No Australopithecus boisei from the Afar
I was reading Scott Simpson and colleagues’ article from March 2014, “The female Homo pelvis from Gona: Response to Ruff (2010)”, in which they go through re...
I was reading Scott Simpson and colleagues’ article from March 2014, “The female Homo pelvis from Gona: Response to Ruff (2010)”, in which they go through re...
Ten years ago I published a paper on the failure of cladistics to resolve questions of early hominin relationships. My study used computer simulation to prod...
Peter Ungar and Matt Sponheimer earlier this fall Ungar:Sponheimer:2011 reviewed the evidence for diet in early hominins, from both microwear studies (Ungar’...
The robust australopithecines existed between 2.5 and 1.5 million years ago. At this station are skeletal remains from two kinds of robust australopithecine....
The endocranial volumes estimated for late Australopithecus boisei specimens (e.g., after 1.8 Ma) are larger than those of earlier specimens. Elton et al (20...
This week, Thure Cerling and colleagues report in PNAS (2011) carbon stable isotope data from 24 specimens of Australopithecus boisei. This is a huge sample ...
I’ve had on my stack for quite a long time, a short paper by Nicholas van der Merwe and colleagues, assessing the stable carbon isotope ratios in several spe...
Ann Gibbons reports on the AAPA meetings with a story about all the Homo erectus pelvis and stature papers (“Human ancestor caught in the midst of a makeover...
I've followed the literature on early hominid diets from the beginning of the weblog. In 2005 I discussed Peter Ungar's analyses of dental occlusal morpholo...
I've been trying to spread the interviews across the field in various directions. I (virtually) talked with Mica Glantz about Neandertals, Adam Van Arsdale ...
After my Q and A with paleoanthropologist Mica Glantz, I got a lot of great response -- people really liked reading about work in the field from somebody ot...
In case you're following the debate about Homo habilis limb proportions, there's a new contribution by Martin Haeusler and Henry McHenry in the JHE holding ...
Rex Dalton reports in this week's Nature on permit problems in Olduvai Gorge:
You know I like the lizard analogies for human evolution -- I wrote about limb length and predation last time around -- and now we have another paper from J...
In a 2002 paper on cranial remains from Sterkfontein, Lockwood and Tobias write the following in a section called "Are there multiple hominin species from S...
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 ...
OK, I was drawn in by the first few minutes, so I'm liveblogging the National Geographic show, "The Ultimate Survivor."
Wood and Lieberman (2002) attempt to systematize the variation in fossil A. boisei. Their hypothesis is that some kinds of craniodental variables may be exp...
Elton and colleagues (2001) examined the record of brain size in early Homo with the following question in mind: we know that brain size increased in this l...