Category Archives: Fossils

Announcing Anthropology 207x

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Last Fall, Wellesley announced its plan to partner with EdX and produce its first online, MOOC courses. Even prior to that decision, I was curious about the development of MOOCs and online teaching: Between two professors: Pros and Cons of … Continue reading →

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Gone Diggin’

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

I will be out of the country on an initial field foray to Kazakhstan for the next several weeks. A few posts will be showing up during that time, maybe more than a few depending on the degree of internet … Continue reading →

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What I am reading today (5/15/13)

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Finishing up the semester’s grading and preparing to leave for a little bit of fieldwork, but here is what I am trying to read today: Let’s Abandon Significance Tests – Jim Wood (The Mermaid’s Tale) But now suppose we’ve learned … Continue reading →

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Talking about data access at the 2013 AAPAs

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

This week is the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA), in Knoxville, Tennessee. My visit to this year’s meetings is going to be an abbreviated one, owing to the realities of leaving a 3-week old at … Continue reading →

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Good advice

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Given the recent chatter about reviving Neandertals, I think this is sage advice:

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“with a morphology similar to present-day humans”

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Adam Van Arsdale

Hominins with morphology similar to present-day humans appear in the fossil record across Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 y ago. That is the opening line of an abstract from Fu, et al. (2013) detailing ancient DNA from ~40,000 year old … Continue reading →

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The rise and fall of hominid genera

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Erin Wayman, blogging for the Smithsonian at Hominid Hunting, has had a series on species of Homo you have probably never heard of. That post got me thinking about the rise and fall in commonly accepted taxa, particularly at the … Continue reading →

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Paleoanthropology Picture of the Day

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Continuing an occasional series…this is a picture of Lake Baringo, Kenya, taken from the shoreline of Betsy’s Campground in Kampi Ya Samaki (late 2004). Lake Baringo sits in the central Rift Valley and is surrounded by fossiliferous exposures in pretty … Continue reading →

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It’s a scale, scale, scale, scale world (part 2)

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Following on my post from yesterday, I wanted to write a little more specifically about the significance of scale and our session at the AAAs. Paleoanthropological data are produced and address questions at different scales. Consider the following: Fossil – … Continue reading →

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My talk at the AAAs

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

If you are in the San Francisco area and interested in human evolution, you should stop by our session at the AAAs this afternoon. There is a great group of panelists who have agreed to contribute and I am excited … Continue reading →

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