iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 14h

Great to see this paper on the importance of higher-order interactions in sustaining organization across scales published! Thank you @svalver.bsky.social for leading the effort in which I've been a small part. The paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪 #Complexity #EvoBio #Macroecology

Assembly–persistence space across biological organization.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 15h

Revealing interview. When we know that LLM's steal the solutions and hack their way by any means in solving tasks, we've heading towards the age of guarded ideas. How can you preserve your originality? Disconnect your idea/data files from the Internet? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzbt... 🧪

youtube.com

The Buckmaster Interview (Navier-Stokes) - Numberphile

YouTube video by Numberphile

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Dynamical [chemical] systems view on the emergence of heredity in evolution: "This paper proposes that early chemical systems could preserve and pass on differences through stable chemical states rather than through stored sequences like DNA or RNA" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪 #Complexity #EvoBio

Behavior of compartments in environments selecting for different autocatalyst composition.

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

MU-Peter Shimon 🀄 @mu-peter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

👇 Good advice... 🧪

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

Brian J. Enquist @bjenquist.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Please pass along: I’m recruiting PhD students to join our Macroecology Lab. We study physical ecology, macroecology, and biodiversity — spanning scaling, trait-based ecology, theory, comparative biology & ecoinformatics. Several avenues for funding. Please reach out if interested 🧪🌐🌾

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If we call a modern species poor deeply diverging lineage or "depauperon" (as it is dubbed in the article) the "basal" lineage, then we should admit that the hominids including humans are the "basal" stock for Old World monkey. Right? 😉 academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan... 🧪 #Paleobio #EvoBio

From the Abstract: "Our results highlight the limits of using extant, species-depauperate lineages to infer deep ancestors and the importance of fossils and other evidence that more directly sample early evolutionary history."

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

J. Alroy's (johnalroy.bsky.social) article on the unreliability of the coverage-based rarefaction; also known in paleontology as the SQS subsampling, in estimating species richness. Use other techniques folks... nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...

Violin plots (Adler et al. 2025) showing diversity estimates yielded by seven estimators when applied to data simulated under three distributions.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Interesting article on the geophysical and geodynamic constraints of the Early Earth in the Hadean on the origins and persistence of the RNA organisms: "...frequent global sterilization events persisted up until about 4.4 Ga..." www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio

Volume for biocompatible mild temperatures in the range 20–50 °C

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

With these tools the identification of anonymous reviewers of papers is pretty easy these days. There are two ways: 1) use soulless AI which would not reveal your style. But it is explicitly banned in most journals due risk of leaking. 2) Reveal yourself and be polite. arxiv.org/pdf/2602.16800 🧪

The first page of the paper on LLM deanonymization

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Looks liek a promissing general approach for the choice of characters (in this application -- the genomic ones). Complexity approach on improving the phylogenetic inference with highlighting highly heterogenous regions of the genome. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Salt (NaCl) as the helper of thrust-fault tectonic movement: "The overall mechanics of fold-and-thrust belts are significantly different in the presence of salt ...because at typical shaIlow-crustal temperatures salt is exceptionally weak." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Estimation of stress versus depth in fold belts

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

Ausarchosaur @ausarchosaur.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

A 2.34 m, 71 kg Notiomastodon tusk recently found in San Pedro. wakeup.sg/ancient-mast...

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Just a reminder, that birds had 1.6 times more history before the K-Pg impact than the duration of the Cenozoic Era. My bet would be that we are severely underestimating Mesozoic diversity of birds (stem or crown). www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

Simplified summary time-scaled tree of the phylogenetic relationships of Mesozoic Avialae. All taxa except Neornithes areextinct; thicker boxes mark the temporal range of each taxon recorded by their fossil record; shaded areas indicate regions ofparticular phylogenetic uncertainty. Fading branches indicate uncertain placement and phylogenetic disconnect between Early andLate Cretaceous taxa. Divergence times largely based on those from M. Wang et al. (2021).

