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Tori Herridge

@toriherridge.bsky.social

4.5K followers 730 following 1.1K posts

🏛Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield 🎓PhD Evolutionary Biology🏝Islands 🐘Elephants🦣Mammoths🦷Teeth ⚒️1/4 of TrowelBlazers 📰EiC Open Quaternary 🎥🎙Presenter. Expcet typos.

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · Mar 7

Would you like to hear a story about a woolly mouse…?

🐭🦣🧪

Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · Mar 4

Once upon a time, in the late 1800s, people in Japan got really into breeding mice.

Coloured mice. Patterned mice. Even mice that danced.

They became known as Japanese Fancy Mice, and that caught the attention of researchers in Europe and America, who imported them for study.

2/n

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Tim Harford @timharford.ft.com · 4h

We keep being told "there are no silver bullets". Nonsense. There are plenty of silver bullets. If they're not working as well as you hoped, perhaps you're not shooting at a werewolf.
on.ft.com/42JHpyB

The silver bullet fallacy

[FREE TO READ] The idea that a lot of problems are difficult to fully solve doesn’t mean we should stop trying

on.ft.com

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 8h

Love this

Reposted by Tori Herridge

Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 1d

Today is the deadline for proposing for observations with JWST. Across the globe, scientists are furiously putting the finishing touches on ideas spanning the nearest planets and stars to the most distant galaxies. Only ~10% of proposals will be accepted, and the science will be amazing. 🧪☄️

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 1d

They probably were at a quantum level

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Ian Duhig @ianduhig.bsky.social · 1d

Maura Dooley visited Chris Wood's Grimm show at Scarborough Art Gallery for which I have written a series of Mortuary Rhymes, as opposed to nursery rhymes, in keeping with the Grimms' tone. She posted this catalogue last page, a suggestion why Yorkshire people are natural matches for such a project.

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 2d

What an opportunity! Four years in one of the most beautiful parts of the UK, Lake District on your doorstep etc, working with one of the cleverest, kindest, funniest people I know, on a FASCINATING topic!

Please share far and wide

🧪🏺👩‍🔬

Brenna Hassett @brennawalks.bsky.social · 2d

I'm hiring! 4 year post doc on my Wellcome Trust grant -- come be inventive about isotopes in teeth with me in PPN Turkiye :) www.lancashire.ac.uk/jobs/post-do...

please share!

Post Doctoral Research Assistant - 1160-25

Thinking of the next step in your career? Take a look at our exciting new role, Post Doctoral Research Assistant based at our Other. Find out more and apply he…

www.lancashire.ac.uk

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 3d

The right-wing campaign group that helped topple Roe v Wade in the US is now working to roll back abortion laws in the UK, with the help of Nigel Farage.

Its first step? Trying to create a debate around "free speech"
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/w...

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 5d

astrophysicists, please help a poor terrestrial palaeontologist out:

Did beryllium form in the first 3-5 minutes of the Big Bang, or not?

Nasa mentions it here, science.nasa.gov/universe/ove... but other places EXPLICITLY say there was only H, He and Li until star formation.

thank you!

Overview - NASA Science

The origin, evolution, and nature of the universe have fascinated and confounded humankind for centuries. New ideas and major discoveries made during the 20th

science.nasa.gov

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 6d

This sounds brilliant—you must know @ltbuck.bsky.social, but if not you have a fellow sinus fan nearby…

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 6d

"We document the participation of women in European academia [from the year 1000 to 1800]. A total of 108 women taught at universities or were members of academies of arts and sciences. Comparing them with 58,995 male scholars, we find that they were on average better."

doi.org/10.1093/ereh...

table 1 from David de la Croix, Mara Vitale, Women in European academia before 1800—religion, marriage, and human capital, European Review of Economic History, Volume 27, Issue 4, November 2023, Pages 506–532, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heac023

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Dr Alex Bond @thelabandfield.bsky.social · 6d

Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.

Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 6d

All my comics have happy endings!

