Category Archives: Evolution

Lineages, species and Michigan

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of the posts that I have had in draft form for several months, waiting for the proper motivation and approach to finalize, is titled, “lineages and species in the fossil record.” This week, perhaps, the time and motivation has … Continue reading →

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Quotes for the day – Expansion and speciation

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Continuous expansion to new environments is the most general overriding feature of all adaptive radiation. The pattern of this divergence between populations and species is partly predictable from principles of quantitative genetic covariation. The initials stages of divergence between populations … Continue reading →

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Linearity and simplicity in the fossil record

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Spend time reading about human evolution and it will not be long until you come across a discussion of “bushy” vs. “linear” evolutionary scenarios or arguments between taxonomic “splitters” (favoring more species) and “lumpers” (favoring fewer species). I will, up … Continue reading →

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The complexity of human sexual dimorphism

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Today’s dialogue on sexual dimorphism and human evolution, hosted by BU’s Anthropology department and featuring Michael Plavcan and Phil Reno as speakers, was great. But it was not great because it came to any grand resolution on questions of the … Continue reading →

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Russian cuisine as innovation loss

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Spending 14 hours in airports and planes yesterday offered me the rare opportunity to read an issue of the New Yorker cover to cover. Reading one of the stories, “The Borscht Belt” by Julia Ioffe, I could not help but … Continue reading →

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Thinking about fire in the fossil record

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of the items in my backlog of “want to blog about” topics is a recent paper by Francesco Berna and colleagues on evidence for fire dating to one million years ago from the South African cave site of Wonderwerk. … Continue reading →

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Biological variation is a wonderful thing

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Women’s NCAA final four edition. Brittney Griner (6’8″) and Skylar Diggins (5’9″): Always nice to be reminded about size variability within humans. Especially when you consider that Skylar Diggins (left) is already in the 95th percentile for female height.

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Bioengineering, prehistory and futurology

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

John Hawks has an entertaining piece on Slate.com about the prospects for bioengineering a more sustainable humanity. But hunting big animals to extinction was not the only option. People in Mesopotamia, China, Mexico, and other places invented a new ecology, … Continue reading →

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Entering the age of global weirdness

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Two years ago, Wellesley broke a record by receiving more than 18 inches of rain in the month of March, largely the result of two “100-year” storms separated by just a week (here is Wellesley’s five-year weather record, courtesy of … Continue reading →

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Paleoanthropology Society Meetings

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

The Paleoanthropology Society has released its finalized schedule of talks for the upcoming annual meetings. My spring conference travel money will be taking me to the AAPA annual meetings in Portland this year rather than the Paleo meetings, but looking … Continue reading →

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