wabarr.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I am deeply saddened to have learned of the death, on Feb 5, 2025, of Elisabeth Vrba—a fantastically creative scientist and a warm, wonderful human being. She leaves us a legacy of original macroevolutionary thinking that is still fresh and illuminating.

submitted 16 days ago • 9 comments

pretty fun to see my recent paper (Barr and Wood, 2024) listed in this list of 100 significant paleoanthropology papers compiled in honor of the 100th year anniversary of the naming of Australopithecus.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

Best grant writing advice I ever received: "Write your proposal as if someone from a completely different field will search through it looking for 100 banned words"

submitted 23 days ago • 5 comments

Feeling inspired after an awesome lab meeting this morning with a great group of undergrads, Masters and PhD students in my lab. Just in case you needed a reminder that amazing things are happening in Washington DC, in addition to all the other things.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

I am very proud of my PhD student Nick Rosas for successfully defending his dissertation proposal! Lots of cool research on Middle Miocene bovids biogeography and ecology coming soon!

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

Once again, the seasons change, and this old meme feels 100% accurate.

submitted 87 days ago • 0 comments

The rhinos we have and the ones we lost. In the late Pleistocene, about two thirds of the worlds terrestrial megafauna went extinct. Rhinos fared better than average, but still, all the temperate and cold climate species are gone. Those that remain are endangered and in dire need of protection.

submitted 99 days ago • 17 comments

Paper led by my now-graduated PhD student Jesse Martin where we argue that the SK 54 cranium from Swartkrans in South Africa is Homo, not Paranthropus. www.scielo.org.za/pdf/sajs/v12...

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

Human evolution is not out of the woods yet! Congrats to Enqu on this landmark paper! In it, we present a new model for predicting woody cover based on an Africa-specific soil dataset. Results show hominin sites were ~13% more wooded than previously predicted! authors.elsevier.com/a/1k5a6_14mM...

submitted 105 days ago • 0 comments

In my paper, coauthor Bernard Wood and I explore the potential impacts of a spatially limited fossil record on understanding human evolution. We do this using two "thought experiments", focusing on the Eastern African Rift Valley. (1/4)

submitted 189 days ago • 1 comment

postdoc on hominin postcranial morphology to work on the Woranso-Mille hominins with Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al! apply.interfolio.com/137850

submitted 443 days ago • 0 comments

As true this year as every year.

submitted 448 days ago • 0 comments

what kind of person are you? A) there is no more toothpaste B) there's DEFINITELY at least one more squeeze in there!

submitted 450 days ago • 0 comments

So proud of Kate Fish for successfully defending her dissertation proposal today. We are looking forward to exciting research on modeling biases in the fossil record!!

submitted 478 days ago • 0 comments

any other biological anthropologists getting calls from the hospitality union in Los Angeles calling for a general boycott of the city and telling us not to go there for #AABA24?

submitted 490 days ago • 0 comments

I was just making a map in QGIS and accidentally zoomed out on my digital elevation model base layer, and accidentally 'discovered' that Antartica has the highest average elevation of any continent! Genuinely very surprised.....no idea.

submitted 503 days ago • 1 comment

Assistant prof of Bio Anthro - University of Wyoming

submitted 503 days ago • 1 comment

hey geometric morphometrics folks who use the R package geomorph. When I do a gm.prcomp, does the function automatically project the points into tangent space before doing the PCA? I assume so, but I wasn't able to 100% convince myself that it does while reading the help file. Thanks!

submitted 507 days ago • 0 comments

Such an amazing lecture hall here in Aarhus for #ESHE2023. Feels like a church dedicated to human evolution.

submitted 523 days ago • 1 comment

interesting and detailed 3D morphometric study of two hominin mandibles from Baringo from Clement Zanoli at ESHE 2023. The results show they are more likely Australopitheucs, Paranthropus and Homo aff. habilis, rather than Homo aff. ergaster as previously argued.

submitted 525 days ago • 0 comments

congrats to Stine Keibel Blom on an excellent first conference presentation: "Signatures of incomplete lineage sorting in the phenotypes of great apes at the ESHE 2023 conference in Aarhus, Denmark!

submitted 525 days ago • 0 comments

Statement from the Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists regarding the transport of two hominin fossils aboard the recent 3rd Virgin Galactic commercial space flight.

submitted 526 days ago • 0 comments

Statement from the Eastern African Association for Palaeoanthropology and Palaeontology on the launch of hominin fossils into sub-orbit

submitted 530 days ago • 0 comments

does anyone have a recommendation for an accessible introduction to geometric morphometrics (e.g. shape, size, landmark types, procrustes). Looking for something not very mathematical, with lots of figures, for undergrads. Thanks!

submitted 534 days ago • 1 comment

Reviewer #2: This paper adequately presents its data and conclusions, but its impact could be increased by launching some of the artifacts into space for the hell of it

submitted 534 days ago • 1 comment

Hi there! I am giving blue sky a try! I study the environmental context of human evolution. I'm a Assistant Professor at the George Washington University in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology.

submitted 534 days ago • 1 comment