Thanks to all
I want to take a moment to thank everyone whose generous donations have allowed me to pay for the site hosting and upkeep. Everyone who uses my Amazon links donates 6 percent of their purchases to the...
View ArticleBigfoot movies and pseudoscience TV
One of the people responsible for the Blair Witch Project is now making a movie about Sasquatch: Titled Exists, the movie is described as following “a group of twentysomethings who take a trip to a...
View ArticleCrows hate cavemen
Stephanie Pappas reports on experiments with social learning in crows. To ensure that crows were responding to their faces and not to their clothes, binoculars or some other ornithologist cue, the...
View ArticleOut of range
I have now reached Novosibirsk and will be offline for a bit more than a week. In the interim, this may be interesting: "ScienceOnline2011 – interview with John Hawks" The web has made it possible to...
View ArticleTweeting from Denisova
By the miracle of Amazon, I have been using my Kindle 3G to tweet from the Altai. It is far from an ideal blogging tool, so I will keep this to a short update. The device is perfectly matched to mobile...
View ArticlePeer review anonymous
Joe Pickrell puts forward an argument against peer review: "Why publish science in peer-reviewed journals?" In this post, I will argue that cutting journals out of scientific publishing to a large...
View ArticleAdministrative bloat
Mark Shapiro documents Parkinson's Law in action: For example, based on data in the California State University Statistical Abstract, the number of full-time faculty in the whole CSU system rose from...
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A visit to Malapa
I'm visiting at the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand this week. Lee Berger has been a really wonderful host and among other things he very kindly took me out to the...
View ArticleEighth day of creation
Larry Moran muses on the recent death of Horace Judson, author of The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology. This excellent history is rarely picked up by students anymore (and I...
View ArticleMore on the mutation rate
I've received several questions over the last few weeks about human genome-wide mutation rates. Some people are noticing heterogeneity in mutation rate estimates among family trios (spurred by a recent...
View ArticleAustralopithecus sediba in National Geographic
National Geographic has posted text from Josh Fischman's August article about Australopithecus sediba: "Malapa fossils". This raises the possibility, says Berger, that all the hominins—at least four...
View ArticleChimp gunplay
MSNBC reports on the really important issues, such as, "Will chimpanzees rise against us?" Any chimp gunplay would most likely be restricted to mimicry. [Primatologist John] Mitani believes actor...
View ArticleAdapting evolutionary psychology
I've been reading the new paper, "Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology", in PLoS Biology. The paper, by Johan Bolhuis and colleagues [1], is an extended attack on the methods...
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Ascending the Altai
On July 3, around 20 scientists left Novosibirsk by van to drive out to the permanent field camp at Denisova Cave in the low Altai mountains. The place is 520 km from Novosibirsk, which turned into a...
View ArticleHawks' Paleoanthropology Advice, #1
If it's been a while since you looked at it, look again. It may look different. It hasn't changed. You have.
View ArticleA look at Little Foot
Along with the papers on the Malapa hominins, Science this week published a news story by Michael Balter that is a profile of Ron Clarke and his work on the "Little Foot" skeleton, StW 573 from...
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The Australopithecus sediba hand
My photo of the hand (cast) of MH2: My commentary on the new papers will be coming. I've been very busy today filming, but I'll catch up after our bullriding adventure tomorrow. Tags: MalapaA. sedibahand
View ArticleA Lucy remembrance
The CNN medical blog (associated with Sanjay Gupta) is running a short piece by Don Johanson, which may be of interest: "'Lucy' discoverer: Why I study human evolution". My deep commitment to...
View ArticleMalapa conversation on NPR
The "Science Friday" NPR show with Ira Flatow did an interview with Lee Berger and Bernard Wood yesterday about Australopithecus sediba. The transcript is now online: "Examining Ancient Fossils for...
View ArticleSign your stuff
From science illustrator Kalliopi Monoyios: "3 Marketing Mistakes Young Illustrators Make". Important: sign your work. Think of every illustration you make as a potential marketing tool for your next...
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