Michela Leonardi

peach coloured background with a drawing of a tree in a sphere depicted

News flash! ⚡ GBIF establishes an international task group led by Dr Lydia Jennings on Indigenous data governance to offer input and guidance for implementing the #CAREPrinciples within the GBIF network 🌱

Read more: 🔗 https://gbif.link/IDG

@localcontexts.bsky.social

A multi-model approach to the spatial and temporal characterization of the African Humid Period During the last c. 20,000 years, African climates experienced temperature shifts related to the last period of global deglaciation and moisture availa…

#Newpaper: the African Humid period through the lenses of pollen-based and mechanistic-based #palaeoclimate reconstructions!

Thanks @ecologypast.bsky.social, @markuslfischer.bsky.social, @paleoclimategirl.bsky.social and all coauthors!

Pollen-based reconstructions and a mechanistic climate model tell a similar story on the Africa Humid Period; @mikleonardi.bsky.social‬ and Andrea contributed to a proxy-model comparison paper led by @ecologypast.bsky.social‬ in Quatern. Int.: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

YouTube video by Natural History Museum Josh doesn't care about T. rex lips | The 'Perfect' Specimen Ep5

It’s our most controversial episode yet! What do Josh and Natalie think is OVERRATED? Do you agree???

m.youtube.com/watch?v=2IKx...

Identifying late Pleistocene and Holocene refugia for baboons - Communications Biology Hindcasted species distribution modelling of baboons illuminates potential refugia across Africa and Arabia, with predicted maxima and minima of habitable ranges pulsed by orbital precession and obliq...

Hindcasted species distribution modelling of baboons illuminates potential refugia across Africa and Arabia, with predicted maxima and minima of habitable ranges pulsed by orbital precession and obliquity expressed within the last precessional cycle. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s retreat from science endangers the health of people and the planet From detecting pollutants to assessing health risks, the US EPA’s Office of Research and Development has long ensured that environmental decisions are grounded in credible, cutting-edge science.

US EPA science shutdown endangers health of people and planet 🌎 🌐 theconversation.com/the-us-envir...

You can also now see it as part of the Richard Owen: A Natural Legacy display in the @nhm-london.bsky.social ‘s free Images of Nature gallery alongside other original #illustrations from Owen’s fascinating drawings collection #naturalhistory #art #gallery #echidna #anatomy

Announcement at the British Academy

Fabulous news that @martamlahr.bsky.social has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy 🍾🍾🍾

Congratulations @martamlahr.bsky.social! This is great!

Ancient proteins rewrite the rhino family tree — are dinosaurs next? Molecules from 20-million-year-old teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced.

Molecules from 20-million-year-old rhino's teeth are among the oldest ever sequenced. New @nature.com paper by Professor Andrea Manica and @mikleonardi.bsky.social @eegcam.bsky.social out now: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Phylogenetically informative proteins from an Early Miocene rhinocerotid - Nature Protein sequences from fossil tooth enamel of a rhinocerotid from Canada’s High Arctic are used to develop phylogenetic frameworks from a specimen too old to preserve ancient DNA.

Andrea and @mikleonardi.bsky.social contributed to a @nature.com paper recovering phylogenetically informative proteins from a ~21M year rhino: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

More is not always better: delta-downscaling climate model outputs from 30 to 5 min resolution has minimal impact on coherence with Late Quaternary proxies Abstract. Both proxies and models provide key resources to explore how palaeoenvironmental changes may have impacted diverse biotic communities and cultural processes. While proxies are thought to pro...

Very pleased to see our paper published online at Climate of the Past: cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/...

We present model-data comparisons of Late Quaternary climate across the Northern Hemisphere, showing that increasing model resolution has little net effect on coherence with pollen proxies 😊

New paper in collaboration with @lucytimbrell96.bsky.social and @jblinkhorn.bsky.social, with several of us involved (@mikleonardi.bsky.social @margheritac17.bsky.social @andreavpozzi.bsky.social) shows that downscaling palaeoclimate models doesn't necessarily improve coherence with proxy data.

Humanity's road to dominance began earlier than expected Getting sapient about sapiens...

Last week, Andrea sat down with Dr Chris Smith of Naked Scientists to talk about our paper on the expansion of the human niche 70k year ago: www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/int...

The Natural History Museum director giving a speech in the main hall, in front of the statue of Charles Darwin

Reflection of one of the historic towers of the Natural History Museum into the full glass side of the Darwin centre.

A newt in the Natural History Museum pond

A square of chocolate cake with a chocolate dinosaur on top

Yesterday it was staff party day at @nhm-london.bsky.social. Coolest event ever 😍

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

Eine neue Nature-Studie erklärt, warum frühe Wanderungsversuche des Menschen nicht gelangen. Die Menschheit musste zunächst in Afrika lernen, verschiedene Arten von Habitaten zu erschließen. Grundlage der Arbeit ist die Datenbank „ROAD“ unserer Forschungsstelle ROCEEH.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An invaluable software for #popgen! Congrats @eviecarter41.bsky.social, @eegcam.bsky.social and colleagues for this tool! 🧬

Sharing ideas might have helped Homo sapiens adapt for life outside Africa | Natural History Museum As humans adapted to new environments, they might have better able to share ideas with other groups.

Sharing ideas might have helped Homo sapiens adapt for life outside Africa www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Thanks Judith! 😘

Thanks @wbanks33.bsky.social!

An elephant standing beneath large trees with text overlay that reads: 'How did humans become the most adaptable species on Earth?' Photo credit: Ondrej Pelanek and Martin Pelanek

Around 70,000 years ago, our ancestors in Africa began exploiting different habitats.

Flexibility to survive in deserts to rainforests enabled their successful spread ‘Out of Africa’.

Find out more about the study co-led by Andrea Manica @eegcam.bsky.social 👇
bit.ly/4e6i9H7

Here is a thread detailing the main findings of the paper by the key people driving this study!

When Humans Learned to Live Everywhere About 70,000 years ago in Africa, humans expanded into more extreme environments, a new study finds, setting the stage for our global migration.

About 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests, our species learned to live just about anywhere. Later, that ability helped our ancestors expand from Africa across the world. Here’s my story on the human niche [Gift link] nyti.ms/3ZBc7ID

Thanks a lot for all your help and support Will! It was great working together!

Thank you @wbanks33.bsky.social for this insight on our paper!

Thanks to @erc.europa.eu and @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding; co-authors @manuelwill.bsky.social, Robert Beyer, Mario Krapp, Andrew W. Kandel; reviewers for making it better, and editor @endofthepier.bsky.social for making it real! 🤩

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

We suggest that the expansion in the human niche before the #OOA resulted from a positive feedback between larger #geographicranges, increased #contacts between populations, easier #culturalexchanges and higher likelihood of developing/maintaining #innovations

i.e. 🌟"together we are stronger"🌟 3/3

Following the niche: the differential impact of the last glacial maximum on four European ungulates - Communications Biology European megafaunal ungulates living in open habitats over the last 50,000 years showed evidence for niche change, possibly driven by climatic change and extinction of competitors and predators

We reconstruct human ecological dynamics in Africa between 120 and 15kya (method below).
From ~70kya humans increased their use of very different environments (hence unlikely to be linked to a particular innovation).
2/3

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

after 6 years, finally out in @nature.com!
‪Huge expansion of the human #niche in Africa ~70kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with unique ecological flexibility

co-led with Emily Hallett @eegcam.bsky.social & @elliescerri.bsky.social
#prehistory #humanevolution #paleoecology #SDM