Finding Bones: The Mystery Continues
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 •
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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: 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: 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 •
Category: Bone Fragments
Before going further, let me remind readers of the purpose behind "What We Can Learn From Bones." Creationists like to make two main claims about paleoanthropology. First, they claim that all we have are bone fragments and teeth, and by...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:10 PM • •
Category: Bone Fragments
I have been fighting with the idea for this post for the last couple of weeks ever since I read this paper on the human amylase gene. Part of the reason for the delay in writing about the amylase paper...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:41 AM • 6 Comments •
Category: Paleoanthropology
Kambiz has already done a good job of dissecting some of the claims made concerning this story about recent research on bipedalism so this post is kind of redundant. Having said that, I have a few things to say on...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:35 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Bone Fragments
As I mentioned in the previous post in this series, Semicircular canals are fully formed by about age two. This makes them an interesting and useful object to study, but in depth studies did not become common until the creation...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:05 AM • •
Category: Bone Fragments
So, what are semicircular canals? To begin with, they are not actually bone. They are membranes. Technically when paleoanthropologists study semicircular canals they are looking at the bony labyrinth - that is the bone surrounding the membranes. In short, considering...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:12 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Bone Fragments
George Gaylord Simpson is probably responsible. I say that because in his influential The principles of classification and a classification of mammals he has this to say about whales:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:42 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Osteology
Back in June I wrote the first part of this post with the best of intentions. I had planned on writing the second part the next day... So to summarize, and refresh your memories, I started the post with an...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:18 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Paleoanthropology
It's been awhile since I have posted on this subject. In a previous post in this series I mentioned that one step in analyzing fossils involves putting the specimen (whether a fragment, complete bone or entire skeleton) in evolutionary perspective...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 2:03 PM • 1 Comments •
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