The Genographic Project
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Recent Posts
Technological sophistication of the earliest toolmakers
One study reported at the meetings brought to mind a growing literature on the sophistication of Pliocene archaeological assemblages, grouped as "Oldowan" o...
Thoughts on the Sahelanthropus reconstruction
I am at the AAPA meeting in Milwaukee this week, and so posting is by necessity very light. However, the news of the new Sahelanthropus remains and CT recon...
The KNM-ER 42700 calvaria
One of the highlights of the scientific program of the meetings was Fred Spoor's paper on the new cranial vault from Ileret, KNM-ER 42700. It is difficult t...
Retractions dept.
...wherein I disavow any suggestion that LB1 or any of the Flores fossils are australopithecines.
AAPA Meetings 2005
Now back from the meetings, I wanted to give my sincere thanks to all those who introduced themselves and had kind words about the weblog. I'm really glad ...
Cerebellar expansion in recent human evolution
Weaver (2005) examined the size ratio of the cerebellum and neocortex in fossil hominid brains. The division between the cerebellum and the cortex is one of...
Bringing down "Goliath"
This post is from 2005. More recent research has shifted much of what scientists used to think about Middle Pleistocene hominins in Africa. This research is ...
Proximal radius variation in hominoids
Patel (2005) examines the morphology of the proximal radius in different species of apes. He sets the work into the context of earlier work on hominid posit...
Dmanisi in National Geographic
The article in the April 2005 National Geographic about Dmanisi has some interesting details that have not been made public before. The feature of the artic...
Caring for the edentulous
One of the features of the National Geographic (April 2005) article on Dmanisi is the discussion of the necessity of other people to aid and care for the ol...
The evolution of crying
Carl Zimmer has a very nice piece on the evolution of crying and colic on his weblog, The Loom.
PhyloCode and human evolution
The April issue of Discover has a feature article on PhyloCode, focusing on the roles of Jacques Gauthier and Kevin de Queiroz in trying to revise the code ...
A show of "no support"
In an article about the controversy over the Liang Bua fossils, Rex Dalton of Nature inserts this non sequitur:
The origin and evolution of the Western diet
There is a very nice review paper with that title in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, by Loren Cordain and colleagues. The basic story is in the ...
Have the hobbits been protsched?
USA Today has a feature article about the damage to the Liang Bua fossils upon their return from Yogyakarta. The article is available online, but the pictu...
Selection and drift in early Homo
Ackermann and Cheverud (2004) consider the pattern of selection necessary to change a nonrobust australopithecine cranium (i.e. Sts 5) into a robust austral...
The Ultimate Survivor!
OK, I was drawn in by the first few minutes, so I'm liveblogging the National Geographic show, "The Ultimate Survivor."
Where did pigs come from?
A study of pig mtDNA sequences by Greger Larson and colleagues in Science establishes that domesticated pigs originated in multiple geographic locations fro...
The Singing Neandertal
Is it just me, or does this remind anyone of "The Dancing Cavalier" from Singin' in the Rain?