Dr. Abigail Desmond

Yes!

Always a pleasure to see hominin graffiti. Tbilisi, Georgia.

78,000-year-old footprints from Neanderthal man, child and toddler discovered on beach in Portugal A Neanderthal trackway discovered in Portugal shows how an adult male and two children hunted for food 78,000 years ago.

"It was early in the morning of a sunny day, with perfect light for checking tracks," Neto de Carvalho told Live Science in an email. 🏺🧪

YouTube video by Integrating ZooMS and Zooarchaeology (IZAZ) IZAZ 'Ask Us Anything' Online Forum June 2025

Are you kept awake at night, wondering whence your bags of archaeological bone fragments? Is your child ZooMS curious? Check out this mMass-ively cool AMA where we address your pressing proteomic problems. youtu.be/loAgeUuK08g?...

What can we tell about Stone Age strategies by identifying critters’ bones? Join me online tomorrow for an archaeological ZooMS AMA!

True for the individual, and true for evolution.

Super happy to be a panelist at this upcoming ZooMS webinar - join us on June 30 for a fun archaeological AMA!

Delighted to see our paper on the evolutionary history of the CCR5Δ32 deletion published this week in @cellpress.bsky.social. Work led by @ravnkirstine.bsky.social, Leonardo Cobuccio and Rasa Muktupavela, and co-supervised by me and @simorasmu.bsky.social. See 🧵 for main findings...

Amazing, congratulations Evan!

"He vexes my goose-herd": What To Read Next If You Liked the Complaint Tablet to Ea-Nasir Everybody loves the complaint tablet to Ea-Nasir – the question is, what will you read next, after you’ve finished the original series?

"He takes a pledge from me and vexes my goose-herd."

"The letter you wrote to Menon about Kallikon's money has been eaten by mice."

"We find that 6 jugs of the wine are missing."

What To Read Next If You Liked the Complaint Tablet to Ea-Nasir

www.thechatner.com/p/he-vexes-m...

Molecular analysis of a hominin mandible from Taiwan reveals the lineage and sex of the individual.

A fossil Pleistocene-age hominin jawbone discovered in Taiwan has now been identified as belonging to a Denisovan, finds a new study in Science.

The results provide direct molecular evidence that Denisovans occupied diverse climates and offer new insights into this hominin lineage. scim.ag/4joSUBh

Laughed out loud reading archaeologists characterized - by a physical anthropologist - as “… the senile playboys of science rooting in the rubbish heaps of antiquity.” Subtitle: If Earnest Hooton is insulting you, you must be cool. From Trigger’s “A History of Archaeological Thought”.

Illustration of bonobos walking and climbing

I could not wait any longer to share the finished illustration of bonobos.
Commissioned by @mpi-animalbehav.bsky.social
#SciArt #mammals #apes #primates #art

How evolution favoured costly and frivolous animal play | Aeon Essays Here’s a puzzle: how could evolution favour such a costly, frivolous and fun activity as animal play?

I am very happy to share this piece with you, exploring the link between inventiveness and play in nonhuman animals. It was written with care and a sincere desire to convey what science and philosophy can teach us about this fascinating topic.
I hope you enjoy reading it!

aeon.co/essays/how-e...

Leslie White (1942) on human tool use. Simply breathtaking.

So pumped to announce this fabulous conspiracy-in-progress 📖

Strategy and Ideology through ZooMS: Insights from Palaeolithic and prehistoric bone tools ZooMS (Zooarchaeoology by Mass Spectrometry) is a biomolecular technique for determining the taxon of origin for archaeological bone and osseous tool …

Tools - as manifestations of human strategic thinking - can tell us a lot about the people that made them. My new paper (out today!) offers some interpretive frameworks for ancient bone tool analysis.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Diversos taxones vegetales en herramientas de percusión de 780 ka: Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel: alimentos de distintos paisajes, estaciones y modos de trabajo.
Starch-rich plant foods 780,000 y ago: Evidence from Acheulian percussive stone tools https://buff.ly/3X1ThZB

Honored to announce I’m writing a book! We understand the importance of stone tools in the Stone Age. But what about socks? Rope? Water bottles? Boats? How did we go from knocking rocks together to the Saturn V rocket? This work takes a long view perspective on how the things we make, make us.

This is figure 5, which shows human induced modifications on cranial and postcranial remains.

A study in Scientific Reports of remains from the Maszycka Cave from 18,000 years ago finds evidence of cannibalism among these Magdalenian groups. https://go.nature.com/4hwUqAQ 🧪 🏺

Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles - Nature Loggerhead sea turtles, which undergo long-distance migrations, can learn magnetic signatures associated with different geographic areas and have two different magnetic senses, each based on a different underlying mechanism.

A paper in Nature reports that the loggerhead turtle can learn and remember the magnetic signature of an area and does a ‘turtle dance’ when in a location that they associate with food. https://go.nature.com/4jSQEDo 🐢 🧪

On the shoulders (and above the mailboxes) of giants.

Does a scientific understanding of our world conflict with the marvelous wonder we experience in it?

In a word: No.

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”

- Anaïs Nin

Both 10/10 contents AND 10/10 cover.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. CARL SAGAN

A marble rendering of AL 288-1, better known as Lucy the Australopith.

Very possibly our collective 10^5 great-grandmother.

“Santa Lucia,” by Gabriel Vinas.

The Earth’s magnetic North Pole is on the move, and at pace.

Please pass this on to any mole rats, robins, eels, whales, butterflies, sea turtles, lobsters or other creatures that use magnetic fields to navigate (thankfully dung beetle navigation by the stars remains unaffected)

🧪🧭🐋🦞🦋🐢🪶🪲

Original video here m.youtube.com/watch?v=jRIQ...