Neil Adams
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neilfadams.bsky.social
Neil Adams
@neilfadams.bsky.social
320 followers 280 following 11 posts
Curator of Fossil Mammals 🦴 Mammal palaeoecology and palaeo-diet researcher 🦷 Associate Researcher at OUMNH and Honorary Visiting Fellow at University of Leicester. Hiker and rambler 🥾 (he/him)
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Reposted by Neil Adams
We need to be more honest about the nature of the job market with students, and one way of doing that is by showing them the data. Turns out, we also need better data collection on (at least US) paleo careers www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Somehow another year has flown by and today marks my third anniversary as fossil mammal curator at the @nhm-london.bsky.social! ☺️ It's been a whirlwind year full of a huge diversity of projects 🌪️ but most of all the prep for our imminent collections move to Reading 📦 Exciting plans ahead for 2026!
Reposted by Neil Adams
Celebrating #NationalFossilDay with a new paper describing specimens of the most whimsical of weasel relatives, leptarctine ("slender bear") mustelids, from the collections of @ucmpberkeley.bsky.social.

Their teeth are so much fun to look at! 🦷
doi.org/10.5070/P9.4...

(Cover image by P. Holroyd)
Reposted by Neil Adams
Just out in @frontiersin.bsky.social our systematic review of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate.

We analyzed and coded 360 articles to trace the development of the debate, identify key themes in the literature, and propose a forward-looking research agenda.
Frontiers | The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate: a systematic review and analysis
With its origins in the late 18th and early 19th century, the question of what drove the late Quaternary megafauna extinctions remains one of science’s most ...
www.frontiersin.org
Reposted by Neil Adams
Just out, our new paper "The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate...". We review the various perspectives, methods, and datasets which have been used to explore the extinction of many large animals. Was it humans, climate, or a mix of both? The debate continues!
Frontiers | The state of the late Quaternary megafauna extinction debate: a systematic review and analysis
With its origins in the late 18th and early 19th century, the question of what drove the late Quaternary megafauna extinctions remains one of science’s most ...
www.frontiersin.org
Reposted by Neil Adams
One week left to apply for our postdoc position on Deep-Time Small Rodent Palaeogenomics!

This is a 2-year full-time position that includes Swedish employment benefits, as well as funding for research expenses and work-related travel.

More info and application link:
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...
Reposted by Neil Adams
New paper: quantifying sexual dimorphism and growth stage of walrus skulls and mandibles. A useful tool for identifying the sex and age of modern and fossil walrus material! #OA #marinemammal 🐋 Read it here: anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
Reposted by Neil Adams
Prehistoric Planet Ice Age out later this year... such a thrill to put this series together, oh my goodness are you in for a treat :) Hopefully news on events and publicity coming soon! Sloths, cats, rhinos, glyptodonts AND SOOOO MUCH MORE!!
Reposted by Neil Adams
Yesterday I co-presented a Meet the Scientist at the @nhm-london.bsky.social: we talked about the giant ground sloth Mylodon (or Neomylodon) skin the museum received from F. P. Moreno in 1899. Thanks to @neilfadams.bsky.social, we had the actual specimen. Turns out it's real big!
Reposted by Neil Adams
My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

A reconstruction of the lost Crystal Palace #Palaeotherium (2023), by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. Commissioned by
@cpdinosaurs.bsky.social with guidance from @nhm-london.bsky.social & @markwitton.bsky.social. Part 1 of 5.

#SciArt #PaleoArt #CrystalPalacePark
Reposted by Neil Adams
A jade (nephrite) Siberian mammoth (object number 02.18.807). Donated to the Met in New York in 1902 by the trustee, businessman, and jade collector Heber Reginald Bishop. Many curious things in the Met's digitised Open Access collections.
Reposted by Neil Adams
Currently prepping these wooden beauties for a new display on Richard Owen’s science, art and legacy going into the NHM’s Images of Nature gallery tomorrow! #woodengraving #megatherium #bones #specialcollections
Reposted by Neil Adams
Completely missed this video coming out last month, but for #fossilfriday why not learn about Darwin’s mysterious fossil mammal Toxodon? An interview with yours truly
Great day of outreach at @uniofreading.bsky.social for their #CommunityFestival. Sharing the wonder of our recent joint project and @nhm-london.bsky.social fossil mammals from Westbury Cave! Some citizen science to top it off, having the public sort field samples for tiny micromammals! 🐁🦷
Reposted by Neil Adams
In @nature.com we report the presence of the Mesolithic on Malta - upending everything we knew about the seafaring capabilities of late European hunter-gatherers and pushing back Maltese prehistory by 1000 years. Watch the clip, link to open access paper is below. 1/5
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
An exciting new study for #fossilfriday! Fur colour of not one but six Mesozoic mammals revealed for the first time!🐀 All of them seem uniformly dark—all the better to blend into the night and avoid becoming a dino snack!🦖
My take with words by @jamesashway.bsky.social
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...
Fur colour of ancient mammal relatives revealed for the first time | Natural History Museum
Dark brown was in fashion for mammals and their relatives over 150 million years ago.
www.nhm.ac.uk
Reposted by Neil Adams
#FossilFriday For our first social media posts, we highlight the iconic MB.Av.1010: a complete fossil of Archaeopteryx siemensii; a Late Jurassic species thought to be transitional between theropod dinosaurs & birds.

On display at the Berlin Natural History Museum.