Beth Shapiro
@bonesandbugs
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I'm an evolutionary (paleo)biologist @ucsc and @hhminews . I still don’t have a mammoth, but I do have a new book! Check out Life As We Made It (please). She/her
Santa Cruz, CA
Joined June 2010
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Curious what "Life As We Made It" is about? Check out the trailer made by
@reelsmartvideo
for
@BasicBooks
. And please don't laugh too hard at the home video (I did my best!
#WFHfun
#thanksKiddos
) 😆
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Just a normal Wednesday when a peer reviewed paper in a high profile journal reminds me that my and my mentees careers (but mainly their careers) suffer because of my gender and concludes that this means I shouldn’t mentor women. Good job, academia!
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Check out this little guy! Kurt is a one month old purebred Przewalski’s horse, born to an American Quarter-horse mom on a farm in Texas. How is this possible? Kurt was cloned from cells preserved 40 years ago. This is a big moment for
#geneticRescue
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Check out what came in the mail! I wrote so many words. It’s actually happening!
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I have news. I'm so excited.
We're hiring!
The ecology and evolutionary biology department
@ucsc
are recruiting an evolutionary biologist (broadly defined). More info here: or DM me!
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Another polar bear paper out today… Meet Bruno! Her 100,000-year old genome revealed an ancient episode of gene flow into brown bears that is preserved in the genomes of all brown bears today.
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What!?!? Congratulations to Svante, to everyone who contribute to this work, and to our entire extended research field!
#paleogenomics
#ancientDNA
BREAKING NEWS:
The 2022
#NobelPrize
in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Svante Pääbo “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.”
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I just caught my 10-year-old checking his email while he was supposed to be paying attention to his class zoom. At least that’s confirmation that I’ve taught him something during homeschooling.
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Friends! It gets better... we're actually recruiting to fill *two* TT positions in EEB at UCSC.
An evolutionary biologist:
And a quantitative biologist:
Come join us!
I have news. I'm so excited.
We're hiring!
The ecology and evolutionary biology department
@ucsc
are recruiting an evolutionary biologist (broadly defined). More info here: or DM me!
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We’re looking for a technician (junior or assistant specialist rank) to work in conservation genomics and ancient DNA. Experience with NGS sample prep is a must. DM me if you’re interested!
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Day 0.5 of coronavirus-mediated homeschooling:
7: I finished all 10 days of homework. What now?
10: I used up all 10 days of screen time. What now?
Me:
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I just finished a complete draft of my new book, so am celebrating by drinking this 2-year-old beer that I found at the back of my fridge while I wait for dinner to grill.
Narrator: The beer was not delicious.
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I'm about to fill your day with cuteness.
Meet Elizabeth Ann, the world's first cloned black-footed ferret. She's a clone of Willa, whose cells were cryopreserved in 1988. Read more about the project led by
@Revive_Restore
at
You're welcome!
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We're hiring! Announcing the first ever Evolutionary Genomics Postdoc Cluster Hire at UC Santa Cruz. Interested in paleo, evolutionary, population, or ecological genomics? More Info: (Arctic fieldwork as shown in pic not req'd) Please RT!
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Do you like genomics, ecology, evolution, and long-dead plants & animals? Are you looking for a lab job to sharpen your skills/interests before grad school? Come join us as a technician in the Paleogenomics Lab
@UCSC_PGL
at UC Santa Cruz!
Apply by 8 May:
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For those who haven’t heard yet,
#SMBE2024
is going to be held in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! I’m tempted to start packing now. I mean, somebody has to go check it out, right?
@OfficialSMBE
#SMBEv2021
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Our thinking about what it means to be a “species” is changing with every cool new insight (and this one is 👍🏼👍🏼 !). Taxonomy wants discrete boxes into which organisms can be placed. Nature denies us this simplicity.
Scientists have discovered a remarkable human who lived in Siberia 90,000 years ago. Her mother was a Neanderthal, and her father was a Denisovan. Here’s my
@nytimes
story on our emerging view of human hybrids:
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The thumbprint piggies because… you know… the human fingerprint and stuff. (v pleased with these covers)
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I’m honored and beyond excited to have been elected to serve as President of
@theAGA_org
. *And* this means I get to plan & run the 2023 Presidential Symposium! Big shoes to fill (!) but I’m for the challenge! Now accepting ideas…. 😀
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Successful day 3! 38 permafrost cores, a few bones, and nobody (still) stuck in the muck!
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Super interesting phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 origin. While it remains unknown whether the adaptations that made the virus so transmissible occurred in humans or an animal host, the virus is clearly a product of natural selection.
#coronavirus
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Out today in
@eLife
- Two very different horses lived together in North America during the last ice age. With the help of ancient DNA, we just gave the thinner-limbed version a new name: Haringtonhippus francisci
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A group of scientists is trying to map the genomes of all 66,000 species of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish on Earth.
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Achievement unlocked: Paper on which I'm a co-author is mentioned on SNL's Weekend Update.
@love_dalen
#mammoths
#ancientDNA
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Pub Day! = book chillin’ on a bench, apparently. Not being read, I note. 😆
LIFE AS WE MADE IT is on sale today!
