Chris Pestana
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chrispestana.bsky.social
Chris Pestana
@chrispestana.bsky.social
460 followers 1.5K following 58 posts
Palaeontologist | Palaeoanthropologist | Lefty | Likes noise rock, Kimchi and Puppers | He/Him.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Chris Pestana
killgrove.bsky.social
Archaeologists discover that Neanderthals ate the women and children first. 🧪🏺
Neanderthals cannibalized 'outsider' women and children 45,000 years ago at cave in Belgium
Fragmented Neanderthal bones discovered in a cave in Belgium show that one group cannibalized the women and children of another group.
www.livescience.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:04 PM
chrispestana.bsky.social
Staring contest.
October 13, 2025 at 6:43 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
stevebrusatte.bsky.social
ICE flew a military helicopter into Chicago.
Stormed an apartment complex in the middle of the night.
Entered the homes of American citizens.
Separated kids from parents.
Dragged them into the street, some naked.
Put them in trucks.
No warrants.
Fascism.
youtu.be/vFh5yBIxTpc?...
ICE agents raid South Shore apartment building: 'They just treated us like we were nothing'
YouTube video by ABC 7 Chicago
youtu.be
October 4, 2025 at 4:29 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
cwebbonline.com
This shit is dystopian. Blackhawk helicopters, zip-tied kids, and racial segregation vans.

ICE is terrorizing communities.
October 4, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
edzitron.com
Here’s the final part of our four part Better Offline case against generative AI. I walk you through how there’s not enough money in the world to pay for OpenAI’s $1 trillion 4-year burn, and how retail investors are at risk as a result.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
October 3, 2025 at 4:50 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
maxplanck.de
Jane Goodall, primatologist and ambassador for #wildlife, dies at 91. Her research transformed our understanding of wild #chimpanzees and their behavior. She inspired many young scientists. A life in pictures: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/s... #rip #janegoodall @nytimes.com
Jane Goodall: A Life in Pictures
www.nytimes.com
October 2, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
ssteingraber1.bsky.social
🧪 NEW STUDY: microplastics may play a role in osteoporosis.

• MPs found inhuman bone tissue

• animal studies show MPs induce cell senescence, promote osteoclastogenesis, impair bone marrow cells.

• MP accumulation in bones impair microarchitecture

link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Effects of microplastics on the bones: a comprehensive review - Osteoporosis International
A growing role for the skeleton in human health and longevity emerged recently. However, knowledge regarding the effects of new risk factors, linked to modern life, for bone diseases is not documented...
link.springer.com
September 21, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
judithbeyer.bsky.social
Incredibly well done multimodal article by the Dutch
newspaper de Volkskrant @volkskrant.nl on Palestinian children as explicit targets. Disturbing images, but necessary to read and watch nonetheless. I particularly found the (moving) gallery of doctors striking.
www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v...
Gunshot wounds in Palestinian children indicate targeted fire
Doctors in Gaza observed a disturbing pattern: children with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest, a sign that they had been deliberately targeted. This emerges from research by de Volkskrant, ...
www.volkskrant.nl
September 15, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
donmoyn.bsky.social
We are at the point in the honoring-Charlie-Kirk's-memory cycle when faculty are being fired for posting, without comment, Charlie Kirk's words. At the behest of politicians sworn to uphold the first amendment, and in public institutions covered by first amendment protections.
Senator Marsha Blackburn tagging a public university for a facebook post where a professor share's Kirk's comments saying gun deaths are worth it.
September 14, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
fakehistoryhunter.net
August 25, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
charleskeener.bsky.social
August 30, 2025 at 5:32 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
amybrown.xyz
this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like
Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.
August 22, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
tim-waterman.co.uk
Because rotting our brains is so terribly important we must trash the environment to do so. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Data centres to be expanded across UK as concerns mount
The number of data centres is set to jump by a fifth in the coming years, figures seen by the BBC suggest.
www.bbc.co.uk
August 16, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
carlzimmer.com
The skull according to ChatGPT: Mandible mandible mandible!
A terrible diagram of the skull courtesy of ChatGPT.
August 15, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
averyofbirds.bsky.social
It happened again
August 8, 2025 at 4:05 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
irishrainforest.bsky.social
The world we know was built on mass killings, weaponised disease, sexual violence, cultural erasure, and slavery.

