After successfully defending my DPhil thesis on ancient dog genomics, I’m now officially a Doctor! Thanks to everyone who’s been a part of this almost 10-year academic journey, which started in @otago and finished in @UniofOxford!

🚨 Calling all ancient DNA researchers 🚨 Abstract submissions for the inaugural AaRC conference are open until March 7th! Get your talks in! 🦴🧬.

Stoked to have been awarded “Best Presentation” at the 12th International Conference of Canine and Feline #Genetics and #Genomics in #Helsinki!.Huge thanks goes to the scientific organising committee for coordinating such an outstanding conference #ICCFGG

We also challenge the idea that maintaining discrete, non-overlapping lineages through reproductive isolation is a requirement in the domestication process, as domestic animal genomes reflecting a palimpsest of domestic and wild ancestry.

We highlight that traits ubiquitous in modern populations cannot be used to infer selection in the early stages of domestication, as they are the result of temporally dynamic evolutionary processes.

Check out the first chapter of my PhD, which was published as part of the upcoming Encyclopaedia of Quaternary Science, and provides a review of aDNA and animal domestication @Greger_Larson @LrFrantz @UniofOxford @school_of_arch 🧵

As my first academic mentor, Ewan Fordyce always encouraged me to follow passion rather practicality. His sage advice still guides my choices to this day. You will be deeply missed.

Extinction is forever, except when you’re Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna! Huge discovery by fellow Mertonian @JamesKempton8, showing the value of preserving Earth’s remaining wilderness!

We’re about unravel the complicated evolutionary histories of mokomoko in Aotearoa! So excited to be a part of this research!.

What are the odds that @nosuchthing’s fact was on discovering new gecko species, including those in Aotearoa! Couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a spot of science communication from the audience.

Forget mammoths, it’s “time for ancient DNA to sweat the small stuff”. @BunceDNA’s brilliant perspective piece in Molecular Ecology reminds us that big stories are hiding in tiny critters

Can you spot the difference? Our research out in Zootaxa describes te mokomoko a Tohu (Hoplodactylus tohu) – a new species of New Zealand gecko hidden in plain site! Read more below:.

Spent the last two days #microCT scanning historic breed dogs at the @NHM_London with the help of Brett Clark. Here’s the skull of ‘Chesham Silvio’ — a King Charles Cavalier born in the late 19th century!

You can read more about the extinction of the NZ grayling in our @ConversationEDU piece:

Our genetic data provides a new tool in the search for survivors. Environmental DNA in water samples from remote catchments can now be compared routinely to known DNA from the upokororo.

Genetic and fossil data together suggest the tupuna (ancestors) of the upokororo arrived in #Aotearoa following the birth of the Alpine Fault. Before that time, present-day Aotearoa was mostly beneath the ocean, during the Oligocene “drowning” 27 to 22 million years ago.

Consistent with morphology—the Australian grayling is the closest (albeit distantly) living relative of the upokororo, separated by more than 15 million years.

After retrieving mitochondrial genomes from formalin-fixed specimens of New Zealand’s only extinct fish—the upokororo, or NZ grayling—we shed some light on its evolutionary history🧵

Guess it’s time to crack out the oil paints and fake a Picasso! Excellent @TheEconomist piece by @TalbotCaitlin

Wait… this isn’t Tesco! Went shopping for Victorian breed dogs @NMBern