Science, November 19, 2004
Depending on your point of view, last week’s New York City marathon was a demonstration of athletic excellence or of unparalleled masochism. But according to a report in this week’s issue of Nature, it was also a display of a key innovation in human evolution. University of Utah biomechanics expert Dennis Bramble and Harvard physical anthropologist Daniel Lieberman argue that the human body is exquisitely adapted for endurance running. They marshal evidence that the ability to run long distances emerged 2 million years ago, possibly enabling our ancestors to become better scavengers. If the researchers are right, running goes a long way toward explaining why our bodies are so different from those of other apes.
Continue reading “Faster Than a Hyena? Running May Make Humans Special”
A little more horn-tooting: The Loom has just been named a winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2004 Science Journalism Award. The judges considered three pieces: Hamilton’s Fall, Why the Cousins Are Gone, and My Darwinian Daughters. Here’s the press release. Thanks to the judges–it’s gratifying to see that it’s possible for a little blog to swim with the big online sharks.
Soul Made Flesh made Amazon.com’s Editor’s Pick list of the ten best science books of 2004. It’s an honor, although it seems a little premature to call 2004 over!
Thanks to Wired for excerpting my post on what DNA has to say about one-man-one-woman marriage. When the editors told me that they were going to run the excerpt, I thought at first that it might be a bit stale by the time the magazine came out. But it seems today that the proper form of marriage is on the nation’s mind again…