Paige Madison

The recording from this talk is now on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8l2...

A black-and-white composite plate of Orrorin tugenensis fossils arranged on a dark background, each labeled with a letter. At the top left (A) and top right (B) are two views of a femur, each preserving the femoral head and part of the shaft. Near the center (D and E) are two mandibular fragments: D is a broader jaw section with cracked cortical surfaces, and E is a narrower, more elongated jaw piece with several teeth still in place. Along the lower left (J) and lower right (K) are two views of the humerus, showing sections of the shaft and a partially preserved distal end. Surrounding these main elements are smaller bone fragments labeled C, F, G, H, I, L, M, and N—irregular pieces representing additional isolated bits of long bone and other skeletal material. All fossils show weathering, breakage, and mineralization typical of early Miocene–Pliocene hominin remains.

The human ancestor Orrorin tugenensis was announced at a press conference in Nairobi #OnThisDay in 2000. The find consisted of a femur, humerus, and teeth, including small canines. 🧪
📸Australian Museum

Palate-cleanser: just one stunningly beautiful AND accurate human-made archaeological image (by the extraordinary @tombjorklundart.bsky.social) 🏺

"Lola", a girl whose DNA was extracted from c. 6000 yr old chewed birch tar
(& she's in #Matriarcha!)

museumlollandfalster.dk/en/stiftsmus...

Meeting Lucy: How a World-First European Exhibition Brought Visitors Face to Face With the Fossil That 'Shrinks Time' Two Australopithecus fossils named Lucy and Selam made a rare trip out of Ethiopia for a 60-day display at the National Museum in Prague

In case you missed it, my story about Lucy's first-ever European showing:
www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu...

Congratulations!! I truly can't wait to read it

Could a Time Capsule Outlast Plate Tectonics? A ridiculous but instructive thought experiment involving deep time, plate tectonics, erosion and the slow death of the sun

Wrote strange a story for @sciam.bsky.social about where on Earth you'd put a time capsule if you wanted to find it as far in future as possible. Maybe bury a laser-etched zircon in Namibia and hope it erodes out of central mountain range of Pangaea Ultima? www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-...

Black-and-white portrait of W.C. Pei (Pei Wenzhong) in later life. He has short white hair, heavy brows, and a gentle, slightly smiling expression. He wears a dark buttoned jacket. The background is plain and dark.

Black-and-white photograph of a fossil cranium (Sinanthropus, later known as Homo erectus) on a book plate. The skullcap has cracks and is resting on matrix. The page is yellowed with age, and a scale bar appears beneath the image.

A book spread showing the opening page of W.C. Pei’s paper titled “An Account of the Discovery of an Adult Sinanthropus Skull in the Chou Kou Tien Deposit.” The text is typed in an old academic style, beginning with Pei’s description of returning to the field in 1929 to excavate the cave deposits at Zhoukoudian. The page has a cream, slightly worn appearance.

#OnThisDay in 1929, paleontologist Pei Wenchung was digging in a freezing, 40-meter-deep crevasse at Zhoukoudian - hammer in one hand and candle in the other - when he uncovered what became the first Peking Man skull. 🏺https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/pei-wenzhong/

New open access paper in AJBA led by my former PhD student Jesse Martin now @cam-archaeology.bsky.social

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

"The StW 573 Little Foot Fossil Should Not Be Attributed to Australopithecus prometheus"

A foot fossil suggests a second early human relative lived alongside Lucy Foot bones and other fossils have been attributed to Australopithecus deyiremeda, a recently discovered species that may shake up the human family tree.

Australopithecus deyiremeda 🤝 Burtele foot www.sciencenews.org/article/foot... 🏺🧪

Me too, I wonder if there are some in the archives, might have to take a look at some point...

Neanderthals cannibalized 'outsider' women and children 45,000 years ago at cave in Belgium Fragmented Neanderthal bones discovered in a cave in Belgium show that one group cannibalized the women and children of another group.

Archaeologists discover that Neanderthals ate the women and children first. 🧪🏺

The marvelous Lucy was discovered #OnThisDay in 1974 in Ethiopia. At more than 3 million years old, she was the oldest, most complete ancestor found to date. 🏺
📸Don Johanson & Maurice Taieb piecing the fossils together

“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." Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was published today in 1859. 🧪

Fossil bones from a partial hominin skeleton displayed against a black background. The bones are laid out in anatomical position but many are missing — fragments of skull, ribs, vertebrae, pelvis, arms, and a single full leg are present, creating the outline of a small-bodied individual (Lucy -- Australopithecus afarensis).

Close-up black-and-white photograph of an open copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The title page is in focus, with the words “BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION” clearly legible. The page shows slight wear and a faint handwritten note near the subtitle. The background is softly blurred, drawing attention to the historic text.

