Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Will Snyder @sahelanthrope.bsky.social · 7d

I am taking art/design commissions (but only 1-2 per month due to the terms of my unemployment). Please feel free to DM if you are interested. Also please share to spread the word. Info about services and rates can be found at my website: sites.google.com/view/wdspale...

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Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 7d

*Laughs hollowly in 2025*

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jenn m. jackson @jennmjacksonphd.bsky.social · 27d

Charlie Kirk spent his life making people like me unsafe. His followers sent me death threats for years and threatened my employer if they didn’t terminate me.

His work was NEVER about free speech. It was about hate and emboldening violent people. The dishonesty of the past 24hrs is disgusting.

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Felix W. Moll @mollfw.bsky.social · 28d

New paper on precise tool use learning in carrion crows @currentbiology.bsky.social. We show that—like New Caledonian crows—expert carrion crows pay close attention to the working end of their tool, suggesting tool integration into their peripersonal space. 🧵 & vids! 👇

www.cell.com/current-biol...

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Antiquity Journal @antiquity.ac.uk · 26d

Can video games help advance #archaeology? By inputting their 3D model of South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves into the Unreal video game engine, researchers made this key site in human evolution research more accessible than ever #NationalVideoGamesDay

Learn more 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

🏺

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Katelyn Jetelina @kkjetelina.bsky.social · Aug 28

CDC employees standing up and walking out in light of the mass shootings, firings, and *waves hands in the air* everything else.

#USAnotRFK

Lets gooooo

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Kevin Lala @kevinlala.bsky.social · Aug 27

Our article "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience" (with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social, @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marc Feldman) is now published online.

We describe five factors that contribute to the spread of racism and suggest strategies for countering them.

doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 14

Yesterday I discovered that ChatGPT's PhD-level expertise didn't extend to bird anatomy. This morning I thought, perhaps I was being too hard on the half-trillion-dollar company. Birds are a little weird, anatomically speaking. Let's try something more familiar. A mammal. Behold.

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Nic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · Aug 10

A PR company working for Colossal Biosciences is sending AI generated pieces to respected science journalists & asking them to publish the articles under their own names. This is so dodgy & just goes to show our critical expert scientific commentary is working. Sci comm failure 101 for Colossal.

Laurie Winkless @lauriewinkless.bsky.social · Aug 10

Just got a 🧪pitch from a PR claiming to work with Colossal (de-extinction chancers). It was a pre-written article claiming the science sector is carrying out "coordinated attacks" on the co. Spy the headline. They asked if I'd publish it on my Forbes column.

Not enough eye rolls on Earth for this 🙄

Is Colossal a threat to Science or Is it Science's Last Hope for the Next Generation?

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · Aug 7

🪨 🛠️ news:

"we propose that distinctive early Acheulean artifact forms may have arisen as *secondary accommodations* to the primary goal of increasing tool size"

New empirical paper by Stout et al. argues heavily against culturally transmitted early Acheulean forms.

doi.org/10.1007/s108...

A screenshot of the paper as presented on the journals website

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Flint Dibble @flintdibble.bsky.social · Jul 31

Several scholars (including me) who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences and de-extinction have been targeted by a mysterious harassment campaign

www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

Critics of de-extinction research hit by mystery smear campaign

Several researchers who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences’ plans to revive extinct animals say they have been targeted by online articles trying to discredit them

www.newscientist.com

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Darren Naish @tetzoo.bsky.social · Jul 30

It's true, #PrehistoricPlanet Ice Age is coming to #AppleTV for November 2025. These images show how good our animals are, but... believe me, this barely scratches the surface!! It has been a massive thrill and privilege to help bring this series together... you're in for an incredible treat.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age image showing two homotheres interacting in a snowy landscape.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age image showing two Woolly rhino, a calf and old adult.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age image showing a glyptodont.

Prehistoric Planet Ice Age image showing a mother sloth climbing up a rocky surface, baby on her back.

