john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Mailbag: The Ardipithecus wait

Sun, 2009-10-04 12:08 -- John Hawks

I sense a touch of criticism regarding the grand unveiling of Ardi after 15 years wait. Now I've completed that sentence it makes sense. A large team spend 15 years on one species with a limited number of remains. How long did it take one man, Darwin, to develop, test, comminucate regarding and write one the world's most importantbooks? Remember without cars, email or phones any travel or questions/opinions would take considerably longer than today.

S

Well, to be fair, Darwin did correspond and communicate with a much broader range of people, including many critics. This helped him identify weaknesses and errors in his thinking (and others') more quickly....

Tags: 
Ardipithecus
metascience
data access

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.