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Gift from kids. Improper CLAMP-like analysis of the leaf shapes suggests the average yearly temperatures of 8 - 12 °C (Real one for Lithuania is 8.3 °C).

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Today I've learned that Douglas Erwin is (classical) palaeontology doomer. Is it that bad in US palaeontology? journals.publishing.umich.edu/ptpbio/artic... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

Concluding remarks from Douglas Erwin article "Quo Vadis Paleontology"

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The macroscale occurences of iron-rich duricrust regoliths in South-Eastern Africa reflects Eon-scale evolution of the megaclimate in this region. With warm and humid periods corresponding to Devonian, Late Cretaceous and Quaternary. www.nature.com/articles/s43... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

The up-to-date model of evolution of theNPthrough the geological times.

Localization, geological characteristics and uplift history of the Nyika
plateau (NP)

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The explanation of extremely arcane subject of the meta-mathematics or the foundations of math: AI apparently can help progress here, e.g. by proving the undecidability of Medvedev's logic, thus creating an oxymoron field of empirical theoretical math 😃 www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3LT... 🧪

youtube.com

Mathematics foundations problem settled using AI: Medvedev logic is undecidable

YouTube video by Dr. Samuel Allen Alexander

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE, ~183 Ma) was a major hyperthermal event...Our simulations indicate the release of ~18,000 Pg C of predominantly magmatic carbon..." The scale is impressive, but I guess there is an order of magnitude uncertainty.. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Comparison of published estimates of carbon release during the T-OAE with our cGENIE model results

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The fossil record not only constrains the evolution in the space-time. But it also gives the insights on the physical properties of the world at macro scale. Think about this find of Miocene capybaras in Atacama, which points to recency of the desert. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Trans-Andean dispersal pathways of late Miocene capybaras.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Thank you for sharing this. Apparently the 3rd Edition of the Principles of Paleontology is freely downloadable. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

One more banger defending the necessity of the higher-order interactions: "Yet reducibility does not necessarily imply simplification, as information removed from the interaction structure may reappear as complexity in the effective dynamics..." arxiv.org/abs/2609.200... 1/2 🧪 #Complexity

arxiv.org

When higher-order interactions matter: reducibility, parsimony, and microscopic organization

The current debate on higher-order interactions raises a fundamental question: when can systems organized through group interactions be faithfully represented within a graph-based formalism? Recent re...

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

"Environmental systems are characterized by complex spatial interactions that cannot be fully described through pairwise relationships or local uncertainty measures." 🧪⚒️ #Complexity #Geology arxiv.org/abs/2609.18439

Environmental field in the area of Gargano.

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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

A decade ago, a “weird” kitten was found on a road near a Bolivian forest. Too small to be a housecat, he had a scrunched-up face, short round ears, long whiskers, & a coat of leopard-like spots. DNA analysis now reveals him as the very first of a newly discovered species & I think I'm in love. 😻🧬🧪👇

nationalgeographic.com

Meet the First New Cat Species Discovered in 100 Years

A small, spotted tiger cat from Bolivia may just be the beginning of a wave of new small cat species.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The "Principles of Paleontology, 3rd Edition" is absolutely legendary textbook--as its Sta./Raup predecessors. This book helped me to bootstrap myself into paleobiology. It is now 21 years old now. Science of paleontology needs new hard conceptual paleontology textbook 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

The book cover of the "Principles of Paleontology"

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"Measurements of three T. rex teeth from the Late Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation yield a temperature of 36.3 ± 2.5°C (1 SE), comparable to modern endotherms." www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Comparison of calculated Δ47 temperatures for T. rex, crocodilians, and bivalves from the HCF along with body temperature ranges of modern birds, mam-mals, and reptiles.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

"We find three macroevolutionary transitions in mammal assemblages... regional Asianmid-Eocene aridification and...global events—the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (...warming 56Ma) and the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (prolonged cooling 34Ma)." www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Sampling-corrected estimates for richness, turnover, and body mass for total Mammalia, spanning the Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene Epochs and corresponding Asian Land Mammal Ages (ALMAs).

