Hopefully next year you'll have one more to add to your collection! 💀 #shamelesshobbitbookplug ;)
There are an incredible number of books - many of them thick and weighty - on our growing knowledge of human ancestors, and on the people who gained and compiled this knowledge. I own many such books and aim to read all of them in time, and write about them at Tetrapod Zoology... 1/n
Please join me for this free online event. Book launch! March 24th, 5pm PT/8pm ET
Register for the event with the marvelous @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social. While you're on their site, you can order a copy of my book or others from their amazing collection.
ptreyesbooks.com/event/2026-0...
I once spent a summer living in a house full of philosophers on Cape Cod, and we spent the *entire summer's* happy hours on the front deck arguing over whether sunset was a moment or a process. 😂
Holding hands with Ardipithecus for #FossilFriday
🏺 Early hominin quartz selection and provisioning from 10-20 km in Oldowan at Omo, 2.3 Ma
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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.
🧪 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.
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
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. 😂
"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??!!
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-...
"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
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.
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.
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...
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. 🏺🧪
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 😂
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
