Beyond Bones

In a well-deserved world-wide wave of publicity, the existence of a new hominid species was announced recently. Fossil hominins were first recognized in the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star Cave system in October 2013. Now, some two years later, and after exhaustive analysis of more than 1,500 bone fragments, the team decided to go […]

That’s some good-looking gombo, cher! photo credit: Southern Foodways Alliance This blog contribution aims to be like a good Louisiana seafood gumbo: thick, hearty, spicy, and made up all kinds of finger-licking ingredients (pun intended). There will be some French, which would be apropos, some Latin as well, and all kinds of discoveries related to […]

Part One: She Should Have Been Caught and E A T E N ! Lucy evolved into us. Really, really (to quote “Shrek.”) Her species, Australopithecus afarensis, or something extremely close, changed over three million years to become Homo sapiens – the species that includes you and me. So we should treat Lucy with respect……. […]

As mentioned in a previous post, the question of whether or not Neanderthalers were able to have offspring continues to be hotly debated by scientists. Depending on the answer given, we would have to classify Neanderthalers either as people like us, or people very different from us. Of course, proponents of both of these statements […]