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The first gift from my son Konstantinas

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

In Lithuanian the similarly prominent (and now completely extinct) animal, which served as the source of place names is the Auroch (Bos primigenius) or "Tauras" in Lithuanian. Tauragė, Tauragnas, Tauro kalnas, Taurapilis, Taurupys etc. Also Kaunas has the Auroch in the coat of arms. 🧪 #Paleobio

The coat of arms of Kaunas features a white auroch

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Interesting and openly accessible book on the alternative radiation of intelligent tetrapods and their brains: AKA birds or avian dinosaurs. Apparently there is everything -- the phylogeny as well as scaling. direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon... 🧪 #EvoBio #Paleobio

Phylogeny of amniotes with the focus on birds

Brain-body mass scaling in birds and reptiles

Neuron density as a function of body mass in birds, mammals and nonavian reptiles

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

One more popular account of our recent study on the biosphere vulnerability patterns and the early warning signs of mass extinctions published a month ago in "Nature Communications". www.earth.com/climate/clim... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #EvoBio #Paleobio

earth.com

Earth’s mass extinctions share a surprising hidden pattern

A study spanning 539 million years reveals a hidden pattern linking major shifts in Earth’s climate and carbon cycle with periods when life was most vulnerable.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Interesting analysis. Biologically this could be interpreted as the case of clade selection for extinction resistance without the internal lower-level improvement in survivorship dynamics. Genera live longer because extinction selects for their toughness. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Event survival curves reveal age dependence punctuated by earlier extinction filters

Allowing toughness to consistently increase or decrease over time does not improve the fit

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

This study tells us little about it being cheetah-like or not morpho-functionally speaking. It just shows the phylogenetic affinity and the resources it exploited. We could use the term "cheetah" in the same spirit as "eagle" and "sabretooth", as ecomorphotypes. www.sciencenews.org/article/amer...

sciencenews.org

Was the ‘American cheetah’ a cheetah at all?

Ancient DNA confirms Miracinonyx trumani was more closely related to modern pumas than cheetahs and had a more varied diet than previously thought.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Game of GO of killer whales hunting walruses link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪

Scheme of cooperative attacks made by killer whales: A1–A34, no. of attack; 1–6, no. of killer whale.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Maybe anybody can comment of the taxonomic affinity of this fossil cephalopod found by my student? It is an erratic boulder from Lithuania, most probably of Ordovician or Silurian age. 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Fossil cephalopod in the erratic boulder

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

New genus and species of lungfishes from the Famennian of Latvia - Jumisodus latus, named after the god "Jumis" from old Baltic mythology. 🧪⚒️ #EvoBio #Paleobio

Comparison of selected Paleozoic lungfishes with tooth plates and parasphenoid in palatal view from digital 3D models.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

We all know big-headed giant theropods. But what about big-clawed and strong-arm predatory dinosaur evolution? "..Megaraptoridae...the only large-bodied carnivorous theropod lineage retaining a specialized forelimb-based predatory strategy.." link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪⚒️ #EevoBio #Paleobio

(A) Ancestral state reconstruction of log-transformed claw centroid size under a Brownian motion model estimated using REML. (B) Phenogram
of log-transformed claw centroid size through time, illustrating the evolutionary trajectories of Megaraptora (blue), phylogenetic outgroups (light green),
Allosauria (black), Megalosauria (green), and Coelurosauria (red). (C) Fitted values from the phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) model relating
Procrustes-aligned shape data to systematic category and size

Phylogenetic integration patterns (effec t siz e in the left and r-PLS on the right of the black line) and evolutionary rates of claw, ulna-radio, and humerus among non-avian theropod clades with well-developed forelimbs. ( Joaquinraptor skeletal reconstruction modified from Ibiricu et al., 2025 ). Evolutionary rates of hindlimb elements were estimated using the set of Procrustes Coordinates ( compare.evol.rates function, geomorph v. 4.0.9 package) under a Brownian evolution model with 10,000 interactions and a permutational procedure.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Present is just a point in time, and all the present patterns are a random realization of many processes, which can miss generalities "inclusion of extinct species...revealed a significantly negative relationship between temperature and body mass" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪⚒️ #Paleobio

Scatterplots showing the relationship between body mass in grams (log10) and mean annual temperature.

