Putting together australopithecine diets
Peter Ungar and Matt Sponheimer earlier this fall Ungar:Sponheimer:2011 reviewed the evidence for diet in early hominins, from both microwear studies (Ungar’...
All posts tagged with A. anamensis
Why didn't they let Kenyanthropus save them?
In the fossil record, a species is a hypothesis. We can’t test that hypothesis in the way we do with living animals. Even in the dark, after all the paleonto...
The teeth that didn't bark
Earlier in the week, I wrote about the new interpretation of fossil teeth from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia (“Woranso-Mille: A ladder not a bush”). There was one ...
Woronso-Mille: A ladder not a bush
In a new paper, Yohannes Haile-Selassie and colleagues describe new hominin fossils from Woranso-Mille, Ethiopia. A good thing: It gives somebody like me a r...
Galili femoral anatomy
Elizabeth Culotta reports from the Vertebrate Paleontology meetings about an analysis of the hominid femur from Galili, Ethiopia.
Miocene hominids and a crisis of confidence
Out of this week's Science Times special on evolution, I clicked into John Noble Wilford's article first, titled "The Human Family Tree Has Become a Bush Wi...
"Spacecraft all over the Pliocene"
Rex Dalton has a great two-page article in Nature about the bush vs. ladder dispute. It keys off of the Middle Awash Australopithecus anamensis article by Wh...
A ladder, not a bush?
Tim White and colleagues (2006) report on new fossils from Aramis and a new site, Asa Issie, with estimated dates between 4.1 and 4.2 million years ago.
Tilting at absent Asian australopithecines
In Nature a couple of weeks ago, Robin Dennell and Wil Roebroeks had a provocative paper exploring the possibility that early humans (i.e. Homo erectus) ori...
Tuber or not tuber? Rats are the question
From a new paper by Greg Laden and Richard Wrangham:
The knuckle-walking anteater
Caley Orr (Personal page, Arizona State University) has an advance paper in AJPA examining convergent features in the wrists of knuckle-walking hominoids an...
Sterkfontein Member 2 paleoenvironment
Pickering and colleagues (2004) examine the fauna from Sterkfontein Member 2, coming to the following conclusion:
Earliest hominids :: thoughts and roundup
Today I lectured on the earliest hominid samples for my graduate course on australopithecines. This is the first time I have been able to give a full lectur...
Ardipithecus remains from Gona
News story at MSNBC
Australopithecus anamensis: overview
Note: I wrote this post in 2004. Much additional evidence about Au. anamensis has come to light since that time. Later posts present more up-to-date informat...