New Species of (Extinct) Giant Sloth Lemur Discovered

Sloth lemurs are extinct species that are the sister clade to the Indiids. They have the widest range of body sizes of any of the Madagascar species. They are called sloth lemurs because of some convergent features they display with sloths – including suspensory behavior.

Monkeys in Space!

I don’t know how I missed this, but yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the launching of Baker (a squirrel monkey) and Abel (a rhesus monkey) into space. They were the first primates to survive a trip into space (although Abel died a few days after the trip due to an infected electrode. National Geographic [...]

Confused By A Talus: The Talus of Darwinius masillae

The tarsal is part of the ankel. It sits on the calcaneus and in turn articulates with the tibia (medial) and fibula (lateral). It is the main weight bearing portion of the ankle.

Giant Trilobites

I’ve been planning on mentioning this for a couple of weeks, but never seem to get around to it. A recent article in Geology (Giant trilobites and trilobite clusters from the Ordovician of Portugal) discusses some interesting trilobite fossils.

Twenty Years Of Wedded Bliss

It was twenty years ago today that I suckered, er, convinced Mrs. afarensis to say “I do”. I think I got the better end of the agreement because I got Mrs. afarensis and all she got was me… At any rate, twenty years flew by far too quickly and speaking for myself only, I have [...]

New Blogs for Fellow Ex-ScienceBloggers

John Lynch of Stranger Fruit and John Wilkins of Evolving Thoughts have both left ScienceBlogs. Lynch can be found at his new blog A Simple Prop – at least he can until he leaves for Greece (yes, I’m jealous). Wilkins can be found at Evolving Thoughts. As far as I know, he is not currently [...]

Hypocrisy and Darwinius masillae

PZ has a link to an interview with some of the Darwinius masillae hype. One comment, by Jørn Hurum, stands out:

Four Stone Hearth # 67

With all the hustle and bustle of recent, multiple moves I almost forgot about this. An Excellent new edition of the Four Stone Hearth is up at Sorting Out Science. There is some interesting stuff there and I highly recommend that you check it out!

Interesting Anthropology and Paleontology News

There is some interesting news relating to anthropology and evolution – over and above Darwinius masillae (which I will have a couple of posts about next week).

King Louie Rocks

I couldn’t think of any better way of inaugurating my new blog than this: Baloo is cool too…

Were Neandertals Cannibalized By Anatomically Modern Humans?

And can you really call it cannibalism if they are not Homo sapiens neanderthalensis? The lemur/adapid/anthropoid paper is not the only anthropology paper out this week, nor is it the only one that has been the subject of over exuberant reporting. The gist of the story is that the jaw below contains cutmarks: The jaw [...]

Corporate America and Wage Theft

Kim Bobo has an interesting discussion of the subject. Having worked in corporate America all my working life, I particularly liked this part: The worker who steals from the employer is fired and may go to jail. The consumer who shoplifts goes to jail. The employer who steals wages will probably not get caught. In [...]

Stupid Creationist Quote of the Week

Today we have comments by two commenters at UD. First up is a commenter named Barb. Barb left a rather lengthy comment talking about Lucy. The part that earned her a “stupid creationist quote” award is this: The paucity of fossil evidence makes knowing all of human evolutionary history impossible. The best evidence for Lucy [...]

Do Deep Sea Fish Have Good Hearing?

An interesting article over at National Geographic looks at that question: Roughly 90 percent of the ocean is completely dark, beyond the reach of the sun’s rays. The researchers wondered if the fish had evolved to have sharper hearing, which might help them catch prey, find mates, or elude predators in the darkness. The researchers [...]

Adapidae, Omomyidae, and Anthropoid Origins: Updated

In a previous post I discussed competing views about adapids and omomyids. In that post I said: There is a further complication. In both 2 and 3 above tarsiers are grouped with anthropoids and adapids are grouped with lemurs and lorises. The problem is adapids share quite a few traits with anthropoids, tarsiers share some [...]