Humans and Bos: When Did we Start Eating Cow?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this. The article is kind of interesting. A new species of Bos has been discovered in Buia, Eritrea dating to about one million years ago. Apparently the dig also yielded human remains.

Sorting the butchered from the boiled: An Interesting Picture Of Collagen

Fig. 4. Shows TEM images which are representative of the collagen from the ‘cooked’ (group A) and ‘uncooked’ (group B) bones. In group A (images a, b and c) the collagen was mainly observed as long intact fibrils with frayed ends and beaded regions. In group B (images d, e and f) the collagen was [...]

Origin of Dogs: Again

In a previous post I mentioned this study which indicates dogs originated in south-eastern Asia some 16,300 years ago. A commenter asked about this study in PNAS. I don’t have access to that paper, but Science Daily summarizes the paper which takes issue with an earlier paper by Savolainen:

Finding Bones: The Mystery Continues

Back in June I found part of a cervical vertebra. Today my dog brings me the distal epiphysis of a femur.

New Zealand Rats: Repeatability and When Can We Toss The Dates?

Kambiz has an interesting post on the rat paper, which, just by serendipity, provides an excellent jumping point for the second post I had planned on this subject. Kambiz points out that: One hypothesis, suggested in this 1996 Nature article, “Arrival of rats in New Zealand,” indicates people arrived with rats roughly 2,800 years ago. [...]

Rats as Proxies for Human Expansion in the Pacific

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has an interesting article on the settlement of New Zealand. The short version of the story is that since Pacific rats are human commensals they can serve as proxies for human expansion across the Pacific. Based on this idea, the authors of the paper used radiocarbon dating [...]

Interesting Anthropology and Paleontology Stories

The BBC has an interesting, but sad, story called Botswana Bushmen refused borehole: The government of Botswana is refusing to allow Kalahari Bushmen access to a water borehole. In 2006, the Bushmen won a landmark legal victory against the government allowing them to return to land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The court found [...]

Frog Legs in Archaeological Assemblages

I haven’t mentioned Archaeozoology lately, so to remedy this error I would like to point you all to Frogs in the Eneolithic diet an excellent discussion of an interesting archaeozoology paper.

Mammoth Tusk With Evidence of Meteorite Impacts

This is very weird. Researchers at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union announced the discovery:

What Seals Can Tell Us About Past Climates

Seals can be rather interesting creatures. Northern fur seals are even more interesting. A recent article in The Holocene combines zooarchaeology and knowledge of seal behavior to reconstruct the spread of Bering Sea ice expansion during the Neoglacial.

Ungulates, Tooth Size and Longevity

One of the more interesting areas of paleoanthropological research concerns the timing of growth and development. For example, in macaques infancy is from birth to 1.4 years, childhood from 1.4-3.2 years, and adolescence from 3.2-5.8 years. In captivity macaques can live to be 30 years old, or more. In chimps the figures are; infancy birth [...]

Pigs and the Spread of Farming in Europe

Back in March I wrote a post about what the ancient pig DNA can tell us about the colonization of the Pacific Islands by Polynesians. A new article that will be published in PNAS, by the same group behind the last study, looks at Europe and the spread of farming. Science Daily has some details:

Know Your Primate: Pliopapio alemui

Order: Primates Infraorder: Catarrhini Family: Cercopithecidae Subfamily: Cercopithecinae Tribe: Papionini Genus: Pliopapio Species: Pliopapio alemui Between 1992 and 199 over 900 cercopithecoid specimens were recovered by the Middle Awash Research Project. The sample dates to about 4.39 million years ago. Two new species have been named based on the material recovered. One is a colobine [...]

Chris O’Brien on T-Rex Teeth

Chris has an excellent post called More On Ham’s Creation Museum, Tyrannosaur Teeth And The Scientific Process that totally shreds the T-Rex coconut eater myth Ham is foisting off on unsuspecting visitors to his fantasyland. One wonders what some of the T-Rex specialists such as Erickson or Holtz would make of Ham’s argument. I haven’t [...]

Interesting Zooarchaeology Blog

Okay, it’s not exactly zooarchaeology, but it is about animal bones. The blog, and blog owner, are named Alexandra van der Geer. Check it out – it’s full of all sorts of interesting info about animals.