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 are a number of interesting anthropology stories in the news. My picks below the fold.
Kambiz mentions new dates for some old footprints:
The three sets of prints from Roccamonfina show that these individuals were fully bipedal and were navigating a steep descent. The tracks have some sharp hairpin turns, indicating at times they were negotiating some precarious moments. There's even evidence of slipping, an occasional hand print shows up from time to time, suggesting someone wiped out a couple times.
You will have to follow the link to find out more.
The rest of these come from PhysOrg.com.
Let's start with New fossil reveals primates lingered in Texas:
"After several years of collecting new fossils, reviewing Texas' primate community and comparing it to other places in North America, we found a much more diverse group of primate species in Texas than we expected," Kirk said. "It seems that primates stuck around in Texas much longer than many other parts of the continent because the climate stayed warm for a longer period of time. While primate diversity was falling off precipitously in places like Utah and Wyoming during the late middle Eocene, west Texas provided a humid, tropical refuge for primates and other arboreal (tree-inhabiting) animals."
While it is widely accepted that modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa 150-200 thousand years ago, their route of dispersal across the hyper-arid Sahara remains controversial. The Sahara covers most of North Africa and to cross it on foot would be a serious undertaking, even today with the most advanced equipment.Well-documented evidence shows there was increased rainfall across the southern part of the Sahara during the last interglacial period (130-170 thousand years ago). The Bristol University team, with collaborators from the universities of Southampton, Oxford, Hull and Tripoli (Libya), investigated whether these wetter conditions had reached a lot further north than previously thought.
Anne Osborne, lead author on the paper said: "Space-born radar images showed fossil river channels crossing the Sahara in Libya, flowing north from the central Saharan watershed all the way to the Mediterranean. Using geochemical analyses, we demonstrate that these channels were active during the last interglacial period. This provides an important water course across this otherwise arid region." The critical 'central Saharan watershed' is a range of volcanic mountains formerly considered to be the limit of this wetter region.
Gorilla study gives clues to human language development:
Psychologist Dr Gillian Sebestyen Forrester developed a new method of analysing the behaviour of gorillas in captivity and found there was a right-handed bias for actions that also involved head and mouth movements. The right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, which is also the location for language development.The findings could provide major clues as to how language developed in humans. Dr Sebestyen Forrester says: "We shared 23 million years of evolution with great apes and then diverged approximately six million years ago. Gorillas have highly-complex forms of non-verbal communication. I think we are looking back at what sort of communication skills we may have once had."
Despite 'peacenik' reputation, bonobos hunt and eat other primates too:
The researchers have now seen three instances of successful hunts in which bonobos captured and ate their primate prey. In two other cases, the bonobo hunting attempts failed. The data from LuiKotale showed that both bonobo sexes play active roles in pursuing and hunting monkeys. The involvement of adult females in the hunts (which is not seen in chimps) may reflect social patterns such as alliance formation and cooperation among adult females, they said.
Finally, Why do women get more cavities than men?:
"The role of female-specific factors has been denied by anthropologists, yet they attain considerable importance in the model proposed here, because the adoption of agriculture is associated with increased sedentism and fertility," Lukacs said. "I argue that the rise of agriculture increased demands on women's reproductive systems, contributing to an increase in fertility that intensified the negative impact of dietary change on women's oral health. The combined impacts of increased fertility, dietary changes and division of labor during the move into agricultural societies contributed to the widespread gender differential observed in dental caries rates today."
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
Thank you for these very interesting links. I saw the one on the bonobo hunting earlier, though and I'd like to make a little correction. Jane Goodall, who published the first major study of chimps back in 1986, noted that female chimps did in fact hunt. They did so less often than males, but she noted some who were quite good at it. In fact, a mother-daughter pair, Passion and Pom, engaged in the anomalous behavior of hunting the infant chimps of their fellow chimps! It was mainly females carrying infants who stayed out of the hunts according to her. In "The Chimpanzees of Gombe" she devotes pp. 304-312 solely to females hunting.
Posted by: DianaGainer | October 16, 2008 2:09 PM
@DianeGainer: I guess the distinguishing factor is that this study is about Bonobos. Bonobos are closely related to the chimpanzees made famous by Goodall, but very different in many physical and social ways.
One of the noted difference is that Bonobos appear to be more egalitarian and non-violent. They tend to resolve tribal tensions with a nice orgy instead of, say, smashing someone over the head. They also have a less meat-dependent diet, so hunting habits are very different.
Posted by: clvrmnky | October 17, 2008 9:28 AM