john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Upcoming appearance at AAA meetings

Tue, 2011-11-15 12:14 -- John Hawks

I will be at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association for the rest of this week, which are being held in Montreal, Canada. I'm presenting in an invited session organied by Karen Rosenberg and Rachel Caspari, titled "The Scars of Human Evolution". It's a great idea for a session focusing on those parts of our biology that one might consider negative legacies of evolutionary change in the past. The title is pulled from a classic article by Wilton Krogman, now published 60 years ago. I'll be talking about pseudogenes, in particular focusing on those cases where a broken version of a gene has had a selective advantage in our recent evolution.

There is much going on, including a session devoted to last year's #AAAfail er...communications breakdown: "Science in Anthropology: An Open Discussion". I'll be there taking notes.

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.