Adam van Casteren

We’re interested in folks applying from all manner of disciplinary backgrounds. Biology, zoology of course. But also computer science, remote sensing, architecture. If you’re keen to work with LiDAR and point clouds, we’d like to hear from you!

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

My post-doc Charlotte King will be starting her own Minerva research group in September and is looking for PhD students. Click here if you are into experimental biomechanics, apes and hominin evolution.

www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

We are hiring a POSTDOC on an NIH award to measure inertial effects of (in)active muscle. Please share and re-post widely! Please send expressions of interest to my UML email.

Early hominins from Morocco reveal an African lineage near the root of Homo sapiens Study pinpoints 773,000-year-old fossils with high-resolution magnetostratigraphic dating, illuminating the shared ancestry of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans

🦴🔬 773,000-year-old #fossils from Morocco illuminate the shared ancestry of H. sapiens, Neandertals & Denisovans. Study @nature.com by an intl. team led by J.-J. Hublin, incl. @matthewskinnerphd.bsky.social & P. Gunz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. tinyurl.com/yxz4kcff & www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨Job Alert plz RT!

Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!

We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals

Open-rank

apply.interfolio.com/178146

Two great biomechanics talks at @primatesocietygb.bsky.social by lab postdocs @savannarhianna.bsky.social and Charlotte King. 👏👏🧗🏼‍♀️🦍🐵🌳

@savannarhianna.bsky.social amazing work!

#ESHE2025
Rhianna Drummond-Clarke ‘First documentation and quantification of wild chimpanzee rock climbing’
Camera traps, Issa Valley TZ & Moyen Bafing, Guinea chimps

Rock vs tree climbing: more dynamic movements, biomech diff locomotor modes, reaching further- role of uneven substrates!
Amazing 😍

Very excited to receive an ERC Starting Grant to study the earliest archaeological and biomolecular evidence of Homo sapiens in NW Europe

Watch this space for new positions in Bristol in 2026! 🎉

#HorizonEurope #ERCStG

I am offering two 4-year PhD positions (fully funded) and a 57 month combined post-doc / project manager position as part of my NWO-Vici grant, which starts in September.

Behavioural diversity in animals threatened by #biodiversity decline. In @science.org, @ammiekalan.bsky.social @uvic.ca & Lydia Luncz @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social emphasise the urgent need to develop strategies for preserving animal cultural #behaviour. tinyurl.com/569u66sv & doi.org/10.1126/scie...

Saving the cultural legacy of wild animals Loss of biodiversity threatens the study of tool use and other cultural behaviors in animals

Happy to have a new piece in @science.org with my friend Lydia where we draw attention to the significance of animal material culture for understanding human technical evolution and why we should digitally preserve and protect primate tools and tool use sites. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why humans have a smaller face than Neanderthals In Homo sapiens, facial growth stops at puberty.

Why #humans have a smaller #face than #Neanderthals: In Homo sapiens, facial growth stops at #puberty. New study in #JHE by @alexandraschuh.bsky.social & an intl. research team, incl. Philipp Gunz, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Sarah Freidline. More: tinyurl.com/ywkvwvej & doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

🚨 Our new paper is out today in Communications Earth & Environment (@commsearth.bsky.social)!! “Modern coastal ecosystems of the American Southeast are shaped by deep-time human-environment interactions” Check it out! 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s43...

Engineering skills in the manufacture of tools by wild chimpanzees Biological sciences; Zoology; Evolutionary biology

📣🐵 🌿 Our study shows that Gombe chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing plant materials to make tools based on specific properties that make them ideal for the job. @runnerape.bsky.social, Susana Carvalho, Deus Mjungu, @ellenschulzk.bsky.social, @adamvanc.bsky.social

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Chimpanzees understand material properties Wild chimpanzees choose just the right tools for the job, demonstrating a remarkable understanding of material properties

Not just any stick. #Chimpanzees understand material properties and choose just the right #tool for the job. New study in @cp-iscience.bsky.social by an intl. research team led by @runnerape.bsky.social & @adamvanc.bsky.social. @ox.ac.uk More: tinyurl.com/59c2wff4 & doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Authors: @runnerape.bsky.social, Susana Carvalho, Deus Mjungu, @ellenschulzk.bsky.social and @adamvanc.bsky.social. 5/5

🧠 The findings hint that our early ancestors likely had similar material engineering skills. Looking at tool biomechanics may provide a new lens for understanding evolution of technology in hominins! 4/5

🌿 Even within the same plant species, chimps target individual plants yielding more flexible material. Bark was especially preferred over twigs/vines due to lower stiffness. These aren't obvious properties - suggests deep understanding of tool functionality. 3/5

🔬 The study shows chimps select materials for their termite fishing tools that are more flexible than non-used plant material. This may have a functional reason as flexible tools better navigate the twisting tunnels in termite mounds, possibly allowing for more efficient foraging. 2/5

Engineering skills in the manufacture of tools by wild chimpanzees Biological sciences; Zoology; Evolutionary biology

Really happy to see this paper out, using field biomechanics we show that wild chimpanzees don't just randomly select plants materials for termite fishing tools – they use a little “folk physics” choosing materials with specific properties! Study in iScience www.cell.com/iscience/ful.... 1/5

Human midfacial growth pattern differs from that of Neanderthals and chimpanzees Present-day humans have small and retracted midfaces, while Neanderthals possess large and forwardly projected midfaces. To understand the ontogenetic…

Very happy to share our new paper on human facial development and evolution out today in JHE 🎉 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧵👇

Book review – The Wood Age: How One Material Shaped the Whole of Human History The Wood Age is an eye-opening piece of environmental history that charts how human civilization was built on trees.

This book “The Wood Age” by Roland Ennos might be of interest. inquisitivebiologist.com/2021/11/17/b...

The Tai Chimpanzee Project is making available microCT scans from their collections on human-fossil-record.org. All proceeds are used to support their mission of conservation and non-invasive research in Tai National Park (taichimpproject.org).

I am very happy to share our new paper on the genetics of some of the first modern humans who ever lived in Europe! We sequenced nuclear DNA from 13 specimens from Ranis in Germany, and found that they belonged to at least 6 individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/n)

Very excited (and a bit nervous) to announce that I will be hiring two Postdocs for my new group(!) in Copenhagen to study the Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA which survives in present-day humans. Retweet will be much appreciated :)

Link for application:
candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...

Footprint evidence for locomotor diversity and shared habitats among early Pleistocene hominins For much of the Pliocene and Pleistocene, multiple hominin species coexisted in the same regions of eastern and southern Africa. Due to the limitations of the skeletal fossil record, questions regardi...

Excited to share our latest paper, new in Science! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are looking for a 2yr post-doc with experience in experimental biomechanics to research ape locomotion

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

🚨Job Klaxon🚨

Q: What links biomechanics, human evolution and apes?

A: This 2-year post-doc position available in my new Human and Ape Biomechanics group in the Department of Human Origins @MPI_EVA_Leipzig 👇

www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

Buried under 8 meters of rock and debris in a German cave, researchers found proof Homo sapiens arrived in northern Europe thousands of years earlier than previously thought—and overlapped with our Neanderthal cousins for millennia. www.science.org/content/arti...