iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by @jeffspear.bsky.social

Dr. Emma E. Bird @dremmabird.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

For years, 💀MorphoSource💀 has given researchers, educators, and students 🚨free access🚨 to 3D data on museum specimens from around the world. 🔆Now it is asking for some help to continue its work🔆 www.morphosource.org/donate/

morphosource.org

Why Give | Support MorphoSource

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The Onion @theonion.com · 21/09/2026

New Study Shows That Bones Are Incredibly Cool

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Ooh, I've been excited for this one! Both the analysis itself and the interrogation of what 'specialized' means are really timely. Awesome work!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My classmates and I were literally told this in class the first year of our PhD: We noted to the professor that the reading list he'd sent for the next class wasn't actually possible and asked for some pointers on what was most important. He told us 'figure it out that's part of grad school'.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

1) This is a preprint. That caveat out of the way, 2) They include quite a bit of information in the study about effects through time and the 'pre AI' and 'never AI' groups are functionally identical:

Figure 2 from the preprint. On the left are histograms showing homework score, homework completion time, and exam scores for three groups of students: Post AI, Pre AI, and Never AI. The Pre AI and never AI histograms are roughly normal distributions and overlap nearly perfectly for the Pre AI and Never AI groups on all three histograms. The Post AI histogram is shifted up for homework score, down for homework completion time (faster completion), and down for mean exam score. Homework score has a negative skew (median & mode are higher than mean); Completion time has a positive skew (median & mode are lower than mean); Exam score has a negative skew. On the right are these three metrics comparing the averages of students who use AI with those who don't, standardized to months since AI adoption. The groups are the same prior to AI adoption. AI adopters see test scores decline, homework scores increase, and homework time decrease. The full effect seems be reached by about 5 months after adoption.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Not carefully, I admit, but it's the first time I've seen paleoanthropologists meaningfully engage with the distinction between the definition and diagnosis of a taxon and for that alone I think it is extremely valuable.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

This is the tension in the way we've simultaneously decided that taxa should be monophyletic but also that we want to keep hierarchical taxon levels rather than going full phylocode 😅. That is not a fully resolvable problem, but I do like your approach. Thanks for sharing!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Hm... I've always felt the opposite problem was more widespread among anthropologists: Folks pay lip service to monophyly but really try to 'define' a genus (especially Homo) post hoc with mutable traits. Hence the consternation when we find things like Homo floresiensis and Homo naledi.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Can any phylogenetic comparative methods folks help me understand why the Adams & Collyer RRPP method exhibits better statistical power than BM-based permutation methods (e.g. Garland et al. pANOVA)? The permuted approach makes intuitive sense to me and RRPP being better feels like dark magic lol.

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Darren Naish @tetzoo.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

... (2) most things, even those considered 'well known' are vastly under-tested, even non-tested entirely. There's SO MUCH to do on the data we already have. Part of me thinks I should call this out at every opportunity, flag it as needing attention. But I can't: wordcount is always an issue.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

In human evolution research there is sometimes something of an obsession with whether a derived condition is too 'specialized' to allow further ecomorphological diversification, and all I can ever think is "but snakes..."

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

You get a homoplasy! You get a homoplasy! Everyone gets a homoplasy!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

If you don't mind my asking, where did you find % locomotor data for Nasalis? I've been looking for some for years and never found any. I don't see it in the Hunt's 2016 JAnat 'why are there apes' dataset; am I just blind or is it from somewhere else?

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Cool stuff! I really do think estimating locomotor behaviors as a multivariate response is the future of predicting fossil locomotion and it's been great to see your approach in this Pliobates series!

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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Monday is the deadline for public comment! The Heritage Foundation has been mobilizing its members to leave comments in favor of the rule change, so every unique comment matters (don’t use a form letter or copy/paste—similar comments are batched and treated as one).

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Beckett Sterner @beckettws.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

this is amazing, will be using this to teach about social construction of colors in my philosophy class #philsci moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

moultano.wordpress.com

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

An impressive tour de force on how evolution came to be accepted by the scientific community. We often learn about great discoveries but rarely how consensus gets built. Highly recommend watching if you have... uh... four hours to spare?

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Well dang. One more mystery in Rising Star (although I feel like I've had this in the back of my mind for some time... Was there a rumor about this floating around before?). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 Homo naledi individuals shows no male markers

The Rising Star cave system excavations resulted in a high number of well-preserved skeletal specimens from multiple individuals of Homo naledi, showi…

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

What's crazy to me is that chimpanzees practice something very similar to what you've termed 'first system warfare' or 'the cutting off way of war'. Or I guess, crazy until I think about it for more than a few seconds, and then realize that of course that's what they'd use.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

As someone who studies human evolution, the number of times the field gets 'rewritten' every year is absolutely staggering. /s

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Krista Koeller @kristalerista.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

I hope people are doing research on internet video learning and I wish there could be at least half the resources devoted to online video education as to AI in education.

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Professor John R. Hutchinson @johnrhutchinson.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

The bent hip, bent knee gait is interesting. And the swiveling arms.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

It is! I guess it doesn't have either the flexible spine or the laterally oriented gluteal muscles to accommodate extended limb locomotion... Neat that they're still going for a valgus knee effect, though!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Regardless, you did a far better job with the nuance of this than I could have done with canines 😂

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

I suspect a lot of the femoral neck signals they are picking up on are related to parasagittal leg movements rather than bipedalism per se. Ofc, we always have to look at the suite of traits as a whole for something as complex as bipedalism! I find this more compelling than Danuvius, at least.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

I think your argument that we can't conclude much about suspension from this femur is correct. I'm confident saying it wasn't moving like an orang, but there's a lot of room between 'no suspension' and 'Pongo'! (and my confidence is more about the type of suspension rather than quantity anyway).

