Al-Shamahi specialises in finding fossils in Palaeolithic caves in unstable and hostile territories, such as Syria, Iraq, Nagorno-Karabakh and Yemen.
[2] In early 2018 her team set off on a cement cargo ship through the Indian Ocean, where they were at risk of running into Somali pirates, and reached Socotra after three days.
[15] In 2019 Al-Shamahi presented an episode for Horizon called Body Clock: What Makes Us Tick?, for which she locked a test subject in an underground bunker for 10 days.
[17] In episode 2 of the three-part series, she reports on the discovery of one of the world’s largest collections of prehistoric rock art that has been discovered in the Amazonian rainforest.
[18] In 2020 Al-Shamahi and well-known naturalist Chris Packham, presented a BBC Two natural history documentary centred on a waterhole in the Mwiba Wildlife Reserve in northern Tanzania.
Al-Shamahi, along with the country’s leading frontline science organisations, investigated the causes of the crisis - how much is due to pollution, fishing, ship strikes and other human activities?
It presents an historical overview of the human handshake from its origins (at least seven million years ago) all the way to its sudden disappearance in March 2020 (due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
One reviewer called the book “a fabulously sparky, wide-ranging and horizon-broadening little study, examining this most ancient of human gestures from a multitude of viewpoints”.