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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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..." Mark Twain
"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..." Afarensis
"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity" Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!" Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind
"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..." Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..." The Simpsons
"This is between me and the vegetable..." Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors
"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..." Thea, Isle of the Dead
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views." Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man
"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny." George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree! Unknown
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you. Frederich Nietzsche
While I toil away in the blogmines, working on my take of the recent cladistic analysis of hominids I thought I would mention a few stories that I found to be interesting....
The BBC has an interesting, but sad, story called Botswana Bushmen refused borehole: The government of Botswana is refusing to allow Kalahari Bushmen access to a water borehole. In 2006, the Bushmen won a landmark legal victory against the government...
I received a press release earlier today that I thought I would pass on to those who might be interested. Normally, I just delete these things, but this one looks really fascinating:...
Razib mentioned this study of ancient DNA. Although the study is being billed as important because it allows us to gain an understanding of the biological history of the skeletons studied, the research will also allow us to gain some...
It happened while I was watching a show called Human Ape. In some ways the show was an interesting exploration of the differences between humans and apes. There was some interesting stuff I agreed with and there was some stuff...
The Four Stone Hearth volume 37 is up at A Hot Cup of Joe. Carl is to be commended on his creative and wonderful use of pulp SF to present the carnival. Well Done!...
The other day when I said blogging would be light I had the best of intentions, but like when Bill Dembski shouts"Waterloo" reality has conspired against me. The intertubewebnet thingy has thrown some interesting stories up into the cybersphere....
The website for Discover Magazine has an interesting article called Has Science Found a Way to End All Wars?. The article, ostensibly about Douglas Fry's book Beyond War seeks the opinion of a number of anthropologists, archaeologists and biologists (Frans...
About this time last year I wrote about a family in Turkey that engaged in quadrupedal locomotion. Kambiz has an interesting update on the story. Check it out!...
National Geographic has an interesting article about recent fossil finds that shed light on the ecological interaction between pandas and Gigantopithecus: Huang said he believes the ape lost out in a three-way struggle with giant pandas and early humans over...
National Geographics' Top Ten Archaeology Discoveries List can be found here. It contains more in the way of biological anthropology than does Archaeology magazines list (no surprise there). Unfortunately, National Geographic does include the Jesus tomb nonsense and the Japanese...
Archaeology Magazine has revealed their list of the top ten archaeological discoveries for 2007. They also added nine more that they thought were important. Not making either cut was the Bosnian pyramid. I'm sure you are all disappointed at that...