Afarensis is in the hospital

This is Afarensis’ youngest daughter.
My dad got sick last week and kept getting worse and worse until finally my mom took him to the ER.
Unfortunately he has Pneumonia and possibly Swine Flu so he won’t be home until Friday.

In Memorium: Claude Levi-Strauss

Via Hawks comes the news that Claude Levi-Strauss has died. MSNBC has more:

The French intellectual was regarded as having reshaped the field of anthropology, introducing structuralism — concepts about common patterns of behavior and thought, especially myths, in a wide range of human societies. Defined as the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity, structuralism compared the formal relationships among elements in any given system.

Although I don’t spend much time writing about cultural anthropology (mainly because I’m an old school fuddy duddy and don’t like those new fangled post-modernist theoretical orientations) Levi-Strauss was one cultural anthropologist I read quite a bit of (along with Malinowski and Boas). He will be missed…

The Genomics and Phylogenetics of Leprosy

Nature Genetics has an interesting research paper on leprosy. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but the PhysOrg.Com summary is fascinating:

Something’s Missing From Comfort’s Version of On the Origin of Species

Genie Scott has the story:

What Do You Do With A Giant Squid?

Eat it, of course:

Source

Does this mean that Cthulhu will not return until sperm whales are extinct?

National Geographic has more pictures…

Kenyanthropus platyops In The News

Science has another entry in theirOrigins: A History of Beginnings series. This time the entry concerns Kenyanthropus platyops. The fossil was the subject of a presentation at a meeting of the Royal Society in London .

Darwin and The Origin of Life

The journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres has an interesting paper on Darwin’s views on the origin of life. The paper can be found here. The short version is that Darwin felt that the origin of life could be explained by natural mechanisms and that such an explanation was beyond the scope of scientific methodology of the time. For the long version read the paper.

The Diet of Australopithecus afarensis

PhysOrg.Com has an interesting item on research presented to the Royal Society on October 20th. The research concerns microwear analysis on australopithecine teeth. The research specifically focuses on Australopithecus afarensis (woohoo, take that Ardipithecus)

Begging For An Article

Can someone send me the following article:

Convergent evolution of anthropoid-like adaptations in Eocene adapiform primatesNature: doi:10.1038/nature08429

Thanks!

Happy Anniversary Koster

Forty years ago excavations began at one of the more important sites in mid-western archaeology sites. The excavations started as test excavations based on some Late Woodland debris. The excavations at Koster would end up revealing a history that dated back to the Early Archaic and uncover a total of 26 different occupations. I bring this up because The Telegraph has an interesting article on the site.

A Couple Of Annoying Things About The Ardipithecus Papers

Although I am quite excited about Ardipithecus (more about the actual substance of the papers later) finally being published, there are a couple of things that really annoy the living daylights out of me.

Ardipithecus ramidus At The Panda’s Thumb

I have the first, of several, posts up on Ardipithecus ramidus at The Panda’s Thumb. It covers the geological, enivonmental, and taphonomic background. I hope you like it, it is my first contribution to PT – other than the links page (I am in charge of the links page at PT so if you know of any good sites not listed let me know).

This video has an interesting glimpse into how the environment was reconstructed:

Also, early in the video you can see one of the “crawls” in progress…

Gaah! This is Horrible Reporting

ABC News is pandering to creationists in this really bad article on
Ardipithecus ramidus. Basically it boils down to, and I kid you not this is a direct quote:

Volume # 77 of the Four Stone Hearth Is Up!

Volume # 77 of the Four Stone Hearth is up at A Place Odyssey. For the best anthropological blogging on the web follow the link!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The Only Classical Musical Station in St. Louis Has Been Sold!

Worse yet it is to a company that is converting to a format of Christian Contemporary Music GAAK! Pardon me while I puke.

The radio station was owned by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod and, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, there is a certain dubious quality to the sale: