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Afarensis

Anthropology, Evolution and Science

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afarcomp3.jpg 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


But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence


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Evolution:

Cichlids, Darwin's Finches, and Paranthropus boisei

Cichlids are an example of what Mary Jane West-Eberhard calls a "multidirectional radiation" - that is an adaptive radiation that produces a large amount of diversity and specialization of related forms. There are at least 1,500 species of haplochromine cichlids....

More Evolutionary Studies on Lizards

A number of people have written on the recent news about the speedy evolution of some lizards. There is another study, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology that has some interesting evolutionary implications....

Snake's Legs and Ninety Two Million Year Old Fossils

The BBC has an interesting story about the use intense x-rays at the ESRF in France to image the hidden second leg of a fossil Eupodophis descouensi:...

National Geographic Made Me Throw Stuff At My TV Today

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...

Molecular Evolution and "Living Fossils"

A short, interesting, and busy paper in Trends in Genetics looks at molecular evolution among tuataras and comes up with some interesting results....

Lemurs! The Evil Greg Laden Beat Me To The Lemurs

Greg scooped me on the lemur research but that's okay because I beat him to the gorilla sex story. So, what is the story about?...

Interesting Science News: Mainly But Not Exclusively Anthropologically Related

Science Daily reports on an interesting new application of Radiocarbon dating: From the end of World War II and up until about 1960, the superpowers of the Cold War era, conducted nuclear tests, detonating bombs into the atmosphere. These detonations...

Blind Cavefish and Vision in Beetles

There are two interesting vision related studies out. National Geographic has the first, Blind Cavefish Can Produce Sighted Offspring:...

The Difference Between a Just So Story and a Theory Backed By Evidence

Science News Daily has an interesting article that illustrates the difference between a "just so" story and a theory backed by evidence....

Book Review: Mammoths, Giants of the Ice Age, Rev. Ed.

Adrian Lister and Paul Bahn have come out with a revised edition of Mammoths: Giants of the Ice Age and I am happy to report that I have received and avidly read a review copy....

Book Review: How and Why Species Multiply:The Radiation of Darwin's Finches

How and Why Species Multiply:The Radiation of Darwin's Finches is the second volume in the Princeton Series in Evolutionary Biology and fully earns its place in that series....

Carnivorous Fungi from Cretaceous

I'm at home today due to a nasty cold. I hadn't planned on writing much, but couldn't resist mentioning this. National Geographic has a story on carnivorous fungi trapped in amber. The find dates to the Cretaceous (~100 MYA)....

Interesting Origins of Life Research in PNAS

Science Daily has some interesting news about origins of life research. The research concerns the origins of adenine:...

Protein Evolution and Metabolic Rate

This is cool! Science Daily is reporting on an interesting study of protein evolution:...

Whoa! Sticklebacks Are Amazing

Science Daily has an interesting article about sticklebacks:...

FoxP2 and Echolocation in Bats and Whales

As I mentioned previously PLOS has an interesting paper on echolocation in bats and whales (you may also recall this post on echolocation in whales). The PloS One paper looks at the FoxP2 gene in bats, cetaceans and various other...

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