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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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Genetics:

Ancient DNA and 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...

Quadrupedal Family In Turkey: An Update

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!...

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?...

Syphilis: The View from 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...

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....

The Galapagos Hawk

Science Daily has an interesting article on the evolutionary history of the Galapagos hawk. Researchers analyzed the DNA of three species of parasites to work out the evolutionary history of the hawk:...

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...

FOXP2 and Echolocation

The FOXP2 gene has been been implicated in evolution of human language and now, according to Science Daily, the gene has a role in echolocation as well. The research is being published in PLOS One (I haven't had a chance...

Pigs and the Spread of Farming in Europe

Back in March I wrote a post about what the ancient pig DNA can tell us about the colonization of the Pacific Islands by Polynesians. A new article that will be published in PNAS, by the same group behind the...

The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species

The rest of posterior basicranial growth in nonhuman primates occurs through posterior drift of the foramen magnum, which has been shown by fluorochrome dye labeling experiments to migrate caudally in nonhuman primates through resorption at its posterior end and deposition...

ProteinTranscription Is Inefficient

At least that is what Science Daily is reporting:...

Ken Miller On Human Evolution

Ken Miller explains human chromosome #2......

Canine Coolness

Science Daily has an interesting article about mutations in dogs:...

Fiddler Crabs and Fruit Flies

A couple of interesting studies have come out recently. The first concerns sexual selection, predator avoidance and fiddler crabs. It is published in PLoS One....

And You Thought 'Possums Were Only Good For Stew

Some of the results from the sequencing of the Didelphis Monodelphis domestica genome are starting to come in. According to Science Daily some interesting stuff was found:...

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