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 
There is another article on the subject here and you can find more information on what is being done to help here.
Wow, this is kind of weird:
A BIZARRE infectious cancer seems to be the cause of the fatal facial tumours that are wiping out Tasmanian devils, the world's largest surviving carnivorous marsupial.
*snip*
Now a team led by Anne-Maree Pearse of Tasmania's department of primary industries has performed a genetic analysis of tumour cells from 37 animals.Results from the first 11 animals reveal that all the tumours contain cells with 13 grossly abnormal chromosomes, instead of the usual 14 healthy ones (Nature, DOI:10.1038/439549a). They were genetically identical whatever their stage of development, suggesting they did not arise in the animals' own tissue. "The cancerous cell line is leading a sort of independent existence," Pearse says.
This cell line probably arose in one devil with a cancer, she says. Cancer genomes are usually very unstable, but somehow this line was stable and persistent. The only other known example of a similar "allograft" tumour disease, transmitted by direct transfer, is of a venereal sarcoma that is passed between dogs while mating.
Added Later: BBC News also has a story on it:
The devils usually have a life expectancy of about five years, but it is now unusual to see an animal over the age of three. Researchers estimate the wild population has fallen from 140,000 in the 1990s to 80,000.*snip*
"Devils jaw wrestle and bite each other a lot, usually in the face and around the mouth, and bits of tumor break off one devil and stick in the wounds of another," said Ms Pearse."We've found out how the disease is transmitted, which is a breakthrough in how we manage the wildlife population. "
*snip*
The authors suggest that close kinship and low genetic diversity among Tasmanian devils reduces their immune response to transplanted cancer cells, making it more likely that they will take hold.
Comments
There was a lengthy, and sad, story about this in the NY Times last year, and a long piece featuring recordings of the Devils' calls on NPR. The NPR piece should still be available; you can get the NYTimes article for a few bucks.
Here's the NPR link (and it features links to Austrailian sources): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4513438
Posted by: Ed Darrell
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February 2, 2006 3:30 AM