Well the gist of this NY Times piece is that they’ve been roaming around so much that they have interbred with cattle. The Times says that there are estimates that of the 300,000 bison in the US, only about 10,000 are genetically “pure” – don’t carry genes from cattle. The Times makes this out to …
Author: Reid Farmer
More on Neanderthal – Modern Human Interbreeding
You may recall a post I put up in October that discussed a 30,000 year old cranium recovered from a cave in Romania that was purported to have both modern human and Neanderthal features. Now the same researcher, Erik Trinkhaus, has a second cranium from a different Romanian cave that he believes shows the same …
Out of Africa
The NY Times has a piece on a fossil human cranium found in South Africa that seems to confirm DNA evidence about the initial spread of modern humans out of Africa into Eurasia and later Europe. Roughly 50,000 years ago, DNA evidence (a good run-down of this is in Before the Dawn) indicates that a …
Adrift
When I took my first historical geology course at Tulane, back in the day, we of course studied plate techtonics and continental drift. It was a revelation to me to adjust my time sense and think about large land masses gliding along our planet’s surface, splitting up or colliding. I pored over maps that geologists …
Skin
The New York Times has an interesting interview with anthropologist Nina Jablonski of Penn State. Jablonski discusses her recent book on that understudied but largest human organ – the skin. I was particularly struck by her observation that “humans are the self-decorating ape.” Even those of us who haven’t had ink done rely on some …
Christmas Ornaments
Here’s a picture of the Christmas tree that we have up this year. Connie despairs of me sometimes because I don’t get as excited about Christmas as she does. She does such a superb job decorating the tree and inside the house. But I didn’t really want to write about the tree so much as …
Programming Note
Due to delays in getting photos loaded to Blogger, three new posts by Steve – Pupdate, One Purely Silly One, and Working Wolf Dogs – came up today “under” his post ‘The Goshawk’ Redux – that appeared Saturday. Just want to make sure you don’t miss anything!
Christmas Day Sunset
Hendry’s Beach, Santa Barbara.
Big Snakes
A news item I found earlier this week, describing how a man in Cincinnati had been strangled by his 13-foot pet boa constrictor, elicited some comments and reminiscences from the crew here. Steve:A thirteen- footer can kill you and it doesn’t even have to be aggressive.When I was at the zoo we didn’t let people– …
Paleontology Christmas Cards
I would urge you all to see Darren Naish’s post on paleontology-oriented Christmas cards. I must admit these paleontologists are more creative than us archaeologists.