Neil Adams

Despite major FOMO from missing #2025SVP and general wintery gloominess, a refreshing start to today with an early morning museum view for government DCMS colleagues - showcasing our exciting Moves programme, new joint projects with @uniofreading.bsky.social, and the wonder of NHM fossil mammals!

We need to be more honest about the nature of the job market with students, and one way of doing that is by showing them the data. Turns out, we also need better data collection on (at least US) paleo careers www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Somehow another year has flown by and today marks my third anniversary as fossil mammal curator at the @nhm-london.bsky.social! ☺️ It's been a whirlwind year full of a huge diversity of projects 🌪️ but most of all the prep for our imminent collections move to Reading 📦 Exciting plans ahead for 2026!

Image of three brown and black fossil jaw fragments of extinct weasel relatives, Leptarctus, with short but sharp cusps. Open access paper at https://doi.org/10.5070/P9.48360

Celebrating #NationalFossilDay with a new paper describing specimens of the most whimsical of weasel relatives, leptarctine ("slender bear") mustelids, from the collections of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social.

Their teeth are so much fun to look at! 🦷
doi.org/10.5070/P9.4...

(Cover image by P. Holroyd)

Frontiers | The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate: a systematic review and analysis With its origins in the late 18th and early 19th century, the question of what drove the late Quaternary megafauna extinctions remains one of science’s most ...

Just out in @frontiersin.bsky.social our systematic review of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate.

We analyzed and coded 360 articles to trace the development of the debate, identify key themes in the literature, and propose a forward-looking research agenda.

Frontiers | The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate: a systematic review and analysis With its origins in the late 18th and early 19th century, the question of what drove the late Quaternary megafauna extinctions remains one of science’s most ...

Just out, our new paper "The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate...". We review the various perspectives, methods, and datasets which have been used to explore the extinction of many large animals. Was it humans, climate, or a mix of both? The debate continues!

Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction The first 10 million years (Myr) following the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction marked a period of global greenhouse conditions and dramatic rise of placental mammals. Because ~80% of known...

New preprint: Brawn before bite in endemic Asian mammals after the end-Cretaceous extinction. #Paleontology #Mammals #Extinction

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

TLDR: S. China mammals diversified dentally, tracked environment, then leveled up bite mechanics all within the first 10 m.y. post K-Pg.

Job alert! jobs.open.ac.uk/job/Lecturer...

Feeding strategies of the Pleistocene insular dwarf elephants Palaeoloxodon falconeri and Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis from Sicily (Italy) The fossil record of the Mediterranean islands attests to several cases of insular dwarfism. The extinct large-sized straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus underwent this process at least tw...

Feeding strategies of the Pleistocene insular dwarf elephants Palaeoloxodon falconeri and Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis from Sicily (Italy) - Strani - 2025 - Papers in Palaeontology - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

One week left to apply for our postdoc position on Deep-Time Small Rodent Palaeogenomics!

This is a 2-year full-time position that includes Swedish employment benefits, as well as funding for research expenses and work-related travel.

More info and application link:
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

A diagram showing the location of several sutures and bones of the skull of walruses, and the progressive fusion of the skull sutures in older individuals

New paper: quantifying sexual dimorphism and growth stage of walrus skulls and mandibles. A useful tool for identifying the sex and age of modern and fossil walrus material! #OA #marinemammal 🐋 Read it here: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

oh crap. MNHN-the Paris Natural History Museum paralyzed by cyber-attack! If you've been unable to access their database, website or other resources, here is why.. www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-p...

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age homotheres, white and touching faces together.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age Woolly rhino old adult and youngster.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age Glyptotherium.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age sloth mother with juvenile on back.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age out later this year... such a thrill to put this series together, oh my goodness are you in for a treat :) Hopefully news on events and publicity coming soon! Sloths, cats, rhinos, glyptodonts AND SOOOO MUCH MORE!!

A hairy slice of Mylodon hide.

A table displaying Mylodon skin, mandible, and dung.

Yesterday I co-presented a Meet the Scientist at the @nhm-london.bsky.social: we talked about the giant ground sloth Mylodon (or Neomylodon) skin the museum received from F. P. Moreno in 1899. Thanks to @neilfadams.bsky.social, we had the actual specimen. Turns out it's real big!

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

A reconstruction of the lost Crystal Palace #Palaeotherium (2023), by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Commissioned by
@cpdinosaurs.bsky.social with guidance from @nhm-london.bsky.social & @markwitton.bsky.social. Part 1 of 5.

