In this paper by Ruggero D’Anastasi and his colleagues, they show how lesions in the fossilised lumbar vertebrae of Australopithecus africanus Stw 431 from Sterkfontein, South Africa may have been caused by the individual’s consumption of meat during its lifetime, prompting the researchers to ask to what extent australopithecines living between 2.4 million and 2.8 [...]
Entries from July 2009
July 30, 2009
Possible Brucellosis in an Early Hominin Skeleton from Sterkfontein, South Africa – PLoS ONE
July 30, 2009
Four Stone Hearth 72 is up at A Hot Cup of Joe
Carl Feagans is hosting a birthday edition of the carnival over at his blog A Hot Cup of Joe, number 72 to be precise, so grab a party hat and head on over to check out the latest compilation of anthropology blogging over the last couple of weeks, including the abstract to a paper asking [...]
July 29, 2009
Autosomal Resequence Data Reveal Late Stone Age Signals of Population Expansion in Sub-Saharan African Foraging and Farming Populations – PLoS ONE
Here’s the introduction to a paper which seeks to determine when and for what reasons modern human populations began to undergo rapid growth spurts at various times during the Late Pleistocene and on into the Neolithic:
Reconstructing the timing and magnitude of changes in human population size is important for understanding the impact of climatic fluctuation, [...]
July 26, 2009
Heidelbergensis Skull Fragments Are Latest Finds From Atapuerca
Just a very brief news item from Atapuerca in northern Spain, where recent excavations by team leaders Juan Luis Arsuaga and Ignacio Martínez working in Sima de los Huesos, have turned up some pretty impressive cranial material from H.heidelbergensis, dating back 500,000 years, a discovery which follows on from the 1.3 million year old partial [...]
July 26, 2009
Two Cultures Conference – Videos Online at New York Academy of Sciences
Back in May 2009, Science Debate and the New York Academy of Science collaborated in putting together a conference by the name of ‘A Dangerous Divide: The Two Cultures in the 21st Century’, which is described at the linked website as follows:
On May 9, 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences’ Science & the City [...]
July 26, 2009
Four Stone Hearth 72 – Call for Submissions
The 72nd edition of the Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival is due to appear this coming Wednesday, July 29th, and will be hosted by Carl over at A Hot Cup of Joe – so if you’ve recently written something of your own, or seen a post on another blog you deem worthy of consideration [...]
July 24, 2009
Peopling of Australia:’Reconstructing Indian-Australian Phylogenetic Link’ Satish Kumar et al
Although this is described as a provisional paper, and therefore subject to alteration before official publication, it’s published in full as a provisional pdf, in which it is proposed that the genetic footprints of Australia’s first inhabitants, estimated to have arrived around 45,000 years BP, can be detected in modern-day Indian populations. The main points [...]
July 24, 2009
The Sixth Mass Coextinction: Are Most Endangered Species Parasites and Mutualists? RSPB
Here’s another free to access paper, by Robert Dunn et al, which discusses circumstances under which extinctions can occur, how extinction of one species leads to others, and how extinction dynamics can be assessed and used to predict similar events in the future, when coextinction rates are predicted to increase.
This is the abstract:
The effects of [...]
July 24, 2009
Impact of Selection and Demography on the Diffusion of Lactase Persistence – PLoS ONE
Here’s a freely accessible paper which amongst many considerations, discusses genetic diffusion in pastoral human populations at the Neolithic transition, and why Lactose Persistence, or specifically lactase persistence allele(s) (LCT*P), which allows for the digestion of fresh milk, was strongly selected for in northern Europe, at the start of agricultural domestication. This is the introduction:
Lactase [...]
