john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

Blammo!

Tue, 2009-12-29 11:30 -- John Hawks

From The Onion:

Dinosaurs Sadly Extinct Before Invention Of Bazooka

According to Ernest Diffey, a fossil archivist at the American Museum of Natural History, a giant asteroid struck the earth in the late Cretaceous period, forever robbing scientists of valuable data concerning the effects powerful rocket launchers might have had on the largest land animals that ever lived.

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.