Primates
laelaps | June 13, 2009This past January I had the pleasure to re-visit Duke University's lemur center in North Carolina. I really recommend that you stop by if you have the chance (I'm hoping to head back to North Carolina sometime this summer myself), but if NC is beyond your reach the center has posted a number of videos of the non-anthropoid primates in residence. Among my favorites are the aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis), which you can see in the videos below;
laelaps | June 3, 2009
The face of Anoiapithecus. From Moya-Sola et al. (2009).
One of the most controversial aspects of the whole Darwinius kerfuffle has been the primate's proposed status as "the ancestor of us all." The fossil, named "Ida", has been popularly touted as the "missing link" connecting us to all other mammals, but how can we really know if Darwinius fits this role? The truth is that we can't, and it is nearly impossible to parse direct ancestor-descendant relationships among fossil vertebrates, especially when we're talking about a fossil that lived over 40 million years before the first…
laelaps | June 2, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Last month an international team of paleontologists lifted the veil on one of the most spectacular fossils ever discovered; a 47-million-year-old primate they named Darwinius masillae. It was a major event, but not everything went as planned. This fossil, popularly known as "Ida", immediately sparked a controversy about the relationship between science and the media, the ethics of buying fossils from private collectors, and what our distant primate ancestors were like.
Indeed, the media blitz…
laelaps | May 31, 2009I just watched the BBC's documentary on "Ida" (Darwinius masillae), "Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor", and to be honest I was not very impressed. Rather than dissect the show second-by-second, though, I will only discuss some of the main points that occurred to me while watching it. Heaven knows I have spent plenty of time on Ida already...
While I surely appreciate the show's efforts (however fleeting) to describe the paleobiology of Ida, the show's real hook is the conclusion that Darwinius is one of our earliest primate ancestors. This is a tantalizing hypothesis, but is it true? The…
laelaps | May 26, 2009
The skull of a tarsier, from The Descent of Primates.
At the turn of the 20th century evolutionary biologists faced a significant problem. In 1859 Charles Darwin had expounded the mechanism of evolution, and Eugene Dubois' discovery of "Pithecanthropus" (known as Homo erectus today) illustrated that humans had evolved over time, but the broad outline of human evolution was almost entirely a mystery. There was no doubt that we had evolved from some ancient group of primates, but one of the most frustratingly difficult to resolve questions was what our earliest primate ancestors were like.…
laelaps | May 26, 2009I broke the news via my Twitter feed last night, but in case you missed it my op-ed "The dangerous link between science and hype" has been published in today's Times. I will give you one guess as to what it is about.
laelaps | May 25, 2009It has been nearly a week since Darwinius, a 47-million-year-old primate heralded as the "missing link", burst on the public scene. (See some of my previous posts about the fossil here, here, and here.) Nicknamed "Ida", the fossil has already spurred comments from nearly all corners of the science blogohedron, but with documentaries about her airing tonight (USA) and tomorrow (UK) there is still plenty to talk about.
That's why I am organizing a one-time-only blog carnival all about Ida. Whether you want to tackle the media hype, the more technical aspects of her discovery, or something else…
laelaps | May 23, 2009
The skeleton of an orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History.
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laelaps | May 22, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
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It has been three days now since an international team of paleontologists promised to deliver the change we need change everything, but when I woke up this morning I was pleased to find that things had still not gone "Bizarro World" around here. There is still a lot going on with Darwinius (better known as "Ida"), though, and while I am sure we will still be talking about her for some time to come I wanted to take a moment to step back and answer a few questions that keep cropping up about this…
laelaps | May 19, 2009
A restoration of the extinct adapid Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
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So the big day is finally here. "Ida", a 47-million-year-old primate skeleton from Messel, Germany has finally been unveiled on PLoS One and in a flurry of press releases, book announcements, and general media hubub. Under different circumstances I would be happy to see an exceptional fossil receiving such treatment, but I fear that Ida has become a victim of a sensationalistic media that values audience size over scientific substance.
Before I jump into my criticisms of the paper describing…
laelaps | May 18, 2009Late last week I received a rather curious e-mail. It read;
WORLD RENOWNED SCIENTISTS REVEAL A REVOLUTIONARY SCIENTIFIC FIND THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING
Ground-Breaking Global Announcement
What: An international press conference to unveil a major historic scientific find. After two years of research a team of world-renowned scientists will announce their findings, which address a long-standing scientific puzzle.
The find is lauded as the most significant scientific discovery of recent times. History brings this momentous find to America and will follow with the premiere of a major television…
laelaps | May 7, 2009As reported in the New York Times Carole C. Noon, the founder of Save the Chimps, passed away this week. She was 59 and suffered from pancreatic cancer.
I first learned of Carole and Save the Chimps when I saw the documentary Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History. Since 1997 Noon and her organization have worked to acquire and care for chimpanzees used in biomedical experiments, the entrainment industry, or kept as pets.
One of the biggest wins for Save the Chimps was when the organization was able to rescue 266 chimpanzees that were being improperly kept (and even abused) at the Coulston…
laelaps | May 7, 2009
Mother gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) Mandara holding her child Kibibi. Photographed at the National Zoo.
laelaps | April 14, 2009Evolutionary anthropology is a subject that has traditionally been dominated by a focus on males, or at least "masculine" behaviors like hunting. The most popular images of our own ancestors have often been of a group of males setting out for a hunt or crouched over a freshly-killed carcass. It is as if our evolution was driven by male ambition. Such tendencies have triggered some backlash, from the relatively absurd (i.e. the aquatic ape hypothesis) to more reasoned critiques (i.e. Woman the Gatherer), but it is clear that our understanding of our own history is most certainly biased by…
laelaps | April 14, 2009
The skeletons of a few apes (from the right: Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, and Homo sapiens), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History.