Light blogging this week is due to my frantic fragment of a week, returning from Thanksgiving and preparing to head down to DC to participate on a panel at the American Anthropological Association. The panel is called “Updating Human Evolution: Bringing Anthropological and Public Conceptions into Contemporary Perspective,” and will take place Saturday afternoon starting at 1:45 pm. Ten anthropologists are going to talk about new advances in our understanding of human evolution, from humans as prey to the evolution of the sexes. (You can find the full line up here. Search the pdf for the title of the panel.)
Scientific American, November 30, 2005
The most obvious thing about yourself is your self. “You look down at your body and know it’s yours,” says Todd Heatherton, a psychologist at Dartmouth University. “You know it’s your hand you’re controlling when you reach out. When you have memories, you know that they are yours and not someone else’s. When you wake up in the morning, you don’t have to interrogate yourself for a long time about who you are.”
The self may be obvious, but it is also an enigma. Heatherton himself shied away from direct study of it for years, even though he had been exploring self-control, self-esteem and other related issues since graduate school.
The New York Times, November 29, 2005
In the annals of life, insects are one of the great success stories.
A little over 400 million years ago, their six-legged ancestors came out of the water onto dry land. They have evolved into an estimated five million living species — dwarfing the diversity of all other animals combined. Even if you throw in all the known species of plants, fungi and protozoans, insects still win.
Insects are also a success in terms of sheer biomass. Put all of the insects on a giant scale, and they will outweigh all other animals, whales and elephants included.
Continue reading “A Pair of Wings Took Evolving Insects on a Nonstop Flight to Domination”
Writing about paleontology without illustrations is like directing a movie without a camera. When I wrote my first book, At the Water’s Edge, I had the good fortune to join forces with Carl Buell, who brought walking whales and fish with fingers to life. Now he has come to the other side, with a blog of his own, complete with pictures. Check it out.
I’ve got a short piece in tomorrow’s New York Times about the 400-million year history of insects. Some beautiful pictures of the creepers included.