Nicola Jones

So... back in 1990 the world's scientists embarked on a massive project to sequence the human genome. Officially the project ended in 2003, but the first publication of the draft human genome appeared in Nature on 15 Feb 2001 to great fanfare; this month marked the 20th anniversary of that feat. To celebrate, Nature published a swath of commentaries and insights about the human genome. I had the pleasure of editing this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00314-6 And the anthropology journal I work for, SAPIENS, also hosted a column celebrating not just the human genome but the neanderthal one too, reflecting on what we've learned from both: https://www.sapiens.org/column/field-trips/human-genome-project-neanderthals/ In the Nature paper, the team dove through the landscape of publications on genes and other genetic material to map out how genetics has changed in 20 years. The upshot:  - research teams have gotten bigger, but the human genome project wasn't act...

If you have seen The Dig on Netflix (a great movie!), check out this amazing piece about the archaeology of the site. I had the great pleasure of commissioning and editing this one for SAPIENS. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/story-sutton-hoo/

The town I live in was recently affected by one of Canada's largest-ever landslides: in 2010, the Mount Meager landslide involved an astonishing 45 million cubic meters of debris, and triggered evacuations and flooding concerns in town. So it was exciting for me to write about another big landslide that nearly went un-noticed in the Canadian wildnerness, but which has had some weird impacts on the local landscape. Read my story in Hakai magazine. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/massive-landslide-cools-fjord/

Just in time for Valentine's day, I had the opportunity to interview love expert and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher (TED Talker, book author, and advisor to Match.com). Read about the biological reality of love, how that shows up in the brain, and what all that means for love matches. https://www.sapiens.org/biology/biological-anthropology-love/ PS: I took the quiz, for fun. Turns out I'm a pretty even split between the types Fisher has identified: ever-so-slightly more "director" than anything else, with "explorer" and "negotiator" tied for a close second, and "builder" trailing close behind. You?