James Valentine On Phyla

Consider the changing morphospace within the stem group of a phylum when it is traced back through successively earlier nodes from the ancestor of the crown group (the crown ancestor) to its last common ancestor with a sister phylum. The crown synapomorphies are lost immediately. Some stem-group branches may be quite diverse, and their derived [...]

Begging for Articles

Can some kind soul send me copies of these two papers: Haile-Selassie Y, Saylor BZ, Deino A, Alene M, Latimer BM. 2010. New hominid fossils from Woranso-Mille (Central Afar, Ethiopia) and taxonomy of early Australopithecus. Am J Phys Anthropol (in press) doi:10.1002/ajpa.21159 Kimbel WH, Lockwood CA, Ward CV, Leakey MG, Rak Y, Johanson DC. 2006. [...]

Were Crocodiles Responsible For The Stones We Call Tools?

Bob O’H brings an interesting Correspondence item in Nature to our attention. An excerpt is below:

Fallback Foods and The Diet of Australopithecines

Physorg.Com has an interesting report on new research by Nate Dominy on underground storage units:

Laetoli Footprints To Have Museum Built Over Them

As I mentioned back in January the Laetoli footprint trackways are in some danger due to erosion from heavier than normal rainfall. According to Nature a solution has been chosen: The world’s oldest human footprints are to have a museum built around them in a bid to protect them. The 3.7-million-year-old tracks in an ash [...]

In Which I Disagree With Hawks

I have been somewhat busy and have just read the Richmond and Jungers paper on Orrorin tugenensis, along with some of what has been written in the blogosphere about it. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with one post on the subject – that of Hawks. In his post Hawks is trying to argue that there [...]

Question For Creationists: What’s Up With Knuckle Walking?

Really, it seems like every time I turn around some creationist or another is trying to argue that Australopithecus afarensis is not a transitional fossil because there are some osteological indicators of knuckle walking in their wrist. Safarti is a case in point. Normally, most creationists quotemine Richard Leakey when this comes up, however, with [...]

Laetoli Footprints In Danger

Rex Dalton, in Nature, noted that the 3.7 million year old fossil footprint tracks at Laetoli are in danger due to erosion caused by heavier than normal rainfall:

What We Can Learn From Bones: Paleodiets, Early Hominins, and Mole Rats, Part Two

Before going further, let me remind readers of the purpose behind “What We Can Learn From Bones.” Creationists like to make two main claims about paleoanthropology. First, they claim that all we have are bone fragments and teeth, and by implication, that we can learn nothing from bone fragments and teeth. Second, they claim that [...]

What We Can Learn From Bones: Paleodiets, Early Hominins, and Mole Rats

I have been fighting with the idea for this post for the last couple of weeks ever since I read this paper on the human amylase gene. Part of the reason for the delay in writing about the amylase paper is that I have come down with what I suspect is lateral epicondylitis and typing [...]