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...
All posts tagged with Paranthropus boisei
What do we know about early hominin relationships?
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...
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’...
Meet Australopithecus boisei
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....
No brain expansion in Australopithecus boisei
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...
Nutcracker Man debunked
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 ...
Papyrus and A. boisei
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...
Shrinking erectus
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...
Average diet versus extreme diet in robust australopithecines
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...
An interview with Michelle Drapeau
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 ...
An interview with 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...
Big arms, small sacrum
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 ...
Olduvai overlap
Rex Dalton reports in this week's Nature on permit problems in Olduvai Gorge:
Lizard dimorphism, ecology, and hominids
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...
Sterkfontein variability
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...
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 ...
The Ultimate Survivor!
OK, I was drawn in by the first few minutes, so I'm liveblogging the National Geographic show, "The Ultimate Survivor."
Variation in Australopithecus boisei
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...
Brain expansion in A. boisei
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...