@bonesandbugs
explores the human history of remaking nature from the first dog to the first beefalo, from farming to CRISPR, and more.
Learn more, available now:
#biotech
#Biotechnology
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A kind stranger agreed to take our day 1 group photo. Amazing.
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7:30 PM: Two campus evacuation emails straddling a rejection email from NSF. Hard not to take this as more meaningful than it probably is...
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@RiboGuy
Yes he was! For those who don’t know, Kurt Benirshke was the geneticist who established the SD Frozen Zoo in 1975 to store cell lines of threatened & endangered species (and genetic diversity) in case science eventually made it possible to bring that diversity back.
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Guess who dragged me after a cat this morning that wasn’t a cat and now he’s sad and we’ve both had baking soda baths and I hate everything?
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Californians: I’ve been staring at my ballot. Vote no on the recall. Then write me in for if things go wrong. I can probably govern. Probably.
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Read every word of
@edyong209
‘s devastating account of how we failed. Have a tissue handy, or a punching bag, or both. Then figure out the logistics of casting your vote in November, and how you will help others in your community to do the same.
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I’ve never been so happy to wake up to the fog! My view this morning (marine layer) compared to yesterday (orange-hued wildfire smoke layer).
Thank you
@CALFIRECZU
for all the work you are doing to keep us safe, and thanks, fog, for this little bit of help.
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Luzia, the oldest human fossil known from Brazil, is among the treasures lost today in this horrible fire.
I am particularly sad about Luzia, the oldest human fossil found in Brazil. She lived in south-central Brazil some 12,000 years ago and was such an important historical artifact. I can't stand the fact that we lost her.
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This is horrible.
“the White House issued a presidential proclamation suspending US entry for graduate and postgraduate students and researchers from China that takes effect at noon on Monday and remains in effect until it is terminated by the President.”
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@AliceM74504589
Don’t let this garbage get you down. The truth is not that women are bad mentors for women - I’m sure you’ll be a great mentor! The truth is that there are inequities in science that work against women. These are the barriers that we need to work to break down.
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Upon retraction of that contentious
@NatureComms
manuscript, we all agree to agree that co-authorship is not mentorship.
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A new single-stranded library preparation method! Yippee yay! :)
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Got my annual reminder to renew my parking permit, which comes every year in the form of a ticket telling me that my parking permit is expired.
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Extraordinary results require extraordinary proof. This has been the mantra of
#ancientDNA
research since the 1990s, where contamination is a major source of error. The problems that
@MichaelWorobey
cites in this thread are well known to us in ancient DNA. Worth a read.
SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 in Italy in September 2019: the most important finding yet on the origin of the pandemic*.
(*or an error with big consequences.)
A thread. 1/24
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“It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling… If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.” RBG
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I’m so sad and unsurprised and disappointed and angry and scared.
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Exactly this: “I find a deeply disturbing that this message - avoid a female mentor or your career will suffer – is being amplified by your journal.”
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I’m not naming any names, but somebody stayed up too late last night.
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In 5 days, 13 smart & curious undergrads, 3 courageous grad students, and a very nervous yours truly begin our 24 day adventure through Yukon/Alaska/NWT. How many mammoths will we find?
#bonequest18
@ucsc
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Congratulations to the newly minted Dr.
@JoshuaKapp
! Hero of the
@UCSC_PGL
for (among his many ideas) reinventing how we prepare our ancient DNA libraries. Yes, that’s a single-stranded DNA cake!
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Our new preprint! How can
#genomics
aid
#conservation
? One way is to ID candidates for translocation. Plus, mountain lions are scary cool, and the animal who is our reference genome, 36M, ruled
#ucsc
campus for years.
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Lovely morning at the beach until someone found and decided to roll in a seal carcass.
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It’s snowing ash in the dark as I wait for evacuees from nearby wildfires to arrive to spend the night in my spare room and I’ve had enough 2020
#uncle
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My 7yo just told me he needed a diamond pickaxe to mine obsidian to make a portal and something about a wither and I’m tired of summer can we go back to distance learning?
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OMG the first review of my new book! 😅
Nonfiction Book Review: Life As We Made It: How 50,000 Years of Human Innovation Refined—and Redefined—Nature by Beth Shapiro. Basic, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5416-4418-2
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I’ve become irrationally obsessed with this
#seashanty
meme and have spent way too much time on this today
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OMG ATL traffic. Also, I don’t think this is what they had in mind.
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Yep. This is definitely the kind of thing that paleontologists do. Yup.
@PalaeoPete
@DeepFriedDNA
Somebody on FB found a great supply of "paleontologist" stock photos and they're great but none of them are as perfect as this dude in a lab coat giving a sheep skull a flu shot
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I miss going to conferences because being there meant freedom to focus on just that one thing. Virtual conferences mean doing that, and maybe another simultaneously, and also regular work and childcare, thank you time zones.
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Today I finished recording the audiobook version of Life As We Made It, which is released in a month (Yay! Yikes!). Reading out loud for hours was was fun and exhausting… but now I’m freaking out about how my voice will sound on the audiobook. Is that normal? 😂
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I’ve gotten less done every day this week. Congratulations, me.
