Kristina Killgrove

Being a science writer right now is like… 9am - Coffee and constitutional crisis! 10am - Read a neat study on 5000-year-old beads. 11am - US science funding is off/on/off/on! Noon - Email a researcher about Iron Age skeletons. Afternoon - More constitutional crises and screaming into the void!

I've been concerned about this pet chimpanzee for a long time. Thank you @animallegaldefense.bsky.social: "We argue that keeping Bow in solitary confinement constitutes harassment of an endangered animal under the law." Just donated. #chimpanzee #primates #primatesarenotpets #anthropology #animals

I believe this is the first time I’ve heard a candidate for office attempt a Trump impression.

Skeleton Sex Orgy "divides" residents of Casper, Wyoming boingboing.net/2026/10/26/s...

Your astonishing artifact this week is a Bronze Age “cape” found in a woman’s burial at Goblins’ Hill in Wales. 🏺🧪

My latest for National Geographic looks at the 131 new Hittite cuneiform tablets unearthed at Šamuḫa (c. 1400 BCE) & what they tell us about everything from augury to an epidemic that killed Hittite children. Thx to @digkabri.bsky.social, Theo van den Hout, @knpazuzu.bsky.social & ISAC for aid. 🪏

1,500-year-old pre-Inca burial contains a high-status toddler ‪—‬ but the grave goods are puzzling www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins fourth term, according to electoral court.

The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, has conceded defeat in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.

Anthropologists have often assumed hunting was a male activity for hominin relatives. New research adds strong statistical support to the data for female hunting dominance in bonobos. Is this a better model than the male-dominated chimpanzees for ancient hominins? www.johnhawks.net/p/woman-the-...

🏺

"This work helps us think about whether there's actual meaning underneath it all," @lisafdavis.bsky.social told @livescience.com. "It doesn't get us there," she said about a definitive translation, "but it moves the ball." 🧪🏺

Have a puzzling phenomenon you'd like an anthropologist to explain? Send us your question: appliedanthro.org/dispatches-s... #SfAA #SocialScience #Anthropology #AppliedAnthropology #Dispatches

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

As a Gen Xer for a while I contemplated writing a book about us called "The Worst Generation" but then I was, like, whatever

Some great investigative reporting here, from @woolsox.bsky.social. Really worth a read.

Massive Viking Age hoard discovered in Norway contains extremely rare coin www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

BREAKING: The hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau "will not move forward," the lead researcher says. “The solution is clear here: Take the money and vaccinate as many kids as you can,” @pauloffit.bsky.social told me: www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

BREAKING: SCOTUS rejects Trump admin's request to allow it to end gender-affirming medical care in prisons — a significant, if tentative, rejection of one of the admin's most extreme anti-trans arguments. Only Thomas and Alito noted they would have granted the stay. More to come: www.lawdork.com

Who was buried in a Roman sarcophagus reworked to feature an Anglo-Saxon cross? One archaeologist thinks he’s solved the 150-year-old mystery. 🧪🏺

Who was buried in a Roman sarcophagus reworked to feature an Anglo-Saxon cross? One archaeologist thinks he’s solved the 150-year-old mystery. 🧪🏺

"This work helps us think about whether there's actual meaning underneath it all," @lisafdavis.bsky.social told @livescience.com. "It doesn't get us there," she said about a definitive translation, "but it moves the ball." 🧪🏺

Scoop: The NSF's Major Research Instrumentation program offers up to $4 million to help scientists buy expensive equipment. Applying is time consuming and competitive. So it's no small issue that date when submissions were meant to open has come and gone. www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

You know what? See next post for my thoughts: www.science.org/content/arti...

Archaeologists found an oak baker's peel with a game board carved on the back, possibly so that medieval chefs could while away the time waiting for bread to bake. 🧪🏺

This is a heist. cen.acs.org/policy/resea...

Archaeologists have found the remains of a Roman military camp used during the Cantabrian Wars in Spain in the 1st century BC. 🧪🏺

Archaeologists found an oak baker's peel with a game board carved on the back, possibly so that medieval chefs could while away the time waiting for bread to bake. 🧪🏺

Your astonishing artifact this week is a Mississippian copper object that may depict a female warrior. 🏺🧪

Opened up a bottle of sriracha while cooking, and it sprayed directly into my eyes. 🥵 How’s your night going?

Wake up, babe! Oldest dwelling in the Western Hemisphere just dropped. (Also, they had the oldest needles and maybe the oldest domesticated dogs.) 🧪🏺🐾

Students from North Carolina A&T can be seen marching back to their HBCU after voting on the first day of early voting in the state. The Guilford County Board of Elections voted to remove the school’s on-campus polling site. (video via Todd Simmons) greensboro.com/news/local/g...

Wake up, babe! Oldest dwelling in the Western Hemisphere just dropped. (Also, they had the oldest needles and maybe the oldest domesticated dogs.) 🧪🏺🐾

I worked at the UNC student bookstore for 1.5 days back in like the summer of 2005. We were supposed to unbox and stack textbooks, but the books hadn't arrived and no one had any idea when they were going to show up. I quit at lunch the second day because there was nothing to do.

Evan Moffat on the legal trade in human remains (facilitated by social media) & a collector who shows him “the preserved front bottoms of Victorian prostitutes. I had to think about it but then at the end I thought they were never really private parts, were they?” 1/3 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzfz...

“All we can ever know about the end of this Neanderthal’s life is that it was violent, and came at the end of a wooden spear.” — Graeme Barker 🧪🏺

A new documentary on the archaeology of Great Zimbabwe airs tonight on PBS. I interviewed the lead archaeologist, Shadreck Chirikure, and if you click through, you can watch an exclusive clip showing the team's discovery of Longquan celadon from eastern China. 🧪🏺

DNA from centuries-old skeletons buried in Montreal reveals no genetic mixing between Indigenous people and French colonists www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

Ancient Indigenous people in New Mexico lived through extreme climate change, study suggests www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

2,000-year-old burial found in Russia near a human sacrifice and a cup to ward off magical threats www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

Also for Indigenous Peoples Day, I talked to experts on demography about how many people were in the Americas in 1492 -- and why it's so difficult a question to answer. 🧪🏺

For this Indigenous Peoples Day, your astonishing artifact is the earliest known Indigenous depiction of a European — a wood carving from Nunavut dated to 1350. 🧪🏺

Sixth person who had measles has died in Pennsylvania, local coroner says