SoS 258: Maggots on the Menu: Rethinking Hominin Diet with Melanie Beasley

In this fun and “soupy” episode, hosts Cara and Chris chat with Dr. Melanie Beasley about putrefied meat, maggots, stable isotopes, and media attention at the most inconvenient times. Dr. Beasley directs the BioAnth Isotope Ecology Research Laboratory (BIER Lab) at Purdue University. Her work focuses broadly on human-environment interactions throughout the hominin lineage when the environment is influencing our evolutionary history, in the Holocene when humans are influencing the availability of prey resources, and in modern forensic contexts when the environment imprints meaningful geolocation information in biological tissues. She uses stable isotope geochemistry to connect humans and the environment they live in to understand changing climate, resource availability, and life history. The use of stable isotope geochemistry and the big data generated by such an analytical method in anthropology has only scratched the surface of what it can offer to the discipline and its contributions to humanity’s grand challenges. Through her scholarship, she sees the Anthropology of Tomorrow as an interdisciplinary blending of the social and natural sciences in an applied approach that makes anthropology relevant to living communities. Dr. Beasley is also interested in science communication to engage with the public about anthropology. Please contact her via email if you are interested in working in the lab as an undergraduate or for enquiries about graduate student training. Dr. Beasley is accepting applications for future MA/PhD students. ------------------------------ Find the paper discussed in this episode: Beasley, M. M., Lesnik, J. J., & Speth, J. D. (2025). Neanderthals, hypercarnivores, and maggots: Insights from stable nitrogen isotopes. Science Advances, 11(30), eadt7466. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adt7466 ------------------------------ Contact Dr. Beasely: melmbeas@purdue.edu ------------------------------ Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and the Human Biology Association: Facebook: facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation/, Website: humbio.org, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, Co-Host Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, E-mail: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cara Ocobock, Co-Host Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Mecca Howe, SoS Co-Producer, HBA Fellow Email: howemecca@gmail.com