Rhianna Drummond-Clarke

Thank you bringing your knowledge, enthusiasm, and hope to this year's Winter Meeting at National Museum Cardiff. We hope to see you all next year!

A special moment for Jane 🤍

Had a lot of fun with our Human and Ape Biomechanics Group the past 2 days @primatesocietygb.bsky.social winter meeting, presenting and learning about others primate focused research 🐵

This image is figure 3 from the paper showing the reconstructed left hand of the KNM-ER 101000 fossils.

A newly uncovered set of 1.5-million-year-old fossils that includes the first unambiguous Paranthropus boisei hand bones are reported in Nature. The findings offer insights into the evolution of hominin hands. go.nature.com/495cW1I 🧪 🏺

Had a lot of fun presenting first results of my postdoctoral project at #ESHE2025 beginning to explore chimpanzee rock climbing in the wild 🧗‍♀️🙉
collab w/ @gmerc-tz.bsky.social @mbchimp.bsky.social
Excited for the next steps, watch this space!

The Issa Valley study site. (A) Location in Tanzania and vegetation map. (B) An example of typical riparian forest vegetation at Issa during dry season (note dry river bed but evergreen vegetation). (C–E) Examples of typical miombo woodland vegetation during dry season at Issa. Woodland trees lose their leaves (C, D), grass dries and is burnt by fires. The woodland undergoes regeneration with regrowth after fires (E). Photo credits RCDC/GMERC.

Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory behaviour in savannah-dwelling chimpanzees 🏺🧪
www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Finds arboreal, especially suspensory locomotion can be advantageous for foraging in a savannah-mosaic and not just closed forest habitats

Thank you for all your support @leakeyfoundation.org 😊

Frontiers | Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory behaviour in savannah-dwelling chimpanzees IntroductionThe association between an open habitat (e.g., savannah-mosaics) and increased terrestriality is central to hypotheses of hominin evolution, espe...

Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory behaviour in savannah-dwelling chimpanzees www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

@gmerc-tz.bsky.social @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social

@gmerc-tz.bsky.social @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social

Great coverage by @primatology.net, too! If your eyes need a break they have an audio deepdive that discusses our findings really nicely 🐵🌳

Thank you for sharing my work :) I love the audio deepdive!

Frontiers | Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory behaviour in savannah-dwelling chimpanzees IntroductionThe association between an open habitat (e.g., savannah-mosaics) and increased terrestriality is central to hypotheses of hominin evolution, espe...

🚨New Publication🚨

So happy to have this final chunk of my phd out, and the fruits of my @leakeyfoundation.org research grant 🙉

"arboreal, and especially suspensory, locomotion can be advantageous for foraging in a savannah-mosaic and not just closed forest habitats"

#phddone #womeninscience #wild

How much time did our ancestors spend up trees? Savanna-living chimpanzees might help us find out It's hard to tell when—and why—our ancestors got down from trees and started walking on two legs. Many early hominins capable of bipedal walking were also well-adapted for climbing, and we lack fossil...

The last chapter of my phd, out today! Summarised here: phys.org/news/2025-07...

thanks for sharing :)

Coverage of my findings on chimpanzee arboreality in a savannah-mosaic in @sciencedaily.com.web.brid.gy. The need to safely access food at the ends of thin branches may have been the driving force for bipedal, and suspensory, behaviour to evolve in open habitat.

#phd #chimpanzee #womeninscience

Our newest issue is now live! On the cover a female killer whale grasps a floating stalk of bull kelp as observed by @drwhale.bsky.social and colleagues, utilizing these during tactile social interactions, potentially as a form of tool-assisted allogrooming. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Gorillas are arboreal apes There is debate over the importance of the arboreal niche in hominid evolution.1,2,3,4,5,6 Gorillas are considered to be primarily terrestrial,7,8,9,1…

🌳🦍 NEW PUBLICATION 🦍🌳

In the first study of gorilla arboreality outside of Virunga, we recognise the importance of arboreality for gorillas, with big implications for understanding their anatomy, ecology and making evolutionary inferences from gorilla-like morphology in the fossil record.

Had a lot of fun working on this, thinking more about the other African ape 🦍 and bringing trees to the forefront of great ape evolution some more 🌳

Do chimpanzees use the onset of rains as indicators of termite fishing season? At Issa they do! Team Phillips, Oelze et al. strike again!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hongera sana, Ivorda Mhakilicha! Cattle-primate spatiotemporal overlap @ Issa from camera trap footage...https://brill.com/view/journals/ijfp/aop/article-10.1163-14219980-bja10057/article-10.1163-14219980-bja10057.xml

Why humans have a smaller face than Neanderthals In Homo sapiens, facial growth stops at puberty.

Why #humans have a smaller #face than #Neanderthals: In Homo sapiens, facial growth stops at #puberty. New study in #JHE by @alexandraschuh.bsky.social & an intl. research team, incl. Philipp Gunz, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Sarah Freidline. More: tinyurl.com/ywkvwvej & doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

Bird scavenging (or hunting?!) - add it to the diet list! Great capture, @R. Drummond-Clarke!. Extra points for anyone who can identify the bird species!

The Tai Chimpanzee Project is making available microCT scans from their collections on human-fossil-record.org. All proceeds are used to support their mission of conservation and non-invasive research in Tai National Park (taichimpproject.org).