A brand new study in the open access journal PLoS One reports on the results of an analysis of the microwear on the teeth of Paranthropus boisei (also known as Australopithecus boisei). The results contest what we’ve all along assumed was going on with the form and the function of these robust australopithecine teeth. I [...]
Entries from April 2008
April 29, 2008
Have you heard of World Atlas of Language Structures online?
About a week ago, Michael from Greater Blogazonia broke the news of the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS) database release. Following suite was Mark from The Ideophone, and Simon from HENRY. All three are lingustic anthropology focused blogs that I follow and trust, and they all praised this database. I’ve been poking around [...]
April 28, 2008
The Genealogy of Kwaday Dän Ts’inchi
In 1999, hunters looking for sheep stumbled upon the remains of a man in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, British Columbia, Canada. The man was found at the foot of a glacier. After reporting the discovery, a team of archaeologists and forensic anthropologists worked with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations to recover the remains. [...]
April 28, 2008
Shanidar III – A Neandertal who ate his veggies… Or at least chewed them
Last month’s annual meeting of the Paleoanthropology Society hosted a talk by Amanda Henry, a graduate student at George Washington University. She analyzed the microfossils of plant material found in the dental plaque on Neandertal teeth from Shanidar, Iraq.
What is dental plaque? Much to the chargin of dentists out there, the composition and origin of [...]
April 26, 2008
Applying Google Earth in paleontological and archaeological research
(GIS) are a critical aspect of modern day archaeological and paleoanthropological research. GIS systems expedite analyzing and managing large amounts of spatial data, and can really improve mapping locations where artifacts or fossils are found. Unfortunately, the price point and learning curve involved in using GIS applications, like ArchGIS make it an unapproachable technology.
An article [...]
April 25, 2008
On mtDNA diversity within Africa, before the out of Africa migrations
Dienekes, Blaine, Razib, and Simon have all chimed in introducing us to a new paper from the American Journal of Human Genetics. It seems like a really interesting one, one that takes mtDNA to construct a phylogeny used to investigate what was happening to early Homo sapiens genetic diversity and populations within Africa. This study [...]
April 24, 2008
More on Homo floresiensis bipedalism and a bit on Homo floresiensis dental work
A week ago, I shared with you news of Bill Jungers’ conclusions on how the morphology of the Homo floresiensis foot affected its locomotion. Science has dedicated a short two page ditty on this topic and you may wanna check it out for a more authoritative take on it.
In other related Homo floresiensis news, John [...]
April 24, 2008
Pardis Sabeti in the most recent issue of Science
Pardis Sabeti, one of my favorite Iranians and anthropologists out there, has a news focus dedicated to her in the latest issue of Science. You should check it out if you wanna get to know a little bit more about her and her current research focus.
For those that don’t know who she is, she holds [...]
April 23, 2008
Four Stone Hearth 39 @ Hominin Dental Anthropology
The latest edition of the anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth is now up and ready to be read – as ever we are offered a very nice mix of writing from around the anthropological zone of the blogosphere.
The next edition will be at remote central on May 9th – so for now, many thanks [...]
