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 [...]

Interesting Science Pictures: Part XII

This is from an article in PaleoAnthropology. The map, of the find locations for the Ngangdong specimens, hasn’t been seen in 75 years. Picture source: Huffman et al (2010) Provenience Reassessment of the 1931–1933 Ngandong Homo erectus (Java), Confirmation of the Bone-Bed Origin Reported by the Discoverers. PaleoAnthropology 2010:1-60 doi:10.4207/PA.2010.ART34

NatureNews Interviews Russell Ciochon on Ngandong

This is an interesting interview

Some Random Thoughts About Australopithecus sediba

I am going to be very busy today so I won’t get an in depth post up on Australopithecus sediba until tomorrow. In the meantime three items jumped out at me so I thought I would, briefly, mention them.

Know Your Anthropology Literature: Ecobotanical Contexts for African Hominids

Ecobotanical Contexts for African Hominids, by O’Brien and Peters, was published in a book edited by J. Desmond Clark entitled Cultural Beginnings: Approaches to Understanding Early Hominid Life-Ways in the African Savanna. O’Brien and Peters describe the work they are doing on a project called “Survey of the Wild Edible Plants of Africa”. The point [...]

1.5 Million Year Old Footprints Found

1.5 Million year old footprints have been found at the Koobi Fora Field School: The footprints were discovered in two 1.5 million-year-old sedimentary layers near Ileret in northern Kenya. These rarest of impressions yielded information about soft tissue form and structure not normally accessible in fossilized bones. The Ileret footprints constitute the oldest evidence of [...]

The New Homo erectus Pelvis From Gona

As both Kambiz and Hawks have pointed out, a new Homo erectus pelvis has been discovered in Gona.

New Homo erectus Pelvis

Well, now we know why the publication date of the book on Ethiopian Homo erectus keeps getting pushed back. Kambiz has the story on the new female H. erectus pelvis. Most of the accounts I have seen focus on the birthing babies aspect – a hot research topic at the moment, but for my money [...]

Lost in New York : Sambungmacan 3

File this one in the “learn something new everyday” category, or perhaps, the relearn something new. I was randomly searching the internet yesterday and stumbled across the story of Sambungmacan 3.

Skull Fragments: A Frontal From Mongolia

It was published last month in C. R. Palevol 7 (2008) 51-60.

Ileret Fossils and Primate Sperm Competition

From the Ileret article by Spoor et al: The intraspecific variation of vault size in H. erectus, including KNM-ER 42700, is larger than in extant humans and chimpanzees, but smaller than in gorillas … This degree of variation may well imply that H. erectus showed marked sexual dimorphism, rather than the reduced levels that characterize [...]

Muffler Falls Off Ford Pinto: Luskin on Dmanisi

I’ve been wondering what the creationist response to the new Dmanisi article in Nature would be. The Discovery Institute’s decrepit Ford Pinto gets pushed to the podium (sans muffler, a few wheels and a bumper or two). I say decrepit because Luskin’s post is, to put it charitably, pitiful. Finds at Dmanisi have been cropping [...]

Dinosaur Embryos, Growth and Human Evolution

I recently wrote a post on Dinosaur Embryos. One of the more interesting aspects of the find was that differences in relative growth of various body parts turned a quadrapedal infant into a bipedal adult. To understand what is going on here look at the pictures to the left. The first picture shows a baby [...]