john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

There's Stone Age, and then there's....

Sat, 2009-02-07 00:56 -- John Hawks

Another chapter for Man the Hunted: 200,000-odd year old human hairs in hyena feces.

[Lucinda]Backwell and her colleagues used tweezers to extract 40 fossilized hairs resembling glass needles from one of the hyena coprolites.

Scanning-electron-microscope images revealed wavy bands of scales on the hairs—a pattern typical of modern primates, with human hair being the closest match.

Well...the real surprise to me in this story is that nobody stepped forward to claim that these are Homo helmei hairs in the hyena scat. Because if I had to think of a picture of what I think of Homo helmei...

Tags: 
MSA
South Africa
Africa
predation

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.