#Archaeology friends, are you also at the #EAA2024 Congress in Rome? If so, let's connect if (like me) you are interested in #paleoclimate, #paleoecology, #populationbiology, #prehistory and #evolution!

If you are free today at 4 pm (UK time), join us for the first Computational and Digital Archaeology #seminar of the term at Cambridge Archaeology (you can also join via zoom).

🔗 https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/events/computational-and-digital-archaeology-laboratory-series/palaeoecology-made-easy-two-new-tools

I'll talk about #paleoecology, #paleoclimate, #bigdata in #archeology, and these tools:
#pastclim https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.06481
#tidysdm https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.24.550358v1 #CDAL #ComputationalArchaeology #EcologicalNicheModelling #SpeciesDistributionModelling #webinar

The idea that archaeology is all about 'discovery' is bullshit. Good archaeology is about accurate recording, analysis, and pattern recognition

Discovery comes down to chance, and many of the greatest discoveries were made by the worst archaeologists

I just found the best soap dispenser ever, in the shape of a #palaeolithic knapped stone! Isn't it gorgeous? 😍
#prehistory #Archaeology
(second picture from the web)

One of the best exhibitions I have visited in a long time
#islanders #FitzwilliamMuseum #archaeology #Cambridge

oh-oh 🍿
---
RT @MPI_EVA_Leipzig
Accidentally produced stone fragments made by #macaques resemble some of the earliest #hominin stone artifacts. New study by @MPI_EVA_Leipzig researchers @tomosproffitt, @RocksGeller, @LydieL23 & an intl. research team. More: https://bit.ly/422Ui4x & https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade8159
https://twitter.com/MPI_EVA_Leipzig/status/1634268130728968193

@biorxivpreprint
These results help us better understand how the #ecology of the #leopard varies across its range, a knowledge that is vital for the effective #conservation of its most distinct and vulnerable populations.

@biorxivpreprint
We visualised the #ecologicalniche occupied by each subspecies and compared them to see how much the Asian #leopards diverged from the African ones. In most cases, there is great or total overlap, with the exception of the Persian leopard which suggests niche expansion. This is supported by the fact that, when modelling the range of the species with #SDM/#ENM using only African presences, only the most northern part of the distribution is not retrieved. 2/3

I forgot to toot about our #leopard #preprint!

Leedham et al. 2023 Niche conservatism in a generalist felid: low differentiation of the #climaticniche among subspecies of the #leopard
https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.26.525491v1
#ecology #conservation @biorxivpreprint

Leopards are subdivided into 1 African and 8 Asian subspecies (result of an ancient expansion from Africa). We collected data to see if the Asian and the African ones share the same #climate, or if, while expanding, they adapted to new conditions 1/

Our #pastclim paper is now officially out in an
issue of Ecography!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecog.06481

We made #paleoclimate easily available, what are you waiting to use it for your project? 😉

If you wonder where to start, here you find all the info you need
https://evolecolgroup.github.io/pastclim/index.html

Non-profit journals as a solution to open science?

Publishers charge researchers incredible amounts to remove paywalls from their own papers...and make unbelievable profits from doing so. Several have an >30% profit margin.

Initiatives such as @PeerCommunityIn provide an alternative: open access, non-profit journals that are free to publish in.

https://peercommunityin.org/
https://peercommunityjournal.org/
#OpenScience #Science #AcademicChatter @academicchatter
Graph (2013): @alexh https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/scholarly-publishers-and-their-high-profits/

Over 100 billion people have lived on our planet.

Just 622 have been to space.

Just 12 have set foot on another celestial object, our barren moon.

Not a single human has been to another planet.

We know of no other planet that can sustain human life.

Why is it so damn hard to get people to care about protecting the only home we've ever had and the only place we can live?

#climatechange

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oceans-break-record-for-highest-temperatures-four-years-in-a-row-180981455/

After today's trip I reevaluated all my life goals. I want to become a seal. #norfolk #seal

A few observations re: the "building an audience v building a community" debate, esp as regards writers/artists/creators who are Twitter escapees: attempting to build an audience in this age of profound advertising fatigue is almost useless. Build community. Don't get hung up on overnight success, which is both rare and temporary. Instead, stick with the people who stick with you. It takes years with an s! But it's worth it.

#pastclim, our #Rstats package to access and use #paleoclimate is now also available on CRAN!
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/pastclim/index.html
To recap:
website: https://evolecolgroup.github.io/pastclim/index.html
github: https://github.com/EvolEcolGroup/pastclim
article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.06481
vignette: https://evolecolgroup.github.io/pastclim/articles/a0_pastclim_overview.html

Pastclim is created as a platform to easily include the #climate of the past into existing analyses and pipelines in #archaeology, #genetics/#genomics, #ancientDNA, #conservation, #ecology, #evolution, #anthropology and even #linguistics.

@joeroe I am not the best person among the authors to answer this question, but personally I think that, since the spatial resolution is so much coarser in the Beyer dataset, it did not made PaleoClim obsolete.

@MostlyTato hello! Nice to meet you! 😊

@Pittthewelder Hi! Nice to meet you! 👋

We created this because we believe that easier access and handling of #paleoclimate data will benefit a lot of fields ranging from #evolution to #archeology, from #ecology to #popgen, and from #anthropology to #linguistics.
For more info see the website https://evolecolgroup.github.io/pastclim/index.html

Compared to the #preprint we have included many more functions, e.g. to crop data by mask or extent or sampling regions over time.
For a quick overview see the cheatsheet at https://evolecolgroup.github.io/pastclim/pastclim_cheatsheet.pdf.
We are also in the process of adding more #paleoclimate reconstructions besides the two already available:
"Krapp2021" (last 800k years) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-021-01009-3
"Beyer2020" (last 120k years)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0552-1
(and if you want us to include our data get in contact!)