Origin of Modern Humans:
One of the most important evolutionary transitions in human prehistory was the rise of modern humans (Homo sapiens) from earlier hominids. A newly reported fossil from Tanzania provides an important new data point necessary to understand this transition....
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Posted on April 26, 2008 12:04 PM • 3 Comments •
It almost seems like there are two separate research project under way regarding the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. One focuses on recent humans, tends to use DNA as a major source of information, and from this base projects back into the past. This approach...
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Posted on March 9, 2008 10:52 PM • 0 Comments •
Evolution: The Mind's Big Bang I've known Shea for years ... since before grad school. Going out drinking with this guy was a little dangerous. Almost as dangerous as going out drinking with me....
Posted on February 15, 2008 5:48 PM • 2 Comments •
Last night, the Campus Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists club (C.A.S.H.) presented a debate between PZ Myers and Loyal Rue on the question: Can religion and science co-exist? I witnessed this event and would like to tell you what happened....
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Posted on February 8, 2008 10:51 AM • 42 Comments •
Welcome to the Four Stone Hearth Blog Carnival #33, 'specializing' in the four fields of anthropology. The previous edition of 4SH can be found at Testimony of the Spade, and the next edition will be hosted by Our Cultural World. The main page for...
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Posted on January 30, 2008 9:44 AM • 0 Comments •
 Did humans wipe out the Pleistocene megafauna? This is a question that can be asked separately for each area of the world colonized by Homo sapiens. It is also a question that engenders sometimes heated debate. A new paper coming out in the Journal...
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Posted on January 25, 2008 7:57 PM • 2 Comments •
Pumice is rock that is ejected from a volcano, and has so much gas trapped in it that it can float. So when a pumice-ejecting volcano (not all volcanoes produce pumice) goes off near a body of water, you can get a raft of rock...
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Posted on January 8, 2008 12:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Homo floresiensis more widely known as the "Hobbit," may have had arms that were very different from those of modern humans. A paper in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution explores the anatomy of H. floresiensis. To explore this we first have...
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Posted on December 19, 2007 8:51 AM • 3 Comments •
Every few years a paper comes out "explaining" short stature in one or more Pygmy groups. Most of the time the new work ads new information and new ideas but fails to be convincing. This is the case with the recent PNAS paper by Migliano...
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Posted on December 18, 2007 2:20 AM • 0 Comments •
There seems to be some interesting things going on with the recently reported study of rates of evolution in humans. We are getting reports of a wide range of rather startling conclusions being touted by the researchers who wrote this paper. These conclusions typically come...
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Posted on December 11, 2007 12:15 PM • 0 Comments •
