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
Also, am evolutionary biologist who has never read On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life is going to read it and blog about it chapter by chapter. If you would like to join him, an online copy can be found here and a free pdf can be found here.
There are a number of websites out there, such as this one from the Smithsonian, that discuss human evolution and the fossil evidence for human evolution. They vary in quality and completeness and you might be tempted to ignore yet another. That would be a mistake with Hominin.net
The only relevant question at this point is the Discovery Institute keeps highlighting its own failings in this way. Why are Casey and his employers now -- three years after the Dover trial -- trying to rehabilitate the tattered credibility of both Michael Behe and Pandas? What mischief are they planning now?
Nick Matzke has a response to Luskin as well. Here is a juicy taste:
Luskin uses the awkward pharse "land-dwelling vertebrate" because he apparently knows only 3 things: (1) there is something called the "vertebrate blood-clotting system", (2) Ken Miller pointed out that whales/dolphins are missing a piece, and (3) Ken Miller pointed out that fishes are missing several pieces. So, like confidently ignorant creationists everywhere, Luskin naively and blissfully assumes that the little bit of knowledge that has been forced upon him by evolution educators represents the sum total of relevant knowledge, and that this knowledge represents reality. I.e., he assumes that "land-dwelling vertebrates" must have the canonical system found in humans and most mammals and diagrammed in Pandas and Darwin's Black Box.
National Geographic is reporting on the discovery of a new species of prehistoric cheetah discovered in China. The find dates to about 2.15-2.5 MYA. From National Geographic:
I meant to mention this before Christmas but somehow didn't get around to it. PhysOrg.com has an interesting article on the astronomical orientation of passage graves in Denmark.
Since 2004 the taxonomic status of Homo floresiensis has been one of the more hotly contested issues in paleoanthropology. I have 34 articles on the subject and there are some that I haven't acquired yet. The Journal of Human Evolution has four more papers on Homo floresiensis. One discusses the Liang Bua faunal sequence, a record that spans 95,000 years, and fills in the paleoenvironmental context of the finds. Two other papers describe the postcranial anatomy of all the Liang Bua homins. The fourth paper which looks at the LB1 cranium is, by far, the most interesting.
One of the more controversial stories in physical anthropology concerns the small bodied humans found on Palau. The finds were published back in March in PLoS. In that paper Berger et al argued that the material they found represents a population of Palauans that possibly were subject to island dwarfing (although they also imply that Palua could have been populated by small bodied humans who later grew larger). Berger et al also compare the remains to Homo floresiensis and make several suggestions anout small body size and primitive characteristics of the genus Homo (I'll return to this point later).
AsI mentioned yesterday, there is an interesting paper out on Homo floresiensis (actually there are several new papers on the subject). There is also a new paper out on the skeletons found by Berger on Palau. I'll get to both subjects over the next couple of days. In the meantime National Geographic is reporting on the discovery of mass graves at Himera. From National Geographic:
PhysOrg.com mentions that there is a new study out on Homo floresiensis. The new study takes an interesting approach:
Using 3D modeling methods, McNulty and his fellow researchers compared the cranial features of this real-life "hobbit" to those of a simulated fossil human (of similar stature) to determine whether or not such a species was distinct from modern humans.
As I mentioned the other day, there was an interesting exchange in PNAS concerning the impact hypothesis. The cause of the exchange was an article published in PNAS back in August.
Not really, it's more of a scrum as various archaeologists exchange letters over the idea that there was a meteor/asteroid/somethingorother impact over Canada that led to the Younger Dryas and contributed to the extonction of the megafauna. The letters can be found in the Early Edition for December 10th. Those of you who have access might find them interesting...
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would have more to say about primates, brain evolution, and life history. I still plan on exploring that in future posts, but wanted to mention this interesting item that deserves a post of its own.
Kambiz, the blogger at the always interesting Anthropology.net has announced that he is giving up blogging. He will be attending medical school for the next couple of years and needs to devote time to his studies. I have never meet Kambiz in person (I hope to someday) but I have corresponded with him for several years and know he will be an excellent med student. For those of you who are not familiar with Kambiz you should know that Kambiz is the host and main blogger of Anthropology.net. He assembled a fine stable of co-bloggers (including me for awhile), he was the driving force behind the Four Stone Hearth, was part of a team that created Forost, and also created a Hominin Fossil Database. I'm sure he will bring the same drive and creativity to his medical studies. Congratulations and good luck Kambiz! I'm sure you will be busy but keep in touch, the anthropological community will miss you.
Aydin Orstan is one of the more interesting bloggers (something you don't ordinarily expect from a malacologist) in the blogosphere, even if I don't mention him as often as I should. One of his readers asked him about the impact of blogging on the evolution/creationism debate (and I use the word debate loosely because, well, the creationist lost) and Aydin was kind enough to post his response. In light of the recent Cincinnati Zoo/Creation Museum kerfluffle I though Aydin's post was worth a shout out.
If I like what I see, I'll receive 5 more issues (6 in all) for just $19.95. If I'm not completely satisfied, I'll simply write "cancel" on the invoice and owe nothing. The free issue is mine to keep.
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 
