Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes.
#aDNA

MSc Defence ✅

I hereby declare war on premature Christmassing.

Any shop caught doing this before 1st December must be shut down and turned into affordable housing.

Choose sanity. Vote Binface.

(Photo dated 9th October 2025)

Congrats to Arianna and co. for a fab paper! Posth lab animal aDNA crew going strong 😋 Some nice damage correction software for non-UDG treated samples is also presented here- which I have had the pleasure of using in my thesis 🤩🧬🐎

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The quickest way to finish an article is to start it. It also helps if you can stay away from social media, tv and the internet. And your cell phone. And other people. You should also fight urges to clean and organise spaces, and to cook big meals.

In other words, it’s difficult to finish articles.

The dragon's out of the bag:

#aDNA gives 146,000 y/o unusual sized and shaped skull of #HomoLongi (a.k.a. #DragonMan), originally found in 1933 in #China and rediscovered in 2018, away as actually: #Denisovan!

www.livescience.com/archaeology/... by @killgrove.bsky.social via @livescience.com

#AllMetalMonday
The extraordinary 57.5cm tall C3 BC Etruscan figure, called (in recent times anyway) Ombre della Sera, as it recalls long shadows cast at the end of day.
Inspiration for Giacometti is pretty clear.....
Now in Volterra's Guarnacci Etruscan Museum, stopping people in their tracks.

INTERVIEWER: If you could be any animal, what would it be?
ME: A horse
INTERVIEWER: Because you work intelligently and quickly?
ME: No because I want a stable job

Last week, @elife.bsky.social posted the version of record of our #aDNA study on Iberian aurochs/cattle.

We found a lot of hybridization, probably sex-biased, stabilizing at ~20% about 4000 years ago (co-author Colin Smith coined the term 'cowrochs').

Read more: elifesciences.org/articles/93076

🧵 Thread: 1️⃣ New paper by‪@jessiehendy.bsky.social‬ Blacka et al. presents breakthrough in rapid proteomic amelogenin sex estimation using Evosep-timsTOF MS. Slashes analysis time to under 20 mins per sample (including prep)! #palaeoproteomics #ZooMS doi.org/10.1002/rcm....

Happy International Women's Day! Despite the efforts, while much more women enter scientific fields, due to numerous factors, few manage to remain in the field or secure senior positions. Support your coworkers, call out harmful systemic behaviour. 😘

A mammoth circus of macabre fantasy and moral bankruptcy.
I got my views on mammoths down. Enjoy.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

clip i took frok the exhibition “oltre terra” at the stedelijk museum, amsterdam, discussing the multifaceted interactions (past and present) between humans and sheep

🏺 Many issues have been flagged with AI, including its environmental footprint. What about the potential impact of AI for archaeology ? Colleen Morgan alerts that it "remains imperative that archaeologists engage with and critique all visualisations." #Archaeology

A high-throughput aDNA extraction method for large-scale sample screening 🦣🦬🧬
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Thread and open access version to come-
Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep | Science search.app/gtSKYHF5HqRa...

#adna

from my time excavating at hohle fels! such wonderful scenery 🍀⭐️

So what would be the general interest for a #SciArt adult coloring book? I don't pay much attention because coloring is the worst part of my art, but people like them... or at least they did a few years back.

Some #aDNA pages I did ages ago 💀