Wohoo! Fossil Marsupials

Science Daily mentions an interesting paper appearing in the current edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Songs From My (Misspent) Youth

Haven’t done any music videos in awhile so I thought I would regale you with some of the music I listened to as a teenager…

Know Your Primate: Saadanius hijazensis

Saadanius hijazensis is a fossil primate dating to the Oligocene at somewhere around 29-28 MYA. Brian Switek has an excellent overview of the finds implications for paleoanthropology.

Brain Size, Body Size, and Longevity

Science Daily mentions an interesting paper on the relationship between brain size, body, and longevity in mammals. From Science
Daily:

Begging for an Article

Can someone send me the article below:

New Oligocene primate from Saudi Arabia and the divergence of apes and Old World monkeys

doi:10.1038/nature09094

Hawks, Paleoanthropology, and Cranks

In an otherwise interesting article on Homo floresiensis Hawks mentions the following:

Gretchen asks if I’m turning into a crank.

Hawks, pictured below, responds:

Wow, it really must be the heat getting to me! I have to keep reminding myself that press interviews frequently misrepresent the nuances of what scientists actually say and think. And yet, this stuff is widely read and believed even among our colleagues! Anyway, I’ve toned down some of the crankiness.

Hawks, paleoanthropological curmudgeon

Although I am in the “pro” camp I do agree with Hawks on this issue. These articles are widely read and it would behoove the writers to get the details right. Of, course it would also behoove neuroscientists to get the details right as well…

Interesting Science Pictures: Part X

Fig. 4. Comparison of evolutionary and postnatal cortical surface expansion. (A) Map of regional evolutionary cortical expansion between an adult macaque and the average human adult PALS-B12 atlas (right hemisphere only). Evolution expansion scale indicates how many times larger the surface area is in humans relative to the corresponding area in the macaque. (B) Map of human postnatal cortical expansion (combined left and right hemispheres) for comparison (detailed in Fig. 1 legend). (C) Correlation map comparing postnatal to evolutionary cortical surface expansion.

Source: Similar patterns of cortical expansion during human development and evolution

And I Thought Bush Pandered to Corporate America

Thanks BP!

Obama’s role:

I must say, the democrats suck just as much as the republicans. Strange to think of all the outrage back in 2000 when Nader said the two groups were basically the same and now the democrats are pretty much proving him correct. The difference is one of name only (and who is in power at the given moment).

What You Can Learn From Bones: The Proximal Femur

There is an interesting article in HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology on the proximal femur. The article, Geometric morphometric analyses of hominid proximal femora: Taxonomic and phylogenetic considerations, looked at whether one can separate extant hominids into different taxa using geometric morphometrics and whether one could distinguish Homo from Australopithecus and Paranthropus.

I Weep For Missouri

The race for a congressional seat in Missouri just took another giant step in to the land of the insane. Republican candidate Ed Martin, who is challanging Russ Carnahan says the following audi o here on a local radio show: