john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Army ant chimpanzee toolkits

Sat, 2009-09-12 08:30 -- John Hawks

A nice story about Crickette Sanz' and David Morgan's work with chimpanzees of the Goualango Triangle, and the tools they use to forage for army ants:

Unlike other instances of chimp foraging of ants, these apes regularly used more than one implement to root out the insects. On average, tools were found in sets of three or four, although chimps assembled as many as 18 together.

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.