john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Pliocene blahs

Wed, 2009-06-03 18:15 -- John Hawks

While writing that last post, about the redefinition of "Pleistocene", I went browsing through my archives. I was surprised to see that I haven't tagged a post "Pliocene" for nearly two years!

That just seems amazing to me. All the more so because the last few Pliocene-tagged posts are pretty entertaining. Things got interesting for a while, and really quieted down since then. Well, there's stuff floating around out there; maybe we'll hear about some of it this summer?

Tags: 

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.