Iseult

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes.
#aDNA

🖋️ really happy to be a part of @the4facedliar.bsky.social's upcoming issue - can't believe I was highly commended! I'm looking forward to reading the rest 📖

Interested in goats 🐐? Read our pre-print on ancient Irish goats and their connection to the Old Irish goat breed

Just look at this dashing individual, courtesy of the Old Irish Goat society

Evolutionary history and recurrent host adaptation in ancient Salmonella enterica Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica is an extremely diverse bacterial pathogen causing frequent infections and foodborne disease among human populations. More than 1500 different bacterial strains (se...

🦠💀🦠 Happy to share our (with @gunnar-u-neumann.bsky.social) new preprint on ancient Salmonella enterica genomes! We analysed 53 new genomes along with published ancient and modern datasets to learn about lineage replacements and host adaptation in prehistory: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🌊🏠🌅

Second craziest thing you'll read today: from 2026 I will be leading an @erc.europa.eu Starter Grant project. HERDPATH will explore how livestock and their pathogens co-evolved during the last 10,000 years. PhD advertisements to come!

Press release below with one of the few good photos of me.

Shameless promotion from #isba11 - I'll be hiring PhDs to start early 2026 (plus postdocs starting later), using #adna to study livestock and pathogen coevolution, particularly looking at inbreeding and immune gene evolution!

Contact me at kevin[at]palaeome.org, full ad to come. Please share!

Archaic ancestry inference in imputed ancient human genomes When modern humans expanded from Africa into Eurasia, they interbred with archaic hominins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. This groundbreaking discovery, made in part possible through the genomic...

Turns out imputation of introgressed archaic regions in aDNA works really well — sometimes even better than for the rest of the genome. More on this (and other cool results) in our new preprint 👇 #aDNA #ArchaicIntrogression #imputation
doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Excited to announce our paper on ancient Borrelia genomes is finally out! 🦠💀We document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever, published today in @science.org‬ with @lucyvandorp.bsky.social and @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social #aDNA 🏺🧪🧬
Main findings and paper below: 🧵⬇️

Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Ancient human and pathogen genomics at the insular edges of Eurasia at Trinity College Dublin, listed on FindAPhD.com

PhD opportunity on ancient humans and pathogens 🦠👀 🤩 #aDNA

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Séamas O'Reilly: Trans people have spent a decade being attacked in a moral panic The poor provision of unisex children’s facilities— which reinforces gender stereotypes and inconveniences women and men both — was, incidentally, an issue I remember being quite talked-about a decade...

The UK's political and media class has spent years heaping sadism on trans people, and they want to do the same in Ireland next. Calls for civility and calm won't cut it. We need to fight them tooth and nail.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

Patrick Freyne: Returning home from Chad, I feel there’s a glitch in western empathy The Sudan war is the world’s biggest humanitarian disaster, but it seems our human compassion is taken up by other conflicts

The way the algorithms keep us hemmed into a handful of news stories has really been bothering me recently www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Inferring domestic goat demographic history through ancient genome imputation Goats were among the earliest managed animals, making them a natural model to explore the genetic consequences of domestication. However, a challenge in ancient genomic analysis is the relatively low ...

🐐 New preprint out with @gingerhowley.bsky.social The VarGoats Consortium and many others!
We explore how genotype imputation can enhance low-coverage ancient goat/Capra🐐 genomes, shedding light on early domestication and herd management.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#aDNA #Domestication​

#AncientMetagenomeDir is expanding to include C14 dating & detailed archaeological/historical info for all samples! 📜✨

🗓️ Join our Hackathon on April 29th from 10-17 CEST and contribute to this groundbreaking project! 🙌

Release v25.03: Historic Centre of Cordoba · SPAAM-community/AncientMetagenomeDir Release v25.03.0 includes 8 new publications, representing 132 new ancient host-associated metagenome samples, 33 new ancient microbial genomes, and 0 new ancient environmental samples. This brings...

