I will be at the meetings of the American Anthropological Association for the rest of this week, which are being held in Montreal, Canada. I'm presenting in an invited session organied by Karen Rosenberg and Rachel Caspari, titled "The Scars of Human Evolution". It's a great idea for a session focusing on those parts of our biology that one might consider negative legacies of evolutionary change in the past. The title is pulled from a classic article by Wilton Krogman, now published 60 years ago. I'll be talking about pseudogenes, in particular focusing on those cases where a broken version of a gene has had a selective advantage in our recent evolution.
There is much going on, including a session devoted to last year's #AAAfail er...communications breakdown: "Science in Anthropology: An Open Discussion". I'll be there taking notes.