John Rowan

That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

Very sad news just in from Neil Shubin that Hans-Dieter Sues has died: suddenly in his sleep this past weekend. Hans’ knowledge of vertebrate palaeontology was exceeded only by his good humour. 😞

Ediacaran fossil surface on the coastline of Newfoundland, Canada

This #FossilFriday I am delighted to share a postdoctoral position that we @deeptimeecology.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social are advertising on early animal evolution in the #Ediacaran.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/postdoc...

The killing in Minnesota They will lie about you and then kill you and they will kill you and then lie about you.  And I don’t mean some ambiguous, imaginary “they” like the one the right invented and blamed for trying to kil...

“They will lie about you and then kill you and they will kill you and then lie about you.” www.pbump.net/o/the-killin...

My God, another shooting by ICE, another person dead in Minneapolis.

This is outrageous. None of this is necessary. It is a choice, by Donald Trump, to send thousands of masked agents into a major American city and brutalize people on the streets.

No honest real American can stand for this.

Palaeoverse Lecture Series: Dr. Juan Cantalapiedra - Mammals as a key to evolutionary theory YouTube video by Palaeoverse

Last Thursday @palaeoverse.bsky.social I shared some of our recent projects, exploring the application of phylogenetic methods and the exciting new wave of Bayesian diversification models.

#paleobiology #paleontology #macroevolution

youtu.be/vd-E4E6iFNg?...

We are excited to announce a new collection - Powell-Cotton Museum! Did you ever need more Chimpanzee or Colobus hand bones for your project, or perhaps some Gorilla tibiae and femora (and more)? Visit the collection and explore!

human-fossil-record.org/index.php?/c...

HEAS Talk with Daniel Green - HEAS We are looking forward to welcoming Daniel Green from Harvard University for a HEAS Talk on Dental Records and the Origins of the Modern African World taking place on the 12th December 2025 at 10:30 C...

We are looking forward to welcoming #DanielGreen to Vienna for a #HEASTalk.

More information and registration is on our website 🔗👇

Earth's largest land animals are limited by salt.

Sodium availability constrains the density and distribution of elephants, giraffes and rhinos across Africa, and offers a new explanation for the so-called 'missing megaherbivores'.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Free access: rdcu.be/eTPY2

Humans are far closer to meerkats and beavers for levels of exclusive mating than we are to most of our primate cousins, according to a new study by Dr Mark Dyble published in Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences

👉 www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/humans-...

📸 Getty Images

Our new paper builds a set of models to recover real-time seasonality data from serial enamel isotope profiles. It's currently operationalized for Equus, so please use the models on your horse and zebra serial isotope data! The paper is open access and available here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

Homo sapiens-specific evolution unveiled by ancient southern African genomes - Nature The genomes of 28 ancient southern African individuals dated to between 10,200 and 150 years before present offer insights into the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Our new ancient DNA paper has just been published!
We present 28 new genomes from southern Africa - several of them high-coverage whole genomes.
Exciting to be moving towards population-level representation of ancient southern African genetic diversity!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts Nature Reviews Genetics - Ancient DNA techniques are being applied to study increasingly diverse pathogens of the past. The authors review the latest insights into pathogen–host coevolution,...

Lovely to work with @blevinske.bsky.social, @paleogenomics.bsky.social & Verena Schuenemann on " Ancient DNA insights into diverse pathogens and their hosts"! Read it at rdcu.be/eSVPN

Fossils reveal anacondas have been giants for over 12 million years Andrés Alfonso-Rojas has analysed giant anaconda fossils from South America to deduce that these tropical snakes reached their maximum size 12.4 million years ago, and have remained giants ever since.

Fantastic work by #HeadLab PhD student Andrés Alfonso Rojas!

Anacondas have been (resiliently) giant since at least the middle Mioncene.

www.cam.ac.uk/stories/twel...

