Over the weekend I was part of a panel at the American Anthropology Association, the topic of which was “Updating Human Evolution.” I got to listen to ten presentations by scientists, each offering a look at how our understanding of our ancestry is changing with new research. While they were all interesting, I was particularly eager to hear one: Alan Templeton of Washington University. Templeton. Having just finished a book about human evolution, I knew that Templeton has been doing some groundbreaking work to figure out what our DNA has to say about our evolutionary history. I was looking forward to hearing about Templeton’s latest results, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I’ve been asked to review a couple books about global warming. Climate change and evolution, which I mainly write about, are intimately related, since life is a potent source of greenhouse gases (methane from bacteria, etc.) and abrupt climate change has triggered profound changes in the biosphere. This assignment has me taking a particularly close look to all the new research and political news emerging these days.
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”