And genocide *always* went hand-in-hand with ecocide.

You won't understand what's happening globally today if you don't understand these basic facts.
share.google/QBvjiWN6GEKR...
Inquiry finds British committed genocide on Indigenous Australians
It is the country's first formal "truth-telling" inquiry that ran for four years from 2021.
share.google
July 2, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
Toothnroll: An R Package for Landmarking, Measuring, and Mapping Dental Tissues of Hominoid Anterior Teeth doi.org/10.1002/ajpa...
Toothnroll: An R Package for Landmarking, Measuring, and Mapping Dental Tissues of Hominoid Anterior Teeth
Objectives We present Toothnroll, a new R package for landmarking, measuring and mapping dental tissues of hominoid anterior teeth. Methods The required inputs include 3D meshes of enamel, dentine...
doi.org
June 30, 2025 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
Comparative Anatomical Network Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Craniocerebral Topology doi.org/10.1002/ajpa...
Comparative Anatomical Network Analysis of Chimpanzee and Human Craniocerebral Topology
Objectives We examine which structural components are fundamental in the craniocerebral spatial arrangement of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, Blumenbach 1776) and humans, contrast underlying phenotyp...
doi.org
June 30, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
crvscience.com
Enamel proteins recovered from Paranthropus robustus fossils. This is super cool because DNA cannot physically survive longer than 1.5 million years due to its relatively short half-life of only 521 years. In this case, researchers were able to sequence the peptide chains and detect polymorphisms.
🧪
Enamel proteins from Paranthropus robustus teeth reveal biological sex and genetic variability
A large international team of anthropologists, evolutionary theorists, biologists, and historians has identified gender and genetic variability via sequencing of enamel proteins from four Paranthropus...
phys.org
June 2, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
mommunism.bsky.social
We were hoping that this letter to @bsky.app could first be shared by a Gazan, but we were too worried that doing so would get their account deleted so we are sharing first.

