paleoanthropology
laelaps | June 23, 2010
The skeletons of Lucy (left) and Kadanuumuu (right). Both belong to the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. (Images not to scale.)
I never fully appreciated how small Lucy was until I saw her bones for myself. Photographs and restorations of her and her kin within the species Australopithecus afarensis had never really given me a proper sense of scale, and when I looked over her incomplete skeleton - formally known as specimen A.L. 288-1 - I was struck by her diminutive proportions. In life she would have only been about three and a half feet tall. Her physical stature seemed…
razib | February 10, 2010Archaeology has a very interesting piece up, Should We Clone Neanderthals?. It begins with the nitty-gritty of ancient DNA extraction & sequencing, moves to the possible avenues of cloning, and of course the bioethical conundrums that we might be placed in. I know that there is an expectation that a neo-Neandertal will be some sort of "ape-man," but we should remember that the ancient Neandertals had greater cranial capacities than modern humans. I suspect thought that the biggest issue for a neo-Neandertal might be disease; "savages" brought back to Europe invariably died from Illnesses…
razib | January 26, 2010The debates about the timing of the extinction of the last Neandertals in Iberia seem to one of those interminable disagreements around which paleoanthropologists can't ever reach a resolution. Another offering from PLoS ONE, Pego do Diabo (Loures, Portugal): Dating the Emergence of Anatomical Modernity in Westernmost Eurasia:
Methodology/Principal Findings
Using AMS radiocarbon and advanced pretreatment techniques, we dated a set of stratigraphically associated faunal samples from an Aurignacian III-IV context excavated at the Portuguese cave site of Pego do Diabo. Our results establish a…
razib | January 13, 2010The changing height of Homo erectus:
Today, I think it's fair to say that the variation of stature in Homo erectus was more or less like the variation within living people. There are short and tall populations today, varied in ecology and latitude. The average stature of young men in the Netherlands today is 184 cm. Adult women in the Philippines average only 150 cm. So the best way to compare statures is to illustrate the range.
That being said, I don't think we know how stature has evolved over time. We do have some data points -- the Neandertals were shorter than Upper Paleolithic…
razib | April 21, 2009Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth:
Childbirth is complicated in humans relative to other primates. Unlike the situation in great apes, human neonates are about the same size as the birth canal, making passage difficult. The birth mechanism (the series of rotations that the neonate must undergo to successfully negotiate its mother's birth canal) distinguishes humans not only from great apes, but also from lesser apes and monkeys. Tracing the evolution of human childbirth is difficult, because the pelvic skeleton, which forms the margins of the birth canal,…