The Metopic Suture of Taung

A recent article in PNAS looks at the metopic suture on the Taung endocast. Before discussing the article a few words are in order about the frontal bone.

Mounds in Illinois Damaged

This sucks! From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Authorities in southern Illinois are asking for the public’s help in finding the people who are damaging and may be looting some prehistoric Native American burial mounds. The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency says someone last month dug several small holes in a portion of Kincaid Mounds State Historic [...]

Know Your Hominin: The Dederiyeh Neanderthal Infant

The Dederiyeh Neanderthal infant was found in Dederiyeh Cave, in Syria, in 1993. The skelton is that of a two year old and dates to 50,000-70,000 years ago. Source: Akazawa et al 1995 Neanderthal infant burial from the Dederiyeh cave in Syria

Vero Beach: An Update

Back in June of 2009 I wrote a post about a bone with a mammoth or mastodon etched on it (you can find a video on the find here). I don’t have anything new to report on that find, but there are some interesting developments concerning Vero Beach.

Bloody Archaeology!

There are a couple if interesting stories this week. Both concern blood and archaeology.The first concerns Otzi the Iceman – a 5300 year old mummy found in the Alps. Researcher used atomic force microscopy and Raman spectroscopy to identify red blood cells from samples taken from wounds on Otzi’s right hand and left shoulder. The [...]

The Great Ape Heart Project

I meant to write about this a couple of months ago, after reading a story similar to this The original article I read, and forgot to bookmark, focused mainly on the process of how to train a gorilla to sit still for this kind of procedure (this article touches on that a little). I’m getting [...]

Cool Archaeological Stories!

I stumbled across a couple of cool archaeological stories today.

East African Australopithecines: More than One Species?

The fact that two species of Australopithecus coexisted, more or less, in South Africa has been known for years. One of the more interesting South African specimens (Stw 573) is dated to somewhere between 3.5 and 3 million years. It has a divergent big toe. As does a new partial foot found in East Africa. [...]

Gorilla Genome Sequenced!

The gorilla genome has been sequenced and yields some interesting insights on human evolution. The research is reported in Nature. The article is open access. Here is the abstract: Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly [...]

Impact Theory: The Theory That Would Not Die

The impact theory rears its head again! From Science Dailey: Conducting a wide range of exhaustive tests, the researchers conclusively identified a family of nanodiamonds, including the impact form of nanodiamonds called lonsdaleite, which is unique to cosmic impact. The researchers also found spherules that had collided at high velocities with other spherules during the [...]

Begging For Articles: Asian Australopithecines

Can someone with access send me the following articles: A critical analysis of claims for the existence of Southeast Asian australopithecines, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 26, Issue 1, Pages 3–21 http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1994.1002 Meganthropus, australopithecines and hominids, American Journal of Physical Anthropology Volume 11, Issue 1, pages 1–38, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330110112 Further remarks on the relationship between [...]

Ancestral Hominin Or Stem Hominid: Part One

I meant to write something about Wood and Harrison’s article, The evolutionary context of the first hominins when it first came out, but have been a bad, lazy blogger and am just now getting around to it.

Know Your Primate: Presbytis hosei canicrus

Order: Primates Suborder: Haplorrhini Family: Cercopithecidae Subfamily: Colobinae Genus: Presbytis Species: Presbytis hosei canicrus Common Name: Miller’s grizzled langur Presbytis hosei canicrus is a subspecies of grey leaf monkey. It was feared to be extinct but has recently been observed in Borneo. Picture Source

Know Your Hominin: Sambungmacan 3

Sambungmacan 3 was discovered in 1977 and spent some time on the antiquities market, eventually ending up in New York, where its importance was realized. It has since been returned to Indonesia. It is attributed to Homo erectus and may be the skull of a female. For Further Reading: Broadfield et al (2001) Endocast of [...]

Shark Bites Whale

Phys.Org mentions an interesting article published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The article concerns a fragment of a whale rib, dating to the Pliocene, that shows evidence of a shark bite. In this case the rib also displays evidence of having survived the attack. From Phys.Org: