Primates
laelaps | April 3, 2009In any book about evolutionary anthropology it is almost obligatory to cite Charles Darwin as the person who suspected that our species was most closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas, thus anticipating our modern understanding. In his famous 1871 book The Descent of Man Darwin wrote;
In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat…
laelaps | April 1, 2009
A model of the skull of Megaladapis From A Guide to the Fossil Mammals and Birds in the Department of Geology and Palaeontology in the British Museum (Natural History).
At a meeting of the Royal Society in 1893 the English geologist Henry Woodward read a communication from his Swiss colleague Charles Immanuel Forsyth Major on a new, recently extinct genus of giant lemur from Madagascar. He called it Megaladapis, and it was a lemur with a skull as large a modern gorilla's. Particularly interesting were the thick rims of bone around its eyes which appeared to be oriented slightly upwards.…
laelaps | March 31, 2009
A cast of the lower jaw of Dryopithecus available through Ward's Natural Science Establishment.
For most of anthropology's history tools had been thought to be the exclusive hallmark of humanity. That only our species could use and manufacture tools was a sign of our superiority, be it the result of evolution or divine fiat, at least until it was discovered that apes could make tools, too. Though anecdotal accounts of tool use by primates had existed for centuries it was Jane Goodall's research at Gombe in Tanzania that truly shattered the "Man the Tool-Maker" image. When told of her…
laelaps | March 28, 2009
The skeleton of a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), photographed at the National Museum of Natural History. Notice the bone pathology around the roots of the teeth in the upper jaw.
laelaps | March 26, 2009
A mother gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and her child. Photographed at the National Zoo.
It may not be accurate to call our species "the third chimpanzee", but there can be no separation between apes and humans. We are apes. This realization has only come recently. There has been a long tradition of scholars who have tried to find something, anything, to draw an unbreakable line between us and our nearest relatives. As Henry Smith Williams wrote in a 1900 biography of Ernst Haeckel published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, however, perhaps we have engaged in such efforts because apes are so…
laelaps | March 26, 2009
A mother gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and her child. Photographed at the National Zoo.
laelaps | March 11, 2009It has been a week since ABC's Nightline ran footage obtained by the Humane Society of primates being abused at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana. Even though the ethics of animal research has been big news on the blogs in the past week, with a poorly-argued article in last week's Huffington Post (Janet, DrugMonkey, Orac) and the recent attack on a UCLA scientist who uses primates in his studies (Janet, Evil Monkey, Nick), I am puzzled as to why there has been virtually no discussion of the footage taken at the New Iberia labs. For those of who you missed it, here is the Nightline…
laelaps | March 9, 2009
From Life.
Starting on May 1, 1901 the great Pan-American Exposition delighted visitors for six months in Buffalo, New York. Organized to "promote commercial and social interests among the States and countries of the Western Hemisphere" the show displayed the modern wonders of art, science, and technology. Among the varied exhibits was Esau the chimpanzee.*
*[The infamous "Cardiff Giant" was also on display.]
Featured in the exhibit "The Evolution of Man", Esau was among the first performing apes in America. Others, like the first incarnation of Consul, had come before in Europe, but Esau…
laelaps | March 5, 2009
I'm a little bit late on this one but I wanted to say "Welcome!" to the latest member of the Sb collective All of My Faults Are Stress Related. It's good to have another geo-blog around the place.
The first edition of ART Evolved has been posted. The inaugural edition features a slew of wonderful ceratopsian images, and I can hardly wait until the next edition (featuring synapsids).
During the Saturday night dinner at Science Online '09 I had the chance to chat with Karen James and Glendon Mellow and together we came up with an idea to raise some support for the Beagle Project. (…
laelaps | March 2, 2009[Last night New Brunswick was buried under several inches of snow, shutting down the university and giving me the day off. I have been using my free time to get some reading done and work on a few projects but I did not want to neglect this blog. Here are the first several pages of the chapter on human evolution from Life's Splendid Riddle, the book in-progress I have so often mentioned here. I still do not have an agent and am unsure whether this book will ever make it to shelves, but I could not resist sharing this sample with you. Enjoy.]
Not long after the earth had been given form, when…
laelaps | February 27, 2009
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | February 13, 2009
Black crested gibbons (Nomascus concolor), photographed at the Bronx Zoo.
laelaps | February 10, 2009
A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata), photographed at the Central Park Zoo.
laelaps | February 7, 2009Now this is pretty cool. Since 2007 the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton AL 288-1, that's "Lucy" to you and me, has been on tour in an exhibit called "Lucy's Legacy - The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia." I don't know if the exhibit is going to come close enough to me to allow me to visit it, but thanks to the website eLucy, I can look at the skeleton from home.
Hosted by the University of Texas at Austin, the website allows you to compare Lucy's bones with those of a human or a chimpanzee. This is a great resource for anyone who has been aching for a closer look at the fossils than is often…
laelaps | January 26, 2009
A female Hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas), photographed at the North Carolina Zoo.