July 2025. After months of eagerness following the preliminary results, I can finally share the biggest step of my career so far: I am now officially the principal investigator (PI) and coordinator of my own interdisciplinary project. 🥹 For the next three years, I will be coordinating the project "Elucidating human-megafauna interactions in the Pleistocene of Brazil by integrating taphonomic and paleoecological approaches" at Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil, funded by CNPq. I'm excited to visit collections, strengthen national and international collaborations, teach and supervise students, and, of course, sunsets at Ipanema beach. 🏖️
April 2025. I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to chair my first symposium at this year's SAA in Denver, Colorado. The session "Beyond Pre-Clovis: Human occupation in the Americas during the Last Glacial Maximum and the perpetual debate" had 8 communications covering works from archaeology, paleontology, ethnology, and linguistics that contribute to this topic. Thank you to all the participants and attendees who were present! 🌎
December 2024. It was an honor to participate in this AP article about the peopling of the Americas and early human interaction with megafauna. I hope academic and non-academic audiences enjoy learning more about the big questions and the recent discoveries on these topics, including my recent and current research. 🥰
October 2024. It was a pleasure and an honor to be interviewed by Chihiro Kai about my work with megafauna (especially giant ground sloths) and human interaction with these animals in South America for this special issue in celebration of 2024's Sloth Day in Smithsonian Voices: Meet the Scientist Decoding Human History in South America Through Giant Ground Sloth Fossils.🥰
April 2024. I am thrilled to share that I hold now my first faculty title of Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology of the University of New Mexico. It is an honor to be able to collaborate and contribute to their paleoecological research!
November 2023. The documentary "Ice Age America" is now available for the USA on Discovery+ and MAX. In this documentary by Yap Films about the Ice Age peopling of the Americas, I share my recent PhD work with the giant sloth ornaments from Santa Elina, Brazil.
September 2023. I'm beyond happy to share that I'm starting a fellowship as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., USA. Looking forward to all the professional and personal adventures I'm going to experience during this time! 😍
August 2023. The giant sloth bone artifacts from Santa Elina are highlighted as the "bone tool of the month" on the Worked Bone Research Group website. Thanks to Hans Christian Küchelmann for adding them to the website.
July 2023. I'm very happy to share that our recent paper (Pansani et al., 2023) has been featured in several media sources, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, Live Science, The Brazilian Report, and Folha de São Paulo. 🤩
February 2023. It is on air the documentary "Amérique: la nouvelle histoire des premiers hommes" by Yap Films/Bellota films. Available on ARTE TV in France. You can learn here a little bit about the significance of the Santa Elina rock shelter in Brazil, and watch me talking about my Ph.D. on the human modification of giant sloth bones into personal ornaments around 27,000 years ago in Brazil!