Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 5d

Wow! This is a nice news 👇

MU-Peter Shimon 🀄️ @mu-peter.bsky.social · 5d

‘Thrilled’ Indonesian scientists celebrate return of fossil trove from the Netherlands

The items to be returned, which include Java Man, were collected during the colonial era 🏺🧪
www.science.org/content/arti...

The skullcap of Java Man, a Homo erectus fossil found by paleontologist Eugène Dubois in 1891.Naturalis

2

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · 7d

"I do know that when talking to people who perhaps think very differently, the only chance you have of getting them to think in a different way is to touch the heart." — Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025)

Thanks, Jane, for touching our hearts.

Photo of Ira Flatow and Jane Goodall taken in 2024 during her 90th birthday celebration."

Photo of Ira Flatow and Jane Goodall taken in 2020.

5 47 310

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 7d

True! Also, cheetahs are not even big cats (but I still love them ahah)

2

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 7d

Schöningen never stops to amaze!
Scientists have just recovered 300,000-year-old #horse #aDNA from the site 🤯 the oldest ever found in open air.
And those horses? Ancestors of all modern horses 🐎🧬
🧪🏺🦣

Links here 👇

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Press: uni-tuebingen.de/en/universit...

Mitochondrial genomes of Middle Pleistocene horses from the open-air site complex of Schöningen - Nature Ecology & Evolution

Mitochondrial DNA from horses at the Middle Pleistocene archaeological site of Schöningen reveals insight into the evolutionary history of horses and advances techniques for the analysis of ancient DNA retrieved from highly degraded samples.

www.nature.com

4 27

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

Michael Petraglia @mdpetraglia.bsky.social · 8d

New discovery! Here @mariaguagnin.bsky.social and our team report on 12,000-year-old life-size camel rock art engravings in the Saudi desert. #GreenArabia @griffith.edu.au www.nature.com/articles/s41...

6 21

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 9d

The oldest use of blue pigment in Europe! 💙
At Mühlheim-Dietesheim (Germany), traces of azurite were found on a Final Palaeolithic artefact challenging the idea that blue was absent from Ice Age art.
So interesting! 🤔 Why hasn’t it been found elsewhere? Body paint, lost contexts?
🦣🏺🧪 #Paleolithic

The earliest evidence of blue pigment use in Europe | Antiquity | Cambridge Core

The earliest evidence of blue pigment use in Europe

www.cambridge.org

8

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 10d

Merci mon cher!

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 11d

Thanks Roman!!

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 11d

Thrilled to have won the Student Poster Prize at #ESHE2025! 🏆 Grateful for the opportunity to share my work on Lebanese fauna and for all the inspiring conversations throughout the conference!

2 4 22

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 12d

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting my poster on large carnivore 🐆 exploitation in Lebanon at #ESHE2025. Such a great venue for it, with so many interesting posters around! I also got the chance to chat with lots of amazing people! #Paleolithic #zooarcheology 🏺🦣🧪

Harvati Lab @harvatilab.bsky.social · 12d

And finally today, team members Gabriel Russo and Marya Soubra presented their latest work on sites in Lebanon at #ESHE2025 poster session! 🌍🐆🦴🐾 Congratulations to both! 🤗🤗

14

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 13d

Great talk @armandofalcucci.bsky.social! Impressive depth of data analysis, and I really appreciated the open science approach. Finally, robust evidence that the Ahmarian and Protoaurignacian aren’t directly linked
#Paleolithic #lithics 🏺🦣🧪

Marta Mirazon Lahr @martamlahr.bsky.social · 13d

#ESHE2025
Armando Falcucci ‘Convergent technological trajectories in early modern humans across the Mediterranean’
Ahmarian (AH) ancestral to Protoaurignacian (PA)?
Test: quant anal of AH fr Ksar Akil & Al-Ansab 1 & PA: NO evidence of PA ancestry or E-W diffusion signal
Chatelperronian source 😳?

2 8

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

European Society for the Study of Human Evolution @eshesociety.bsky.social · Apr 14

#ESHE2025 kicks off on 24 Sept with tours at the NHMN in Paris, followed by a keynote panel on the 25th, conference talks, posters (25th to 27th) & an excursion to Resson and Grotte à la Peinture on the 28th. More info here: bit.ly/3G9CeiQ

11 32

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 18d

#AI is opening a window into #animal #communication, bonobos build phrases, whales craft alphabets 🐒🐋 It’s thrilling to imagine talking back, but... what if our words change their world forever?
Here is a good read to stay updated

AI is helping to decode animals’ speech. Will it also let us talk with them?