#SciArt #PaleoArt #CrystalPalacePark

A jade (nephrite) Siberian mammoth (object number 02.18.807). Donated to the Met in New York in 1902 by the trustee, businessman, and jade collector Heber Reginald Bishop. Many curious things in the Met's digitised Open Access collections.

Currently prepping these wooden beauties for a new display on Richard Owen’s science, art and legacy going into the NHM’s Images of Nature gallery tomorrow! #woodengraving #megatherium #bones #specialcollections

Digging into the rise of mammals A new study of mine has just been published in the Journal of Anatomy! The paper is open access, courtesy of UC Davis, so it is free to access and read for all. You can find it here. The paper is p…

A new paper of mine just came out in the Journal of Anatomy! Learn more about Conoryctes and why the insides of its bones are important on my website. Or, check out the open-access paper here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Digging into the rise of mammals
gregfunston.com/2025/07/14/d...

An indentation in a 33,000-year-old right calcaneus of the ground sloth Lestodon (Xenarthra, Folivora) from Uruguay and its possible human agency - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology Several sites in the Americas are proposed to have evidence of human occupation before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The timing of human colonisation of the Americas is a matter of debate due to its...

[Open Access] sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Completely missed this video coming out last month, but for #fossilfriday why not learn about Darwin’s mysterious fossil mammal Toxodon? An interview with yours truly

Great day of outreach at @uniofreading.bsky.social for their #CommunityFestival. Sharing the wonder of our recent joint project and @nhm-london.bsky.social fossil mammals from Westbury Cave! Some citizen science to top it off, having the public sort field samples for tiny micromammals! 🐁🦷

In @nature.com we report the presence of the Mesolithic on Malta - upending everything we knew about the seafaring capabilities of late European hunter-gatherers and pushing back Maltese prehistory by 1000 years. Watch the clip, link to open access paper is below. 1/5
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Quaternary Megafaunas and Palaeobiology of Quaternary Small Mammals | Deutscher Museumsbund e.V. Job announcement Ref. #03-25001 The Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN) was founded in 1817 and is one of the most important research institutions in the field of biodiversity. At its t...

🚨Job offers🚨
Two tenure-track positions for researchers at the Senckenberg in Weimar (Germany) on:
- Quaternary Megafaunas 🦣
- Palaeobiology of Quaternary Small Mammals 🐁

www.museumsbund.de/stellenangeb...

Fur colour of ancient mammal relatives revealed for the first time | Natural History Museum Dark brown was in fashion for mammals and their relatives over 150 million years ago.

An exciting new study for #fossilfriday! Fur colour of not one but six Mesozoic mammals revealed for the first time!🐀 All of them seem uniformly dark—all the better to blend into the night and avoid becoming a dino snack!🦖
My take with words by @jamesashway.bsky.social
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

New remarkably complete skeleton of Mixodectes reveals arboreality in a large Paleocene primatomorphan mammal following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - New remarkably complete skeleton of Mixodectes reveals arboreality in a large Paleocene primatomorphan mammal following the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction

Excited to share our new paper on the most complete mixodectid fossil ever discovered! Phylogenetic results support Mixodectes as most closely related to primatomorphans (primates and colugos) among mammals.

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

#FossilFriday For our first social media posts, we highlight the iconic MB.Av.1010: a complete fossil of Archaeopteryx siemensii; a Late Jurassic species thought to be transitional between theropod dinosaurs & birds.

On display at the Berlin Natural History Museum.

Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150 thousand years ago - Nature The identification of tools dated to the time of Homo sapiens associated with microfloral evidence of wet tropical forests indicates that West African forests were occupied by humans much earlier...

In @nature.com we show that humans lived in rainforests ~150,000 years ago – over double the previous oldest estimate. Their presence in West Africa’s rainforests demonstrates the spread of early humans and places ecological diversity at the heart of our species.

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

Rylands BlogElephants in Museums: Studying South Asian Fossil Heritage in Manchester and Beyond Dr Amelia Bonea, recipient of the JRRI pilot grant, talks about her project on South Asian Fossil Heritage in Manchester and beyond.

New blog post by our CHSTM colleague Dr Amelia Bonea on natural history, heritage, and the stories of fossilised elephant bones at Manchester Museum

rylandscollections.com/2025/01/17/e...

Associate Editors needed for Historical Biology

There are some fields we would love applicants from: Birds, Terrestrial Invertebrates, and Taphonomy/ichnology. We also still need to fill our dedicated Ethics Editor position. If you are interested in these roles, or know anyone who might be, please forward our application link!

Postdoctoral Researcher - Denver, CO 80205 - Indeed.com Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) Postdoctoral Researcher position at Denver Museum of Nature & Science

www.indeed.com/viewjob?from...