I have spent a lot of time reading about new findings about Neanderthals over the past year. Recently, I wrote about the coincidence of two studies published in July: one demonstrating genetic overlap between modern humans and Neanderthals (resulting from sexual relationships), the other proposing that Neanderthals were pushed out of their territory by an… [Read more…]
May 21, 2011
This just in: ancestral humans adopted bipedal posture so that males could fight with the strength of their forelimbs, making their punches more dangerous. OK. I actually thought I knew the range of arguments for bipedalism. I guess I appreciate having something novel to think about? The research described in news reports I read was… [Read more…]
March 10, 2011
Nature‘s editors and authors tried, they really tried, titling the report published yesterday “Human-specific loss of regulatory DNA and the evolution of human-specific traits”. But from the earliest news report I can find (yesterday on Science 2.0, titled “Why Your Penis Has no Spine”) through to the raft of articles today, reporters have had their… [Read more…]
August 7, 2011
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