and, from what Brian Switek says over at Laelaps, a whole lot more media hype. The new fossil is a 38-million-year-old primate from Asia, Ganlea megacania (the species name refers to the fact that it has enormous canine teeth). While the paper describing this fragmentary fossil (teeth & bits of jaw) describe it as a seed-eating monkey, […]
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interesting readings on human evolution
Those of you who came to the WEB days a few weeks ago (WEB = Waikato Experience of Biology, for those who didn’t) might remember me saying that the human family tree is quite a complex thing. Not only is it a branching tree, rather than the linear model of early palaeoanthropologists, but our understanding of […]
Continue readinghyenas & homo erectus
When you’re studying human evolution (AS 90719), one of the fossil hominins you’ll learn about is Homo erectus. These days this designation includes fossils that were placed in separate taxa, such as H. pekinensis ("Peking man") & "Java man" (named Pithecanthropus erectus by its discoverer, Eugene Dubois, but now recognised as the first H.erectus fossil to be described). The […]
Continue readingamazing aye-ayes
I’m not sure how much time you spend on the ‘non-human’ primates these days; we got quite a bit of content in that area when I was a student, but I do know that things have changed! Anyway, lemurs (prosimians) are part of that group. And one that’s always fascinated me is the aye-aye – […]
Continue readinga whole lot more on ‘ida’
I’ve written a couple of posts on ‘Ida’ (Darwinius massillae) – the 47-million-years-old fossil primate which has been the focus of so much media hoop-la. For those of you who would like to read more widely about this discovery, Laelaps has hosted a blog carnival where he’s brought together links to some great writing by […]
Continue readingan update on ida
In today’s Science journal there’s an update (Gibbons, 2009) on all the hoop-la associated with the unveiling of 47-million-year-old Darwinius massillae (aka ‘Ida). I commented earlier that the hugely overblown press coverage that accompanied the publication of Ida’s description in PLoS One was a worrying thing. It described Ida as a ‘missing link’ (a claim that the authors of […]
Continue readinga piece of palaeolithic er*tica?
She has enormous, protuberant breasts, huge buttocks, exaggerated genitalia, and no head. Oh, yes, and she’s 35,000 years old – the oldest ‘Venus’ figurine to date (Conard, 2009).
Continue readingankle joints & hominin evolution
Some of the many questions to do with human evolution centre on our way of getting around – just when did bipedalism evolve? Is bipedalism a derived state, found only in our own twig of the primate family tree? Or is it a feature seen in the last common ancestor that we share with our […]
Continue readingan entertaining look at our family tree
Horrakapotchkin! It seems that hsi is no longer available – something t do with a ‘terms of use violation’. I do hope the problem – whatever it is – is cleared up as this really was rather cool. ______________________________________________________________________________ and a useful introduction to some of the terminology used in phylogenetics. (Courtesy, as usual, of […]
Continue readinglactose (in)tolerance & domestication of cattle
Humans first domesticated cattle about 8.000 years ago. Possibly this was first for the meat, but at some point someone (or rather, several someones in several different regions) started also making use of the milk given by lactating cows. Which raises some interesting questions, as many people can’t digest the milk sugar, lactose, found in […]
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