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Anthropology, Evolution and Science
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
Category: Sharks
But, it doesn't link Great Whites and Megalodon. Longtime readers may remember this three part series on the subject. An interesting new fossil has been discovered that sheds some more light on the subject....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:36 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Sharks
That is the name of his blog anyway. Apparently, though, Martin also studies fossils. National Geographic has the story - and this is the clever part - apparently he didn't even have to go out into the field: But Brazeau...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:53 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Sharks
MSNBC has video of a female frilled shark. From MSNBC News:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 1:22 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Biology
According to BBC News and Science a new species of hammerhead shark has been discovered of the coast of South Carolina. The new species is related to the scalloped hammerhead pictured below....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 6:18 PM • •
Category: Invertebrates
Martin Brazeau at The Lancelet has the video. Apparently, the octopus was moved into a shark tank and developed a regular habit of killing 3-4 foot sharks......
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:37 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Sharks
This is the final post in the series... I had originally planned the first post in this series as a companion piece to the Cheetah post for the Friday Ark. One of the points I wanted to address was the...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:10 PM • •
Category: Sharks
The Second in the series on Great Whites and Megalodon.... So the question becomes, if Megalodon did not evolve into great whites ( i.e., if they were not a chronospecies) then what happened to cause them to go extinct? One...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:04 PM • •
Category: Sharks
I am currently working on the second part in my "Evolution of Hominid Limbs" series. In the meantime, I thought I would pull some stuff from the archives and repost it here. This is the first of a three part...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:50 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Sharks
The above is, of course a hammerhead shark. Scientist plan on attaching tags on several of them, according to National Geographic News: In a few weeks, the marine scientist will attach satellite-tracking tags—by hand—to two of the 500-pound (230-kilogram),...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:27 PM • 2 Comments •
Orac 02.13.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
PZ Myers 02.02.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
