Beyond bones & stones
A colleague of mine has developed a new online human fossil record, in the likes of my own database of fossils. The project is Fossilized.org and although it is in beta, it has some remarkable features already. I am particularly impressed with the phylogeny plot view, which offers a chronological color coded map of many important... Continue Reading →
The last time I did a little tutorial on how to use bioinformatic tools in anthropological research was last October. I've had some ideas since then and have decided to restart this project. The biggest change is the screencast format, rather than a set of static instructions. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the... Continue Reading →
So, I got my hands on that mouth watering Nature paper I mentioned a couple days ago. It is titled, "Cladistic analysis of continuous modularized traits provides phylogenetic signals in Homo evolution," and it is probably the biggest anthropology news of this week. I've read it and it is dense. It really shouldn't be so... Continue Reading →
The press is running some mouth watering news on an upcoming Nature paper that provides 'a new, simplified family tree of humanity.' I'm really interested in this topic, especially figuring out just how bushy our phylogeny is. See, there has been what I consider misguided movement growing within hominin systematics. One where features from a... Continue Reading →
John Hawks shared an interesting news bit the other day. The study basically sampled head lice off of 1,000 year old Peruvian mummies and with some sequence variation comparisons to other lice, the authors were able conclude that lice have been with humans ever since they migrated out of Africa. I've tracked down the original... Continue Reading →
I've read the short article on punctuated equilibrium in language evolution and have discussed it with some colleagues of mine. I'm assuming they don't want me to publicize their name since this blog's reputation for being coy and graceful isn't what most would consider honorable. For that reason, I'm omitting their names, even though they... Continue Reading →
Fellow blogger, Simon Greenhill of HENRY, and co-authors published a cool paper evaluating language evolution that just came out in today's issue of Science. The premise behind the paper, "Languages Evolve in Punctuational Bursts," is simple to follow. By comparing related versions, or homologs, of common words between the following language families: Indo-European, Bantu, and... Continue Reading →
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