Greetings–
Homo floresiensis is one of my favorite hominins. (What’s yours?) Back in 2004, scientists announced they had found a tiny human-like species on an Indonesian island. I fell into a blogging frenzy that lasted over two years: Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, June 10, 2016”
The New York Times, June 8, 2016
Scientists digging in the Liang Bua cave on the Indonesian island of Flores years ago found a tiny humanlike skull, then a pelvis, jaw and other bones, all between 60,000 and 100,000 years old.
The fossils, the scientists concluded, belonged to individuals who stood just three feet tall — an unknown species, related to modern humans, that they called Homo floresiensis or, more casually, the hobbits.
On Wednesday, researchers reported that they had discovered still older remains on the island, including teeth, a piece of a jaw and 149 stone tools dating back 700,000 years.
Continue reading “New Fossils Strengthen Case for ‘Hobbit’ Species”
Greetings–
It’s late spring here in New England, and that means one thing: an invasion of snapping turtles, in search of a place to lay their eggs. Here’s a story I told two years ago about learning to love my monstrous neighbors.
If you are in Austin, or if you’ll be there for the Society for the Study of Evolution meeting, please join me on June 17 for a public lecture, “The Surviving Branch: How Genomes Are Revealing The Twisted Course of Human Evolution.” Details here Continue reading “Friday’s Elk, June 3, 2016”
Greetings–
Here are a couple items for your long-holiday reading list.
The New York Times, June 3, 2016
Just a few years ago, Crispr was a cipher — something that sounded to most ears like a device for keeping lettuce fresh. Today, Crispr-Cas9 is widely known as a powerful way to edit genes. Scientists are deploying it in promising experiments, and a number of companies are already using it to develop drugs to treat conditions ranging from cancer to sickle-cell anemia.
Yet there is still a lot of misunderstanding around it. Crispr describes a series of DNA sequences discovered in microbes, part of a system to defend against attacking viruses.
Continue reading “Scientists Find Form of Crispr Gene Editing With New Capabilities”