Celebrating an incredible coincidence of history today: #OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, and 115 years later, to the day, Lucy was found. 🏺

😂

Old newspaper clipping titled “The skull that never was.” Large illustration of a skull being measured with calipers and two hands pointing at its eye sockets, next to an oval portrait photograph of an older man in a suit and tie. The headline suggests a scientific hoax being exposed, referring to the Piltdown skull. Small columns of text fill the page in typical mid 1900s newspaper layout.

#OnThisDay in 1953, the Piltdown man fossils were declared a “perfectly executed and carefully prepared fraud," concluding a hoax that had lasted over forty years. 🏺🧪

🧪🏺🦣
Hugely important new data here, I need time to digest it (🙃), but this kind of detailed contextual work is EXACTLY what we need to avoid stereotypes that #Neanderthal body processing & cannibalism were simply "brutal massacres"

Hello internets, there's a paleontological museum in danger of being closed. Please help.

A Tiny Apelike Humanoid May Still Be Living in Plain Sight, Scientist Says Don’t be shy, little guy.

Every few months: “Are the hobbits still out there?” 🤦‍♀️
www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...

Excellent write-up of a remarkable exhibition by @fossilhistory.bsky.social - glad I could provide some commentary on it!

Meeting Lucy: How a World-First European Exhibition Brought Visitors Face to Face With the Fossil That 'Shrinks Time' Two Australopithecus fossils named Lucy and Selam made a rare trip out of Ethiopia for a 60-day display at the National Museum in Prague

Lucy traveled from Ethiopia to Prague in a custom box, with police escorts, to meet her great-great-great grandchildren (of sorts) in Europe for the first time. Hundreds of thousands showed up. Me for @smithsonianmag.bsky.social 🏺

Very cool! I'd love to ask you a few questions about this for a magazine article I'm writing. If you're open to it, could you DM me?

As the snow falls in front of the setting sun, Thag the Neanderguy pauses mid-step and looks behind him. He's thinking about the third series of Twin Peaks again. "Maybe it _was_ about the bunny", he ponders. But while Thag misses some of the nuances of event TV, he understands fashion very well. He's wearing all this season's newest Neanderthal gear, carrying his two dead rabbits in a looped strap alongside his thick, fur-lined boots. A pouch is slung over his left shoulder, containing various flints and bone tools. He's warm and stylish in his gloves, trousers, coat and shawl, and he's accented the whole ensemble with a cumberbund-type affair that he doesn't know what to call, but _who cares_: it looks cool. He realises that his body type has no significant waist, but this gives his body an important upper-lower divide. Even way back then, in the Pleistocene, you had to dress the body you had, not the body you wanted.

Over the next few hours/days I'll be uploading lots of new #paleoart to Patreon. First up is this #Neanderthal fellow looking whimsically over his shoulder, wondering if he locked the door to his cave. Lots of discussion about his appearance and clothes at
www.patreon.com/posts/142405... #sciart

Cover of the 28 October 2004 issue of Nature magazine featuring the skull and jaw of Homo floresiensis. A researcher’s hand steadies the small, brown-stained skull, which rests beside a lower jaw on a white surface. The headline reads “Short for her age: Third Asian Homo species reveals diversity of Pleistocene humanity.”

#OnThisDay in 2004, we were introduced to "a stranger from Flores," a new species of human called Homo floresiensis. @chrisbstringer.bsky.social's thoughts at the time on the big (or small) surprise: go.nature.com/34s9xbM 🏺🧪

'Java Man,’ the first Homo erectus discovered, is finally going home Excavated with colonial labor and shipped to the Netherlands, the famous fossil is being repatriated to Indonesia along with 28,000 other fossils.

'Excavated with colonial labor and shipped to the Netherlands, the famous fossil is being repatriated to Indonesia along with 28,000 other fossils.' 🏺

Fragmented fossilized femur bones attributed to Orrorin tugenensis, arranged against a black background. The pieces include multiple partial shafts (3) including a mostly complete femur, and fragments, showing varying degrees of preservation and reddish-brown mineralization,

The fossils of a potential ancestor, Orrorin tugenensis, were found #OnThisDay in 2000 in Kenya. The bones give us hints about early experiments in walking upright. 🏺

Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins - Communications Biology Morphometric analyses of ankle bones provide evidence that humans evolved from an ancestor with vertical climbing adaptations like those of chimpanzees and gorillas.

Prang, T.C., Tocheri, M.W., Patel, B.A. et al. Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins. Commun Biol 8, 1454 (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Revisiting old Liang Bua documentaries and getting a kick out of this scene. 🏺

Fantastic!

New methods on the block: Taxonomic identification of archaeological bones in resin-embedded sediments through paleoproteomics Abstract. The integration of biomolecular studies of past organisms with geoarchaeological studies can significantly improve our understanding of the relat

📄 New paper 📣 of @matrixerc.bsky.social & @welkergroup.bsky.social! We show that microstratigraphic-scale #paleoproteomics works in intact sediments - opening new ways to explore ancient ecosystems & hominin behaviour 🌍🦴
@erc.europa.eu @icarehb.bsky.social 🔗 academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...