#ESHE2025
Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’
Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps

Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates!
Amazing 😍

Very excited to receive an ERC Starting Grant to study the earliest archaeological and biomolecular evidence of Homo sapiens in NW Europe

Watch this space for new positions in Bristol in 2026! 🎉

#HorizonEurope #ERCStG

I am offering two 4-year PhD positions (fully funded) and a 57 month combined post-doc / project manager position as part of my NWO-Vici grant, which starts in September.

Behavioural diversity in animals threatened by #biodiversity decline. In @science.org, @ammiekalan.bsky.social @uvic.ca & Lydia Luncz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social emphasise the urgent need to develop strategies for preserving animal cultural #behaviour. tinyurl.com/569u66sv & doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Happy to have a new piece in @science.org with my friend Lydia where we draw attention to the significance of animal material culture for understanding human technical evolution and why we should digitally preserve and protect primate tools and tool use sites. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why #humans have a smaller #face than #Neanderthals: In Homo sapiens, facial growth stops at #puberty. New study in #JHE by @alexandraschuh.bsky.social & an intl. research team, incl. Philipp Gunz, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Sarah Freidline. More: tinyurl.com/ywkvwvej & doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

🚨 Our new paper is out today in Communications Earth & Environment (@commsearth.bsky.social)!! “Modern coastal ecosystems of the American Southeast are shaped by deep-time human-environment interactions” Check it out! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

📣🐵 🌿 Our study shows that Gombe chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing plant materials to make tools based on specific properties that make them ideal for the job. @runnerape.bsky.social, Susana Carvalho, Deus Mjungu, @ellenschulzk.bsky.social, @adamvanc.bsky.social

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Not just any stick. #Chimpanzees understand material properties and choose just the right #tool for the job. New study in @cp-iscience.bsky.social by an intl. research team led by @runnerape.bsky.social & @adamvanc.bsky.social. @ox.ac.uk More: tinyurl.com/59c2wff4 & doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Really happy to see this paper out, using field biomechanics we show that wild chimpanzees don't just randomly select plants materials for termite fishing tools – they use a little “folk physics” choosing materials with specific properties! Study in iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful.... 1/5

Very happy to share our new paper on human facial development and evolution out today in JHE 🎉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧵👇

The Tai Chimpanzee Project is making available microCT scans from their collections on human-fossil-record.org. All proceeds are used to support their mission of conservation and non-invasive research in Tai National Park (taichimpproject.org).

I am very happy to share our new paper on the genetics of some of the first modern humans who ever lived in Europe! We sequenced nuclear DNA from 13 specimens from Ranis in Germany, and found that they belonged to at least 6 individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

Very excited (and a bit nervous) to announce that I will be hiring two Postdocs for my new group(!) in Copenhagen to study the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA which survives in present-day humans. Retweet will be much appreciated :)

Link for application:
candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

Excited to share our latest paper, new in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨Job Klaxon🚨

Q: What links biomechanics, human evolution and apes?

A: This 2-year post-doc position available in my new Human and Ape Biomechanics group in the Department of Human Origins @MPI_EVA_Leipzig 👇

www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

Buried under 8 meters of rock and debris in a German cave, researchers found proof Homo sapiens arrived in northern Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought—and overlapped with our Neanderthal cousins for millennia. www.science.org/content/arti...