally sure either - I guess tiptoeing a bit lightly (rather than taking it too seriously). With a touch of whimsy 😂

My photo shows the left side profile of a head of a cave lion skilfully carved from mammoth ivory some 40,000 years ago (Aurignacian culture). Carved details include muzzle, nose, eye, raised ears, and cross-hatching on the neck to indicate a mane. The ivory is a light creamy brown in colour with a surface sheen, and darker patches caused by time spent buried in the ground. It is displayed against a dark background. The head measures 2.95 cm in length x 2.11 cm in height. On display Landesmuseum Württemberg Stuttgart.

Wonderful Ice Age art!

Some 40,000 years ago, this tiny head of a cave lion was skilfully sculpted from mammoth ivory. It is one of the oldest known works of figurative art!

📷 by me

#Archaeology

Vintage illustration of an extinct ape labeled “Pliopithecus,” shown in side profile against a plain tan background. The animal is depicted upright, mid-stride, with long, curved arms held up and bent at the elbows, long legs, and a small, monkey-like head. It is from the “march of progress” illustration, with a textured, stippled drawing technique.

How I'm moving through my manuscript draft today.

Oldest wooden tools may have been used to butcher elephants Branches sharpened 400,000 years ago shine light on humans’ early toolmaking

Branches sharpened 400,000 years ago shine light on humans’ early toolmaking. https://scim.ag/3McCcdk

Postcranial fossils from the site of Drimolen in the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa provide further insights into hominin paleobiology at approximately 2.0 million years ago!
New study by Caley M. Orr et al.: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Some great book recs from @powells.bsky.social 👀

160,000-year-old sophisticated stone tools discovered in China may not have been made by Homo sapiens Archaeologists have found the oldest known evidence of hafted tools in East Asia, and they challenge a previously held assumption about stone tool use.

Their toolmaking techniques "appear to be well established and involve several intermediate steps, showing evidence of planning and foresight." 🏺🧪