Quote: Matthias Höss on the fascination with ancient DNA
In 2000, Igor Ovchinnikov and coworkers sequenced part of the mitochondrial genome of an infant’s skeleton from Mezmaiskaya Cave, Russia: “Molecular analysis...
All posts tagged with history of paleoanthropology
Quote: Robert Broom has no apologies
Robert Broom, in the first paragraph of his paper, “Further Evidence on the Structure of the South African Pleistocene Anthropoids”, says it better than I co...
Quote: Loren Eiseley on the march of progress
In 1948, Scientific American published an article by the anthropologist Loren Eiseley, titled, “Antiquity of modern man”. In it, Eiseley conveyed some detail...
Quote: Arthur Keith on Weidenreich and Piltdown
In 1944, after receiving Franz Weidenreich’s monograph on the fossil sample from Choukoutien, China (now spelled as Zhoukoudian), Arthur Keith wrote a letter...
Quote: Sweeping out the cruft for cladistics in human origins
Eric Delson, Niles Eldredge, and Ian Tattersall in 1977 published on one of the first cladistic analyses of humans and our close relatives: “Reconstruction o...
Quote: No ‘anatomically modern’ elephants
In the field of human evolution, every so often a scientist will note the absurdity of talking about “anatomically modern humans”. Biologists don’t talk abou...
A story of Australian repatriation
The September issue of Smithsonian magazine has a feature article by Tony Perrottet recounting the burial ceremony for the “Mungo Man” skeleton, which happen...
Quote: Sherwood Washburn on intellectual traditions in human origins
Sherwood Washburn was a prominent biological anthropologist of the mid-twentieth century, best known as the architect of the “New Physical Anthropology” move...
Quote: Loren Eiseley on Neanderthal hybridization
Loren Eiseley was an anthropologist well known in the mid-twentieth century for his popular writing about human evolution and science more generally.
Quote: Weidenreich on the resistance to Neandertals as human ancestors
Franz Weidenreich, in his 1943 article, “The ‘Neanderthal Man’ and the ancestors of ‘Homo sapiens’” (p. 44):
Quote: Keith’s awkward analogy for Neanderthal dental anatomy
Here’s a painful analogy deployed by Arthur Keith (1924:253) for Neandertal dental anatomy:
Quote: Two competing hypotheses
A 2015 review paper on archaic human introgression by Fernando Racimo and coworkers has a wonderfully succinct summary of the modern human origins debate:
How many students in paleoanthropology can see casts of Australopithecus afarensis?
The other day I happened back upon an old post from 2005, the first full year of the blog: “NSF and data access”. The post recounts my perspective on the pro...
Lessons of Piltdown doubters
Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology has published a nice post about early doubters of the Piltdown fossils: “Piltdown Man and the Dualist Contention”.
Link: An appreciation of Frank Brown
Nature last week published an appreciation by Bernard Wood of the life and contributions of the late Frank Brown, who died earlier this fall: “Frank Brown (1...
Link: A short Sterkfontein history on its 80th anniversary
The discovery of hominin fossils at Sterkfontein, South Africa, was eighty years ago this year. Recognizing the occasion, Jason Heaton, Travis Pickering and ...
Quote: Tobias describes an endocast
Classic Phillip Tobias:
Quote: Earnest Hooton on the Taung Child
Earnest Hooton, discussing the Taung Child in Up from the Ape (p. 284):
Quote: Yves Coppens on the invasion of paleontologists in East Africa
Virginia Morell’s excellent biography of the Leakey family, Ancestral Passions, includes a great discussion of the aftermath of the innovation of potassium-a...
Quote: Robert Broom on the age of Australopithecus
In 1930, Robert Broom commented on the age of the Taung specimen. This is one of the earliest instances I have found of someone claiming that a fossil is “to...
Quote: Johanson on the thread of ancestry of Homo
Again from Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind today, Don Johanson describes his thoughts upon the question of whether to place the Hadar jaw remains (later at...
Quote: Johanson and Edey on why Lucy was not the holotype of Au. afarensis
From Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey, p. 288, a very good concise description of why Johanson and White did not choose...
Link: Why do humans have chins?
Ed Yong has an article in Atlantic on the mysterious evolution of the human chin: “We’re the Only Animals With Chins, and No One Knows Why”. He builds on a r...
How long does it take to publish new hominin species after discovery?
In an earlier post, I looked at descriptions of new hominin species during the last 25 years, to see how long they took from submission to acceptance in the ...
Hominin species and time in peer review
In 2015, two new hominin species were published: Australopithecus deyiremeda and Homo naledi. One of the criticisms I’ve seen of both discoveries is the idea...
When Australopithecus ramidus was the missing link
Ann Gibbons is a science writer specializing in paleoanthropology for the journal, Science. Her 2006 book, The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest...
Quote: George Grant MacCurdy on Piltdown
I was doing some reading about Piltdown for a project, and ran across a 1916 article by George Grant MacCurdy in Science reviewing diverse opinions about the...
A paleoanthropological Thanksgiving
This is Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S., and friends on my social feeds have been forwarding a proverb: “When you have more than you need, build a longer ta...
Quote: Tim White on stumbling fieldworkers
Tim White, from an essay in 2000:
Quote: Louis Leakey on Homo habilis as non-intermediate
Louis Leakey, writing in Nature in 1966 as part of a defense of the Homo habilis definition:
Link: A visit to Ethiopian paleoanthropology
I’m frankly amazed I didn’t link to this Nautilus article when it came out last year: “Digging Through the World’s Oldest Graveyard”. In it, Amy Maxmen trave...
Photo: Sterkfontein
This morning I went on an awesome visit to Sterkfontein, guided through the subterranean parts of the excavations by site manager Dominic Stratford. What an ...