Afarensis: New Population of Orangutangs Discovered

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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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New Population of Orangutangs Discovered

Category: Primatology
Posted on: April 15, 2009 8:30 AM, by afarensis, FCD

According to National Geographic a new, and large, population of orangutangs has been discovered in the Indonesian sector of Borneo:

Combing through the island's East Kalimantan Province--part of Borneo's Indonesian sector--last December, conservationists discovered 219 orangutan nests.
The scientists used this number to make a wider estimate that the new population may contain up to two thousand Bornean orangutans.

More importantly:

But this newfound group faces few threats from humans, because the region's rocky landscape cannot be easily developed into plantations, Meijaard said.

Find more posts in: Humanities & Social Science

Comments

Read this a few days ago - what great news! And as much as I like reading about primates I'd never even heard of black-colored orangutauns before. Very cool.

Posted by: Frasque | April 15, 2009 11:32 AM

Thank you for mentioning this truly wonderful orangutan news on Afarensis!

Orangutans are still critically endangered in the wild. To learn more about them and see how you can help protect them please visit the Orangutan Outreach website.

Adopt an orangutan today!

Richard Zimmerman
Director, Orangutan Outreach
http://redapes.org
Reach out and save the orangutans!
Facebook Cause: http://causes.com/redapes

Posted by: Richard Zimmerman | April 15, 2009 11:40 AM

That's fantastic! Really good news.

Thanks for telling us about this, made my day.

Posted by: Gareth L Owen | April 15, 2009 2:15 PM

Wonderful news! I only hope they remain as protected and wild as they were before the discovery.

Posted by: Kris | April 16, 2009 9:04 AM

Great News!

BTW, do you have an ETA on that article on ape locomotion you mentioned a while back?

I'm looking forward to it.

Posted by: AK | April 16, 2009 10:51 AM

You can find the third post on the subject here and follow the links in the post to the first two...

Posted by: afarensis, FCD | April 16, 2009 11:53 AM

Actually, you recently said something about finishing it. Something to help incent: Functional morphology of the ankle and the likelihood of climbing in early hominins by Jeremy M. DeSilva, Published online before print April 13, 2009, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900270106.

I've only seen the abstract, but it looks interesting.

Posted by: AK | April 18, 2009 12:45 PM