You can sign on to the letter about the unfair treatment of Gazans on Bluesky here:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
[CLICK here if you would like your name added to this letter] النسخة العربية من هذه الرسالة متاحة أدناه. Open Letter to the Bluesky Team About Their Treatment of Palestinians in Gaza The signatories of this letter are all members of the Bluesky community, many of us have actively participated on the platform since its inception. We came to Bluesky because it was a breath of fresh air, a place that felt different from many of the other social media platforms. The lack of a central algorithm, the ability to build and use custom feeds, and the lack of penalty for link promotion contributed to an environment that allowed diverse and interesting voices to find their footing and community on Bluesky. While some of the signatories of this letter have had no issues with speaking their mind publicly on Bluesky, unfortunately that is not true for all the signatories because many are Palestinians currently living in Gaza. These Palestinians are journalists, artists, engineers, teachers, grandmas, entrepreneurs, a man who owned an ice cream shop, a pediatrician who has been featured on CBS Morning News, aid workers, architects, waiters, pharmacists, students–and perhaps most essential to the backbone of Bluesky, posters. All of these people provide unique and interesting voices to the Bluesky community. However, unlike the other signatories of this letter, these Bluesky community members have struggled to keep their accounts on the platform. Most of them have lost multiple accounts and/or have had their accounts labeled as spam. Some cannot even make an account without it immediately being removed from the platform. Gazans undertake immense efforts to simply be on Bluesky. Sometimes, they walk for miles just to have access to the internet. They scale rooftops where they are exposed to potential military attacks just for the opportunity to get better cell signals–one signatory of this letter tragically lost her brother this way. They use what little money they have to pay … Gazans have also been aggressively targeted and unfairly reported by bad actors. Many accounts openly encourage the reporting and targeting of any Palestinian. Several groups exist for the express purpose of looking for Palestinian accounts to report. We believe Bluesky owes Gazans, and the entire community who benefits from their voices, a greater duty of care especially in the context of the horrors they are enduring. We ask Bluesky to implement the following changes: Provide information on all Bluesky-affiliated websites in Arabic that explains the rules and expectations of the site in clear language. Investigate the accounts that are mass-reporting Palestinians on Bluesky. The mass reporting of Palestinians on Bluesky is a group effort to render the platform a hostile place for a community based on their ethnicity. As such, it is racism, and should be understood as such. Reports against Palestinians who have broken no community guidelines must be understood as racism, and the accounts that submit those reports should be disregarded in the future. Many Bluesky users encourage Gazans to tag or reply to them, and this is not always understood as unwelcome behavior. If an account is reported as Spam for tagging or replying to others, treat only reports from the tagged/mentioned account as legitimate, seeing as they were the only ones who received a notification. Send emails regarding disciplinary action every time it is taken. Gazans do not always get an email explaining what they did wrong, and those that do are required to parse a language they do not speak in order to understand their violation. Have these emails contain an easily visible link to information about their violations in Arabic. Respond to appeals in a timely fashion, many Gazans simply never hear back from Bluesky after they appeal a decision. In addition to removing Gazans for alleged spam behavior, Bluesky has also sometimes indicated that they are deleting an account for being a scam or … End IP bans on any account from Gaza and allow them to make new accounts where they can comply with Bluesky rules and continue to be valued members of the community. We understand that even if all these changes are made, many Gazans may still violate Bluesky rules in the future, but we hope that Bluesky will abandon their punitive approach to these violations and instead embrace an attitude of education, cooperation and community care– one that works to ensure people in Gaza can participate in a way that keeps their voices heard. We also call on the Bluesky community to help and support these accounts however they can. We want to continue to build a healthy community with better community members and this cannot be done if Gazans continue to be shunned. We can use this as an opportunity to show how to protect all vulnerable groups in the future. We hope that Bluesky does not follow the path of other social media platforms and instead forges ahead with a different philosophy. After all, that is the reason so many of its users are there. Bluesky's ethos of "No Caesars” should apply to all members of its community. [To add your name to the list of signatories, click here.]
May 24, 2025 at 6:46 PM
Reposted by Chris Pestana
andrejpaleo.bsky.social
Interesting hypothesis on the bottleneck origins of the modern human lineage in connection to chromosomal events. Seems highly relevant to understanding #Punctuated_Equilibria patterns.
cc: @svalver.bsky.social @nilese.bsky.social
🧪 ⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio #Geology
ericfauman.bsky.social Eric Fauman (he/him) @ericfauman.bsky.social · May 25
I was today years old when I realized that the Chromosome 2 fusion event which is unique to modern humans probably coincides with a possible population bottleneck event ~900kya.

Could the one have caused the other?

This is my adaptation of the published figure

DOI: 10.1126/science.abq7487
May 26, 2025 at 7:19 AM
chrispestana.bsky.social
Macaca silenus. I miss visiting these guys.
May 7, 2025 at 3:59 PM
chrispestana.bsky.social
Dear Followers,
The heritage consultancy firm I recently started working for may close shop. Links to any work (geographic information systems, statistical modelling, and heritage impact assessment), and any links for PhD funding for a position I was offered at Oxford would be appreciated.
May 5, 2025 at 1:26 PM
chrispestana.bsky.social
Inequity aversion in Bonobos.

"Unlike chimpanzees, their responses could not be explained by disappointment alone, supporting the idea that bonobos genuinely recognize and respond to unfair treatment".

phys.org/news/2025-04...
Bonobos refuse to participate when faced with unequal rewards
The question of whether non-human animals have a sense of fairness has been widely debated. Some studies suggest that primates and other cooperative species show an aversion to inequity, while others ...
phys.org
April 18, 2025 at 10:49 AM