Reconstructed Phylogeny of Canidae by Wang et al. (2008) and Zrzavý et al. (2018), annotated with body mass, represented by a bar chart alongside the tree, with mass expressed in grams

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Surprisingly wide range of prey of the extinct "American cheetah": "Yukon population occupying an elevated trophic position consistent with exploitation of anadromous fish, while the Wyoming population functioned as a generalist terrestrial predator." cell.com/current-biol... 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Geographic distribution and sample localities for M. trumani

Miracinonyx catching salmon. Artwork by Hodari Nundu.

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

Brandon Bishop @brandontbishop.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Roving bands of Post-Apocalyptic Geologists & Geophysicists who survive by finding and cracking open Billionaire Bunkers....

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Ordovician-Silurian Baltic Basin keeps in it's layers the record of mega-colossal volcanic eruption events (VEI8 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcani...) in a form of metabentonites. Apparently some of them came from England--many thousands of km away back in the day doi.org/10.1130/B388... 🧪⚒️ #Geology

Paleogeographic reconstructions for Late Ordovician (ca. 454 Ma) and Early Silurian (ca. 440 Ma), after Torsvik and Cocks (2016) and Domeier (2016). Super-eruptions from arc volcanoes in England and backarc volcanoes in Wales and Ireland (Eastern Avalonia) deposited thick tephra of Sandbian age in Baltoscandia. A contribution from an inferred volcanic arc located on juvenile crust of the S North Sea Lüneberg Terrane, now concealed beneath the Mid-North Sea High (Fig. 1), cannot be excluded.

Schematic and conjectural illustration of Wash Igneous Complex (WIC) evolution constrained by thermal ionization mass spectrometry U-Pb zircon ages and igneous apatite microphenocryst chemistry.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Wonderful world of cephalopod evolution in deep time... " Here we provide an overview of some exciting fields in cephalopod research, where (in our biased opinion) the most impressive advances have been made." 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Morphological changes during the evolution from bactritids (top) to the first and slightly derived Devonian ammonoids and changes in ecology.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This could be called 'hyper-optimization-lead impedance of the exaptive problem exploration'. 🧪 #EvoBio #Complexity

Discussion by Terrence Tao about the importance of the journey in the [mathematical] discovery in developing science and the general understanding.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Interesting hypothesis of firelight in the campfire as the modulator of the humans speech in the frequency space. Coevolution of biotic-cultural traits with the (local) fabricated environment. royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article... 🧪⚒️ #EvoBio #Archeology #PhilSci

Firelight flicker rate quantified through high-speed video capture

The fireside niche is a dynamic light environment and social space.

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

Steve Brusatte @stevebrusatte.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Just devastating. The oldest natural history museum in America will suddenly close its doors at the end of the month. With budget cuts, flagging govt and political support, high overhead costs...I fear this fate may befall many of us. www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/a...

nbcphiladelphia.com

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University to close museum on Sept. 30

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will close its museum in Philadelphia on Sept. 30, 2026, NBC10 confirmed.

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

" Finally, we suggest interventions that could slow or even reverse this cycle of peer-review meltdown." 🧪

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Andrej Spiridonov @andrejpaleo.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

#Bretskyan_hierarchy perspective on the Neanderthal dispersal capacities through the glacial-interglacial times. www.nature.com/articles/s43... East-west dispersal zone seems immutable through tens of thousands of years, including historical times. 🧪⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio

Continental-scale dispersal corridors of Neanderthals during the Last Interglacial (MIS5e)

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Reposted by Andrej Spiridonov

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Last year, I publicly complained multiple times (see e.g. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...) that the open access movement had been captured by publishers, and we are now worse off than before open access. Well people got mad at me for saying it. But I think things are still getting worse.

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