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Congratulations to the most recent
@UCSC_PGL
grad Dr Sabrina Shirazi
@s2shirazi
on a fabulous defense - all vaccinated & in person!!
#sedaDNA
cake to celebrate!
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I’m camouflaged. You can’t even see me. Nope.
@eat_modified
#pagxxviii
#pag2020
come try some amazing
#GMO
papaya! And see if you can find
@bonesandbugs
despite her camouflage ...
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We (
@ed_green_72
and I) are recruiting a postdoc in computational genomics! Want to develop methods for detecting admixture from modern & ancient genomes? Interested in learning about the biological consequences of admixture? Join us! More information:
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I’m proud to have been a small part of this fascinating research and important collaboration. Inclusive and respectful science enables discovery and innovation. And there’s more to come!
New Science paper argues horses came to the Americas earlier than previously thought—a conclusion that, if it holds up, rewrites the history of the N. American West. Strikingly, the article is from a team of archaeologists, geneticists, and Lakota researchers and elders. 1/15
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Woot! Check out the awesome women who I get to be on a tweet with!
On
#February11
we’re celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science with
#PackardFellows
@bonesandbugs
in conversation w/
@NobelPrize
Laureates
@francesarnold
@doudna_lab
& Andrea Ghez. Check out more
#WomenInSTEM
at
@WomenScienceDay
👩🔬👩🏽🔬👩🏿🔬
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Hmmmm…. Well, you might consider making the APCs less than $11,250?
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Ok so Santa Cruz schools are closed? Ok. That’s the right epidemiological decision. Can handle this. Cool cool. What, my cuticles are bleeding? Weird. All good. Gotta get back to porting those UCSC classes to online. (Please be nice to each other out there. We’re all stressed.)
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Maybe shoulda rethought that title... 😂
I picked up a copy of "How to Clone A Mammoth" by
@bonesandbugs
today; having been made aware of it by
@JacquelynGill
.
The local public library had filed it under "Do It Yourself".
Not sure what to think about that.
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It's ok if I stress-eat an entire pumpkin spice loaf from Costco today, right?
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Should we be concerned that
@richard_durbin
is leading a bunch of computational biologist through the German forest?
#EEShuman
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It’s little Vicki’s 3rd birthday and the coronavirus better watch out....
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I am prepared to accept our new California Condor masters. May they shepherd the planet well.
🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨
Scientists at SDZWA discovered two California condor chicks have hatched from unfertilized eggs. This sort of asexual reproduction, known as parthenogenesis, is a first for the species and provides new hope for their recovery. Read more:
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Woke up to smoky air & no school but 13% containment (!), no new lightning-sparked fires (!), and the feeling that
@CALFIRECZU
have pulled us closer to the end of the active fire part of this disaster. Grateful, and also sad for so many who’ve lost their homes & communities.
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👀 Look who reviewed my book! And who I got to meet! And who asked me to sign it! It’s snowing outside and I’m loving everything about this
@theAGA_org
meeting. (Thanks,
@SCampbellstaton
)
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Just when I had accepted that I wasn’t going to be the unnamed face of this year’s UC Open Enrollment, Look what came in the mail to my faculty friends from
@UCLA
!
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Day 5: Top of the World to a new Pleistocene site for a few permafrost cores and some bone collecting, followed by a quick visit almost to Alaska (border crossing in the background) to get above the tree line and step on some tundra.
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Out today: Another awesome international collaboration to which a few of us
@UCSC_PGL
were lucky enough to contribute. Check out the thread! It’s about RHINOCEROSES 🦏🤩🦏
[THREAD] 🦏🦏🧬🧬⬇️⬇️
We’ve analyzed genomes from all living species of rhinoceros.
Plus three species that went extinct during the last Ice Age!
Great collaboration with researchers from:
🇨🇳 🇩🇰 🇸🇪 🇫🇷 🇦🇺 🇺🇸 🇪🇸 🇳🇱 🇲🇾 🇳🇴 🇿🇦 🇷🇺 🇬🇧
Paper in Cell (OA):
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There’s so much cool stuff going on here
@UCSC_PGL
these days.
Why
@ed_green_72
Keeps Receiving Packages of Serial Killers’ Hair (reported by
@heathertal
)
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I’m excited for this event tomorrow!
But…that’s not me in the stock photo, for anyone who wondering. I’m not sure about the safety goggles / microscope combo. Also not sure what I would be looking at in the microscope.
Do the phrases ‘genetic modification’ and ‘synthetic biology’ make you think of a future to embrace or avoid? Beth Shapiro (
@bonesandbugs
) will explore how new technologies promise potential for altering nature in the future.
Book now (livestream):
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Fieldwork Day 2! Made it to Dawson City, found
@love_dalen
and
@PalaeoPete
, and even got a photo that included our heads! Out to the Klondike tomorrow…..
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Oh really.
Women may actually be harming their presentation outcomes by making jokes.
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Trying to be tooth fairy, leprechaun, and faculty job candidate host all in one night and not doing well so
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