Why Our Brains Are Big
This post first appeared at The Advance Apes on 1/31/13 One of the most important traits we’ve developed over the course of human evolution is our exceptionally large brains. Brain […]
Category Archives: Chimps
Did Australopithecus make stone tools?
The first stone tools manufactured by our ancestors were part of the Oldowan industry. This toolkit consists of small sharp flakes which could be used for a wide range of […]
Caring Homo erectus
Empathy is an important human emotion, forming the foundation of the social emotions which underpin our communities. Our desire to care for one another – often at great personal cost […]
Australopithecus afarensis: tree climber
Australopithecus afarensis is a bipedal human ancestor which lived in Africa from 3.9 – 2.9 million years ago. It’s particularly notable for being the first hominin to have a human-like […]
Humans and chimps diverged earlier than previously thought
Our lineage’s fossil record is especially sparse between 4 – 8 million years ago. From that time period we have roughly 50 fragmented specimens making up only 6 or so […]
Competition makes apes take greater risks
A “farmer curve” is a graph which charts the chance of an event occurring against how bad that event will be, in effect calculating how risky a particular situation is. […]
Lucy the knuckle walking ape? – Misguided Mondays
Answers in Genesis have “refuted” this post. I offer a counter-refutation here Answers in Genesis runs the (in)famous Creation Museum, where they expound the Biblical account of how the earth […]
The mysterious StW 89 metatarsal
StW 89 is the designation of a recently described 2-2.6 million year old second metatarsal from the Sterkfontein formation in South Africa. As a metatarsal, it’s an important fossil since […]
Transitional hominins and creationists – Misguided Mondays
Some species can be defined as “mosaic.” In other words, that they possess a combination of features from two other species. These species are particularly useful, revealing evolutionary relationships between […]
Recent changes to the human accelerated region
Some genes have undergone very little evolution and so are highly conserved between species, being almost identical in animals which are far from similar. Such conservation is typically due to […]
