I have made a slight change to the blog’s title. “A.P. Van Arsdale Biological Anthropology Lab was always just a default placeholder till I found something I liked better. I have, at least temporarily, changed it to “The Pleistocene Scene.” I’m not opposed to a little bit of a play on words and my primary interests really do fall within the broad heading of the Pleistocene – the beginning featuring the early appearance and dispersal of the genus Homo, the end of the Pleistocene and the onset of a domesticated world, and the processes of evolution that characterize human evolutionary history in the middle. I also go into Pliocene issues that set up our Pleistocene story prior than about 2.5 million years ago, and of course I am interested in the ramifications for those of us walking the planet today of our Pleistocene evolutionary past, but the “Pleistocene scene” is a fair description of my primary beat. Always subject to change, of course…
I am also beginning to work on a new “page” for the site featuring a catalogue of biological anthropology/paleoanthropology resources. I am envisioning this as a searchable listing of skeletal/fossil/digital collections that are of interest to those of us working on human evolutionary questions and the fossil record. A lot of this information is already on the web in various places, but I have not been able to find a comprehensive resource where this information is consolidated. Perhaps I will give it a try.