The complexity of vocal communication in some primates, whales and birds might approach that of human language.

www.nature.com

1 1

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 20d

Imagine a rhino horn longer than most people are tall… Woolly rhinos had them! Record-breaking 1.65 m nasal horn found in Siberia belonged to a 40+ year-old female 🦏❄️
#Paleontology #IceAge #Prehistory 🧪🦣
Paper 👇
zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

4

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 20d

A new cool research using AI reveals that Homo habilis fossils 💀 show #leopard bite marks 🐆 For decades, Homo habilis was cast as a toolmaker, meat-eater, or even predator. But this study shows that at least some were actually leopard prey!
#AI #Archeology 🧪🏺🦣

NYAS Publications

The traditional view regarding Homo habilis as the primary agent in stone-tool making and animal butchery has long shaped our understanding of human evolution. Recent advances in artificial intellige....

nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

1 4

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

Darren Naish @tetzoo.bsky.social · 29d

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!!

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age homotheres, white and touching faces together.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age Woolly rhino old adult and youngster.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age Glyptotherium.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age sloth mother with juvenile on back.

20 130 490

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · 27d

They finally added the #bookmark 🔖 feature! Finally 💙

1

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · Sep 5

Found the oldest artefact-bearing sediments in Northern Europe (773–607kya), showing hominins lived above 51°N even during glacial stages! Crazy 🥶
#Archeology 🦣🧪

Hominin glacial-stage occupation 712,000 to 424,000 years ago at Fordwich Pit, Old Park (Canterbury, UK) - Nature Ecology & Evolution

The authors report Acheulean hominin occupation of eastern Britain during glacial marine isotope stages 17–16 and again in glacial marine isotope stage 12 via stone tools in sediments dated to 712,000...

www.nature.com

1 6

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

Dr Ross Barnett @deepfrieddna.bsky.social · Sep 3

phys.org/news/2025-09...

Ancient mammoth remains yield the world's oldest host-associated bacterial DNA

An international team led by researchers at the Center for Paleogenetics, has uncovered microbial DNA preserved in woolly and steppe mammoth remains dating back more than one million years. The analys...

phys.org

5 10

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · Aug 19

New study of cave #bear tooth microwear 🐻🦷 shows they weren’t strict herbivores but had seasonal, opportunistic diets, like modern bears. This flexibility, plus niche overlap with brown bears, offers a more complex picture of their path to extinction!
#zooarchaeology 🦣🏺

Dental microwear of cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) reveals locally adapted foraging strategies in South-Eastern Europe during late MIS 3

Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus sensu lato) represent a remarkable example of Late Pleistocene megafauna, whose ecology and extinction dynamics remain a su…

www.sciencedirect.com

5

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

Kristina Killgrove @killgrove.bsky.social · Aug 15

Today in stone tool news... 🏺🧪

2.6 million-year-old stone tools reveal ancient human relatives were 'forward planning' 600,000 years earlier than thought

Hundreds of stone tools discovered in Kenya have revealed that human relatives traveled long distances to find raw material.

www.livescience.com

1 17 57

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · Aug 15

New fossils 🦴 from Ethiopia reveal that ~2.8 million years ago in East Africa, four kinds of early hominins lived side-by-side, including a mysterious new Australopithecus. Our family tree even more crowded and confusing now 👌
#Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution
🦣🏺🧪

New discoveries of Australopithecus and Homo from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia - Nature

Hominin fossils from the Ledi-Geraru Research Project area, Ethiopia, suggest that early Homo and Australopithecus species co-existed in the region more than 2.5 million years ago.

www.nature.com

4 14

Reposted by Gabriele Russo

João Cascalheira @jmcascalheira.bsky.social · Aug 7

📢 Just published: our latest paper on site formation processes at the Middle Paleolithic sequence of Escoural Cave, southern Portugal.

Check it out!

@erc.europa.eu @icarehb.bsky.social #neanderthals #archaeology #openscience

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

Close to sunlight or deep underground? New data to reconstruct site formation processes at the Middle Paleolithic Escoural cave (southern Portugal)

The ability to exploit the deeper levels of cave systems is regarded as complex human behavior. Evidence that Neanderthals possessed this skill remain…

www.sciencedirect.com

3 12

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · Aug 6

Mind-blowing!
Stone tools in Sulawesi dated to ~1.0–1.5 million years ago suggest hominins were crossing ocean barriers way earlier than we thought. This could be the oldest evidence of hominins at see, island-hopping across Wallacea long before our species!
#Paleolithic #Archeology 🧪🏺🦣

Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · Aug 6

The discovery of ancient stone tools on Sulawesi suggests that this Indonesian island was populated by hominins at around the same time as the nearby island of Flores, if not earlier, according to a paper in Nature. go.nature.com/4oq7zzw 🏺 🧪

This is figure 2, which shows stone artefacts recovered from Early Pleistocene deposits at Calio.

6 18

Gabriele Russo @gabrieleru1.bsky.social · Jul 26

Fresh perspectives are great, but attributing Neanderthal heavy nitrogen levels to maggot consumption just because they have nitrogen levels seems a bit of a speculation and overlooks substantial evidence of large game hunting including herbivores and even carnivores 🧐 #Neanderthals #Hunting 🦣🏺🧪

Neanderthals were not ‘hypercarnivores’ and feasted on maggots, scientists say

Researchers believe humans’ closest relatives may have stored meat from their kills for months before eating it

share.google

1 2 14