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 6d

The thumbnail pic made me think this must be about albatross… i suppose humans are alright though

Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 6d

Jon Copley at Southampton has done sterling work in the octonauts/science field www.joncopley.com/blog_nov17b....

Prof Jon Copley

Prof Jon Copley - marine biologist & bathynaut

www.joncopley.com

Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 7d

Was the lower amplitude climate shifts through MIS9-7 still too inclement for hippos? It looks like, except again we have some intriguing hints from our island data. Very much a more work needed situation, especially as hippo sometimes just assumed to be mis5…

Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 7d

Did MIS6 cause local extirpation, then new immigration event (?from Africa? The near east?) in MIS5?

stage 6 is especially interesting to me from island fauna turnover perspective as we have hints of presence…

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 7d

The dating is tricky! And so is the taxonomy (antiquus vs amphibius). It looks like there are amphibius fossils ca400ka (also = LAD for antiquus in similar regions) in southern europe. But then a gap (w/ some uncertainty on ages)

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Brenna Hassett @brennawalks.bsky.social · 7d

This was stupidly fun to record 😂🤘

Greg Jenner @gregjenner.bsky.social · 7d

Delighted to say my new children’s audiobook is out today!

Totally Chaotic History: The Stone Age Runs Wild is a wild, funny rampage through 34 million years of human evolution and global prehistory. Cowritten with archaeologist @brennawalks.bsky.social, it’s out now!

youtu.be/OULXpXL6Tek?...

Totally Chaotic History: The Stone Age Runs Wild! by Greg Jenner | Book Trailer

YouTube video by Walker Books

youtu.be

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 7d

I am currently very into ice age hippos, and it is actually pretty amazing how much we DON’T know about their chronology given that they are used as a kind of indicator for MIS5e.

Here they are, lolloping about Europe in stage 4, for example (but for me, stage 6 is where I want answers!)

NEaar lab @neaarlab.bsky.social · 7d

Intriguing study just out in @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Patrick Arnold & Michi Hofreiter @unipotsdam.bsky.social showing hippos might have still been roaming central Europe in the last ice age www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧪🦛#quaternary

Ancient DNA and dating evidence for the dispersal of hippos into central Europe during the last glacial

Late Pleistocene hippo fossils (Hippopotamus amphibius) from Europe have generally been associated with the last interglacial period (Eemian, 129–115 …

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225012059🧪🦛#quaternary

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 7d

Hippos lollop, I think

Reposted by Tori Herridge

NEaar lab @neaarlab.bsky.social · 7d

Ancient DNA and dating evidence for the dispersal of hippos into central Europe during the last glacial

Late Pleistocene hippo fossils (Hippopotamus amphibius) from Europe have generally been associated with the last interglacial period (Eemian, 129–115 …

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225012059🧪🦛#quaternary

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Rowan Hooper @rowhoop.bsky.social · 8d

Vote for us! We are up for BEST SCIENCE PODCAST at the Signal Listener's Choice awards, please vote for THE WORLD, THE UNIVERSE AND US here: vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting...

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Dr Toby Driver @drtobydriver.bsky.social · 8d

We've finally made it to #HillfortsWednesday 🥳🛖

Here's a reconstruction of Buckspool coastal promontory fort in south Pembrokeshire, a craggy limestone headland defended by a set of intermittent banks & packed with house platforms 😮

Excavations in 2025 revealed a wealth of Roman finds 🏺

📷 My own

Drawing of a coastal fort seen from the air with many roundhouses inside & smoke rising

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Reposted by Tori Herridge

Adam Vaughan @adamvaughan.bsky.social · 9d

Renewables have overtaken coal in the global electricity mix for the first time, @ember-energy.org has found
www.linkedin.com/pulse/renewa...

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Tori Herridge @toriherridge.bsky.social · 9d

Normal service joyfully imaging Pleistocene moonrise can recommence

Knu-hu-t Morå @knut.dundasmora.no · 9d

When the Moon was just formed, it was spinning more, while now it's tidally locked to earth to only show one side. However,.throughout, the axis of rotation stays constant (conservation of momentum) so the north and south directions would stay the same