Marcus Brandel5d ago

🐂 #LostBones #FossilFriday 🐟🐘🦥🐴🐪 This month I'm back out #CountingBones. At the Winnebago Area Museum a quiet storage room revealed bison and horse remains from two Blue Earth River sites

Shout out: this museum has been entirely volunteer run for half a century — the kind of stewardship that will help keep Ice Age stories alive.

Museum: https://www.winnebagoareamuseum.org

Learn about the Lost Bones project: https://marcusbrandel.substack.com/about
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#Pleistocene #MnMuseums #Bison #Horse #Palaeontology #CitizenScience

ResearchBuzz: FirehoseMay 15

Anthropology.net: The Bag Before the Bowl: Pleistocene Origins of Mobile Container Technology. “The new database, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, documents 739 Pleistocene mobile containers drawn from 210 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2026/05/15/the-bag-before-the-bowl-pleistocene-origins-of-mobile-container-technology-anthropology-net/
The Bag Before the Bowl: Pleistocene Origins of Mobile Container Technology (Anthropology.net)

Anthropology.net: The Bag Before the Bowl: Pleistocene Origins of Mobile Container Technology. “The new database, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, documents 739 Pleist…

ResearchBuzz: Firehose
CalishatMay 15

#archaeology #prehistory #Pleistocene

'The new database, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, documents 739 Pleistocene mobile containers drawn from 210 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.'

https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-bag-before-the-bowl-pleistocene

The Bag Before the Bowl: Pleistocene Origins of Mobile Container Technology

A new database of 739 ancient containers pushes the story of carrying technology back half a million years — and reveals how much of that story has already vanished.

Anthropology.net
Marcus BrandelMay 15

🐂 Happy #Minnesota #FossilFriday! 🦥🐴🐘🐪 These large upper bison molars — plus partial maxilla — are part of a 2024 donation to the Melrose Area Museum. The collection, contributed by a museum board member, also includes horn cores, mandibles, individual teeth, and other Ice Age materials.

If you’re into Midwest deep time stories, follow along and explore the full project in my bio.

#MelroseAreaHistoricalSociety #Pleistocene #Bovid #Bones #Palaeontology #Fossils #CitizenScience

𝓛𝔁𝓼 / 𝔸𝕝𝕖𝕩𝕚𝕤 🏵🇪🇺💫May 14

How I wish that the journal was called

«FLOSS ONE»

Simply for the opportunity for a little giggle given the recently published research article on ancient #dentistry 🦷😬

…dating back > 40,000 year
= from #Neanderthal period
( Middle–Late #Pleistocene )

«
Earliest evidence for invasive mitigation of dental caries by Neanderthals
»
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0347662

My source:

FT article «Neanderthal dentist drilled into decayed tooth almost 60,000 years ago» https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/6f237a3b-d55f-4f24-9fad-8fdef503cf21

Earliest evidence for invasive mitigation of dental caries by Neanderthals

Neanderthal medical knowledge has long attracted scholarly interest. Evidence suggests they cared for sick, injured, and elderly group members, with possible use of medicinal plants. However, it remains uncertain whether such practices reflect deliberate medical strategies or instinctive self-medication akin to that observed in non-human primates. Here, we analyze and interpret traces of deliberate artificial manipulation of Chagyrskaya 64, a Neanderthal lower left second molar found in Chagyrskaya Cave (Altai Krai, Russia). The tooth exhibits a large human-generated concavity on the occlusal surface, created during the lifetime of the individual. Traceological and microtomographic analyses of the observed modifications, combined with experimental verification, reveal that the concavity in Chagyrskaya 64 is indicative of the earliest documented instance of caries treatment involving the drilling/rotating with a lithic perforator, ca. 59 ka. Evidence of two distinct types of manipulations requiring different tools, in addition to the drilling/rotating technique, necessitating complex finger movements, indicates that the Chagyrskaya Cave Neanderthals possessed the cognitive capacity to intuit the source of pain, comprehend the feasibility of its elimination, and deliberately select the most efficacious dental intervention. These patterns bring Neanderthal behavior closer to modern humans and differentiate that behavior from the instinctive actions of other primates.

Marcus BrandelMay 9

🐴🐘🐪 This tooth survived the end of the Ice Age in a gravel pit. 🦷

Found 5 miles east of Montevideo, this lower horse molar may have belonged to one of the last Equus roaming Minnesota before their disappearance from North America. It’s tooth 10 in the 12 specimen project tracing Minnesota’s Ice Age horses.

Follow the whole 12 tooth journey in Lost Bones #4 thru the link in my bio.

#LostBones #FossilFriday #Pleistocene #Equus #MinnesotaHistory #Paleontology #CitizenScience #RadiocarbonDating

Rachel ThernMay 5
Digital sketch - cave bear (Ursus spelaeus)
#art #sketch #drawing #pleistocene
Show threadKenneth De BaetsMay 1
To place these findings in a broader context, the newly reported assemblages were analyzed together with other Pleistocene assemblages across the IWP region (Indo-West #Pacific). Only weak geographic and temporal separation was detected, suggesting a relatively #cosmopolitan #community composition in #subtropical waters during the #Pleistocene, likely reflecting low temperature variability despite glacial–interglacial cycles.
Show threadKenneth De BaetsMay 1
Osipova & Lin describe a newly discovered Late #Pleistocene assemblage of pelagic gastropods from southern Taiwan. The assemblage comprises 14 #pteropod and eight #heteropod taxa, most representing the first fossil records of #holoplanktonic #gastropods from #Taiwan.
Kenneth De BaetsMay 1
🌊 Late #Pleistocene pelagic #gastropods of southern #taiwan paleobiodiversity, first #fossil records, and regional affinity: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.21046
@PeerJ
#Biodiversity #Biogeography #Paleontology #Taxonomy, #Zoology
Late Pleistocene pelagic gastropods of southern Taiwan: paleobiodiversity, first fossil records, and regional affinity

Holoplanktonic gastropods (pteropods and heteropods) are major components of modern Indo–West Pacific (IWP) plankton, yet their fossil record in this region remains sparse. Expanding the spatial and temporal coverage of fossil data is essential for reconstructing dispersal pathways of pelagic fauna within the IWP and understanding the origins of present-day diversity. Here, we describe a newly discovered Late Pleistocene assemblage of pelagic gastropods from southern Taiwan. The assemblage comprises 14 pteropod and eight heteropod taxa, most representing the first fossil records of holoplanktonic gastropods from Taiwan. We also evaluate variation in paleobiodiversity between depositional environments of the Szekou Formation. Species richness and density do not differ significantly between restricted and open lagoon settings, contrasting with patterns reported for benthic bivalves. To place these findings in a broader context, the newly reported assemblages were analyzed together with other Pleistocene assemblages across the IWP region. Only weak geographic and temporal separation was detected, suggesting a relatively cosmopolitan community composition in subtropical waters during the Pleistocene, likely reflecting low temperature variability despite glacial–interglacial cycles. Indicator species analysis further suggests a later arrival at higher latitudes for the pteropods Telodiacria quadridentata and Heliconoides inflata, which show associations with late Pleistocene sites, whereas Styliola subula displays a distribution resembling its modern range, being most closely associated with assemblages from Taiwan and southern Japan.

PeerJ