Nick Crow

Trackways and prints at WHSA. (A and B) Unexcavated sloth track. The track outlines are only visible during specific moisture conditions. (C) Flailing circle made by a sloth reaching forward with its forelimbs and leaving knuckle and claw impressions. (D) Human unshod right foot, unexcavated, and 30 mm below current surface. (E) Superimposed human and sloth track. (F to H) Unshod human feet. (I) Sloth pes track. (J and K) Human tracks superimposed in sloth tracks, indicating contemporaneity. (L and M) Manus claw impression of a sloth.

Ancient human playground found inside sloth footprints?

Fossilized tracks of a giant ground sloth are stamped with tiny human feet

Footprints preserve terminal Pleistocene hunt?
Human-sloth interactions in North America 🏺🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

Wow!

As always, Courtney Milan provides excellent legal insight.

A laptop on a table next to a house plant

“The creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.”
- Virginia Woolf

Oh wow. This is gross. But also, I think I need to put it in a book. 😅

Don't forget program

I had an anxiety dream last night where someone asked me, “Which bioinformatics algorithm should I use with these sequences?” and I said, “ClustalW,” then realized I meant “UClust,” but by that point, it was too late.

You can leave academia, but it never leaves you…

Finally got this beautiful drawing of a Pachycephalosaurus by @serpenillus.bsky.social framed.

Mysterious Ancient Humans Now Have a Face

I remember learning about this skull back when I was a postdoc. At the time, scientists believed it would remain forever enigmatic because it was too old to harbor ancient DNA. Now we know it's a Denisovan. It's nice to finally put a face to a name.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/s...

Getting stuck while we're writing is a feature, not a bug. It's the point of the exercise. It's what happens when we are trying to express something we have not expressed before. That friction forces us to make the tools we need to understand and express it. Getting stuck is how we make meaning.

You should definitely do this. It’s how my wife and I started writing. Now we’re full-time authors!

Did these end up shipping?

Woo hoo!

I’m excited!!!

I had the same question.

The Return of the Dire Wolf Colossal Biosciences has genetically engineered the first dire wolf to live in over 10,000 years. Here's what that means for other extinct species.

Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi? I would have gone with Nymeria, Lady, and Ghost. time.com/7274542/colo...

The problem with the 23andMe data, or one problem, is that even if you didn’t contribute your DNA, if a family member did, you’re interpolated into their network.

Could you break it into two books?

I saw them perform at Coachella back in the early 2000s. Easily one of the best concerts I ever attended.

Same.

Abstract Anal. Chem. 2025, 97, 5, 2618-2628

Organic Molecules Found in 66-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

Unambiguously identified, and for the first time quantified, hydroxyproline, a unique collagen-indicator amino acid, in acid-digested samples.

Evidence for Endogenous Collagen in Edmontosaurus Fossil Bone 🧪
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

mythology professor: so you think it's cool to make comedy about half-man/half-goats huh?

me: it's called "satyr"

Relevant to my current book.

The orange man has broken BLAST

I'm busy working on the final act of a new book in the "Lazurus Factor" universe. Things got a bit held up due to other projects, but I hope to have a draft by the end of the month. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out so far.

YOUR first draft doesn’t need to be perfect. but mine does

Neighbor-Joining tree of red cell blood group alleles in Upper Paleolithic H. sapiens, Neandertals and Denisova. Each branch received 100% of 1,000 bootstraps iterations. Bold black, H. sapiens characteristic alleles; blue: Neandertal characteristic alleles, red: Denisova characteristic alleles. Arrow: probable introgression event detected by15. OoA: Out of Africa. https://d-maps.com. Credit: Scientific Reports (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-83023-0 In their work, the team looked at the Rh blood types for the three types of hominids. In so doing, they found some major differences. Neanderthals, they discovered, had an Rh type that still exists in some humans but very rarely, called RhD. They also noted that RhD is not compatible with other variants found in either Homo sapiens or Denisovans.

Perhaps a contributing factor to the decline of Neanderthals

Rapid change in red cell blood group systems after the main Out of Africa of Homo sapiens🏺🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This likely led to hemolytic disease in offspring if a H. sapiens or Denisova male mated with a Neanderthal female

YouTube video by CoolioArt Jurassic Park With SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE Raptors [Animation] Part 1

This is great!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbCQ...

I am always excited to read a snake venom article in the @nytimes.com until I see they messed up poisonous vs. venomous.