Trump Moves to Dismantle Endangered Species Act Center for Biological Diversity: WASHINGTON— In a sweeping assault on the nation’s imperiled wildlife, the Trump administration today proposed a suite of regulations that would dismantle the Endangere...

“This plan hacks apart the Endangered Species Act and creates a blueprint for the extinction for some of America’s most beloved wildlife.”
🌎

Last but not least at #2025SVP #SVP2025, 𝐅𝐚𝐲𝐬𝐚𝐥 𝐁𝐢𝐛𝐢 is presenting a poster on academic responsibility and how we as paleontologists can help address and improve injustice

The figure used in my News & Views commentary. I generated the CT-based rendering of the holotype skull of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), based on a recent scan. The lower image was done by the Nature art department.

Here's the free link to the print version that I'm permitted to share: https://rdcu.be/eNv94. You can't download it but you can screen-capture its two pages if you really need a copy.

Our casts of (bottom) the holotype of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), (middle) the newly named holotype of N. lethaeus (BMRP 2002.4.1), and (top) T. rex (AMNH 5027). We published on CMNH 7541 in 2010 (http://bit.ly/3X5nCGm).

Today's bombshell in @nature.com by Lindsay Zanno & James Napoli @jgn-paleo.bsky.social (bit.ly/4qBE6ng) shows that putative juvvy T. rex fossils actually are Nanotyrannus. I reviewed the manuscript, so Nature invited me to write the News & Views commentary. Free link: rdcu.be/eNv94 🦖

Thank you!! Lovely group of colleagues indeed 😁

Honored (and surprised!) to receive a Philip Leverhulme Prize, but grateful to @leverhulme.ac.uk and @cam-archaeology.bsky.social for their support.

Black background with gold swirls. 2025 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winners announced. Celebrating the achievements of thirty outstanding scholars. Leverhulme Trust logo and URL leverhulme.ac.uk/news/2025PLP.

The Trust is thrilled to announce the 2025 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winners. Congratulations to this year’s cohort. Thirty extraordinary researchers from across a range of disciplines: leverhulme.ac.uk/news/2025PLP

Today was the ceremony for new fellows at the #BritishAcademy - it was wonderful 🤩. I am thrilled and so grateful to the colleagues who nominated me, elected me, and the many colleagues, students, friends, our kids & family, & specially Rob 😍 who have so enriched my life and career ❤️

Simulating the formation of herbivore tooth death assemblages to improve expectations for paleoenvironmental reconstruction from intra-tooth isotopic analysis Isotopic analysis of serially-sampled dental enamel from fossil faunal assemblages is a popular paleoenvironmental proxy for its ability to inform on …

I'm really excited about this new paper, with @dayvees.bsky.social, where we use simulations to explore how herbivore tooth growth and development, demography, and dental wear mediate the seasonal signal preserved in serially sampled teeth!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

Horrific reporting from the AP on the Myanmar families watching their kids starve to death from Trump and Musk’s aid cuts apnews.com/article/myan...

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa Nature Communications - Several possible points of origin have been proposed for the spread of ceramic technology in Saharan Africa between 11–10,000 years ago. Here, the authors...

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️
Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion
rdcu.be/eJi3g

Who's got unfused parietals and probably wasn't a stem snake? This guy.

My explainer about the Yunxian 2 study

Mark Norell, Who Studied Link Between Dinosaurs and Birds, Dies at 68

New York Times obituary for one of New York’s greatest characters. RIP Mark, and you’d enjoy the Romanian palinka we’re toasting in your honor tonight!

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/s...

And see this excellent coverage from our Department @cam-archaeology.bsky.social

www.arch.cam.ac.uk/news/early-h...

Giraffes are four distinct species, major report confirms The revised classification will help ensure different giraffe populations are adequately protected, conservationists say

Giraffes, long considered a single species, are in fact four. https://scim.ag/4n2po6f

Come work with me! (Or Gabrielle or James)

stonybrooku.taleo.net/careersectio...