Anthropology.net

Another day, another update, and this time we’re off to Woranso-Mille in the Afar region of Ethiopia, one of the best known hominid fossil-bearing sites in the world, from where we recently had news of a find dating from a period, 3.5 million to 3.8 million years, which has thus far produced little in the way of finds…

The cache included several complete jaws and one partial skeleton, and was unearthed at Woranso-Mille in the country’s Afar desert. The remains were recovered 30km from the site where “Lucy” – one of the most famous human ancestors – was found. The fossils come from the right time period to shed light on the relationship between the “Lucy” species, Australopithecus afarensis, and an even older species called Australopithecus anamensis.

Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, one of the team’s leaders, told the BBC: “One of the reasons why this discovery is really important is because it serves as a time frame that we know nothing about in the past and that’s what makes it really significant.” He added: “We have a record of about six million years of early human evolution in Ethiopia, but there are also small gaps here and there and this one happens to be one of them.”

As I mentioned above, the Afar region has played a spectacular part in the search for fossils that give us an idea of exactly who some of our ancestors were, even though it’s still not clear how or even precisely when species Homo evolved from the australopithecines. Here’s some additional comment detailing the role and significance of the Woranso-Mille site and the recent discoveries… Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick update regarding the latest developments from Hereford, which has been visited by English Heritage, or are currently assessing whether the site should be conserved and protected, as is apparent from this response from Chief Executive Moira Thomson, to an email I sent as part of a petition to English Heritage…

Thank you for your email correspondence about the recent discoveries at Rotherwas. English Heritage has, indeed, been informed about the discovery and have been liaising closely with local authority colleagues. Arrangements were made to visit the site on the 9 July 2007 and consideration will be given to the best way of ensuring preservation in situ of the remains. Our Heritage Protection Department is also considering whether the site meets the criteria for designation under the 1979 Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act.

This is plainly a step in the right direction, and it’s good that EH visited the site so quickly; indeed, it would appear that speed is very much of the essence in this instance, as the recent rainy weather has been having adverse effects on those parts of the site that have thus far been exposed by excavations.

Council chiefs have said the English Heritage inspectors are “completely satisfied” with how they have been handling the situation so far. However, local campaigners have said recent downpours have led to part of the trail being washed away and say the feature needs more permanent protection before it is too late.

Campaigner Rob Hattersley said the site could be turned into a heritage site, attracting tourists to the area. Mr Hattersley, who runs the campaign’s website, said: “Even something like a model of what it would have looked like and an explanation of what it was would be fascinating. We’ve been contacted by historical experts in Salisbury with the experience of having Stonehenge who say that Herefordshire Council needs to listen to the great tourism potential this could bring.” Read the rest of this entry »

Not strictly an anthropological post, but one that highlights how in some cases, humans are still better at deciphering visual data than the powerful computers and pattern recognition applications that have been built and designed over recent years. Following in the steps of previous projects like stardust@home, Galaxy Zoo needs volunteers to log on to their site and help classify thousands of images of galaxies, many of which will never have been seen by human eyes as all the images were acquired by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey robotic telescope.

Computers users undergo a three-minute online tutorial and are then allocated a series of images and asked to decide whether each one shows a spiral or an elliptical galaxy. If it’s a spiral galaxy, they’re asked to decide which way it appears to be rotating. Kevin Schawinski, an astrophysicist at Oxford University, UK, is one of the team who devised the project.

“I classified about 50,000 galaxies myself in a week,” he said. “It was mind-numbing. It’s not just for fun,” he added. “The human brain is actually better than a computer at pattern recognition tasks like this. Whether you spend five minutes, fifteen minutes or five hours using the site, your contribution will be invaluable.”

And further comment from Dr. Chris Lintott, another member of the Galaxy Zoo Team…

“We hope that participants in Galaxy Zoo will not only contribute to science, but have a lot of fun along the way. One advantage is that you get to see parts of space that have never been seen before. These images were taken by a robotic telescope and processed automatically, so the odds are that when you log on, that first galaxy you see will be one that no human has seen before. It’s not often you get to see something unique.” Read the rest of this entry »