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

That is a very cautious but very fair position! Thanks for the quick answers and a great video!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Thanks for the quick answer! I disagree with them on a few things but that statement isn't one of them haha. But the orang similarities are mostly just general ape-like traits. I think the ulnae more Pan like than anything, although with a few notable differences.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

I'm not aware of any good studies of CT cross-sections in monkeys similar to this paper (or the Orrorin papers) for apes, but Rafferty (1998) did a comparison of cortical bone thickness in a wide sample of primates using x-rays and the asymmetry is really clear! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Table 2 of Rafferty (1998) showing bone distribution (including cortex distribution) in primates

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Q1) Where are you getting the 'Sahelanthropus ulna looks like an orang and/or gibbon'? Has someone said that in a publication? I haven't seen that claim before. Q2) When you suggest upright in trees -> upright on ground, do you mean the Thorpe/Bohme hypothesis or something else?

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Funny to see this come across my feed the same day I finally got to take my own deep dive into the Azmaka femur! I have 2 questions and an answer if you're willing: A) Mesopithecus has asymmetrical femoral neck cortex because that's standard for primates. It's non-human great apes that are weird.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I have three initial thoughts on this: 1) Amazing fossil! Exciting to see our knowledge of apes in Africa expand geographically 2) That is a very questionable use of ASR 3) Come on, Science, seriously no methods whatsoever in the main text!?

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Natalie Cooper @nhcooper123.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Hi all. I am very excited that after 6 years I finally got my phylogenetic comparative methods book and online exercises online. Feel free to use and share. The book is here: nhcooper123.github.io/pcm-primer/. Note that it is not finished, we had to abandon it before the sunk costs fallacy broke us

nhcooper123.github.io

Phylogenetic Comparative Methods

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

So we've got mammals, more mammals, dinosaurs, fish (I think?), and even more mammals. Checks out! I wonder if it could be plotted as different sections of the bar charts above? Contribution from top publisher in a category, second, third, and then all others?

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Bryan Gee @koskinonodon.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

👋 Back for #FossilFriday with more data on where/what new species get published! Updated data and scripts: github.com/bryanmgee/ne... Nature/Science: ⬆️in coverage through 1995 PNAS: 🆕, new species through 2000 Current Bio: 🆕, new species through 2006 Palaeontology: 🆕, new species through 2010 🧵👇

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 05/03/2026

Dental Formulas xkcd.com/3213/

Comic. [Two people looking at a board with apparent formula (3.1.3.1)/(3.1.2.1)] PERSON: Do mammologists think these are hard? I mean, this one just evaluates to 3/2. [caption] Mathematicians encounter dental formulas

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

And it gets even trickier if anatomical ape-ness is not homologous, given how diverse modern ape locomotion is! (none of this is to detract from the paper, of course -- it is a valuable way of addressing the question).

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

Especially because there isn't even a firm consensus on what those ape anatomical specializations are for, something this paper dodges a bit by combining "suspension, orthograde stand, cling, and postural bridge" into a single "versatile postures" (i.e., "ape stuff") category.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Of course, the causal link could still go either way (certain scientists get their work published more so the taxa they work on appear more often, or specific taxa are published more often so the scientists who work on them get their work published more often).

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

This is very cool, thank you so much for doing it! I'd be very curious if the preference for certain taxa is confounded by an overrepresentation of specific scientists.

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Bryan Gee @koskinonodon.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Last week, amidst the hoopla over a new Speen, @fishfetisher.bsky.social suggested a review of naming papers in fancy journals in response to a post by @daveyfwright.bsky.social - I got bored after work and now I have (some) data! 🧵👇 #FossilFriday #CharismaticTaxaAreOverrated

media.tenor.com

a close up of a dinosaur 's head with green eyes

Alt: a close up of a Spinosaurus head with green eyes from Jurassic Park

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Thanks for this! I tried using this form when the videos first came out but never got a reply. I kinda figure the heavily cited paragraph I sent was above the pay grade of whatever intern was supposed to reply to those 😅. It's probably worth trying again, though.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Given this widespread educational use, is there a way to report errors? Not small nitpicks; I'm aware of two complexly videos (one SciShow one Eons) in my field that answer the titular question wrong. That's a good track record given the number of videos, but I'd still love to see them fixed!

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

This is great. It's not as in depth as the suggestions here, but at my JC in grad school we always asked two questions at the end: "What is the most valuable thing we can take from this paper?" and "What's the next step we would take related to that most valuable thing?" It was fantastic.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Yes! There is some debate about whether Pierolapithecus diverged before or after orangutans (I feel the evidence is stronger for 'before').

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

A great question about the context of Sahelanthropus from @fossilhistory.bsky.social. Figured I'd share it and my best attempt at answering it, rather than letting it linger in replies.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Thank you! You are absolutely right about the context. It is definitely frustrating that such an important fossil is plagued by so much uncertainty. The size and lack of repeated bones is consistent with one species or even individual, but it will likely be impossible to prove without more fossils.

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jeffspear.bsky.social @jeffspear.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I'd be surprised if they are from entirely different species, but it's not impossible. Maybe this is literally the human-chimp split? With the femur being from the human line and the ulna from the chimp line? This is getting into some pretty serious speculation territory, though, so I should stop!

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