Anthropology, Evolution and Science
Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain
"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis
"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind
"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons
"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors
"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man
"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence
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May 9, 2008
Category: Blogs of Note • Whales
This is really interesting. Scientists at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa are dissecting a pygmy right whale, you can read all about it at their blog. One interesting bit concerns a common creationist claim about whales:
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:05 AM • 0 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 8, 2008
Category: Anthropology • Insanity • Interesting Science News • Paleoanthropology
While I toil away in the blogmines, working on my take of the recent cladistic analysis of hominids I thought I would mention a few stories that I found to be interesting.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:53 PM • 0 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 7, 2008
Category: Archaeology • Book Review
When I first heard about this book I knew I would have to review it. The question of who owns the items archaeologists dig up has been the subject of a long, and frequently bitter, debate. Here in the United States the debate centers around NAGPRA and the repatriation of human remains and artifacts. In other areas of the world the debate concerns cultural knowledge (think ethnopharmacology) and even genetics. Indigenous peoples are pitted against archaeologists, and in turn, the archaeologists are pitted against museums. The debate doesn't end there though, consider the case of the Elgin Marbles which pits the nations of Greece and Britain against each other. As we will see below, the debate gets a very complicated very quickly, especially when nationalism gets involved.
I myself have always been moderately conservative on the issue. In general I think there is something to be said for repatriation of human remains and artifacts to the cultures that produced them, although I think we should exercise some caution and forethought. Consequently, I found Who Owns Antiquity? to be somewhat congenial to my point of view.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:23 PM • 5 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 5, 2008
Category: Forensic Anthropology
There are a couple of interesting news items relating to forensic anthropology. First, this short piece on Beth Murray and forensic anthropology in high schools.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:12 AM • 0 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 4, 2008
Category: Evolution • Paleoanthropology
Cichlids are an example of what Mary Jane West-Eberhard calls a "multidirectional radiation" - that is an adaptive radiation that produces a large amount of diversity and specialization of related forms. There are at least 1,500 species of haplochromine cichlids. Within Lake Victoria there are at least 120 species that display a wide variety of behavioral and morphological specializations.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 1:00 PM • 1 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 3, 2008
Category: Books
Okay, I'm back. My haul is below, in no particular order.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 4:45 PM • 7 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
Category: Administrative
Even though I have a ton of stuff to right about - the new paper on Paranthropous boisei for example - blogging will be light. Why?
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:34 PM • 3 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
May 1, 2008
Category: Archaeology
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has declared that the Month of May is Preservation Month:
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:42 PM • 1 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
Category: Paleoanthropology
It was published last month in C. R. Palevol 7 (2008) 51-60.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:19 AM • 4 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
April 30, 2008
Category: Bats
The BBC has a story about bat, suffering from hunger, who are out foraging in daylight:
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:31 AM • 1 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
April 29, 2008
Category: Archaeology
The Crow Canyon Newsletter has an interesting review of Archaeological Ethics and Law by Walter Lipe. The material covered is pretty basic and should be familiar to most archaeology students and working archaeologists. The article is more for those who don't know that much about archaeology. The article also contains links to theState Historic Preservation Legislation Database, the Laws, Executive Orders & Regulations concerning archaeology and preservation, and Federal Historic Preservation Laws. Check it out...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 2:00 PM • 0 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
Category: Current Events
Ed mentions that the Supreme Court a federal judge has struck down Gideon Bible distribution at schools. Interestingly enough, some people tried to distribute Gideon's Bibles at my daughter's high school last week. The principals discovered it and made them leave school property, so they had to stand across the street and pass them out. Kudos to the principals, especially because they actually spent most of the day outside making sure the Gideon's people stayed off school property.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:54 AM • 6 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
April 27, 2008
Category: Archaeology • Interesting Science News • Paleopathology
Physorg.Com has an interesting story concerning two skeletons found in a viking ship burial discovered in Norway in the early 1900's (the ship burial dates to 843). Recent DNA and x-ray evidence indicates that one of individuals had cancer:
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:14 PM • 5 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
April 26, 2008
Category: Administrative
Can someone out there send me the two articles below?
Google Earth, GIS, and the Great Divide: A new and simple method for sharing paleontological data
A new archaic Homo sapiens fossil from Lake Eyasi, Tanzania
Please leave a note in comments, so I don't get more than one each...my email is in the contact tab.
Update 1: I have them now...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:53 PM • 2 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
Category: Evolution
A number of people have written on the recent news about the speedy evolution of some lizards. There is another study, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology that has some interesting evolutionary implications.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 6:15 PM • 0 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
Category: Blogs of Note • Geology
I just stumbled across a new blog on Geology that looks quite promising. The blog is called Antimonite. Who writes it?
The author of this blog is a Swedish student of geology at the department of Geoscience at the University of Lund. I have studied a great deal before going for geology. Basically lurking around different departments since 1998. My academical passions outside of geology includes history, religious studies, philosophy, astronomy and technology. Besides that I like to read science fiction, watch movies and debate (and obviously taste) aged rum.
Go check it out. The first couple of posts are interesting.
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 4:12 PM • 3 Australopithecines &bull View blog reactions
