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 
Not literally, of course. They have published two papers that are extremely interesting. The first article, published in PLOS Biology, discusses the complete sequencing of the mitochondrial genome of the American mastadon. The data is then used to examine the phylogeny of the Elephantidae.
Previous studies indicated that African elephants arose about six million years ago, followed a short time later by Asian elephants and woolly mammoths. One of the key differences between this study and previous attmpts to sort out the phylogeny of elephants and mammoths is that previous studies used distant relatives - the dugong and the hyrax - as outgroups. This study, in contrast, uses the mastadon. Results come out roughly the same. African elephants split off from Asian elephants and the mammoth 7.6 MYA while the Asian elephant split from the mammoth 6.7 MYA (it should be noted that the CI for the former is 6.6-8.8 MYA, while for the latter it is 5.8 to 7.7 MYA. This roughly brackets previous estimates).
The second article is even more interesting. On the down side Science Daily manages to totally mangle the explanation (I can see ID types quote mining the hell out of the Science Daily piece) of the research. The paper in question looks at the evolutionary transitions from fins to limbs. Specifically, the article looks at the expression of the HoxD cluster early in the embryological development of the catshark. The results have some interesting implications for the evolution of the digits. Not being a developmental biologist I will let others explain it (especially since I haven't finished reading it yet). In the meantime, I do recommend that you read it yourself....
Oops, I gues you can't read it for yourself without a link to the paper.
Comments
Shark fin link?
Posted by: coturnix | August 16, 2007 1:17 PM
Not to quibble, but - in my assessment - Science Daily is merely a repository of press releases written by writers/press officers at universities, research orgs, etc. Very similar to Eurekalert, but with better organization and more color. So, if there is a problem with the Science Daily story, it's actually a problem with the university-written press release. Science Daily does not seem to produce their own content - with the exception of a nut graph at the beginning of most stories.
U of Florida release:
http://news.ufl.edu/2007/08/14/findigit/
Science Daily link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070814212149.htm
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. But I wouldn't rag on Science Daily too much.
Posted by: deskzombie | August 16, 2007 2:15 PM
Yahoo! It's only a matter of time now before we know the genome of the Dwarf Mammoth of Catalina Island, California, and other venues. Does it share an oxymoron gene with the Jumbo Shrimp?
But seriously, PLoS rocks!
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | August 16, 2007 5:47 PM
Oh, you've only just seen this. I blogged on the mastadon weeks ago. :-)
And I included testicles!
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | August 19, 2007 3:15 AM
When I read the bit about primates the first thing I thought of was the hominoid rate slowdown hypothesis...
Posted by: afarensis, FCD | August 19, 2007 11:18 AM