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Nature @nature.com · Jul 23

Toothmarks on a fossilized bone tell a story of two mega-predators

go.nature.com/4kYPLIN

Rumble in the Miocene: terror bird versus caiman

Toothmarks on a fossilized bone tell a story of two mega-predators.

go.nature.com

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Nature @nature.com · Jul 22

A team of 24 people in India and Tanzania with no previous experience has collected brain-activity recordings from nearly 8,000 people in schools, offices and open-air spaces to create the largest data sets of their kind in Africa and Asia

go.nature.com/4kRBBt2

Budget brainwaves: low-cost system collects brain data outside the lab

Neuroscience initiative in India and Tanzania amasses a trove of high-quality EEG recordings from diverse populations.

go.nature.com

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ROCEEH Research Center @roceeh.bsky.social · Jul 22

We congratulate the Faya Paleolandscape on its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List! (whc.unesco.org/en/list/1735/). Since its early years, ROCEEH has supported research in Jebel Faya and neighboring sites financially and with personnel.
📷Sharjah Archaeology Authority

Overview of the 10 km long Jebel Faya mountain and the plain with the archaeological sites in front. The ridge forms a barrier to the Rub’ al Khali desert. (photo: Sharjah Archaeology Authority)

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Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · Jul 16

My own university has a "strategic goal" to increase research "outputs" by 10% annually (7 year doubling time). Your university is almost surely working towards the same. University rankings are now the main driver of this damaging institutional behavior. Publication is an out-of-control arms race.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Jul 14

Brandon Stell of PubPeer makes good points about taking focus off publication and onto content of publication. Until we do that, we are treating symptoms.

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Stuart K Watson @chimpsahoi.bsky.social · Jul 14

Important new work (from Elisa Bandini,
@ctennie.bsky.social, @sofiaforss.bsky.social et al.) addressing an elephant in the room - how weird are our weirdest apes, and how is that skewing research efforts?

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The Biases in Captive Chimpanzee Cognitive Research: First Insights From the Ape Research Index (ARI) Database

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · Jul 8

BREAKING: Scientists are staging a “science fair” in the lobby of a Congressional building to tell elected officials about the critical knowledge the US will lose because their research grants have been canceled.

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Will Snyder @sahelanthrope.bsky.social · Jul 3

There are also a number of behavioral and cognitive 'strategies' other than know-how copying that are likely to have mitigated the inherent costs of knapping. The complexity of these interactions is underappreciated, and here we make an attempt to break it all down. @ctennie.bsky.social

Will Snyder @sahelanthrope.bsky.social · Jul 3

It is also often just assumed that knapping has fitness benefits and that not knapping would be detrimental. But we actually have limited knowledge of how often and how habitually knapping was for different hominin groups. Maybe some populations didn't knap at all!

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Will Snyder @sahelanthrope.bsky.social · Jul 3

Knapping imposes risks. So much is undeniable. This includes the injury risks related to toolmaking, but also the time and energy spent on toolmaking and learning to knap and the material costs. But the relative magnitude of these costs and the overall cost-benefit profile of knapping is not known.

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Will Snyder @sahelanthrope.bsky.social · Jul 3

Just published❗: our take on the 'costly knapping hypothesis', where we challenge the idea that the costs of knapping can be used to infer the evolution of know-how copying in the hominin lineage. #archaeology #stonetools #humanevolution link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Costs of Early Stone Toolmaking cannot Establish the Presence of Know-how Copying - Human Nature

Compared to other apes, humans show a distinctive capacity for the cultural learning and transmission of know-how: we extract know-how from other individuals and artifacts in ways that regularly give ...

link.springer.com

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Claudio Tennie @ctennie.bsky.social · May 10

Experimental archaeologists: standardizing blanks makes results clean but is tricky. @sahelanthrope.bsky.social et al. tested various materials and shapes. Each has pros and cons... This OPEN ACCESS paper compiles protocols & tips into one handy guide. #knapping #archaeology
doi.org/10.1017/aap....

Trade-Offs in Standardizing Raw Materials: Experimental Control in Live Knapping Studies | Advances in Archaeological Practice | Cambridge Core

Trade-Offs in Standardizing Raw Materials: Experimental Control in Live Knapping Studies - Volume 12 Issue 4

doi.org

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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · Apr 7

🧪 I see the $10 billion biotech firm that will never produce enough fluffy elephants to stamp away climate change has now done some experiments on dogs, and received enormous (colossal!) free marketing from the media 👍

Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · Apr 7

...would anyone like to tell the people involved here that Dire Wolves were not, in any sense, wolves? Not even remotely part of Canis, in fact? At all?

The Dire Wolf Is Back

Colossal, a genetics startup, has birthed three pups that contain ancient DNA retrieved from the remains of the animal’s extinct ancestors. Is the woolly mammoth next?

www.newyorker.com

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Felix Riede @felixthehauskat.bsky.social · Feb 23

Led by the one and only @acortellnicolau.bsky.social, the summary paper from the funky Archaeo-riddle project (theia.arch.cam.ac.uk/archaeoriddle) - possibly the first specifically archaeological tactical simulation competition - is now out in J Archaeological Science.

Archaeo-riddle

theia.arch.cam.ac.uk

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