john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

"Changing humans in a changing environment"

Sun, 2011-10-09 11:42 -- John Hawks

This Friday, October 14, I'll be appearing in Anaheim, CA, at the National Association of Biology Teachers conference. I'm part of a symposium sponsored by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), titled "Changing humans in a changing environment."

It's a fantastic set of presentations on human evolution from the behavior of our ape relatives, the origin and evolution of Homo and new insights coming from ancient genomes (that's my part). The other presenters are Jill Pruetz, Rick Potts and Susan Antón. The symposium will be webcast live, and I can share the instructions for seeing it in progress:

Even if you can’t make it to this year’s meeting in Anaheim, you can still watch the symposium via live webcast.Tune in Friday, October 14 from 4:30-8:30 PM EST (1:30-5:30 PM PST).

To view the live, free webcast, simply go to http://dukeuniversity.acrobat.com/nabt2011 at 1:30 pm Pacific/4:30 pm Eastern and log in as a guest. (Note: We suggest you do this in advance to test the connection and make sure you can access the site without problems. When you log in successfully you'll see a "Congratulations" message. If you have problems, please contact eog@nescent.org.)

I think I'm fourth in the order, and my presentation is titled, "New discoveries from ancient genomes". That's pretty much what all of my talks are titled lately, but many discoveries actually are new in each one. I'm reporting things as we figure out how to do them!

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.