“LUCY WAS PUSHED!” someone shouted at me through the fibers of the internet. I had just shared the new Lucy study on Twitter, which I’m sure many of you have seen by now: the idea that Lucy–the famous Australopithecus afarensis skeleton–fell to her death 3.2 million years ago. My mother felt just as incredulous as…
A Strange Skeleton The bones revealed a human of “extraordinary form,” he concluded. It was January 1857, and Hermann Schaaffhausen had just viewed a fossilized skeleton that was unlike anything he had ever seen. The surviving bits of the skeleton–made up of a partial skull, along with some leg bones, ribs, and other bits…
Summer is coming to a close, giving us a great excuse to reflect on the incredible announcements that have been recently made in paleoanthropology. From footprints to new fossils, these discoveries have definitely altered the ways I think about many hominin species, so I’m counting down my favorites. This time, I polled a bunch of you…
Who were the Neanderthals, and how were they related to humans? These are questions that have plagued paleoanthropologists since the first Neanderthal fossil was found over a century and a half ago. On July 11, 1997 a very important paper appeared in the journal Cell that shed light on this issue. It was titled “Neanderthal…
New fossils have been discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. The bones appear to be an ancestor of the hominin species named Homo floresiensis (known as the hobbits)! The bones–some teeth and part of a jaw–were uncovered in an area called Mata Menge, only 74 kilometers from the cave in which the hobbits themselves had been found back…
If you follow me on twitter (@FossilHistory) you may have seen I’ve been doing some writing outside of my blog. Today I wanted to share a piece I recently wrote for SAPIENS–but also I’d like to use this to briefly illuminate what it is I do as a historian of science, and why I think it’s the…
William King Gregory was a paleontologist who studied a variety of fossils creatures during the first half of the 20th century. He worked at the American Natural History Museum and Columbia University, and spent many years studying everything from fish to primates to human ancestors. Gregory introduced new approaches to examining fossils, helped settle human ancestor debates, and…
As some of you know, I study the history of paleoanthropology. Clearly, doing a PhD on the entire history of paleoanthropology would be difficult. So, for my dissertation research, I focus on fossils of two species of extinct hominins: Neandertals and the ‘hobbits’ from Indonesia, Homo floresiensis. I’m here to today to tell you that I lucked out; I…
For the non-paleoanthropologist readers, the words Sterkfontein and Kromdraai may not mean much…but that’s about to change. Sterkfontein and Kromdraai are two of the many limestone caves that make up the massive World Heritage Site: the Cradle of Humankind. This South African site is the richest place for hominin fossils in the world. The sheer number of hominin fossils…
It’s only March (on a related note–how is it already March?!), and already a TON has happened in paleoanthropology this year. So far in 2016, we’ve seen announcements on everything from teeth to DNA. I thought I’d recap some of the big finds, but as always, I have to include the disclaimer that these announcements are…
Dart Invents the Southern Ape In early February 1925, Raymond Dart announced his discovery of the Taung Baby fossil to the world. I recently wrote about how Nature was scooped on the announcement, but I now want to focus on how the scientific world reacted to Taung’s discovery. In his paper, Dart argued that Taung represented a new…
Dart and his Taung Baby Raymond Dart and his Taung child fossil are well known in the history of paleoanthropology. The story goes: the fossil came from a limestone quarry near the town of Taungs, South Africa. It fell into the hands of Dart, an anatomist at the nearby University of Witswatersrand. Recognizing that he…
