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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: Evolution
There are are couple of interesting pieces of research in the news. The first concerns tail shedding in island lizards. PhysOrg has the story:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:45 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Back on the 17th I wrote about a study that was supposed to appear in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study concerned the evolution of the MSX1 gene and its role in causing cleft lip and some skin derivative disorders....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Paleoanthropology
I'm not sure what the point of this post is, I'm just kind of thinking out loud and I'm sure that those who know a lot more about genetic analysis will be able to point out some errors in all...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:00 AM • 14 Comments •
Category: Sticklebacks
A number of people have emailed me a link to this story about "reverse evolution" in sticklebacks residing in Lake Washington. The basic story is that as Lake Washington was cleaned of its pollution sticklebacks went from being low plated...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:09 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Interesting Science News
Some interesting science stories for you....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 1:15 PM • •
Category: Bioarchaeology
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...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:28 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Anthropology
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!...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:20 PM • •
Category: Genetics
A short, interesting, and busy paper in Trends in Genetics looks at molecular evolution among tuataras and comes up with some interesting results....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:45 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Primatology
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?...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:14 PM • •
Category: Bioarchaeology
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases recently published an interesting article called On the Origin of the Treponematoses: A Phylogenetic Approach. The paper used data from 21 genetic regions in 26 geographically separated strains of the Treponema bacterium. Before looking at the...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:01 PM • 1 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