🚨 New release of #AncientMetagenomeDir! (v25.03.0, Historic Centre of Cordoba)
github.com/SPAAM-commun...
It is a community resource of #metadata of >2K shotgun-sequenced #AncientMetagenome or ancient microbial genome enriched samples & >5K libraries. Stats below (🧵 1/5)

Ancient DNA from the Green Sahara reveals ancestral North African lineage - Nature Pastoralism spread through cultural diffusion into the Green Sahara, where an isolated, distinct North African ancestry persisted.

I'm beyond excited to share our new paper in Nature! We sequenced the first ancient human autosomal genomes from the Central Sahara, two ~7,000-year-old individuals from Takarkori in Libya, revealing a long-isolated North African lineage: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Here's a short thread: (1/n)

🎓 PhD Position Available in the Population and Evolutionary Genetics group at Trinity College Dublin ☘️ . More details👇

Archaeogenomic insights into commensalism and regional variation in pig management in Neolithic northwest Europe | PNAS The relationship between humans and pigs has changed dramatically since their domestication in southwest Asia and subsequent human-induced introduc...

Interested in human-pig-boar interactions? Read our new paper on human-pig-boar relationships in Neolithic Europe 🐷🐗🧬.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Archaeogenomic insights into commensalism and regional variation in pig management in Neolithic northwest Europe | PNAS The relationship between humans and pigs has changed dramatically since their domestication in southwest Asia and subsequent human-induced introduc...

How did Europe's first farmers interact with their pigs and local wild boar? @jolijnerven.bsky.social has a new paper addressing just that using 11 ancient suis genomes!

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We really want this to be an event that ECRs can share their research in front of a friendly audience of other animal palaeogenomics enthusiasts. Please, the more weird and wonderful the submissions the better! #aDNA

Finally getting some of my research for my PhD out there! Hopefully soon in a journal near you ;)

Ancient Y. pestis infection from a sheep falls on the LNBA lineage, previously only known from humans! +molecular evolutionary analysis to leverage the ever increasing number of ancient genomes known!

“So why would I go through the pretense of peer review if the process is ultimately outsourced to an algorithm? I do not care for the aesthetics of peer review. We are not children playing academics. We are supposed to be doing substantive, not performative work.”

A genetic perspective on the recent demographic history of Ireland and Britain - European Journal of Human Genetics European Journal of Human Genetics - A genetic perspective on the recent demographic history of Ireland and Britain

Very cool work on recent demographic history in Ireland and Britain - congratulations Ashwini Shanmugam and Ross Byrne!

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep The origins and prehistory of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Ge...

Thread and open access version to come-
Ancient genomics and the origin, dispersal, and development of domestic sheep | Science search.app/gtSKYHF5HqRa...

#adna

Delighted that our new paper on female-centred kinship in Celtic Britain is out in Nature

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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)

AaRC TikTalk Seminars - Expression of Interest Please let us know if you are interested in presenting at the AaRC TikTalks Seminars. The seminars are held on the last Friday of every month. Speakers are currently open to graduate students (PhDs an...

Are you an Early Career Research (PhD, postdoc, new group leader) working in Animal Ancient DNA? Want to present your work to the @aarc-community.bsky.social community? Express your interest in participating in our AaRC TikTalk Seminar series with the link below! #aDNA

Their DNA survives in diverse populations across the world – but who were the Denisovans? The discovery of a finger bone in a cave in Siberia some 15 years ago kicked off a race to unravel the mysteries of an entirely new group of humanoids.

I am happy to share my latest article published on
@uk.theconversation.com, written for a broad audience, where I summarise our review about the Denisovans! 🧬✨ Discover their fascinating genetics and how they shaped human history.

theconversation.com/their-dna-su...

Demographic history and genetic variation of the Armenian population A whole-genome study of Armenians shows homogeneous genetic structure across the region, with a recent bottleneck explaining the distinctiveness of the Sasun population. Our findings reject the Balkan...

Armenian demographic history from @anahit19.bsky.social !

www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltex...