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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: Bioarchaeology
The Journal of Anthropological Archaeology has an interesting paper that addresses the issue of what population provided the trophy skulls. The question has, in the past, been part and parcel of the debate as to what the trophy skulls were...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:28 PM • •
Category: Osteology
According to National Geographic the remains of 72 Rwandan mountain gorillas are being exhumed for scientific study:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:15 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Osteology
Back in June I found part of a cervical vertebra. Today my dog brings me the distal epiphysis of a femur....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:55 PM • 7 Comments •
Category: Osteology
The American Museum novitates has an interesting paper - made all the more interesting by the fact that it is freely available for download. The main focus of the paper is to determine which craniodental measures give reliable estimates of...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:07 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Primatology
Science Daily has an interesting item called Canine Tooth Strength Provides Clues To Behavior Of Early Human Ancestors. It concerns a recent analysis of primate canine strength by Michael Plavcan and Christopher Ruff:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:19 PM • •
Category: Osteology
So, I get home from a Father's Day lunch and Mrs. afarensis observed that the front yard looked like it needed to be mowed. I didn't think this was a very nice thing to say to someone on Father's Day...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:45 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Bioarchaeology
There is an interesting new paper out in PNAS that looks at enamel chemistry to try and reconstruct early diet. The study is by Humphrey, Dean, Jeffries, and Penn. The abstract is below the fold....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:16 AM • •
Category: Archaeology
PNAS has an interesting paper on Mixtec cremations. I don't have a copy yet (so if someone could email me a copy I would be eternally grateful - leave a comment so others will know it has been sent). The...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:33 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Osteology
Greg Laden has a write up of the 1.1-1.2 MYA find at Atapuerca. I mentioned this story last year and the find has finally been published. I will have more to say about this in a later post (there are...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 4:13 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Bone Fragments
Bioarchaeologists and paleoanthropologists draw on a wide variety of methods in order to analyze bone. The exact technique depends upon the problem being addressed. One technique, associated mainly with Christopher Ruff, that has been around since the late 1970's involves...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:24 PM • 7 Comments •
