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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: Paleontology
PhysOrg.com has an interesting, but ultimately uninformative, write up of some research that will be appearing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Here is the context:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:08 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Blogs of Note
Like every blogger I accumulate more links to interesting blogs and websites than you can shake a stick at. I am also, like many bloggers, behind in updating my blogroll. Just today I received an email telling me about a...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:49 PM • •
Category: Blogs of Note
This is really interesting. Scientists at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa are dissecting a pygmy right whale, you can read all about it at their blog. One interesting bit concerns a common creationist claim about whales:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:05 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Bats
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...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:54 PM • •
Category: Biology
Science Daily has an interesting article up about the evolution of echolocation in toothed whales. The research behind the article was published in Lethaia....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:02 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Whales
National Geographic has some interesting video of humpback whales using bubblenets to capture herring. Check it out!...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 6:31 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Whales
Zimmers' wonderful post on baleen whales is a must read. Suffice to say, whale evolution is much cooler than I thought (and I thought it was pretty cool to begin with). Wilkins also has an interesting post on the barnacle...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:19 PM • •
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
Orac 11.06.2009
Orac 11.05.2009
revere 11.07.2009
