Loukas Koungoulos

[npj Biodiversity @npjbiodiversity]

🦴 A fossil finger bone from coastal Papua New Guinea clusters with extinct 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘯𝘰𝘥𝘰𝘯 kangaroos

The finding suggests some marsupial #megafauna survived in the Australia–New Guinea region until ~5,300–6,800 years ago.

#Paleontology
🔗 https://t.co/xyTCNit6us

[The Conversation - Australia + New Zealand @ConversationEDU]

A new study challenges conventional thinking about what drove the extinction of megafauna. @koungoulos @IsaacARKerr @OurANU @FlindersUniNews @uwanews https://t.co/c7A6uadn85

[Nrken19 @nrken19]

Dogs’ brains began to shrink at least 5,000 years ago, study finds

https://t.co/4XblNInr87

[Lachie Scarsbrook @LJScarsbrook]

Yesterday in @Nature, we presented the earliest evidence of dogs anywhere in the world — three puppies that were buried by Stone Age hunter-gatherers in Türkiye almost 16,000 years ago.

https://t.co/SHkfDIzU7f

[Leonidas Davranoglou @LeonidasDav]

So happy our research is featured at the University of Oxford: https://t.co/lnwtfl3EDr

[Will @Evolving_Moloch]

I have data on contemporary hunter-gatherer trophy taking. Many foragers preferentially keep and display the skull and horns of animals to demonstrate their hunting success, appease the animal’s spirit, and provide supernatural protection to their dwellings.

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

@Evolving_Moloch Very cool. Trophies are one of our best repositories for mammals in New Guinea - since even very small, unassuming species would be kept - and for a few, certain anatomy is known only from trophy specimens

[Lachie Scarsbrook @LJScarsbrook]

🚨 PNAS Special Feature 2 🐕

We used ancient DNA and dietary isotopes to show that landscape modification and the introduction of European dogs impacted dingo populations across Australia.

🔗 Full paper here: https://t.co/ePYWoln0WU

[The Conversation - Australia + New Zealand @ConversationEDU]

Just like everyone and everything else that was already in Australia when the First Fleet arrived in 1788, dingoes had to adapt to their new reality. @dr_cairns @uninewengland @Sydney_Uni @UNSW https://t.co/BNsWqebKuQ

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

Ancient DNA from Nullarbor dingoes up to 2300 years old now out open access at PNAS - well done @LJScarsbrook! https://t.co/604xInu1KM

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

@motherlander ...where it just so happened that a second dispersal from the same part of Southeast Asia picked them up thousands of years later. Might be guessed from the fact that ancestry of Vanuatu and Tonga Lapita are nearly 100% "Asian" related (with Ami reference for qpAdm)

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

@motherlander I think the odds are the B4a1a ancestor of Remote Oceania PM was probably somewhere between Taiwan-Moluccas just not yet sampled in aDNA survey, rather than actually absent there and instead present "out of place" in the mid-Holocene Bismarcks...

[Chris Stringer @ChrisStringer65]

Extinct megafauna dominated human subsistence in southern South America before 11,600 years ago | Science Advances https://t.co/x5h2kMcLD0

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

NSW state library & the National Library have microfilms - Pacific Manuscripts Bureau coll. I initially considered paying for digital copies but there are thousands of pages, and many are his notes from Sydney Uni anthropology classes! Interesting character.

[Chris Buckley @chrisbuckley888]

@koungoulos Sounds interesting - which library is that archive in? I don't know of any well-researched chronology of those beads, but the eroded-looking blue-ish beads at the bottom right, and the ribbed kinds are said to be Song/Yuan

[Chris Buckley @chrisbuckley888]

Glass beads from the Lake Sentani region, north coast of Papua, part of bridewealth exchanges. The beads are mostly from China, and include some very old examples (the melon shaped beads). Brought by trading vessels over the last two millennia. From my book "Stone and Fiber".

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

@chrisbuckley888 Recently went thru KH Thomas' archive, Vanimo kiap 1927-34. He wrote a whole unpub. manuscript on the use of these beads along the north coast for marriage. We've found a few blue/green beads in the upper levels at sites there - Lachitu & Taora.

[Australian Archaeology @AustArchJ]

How did marine shells end up 200 km inland? Walufeni Cave reveals a 3,250-year-old story of trade, migration and cultural connection across Papua New Guinea’s Great Papuan Plateau.🔓⤵️
👉https://t.co/JFxxV5UIMu

[Biodiversity Council @Biodivcouncil]

New research shows that based on genetic, behavioural, ecological and archaeological evidence, dingoes are distinct from domestic dogs, including South-East Asian village dogs, which look superficially similar.

Read more on The Conversation from Kylie Cairns, Bradley Smith, Euan Ritchie and Thomas Newsome.
https://t.co/zfSC13spEc

@

[Loukas Koungoulos @koungoulos]

@MungoManic @AntiquityJ The predominant thinking is that sweet potato introduction in New Guinea was through European contact so it doesn't count as part of this network. but there are some dissenters who believe it happened somewhat earlier