The Evolutionary Enigma of the Human Eyebrow
[no-caption] Pexels This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Eyebrows. We all have them, but what are they actually for? …
Tag: Biology
The Personhood and Rights of Apes
I spent the earliest part of my career as an anthropologist studying captive chimpanzees at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, NC. While there, I always made a…
Humanity’s Story Has No End of Surprising Twists
Indigenous Australians created elaborate rock art, as shown here in Arnhem Land. P. Taçon This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative…
Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the first peoples in the Americas were not from Europe
A recent Canadian documentary promoted a fringe idea in American archaeology that’s both scientifically wrong and racist Last month’s release of The Ice Bridge, an episode in the…
Rejecting the Solutrean hypothesis: the first peoples in the Americas were not from Europe
A recent Canadian documentary promoted a fringe idea in American archaeology that’s both scientifically wrong and racist Last month’s release of The Ice Bridge, an episode in the…
Baby Fat Is About More Than Cuteness
Pudginess in babies offers an evolutionary advantage. Alamy Photos “Aw, you still have your baby fat!” This refrain plagued me throughout my childhood. No matter what I did,…
Is the Clock Ticking Toward Doomsday?
Each January, the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveils an estimate of the likelihood that humanity will self-destruct. They do so by…
What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native…
What the ancient DNA discovery tells us about Native American ancestry
A new genome from a Pleistocene burial in Alaska confirms a longstanding model for the initial peopling of the Americas Surprise as DNA reveals new group of Native…
Anthropology’s Top Findings of 2017
“Fossil scout” Pedro Boshoff inside the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, where Homo naledi fossils were found. Wits University This year’s anthropological findings brought us fasc…
Can Rat Bones Solve an Island Mystery?
When I ask her “So how big are the rats?,” E. Grace Veatch, a graduate student in zooarchaeology at Emory University, smiles and immediately holds her hands apart…
No ‘lost tribes’ or aliens: what ancient DNA reveals about American prehistory
New genetics research settles questions about the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador – and helps highlight what genetics can’t tell us Genetics research has transformed our understanding of…
No ‘lost tribes’ or aliens: what ancient DNA reveals about American prehistory
New genetics research settles questions about the peoples of Newfoundland and Labrador – and helps highlight what genetics can’t tell us Genetics research has transformed our understanding of…
Watching Ancient Hominins Giving Birth
The movies that Natalie Laudicina makes use the same software that helped create some of the biggest blockbuster hits of the last decade, but her movies won’t be…
The secret about human evolution found in spit
Genetic detectives discover surprising findings about our evolution by studying saliva What does a protein in our spit called MUC7 that all of us have – but most…
How Molecular Clocks Are Refining Human Evolution’s Timeline
Our cells have a built-in genetic clock, tracking time—but how accurately? Mauro Hiroshi Cannas/Flickr This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished u…
If Mary Beard is right, what’s happened to the DNA of Africans from Roman Britain?
There are many reasons why a genetic legacy might not be seen in contemporary populations – Mary Beard was right to defend the BBC’s cartoon If you have…
Why Are Human Teeth So Messed Up?
Most animals would never need braces even if they could get them. Monica y Garza/Flickr This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative…
Did human women contribute to Neanderthal genomes over 200,000 years ago?
A new Neanderthal mitochondrial genome supports a remarkable hypothesis – that there was interbreeding with an extremely early migration of African hominins Keeping pace with new developments in…
Homo naledi genome: Will we ever find this elusive key to human evolution? | Jennifer Raff
Despite the recent announcement of a new haul of Homo naledi fossils, recovering ancient DNA is still proving as difficult as ever Despite what many people believe, paradigm-shifting…
Nature’s Most Creative Copulators
For humans, sex is risky, socially complicated, and culturally loaded—but it’s almost always fun. David Williams Googling “sex” in 2016 yields approximately 3.34 billion results in 0.29 s…
Do You See What I See?
Social scientists have long been fascinated by how people in different cultures perceive and describe color. Michelle Jones/SAPIENS In a Candoshi village in the heart of Peru, anthropolog…
Why Do We Keep Using the Word “Caucasian”?
The word “Caucasian” is used in the U.S. to describe white people, but it doesn’t indicate anything real. It’s the wrong term to use! My colleague and one…
The Biological Fallacy of American’s Race Problem #MeadCompetition
I love my hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. I’m sure you’ve heard about Baltimore lately, with its sagging school system, serving a mainly African-American population; its yet again exploding…