Anthropology.net

I hate to be bugging you with these half-assed side notes, but the PNAS paper that I’ve been swooning over the last couple of days is now out.

Here are the good bits: Dental evidence on the hominin dispersals during the Pleistocene,

“A common assumption in the evolutionary scenario of the first Eurasian hominin populations is that they all had an African origin. This assumption also seems to apply for the Early and Middle Pleistocene populations, whose presence in Europe has been largely explained by a discontinuous flow of African emigrant waves. Only recently, some voices have speculated about the possibility of Asia being a center of speciation. However, no hard evidence has been presented to support this hypothesis. We present evidence from the most complete and up-to-date analysis of the hominin permanent dentition from Africa and Eurasia. The results show important morphological differences between the hominins found in both continents during the Pleistocene, suggesting that their evolutionary courses were relatively independent. We propose that the genetic impact of Asia in the colonization of Europe during the Early and Middle Pleistocene was stronger than that of Africa.”

You’d think this would be good news to me. But it is actually really unfortunate for me, because my school’s library hasn’t updated access to this hot off the press paper, so I can’t download the full text just yet. Unless someone wants to graciously email it to me. I’ll be very grateful if you do, and will read and review it thoroughly plus share some of the good photos up here. Nevermind, I got it, and am reading it right now!