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 
As Kambiz points out F. Clark Howell has passed away. The NCSE Website has more. He was 77 and passed away due to lung cancer. As the NCSE points out:
Howell was a central figure in the development of paleoanthropology as a science in the second half of the 20th century. He pursued extensive and groundbreaking fieldwork on human evolution, archeology, and paleontology in Africa, Europe, and Asia. He was a pioneer in the organization of multi-disciplinary research teams, bringing together geologists, paleontologists, biologists, archaeologists, and physical anthropologists to investigate the fossil record of human evolution from many perspectives.
His dig at Omo was paleoanthropology done right and is considered a groundbreaking study, primarily due to the multidisciplinary nature of the dig. Ambrona and Torralba were also excavated under the direction of Howell. One could also mention the impact his paper "The Evolutionary Significance of Variation and Varities of 'Neanderthal' Man", published in the Quarterly Review of Biology in 1957, had on Neanderthal studies. I never had the opportunity to meet F. Clark Howell, but one of my teachers studied under him and admired him greatly. F. Clark Howell was a giant in the field and his passing will be sadly missed.
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