john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Malapa surfacing

Sat, 2010-04-03 16:45 -- John Hawks

Richard Gray of The Telegraph has a story about the upcoming Malapa hominin announcement: "Missing link between man and apes found"

Palaeontologists and human evolutionary experts behind the discovery have remained silent about the exact details of what they have uncovered, but the scientific community is already abuzz with anticipation of the announcement of the find when it is made on Thursday.

The skeleton was found by Professor Lee Berger, from the University of the Witwatersrand, while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as "the Cradle of Humanity".

...

It is thought that the new fossil to be unveiled this week will be identified as a new species that fits somewhere between Australopithicus [sic] and Homo habilis.

The story is otherwise devoid of information content, including the unrevealing comments by P. V. Tobias.

This would seem to be an embargo break, so we'll have to see what further information may come to light in the next few hours. I have heard that the description will be published in Science (that's the Thursday embargo noted here).

UPDATE (2010-04-03): The Times enters with an even less informative story.

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.