john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Babi yaga

Wed, 2010-02-17 07:30 -- John Hawks

Tetrapod Zoology writes about the mysterious babirusa:

Despite the ancient divergence of babyrousines from other suids, a male babirusa hybridised with a female domestic pig at Copenhagen Zoo in 2006. Of the five resulting piglets, one died but the others survived. As you can see from the photo here, they look surprisingly normal.

Timeframe of divergence not entirely clear; certainly Miocene and possibly Early Miocene. Babirusas are number 2 on my list of why we won't find hobbits on Sulawesi.

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.