If you’ve been following along, you know I’ve been detailing the event of “Darwin’s Worst Nightmare” as it unfolded in real time in 1858. First, he received a letter that rocked his world (not in a good way), then he asked his friends to spring into action and help him preserve his scientific priority. Today, July…
Last week, I told the story of the time Darwin received a harrowing letter from Alfred Russel Wallace. The date was June 18th, 1958, and Darwin had potentially lost his originality. His claim to “discovering” evolution through natural selection, an idea he had been working on for twenty years, was seemingly vanishing before his eyes.…
June 18th, 1858 was a rough day for Charles Darwin. On that day, he saw his worst nightmare seemingly unfold right in front of his eyes. “All my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed,” he wrote to a friend, fearing that his life’s work had collapsed entirely. What happened–what caused this moment…
Readers of this blog are familiar with my fascination of the fossils of human ancestors. I’ve written about fossils’ beauty, their strange stories, and the ways they make us question our ideas. Despite these points, critics often ask: do the discoveries of these bits of bone actually make any difference? In other words, why is paleoanthropology important;…
Hesperopithecus, wikicommons In 1922, scientists announced the discovery of a “remarkable tooth” from a Nebraskan hillside. This tooth had the potential to change the story of the human past, scientists argued. The president of the American Natural History Museum, Henry Fairfield claimed that the fossilized tooth belonged to an ape–the first recognized ape in North…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently (or you’re avoiding the news, understandably), you might have noticed some big announcements came out of South Africa this week. A team of researchers, led by Lee Berger and John Hawks, announced 1) the age of Homo naledi 2) a new chamber discovered with fossils in it 3)…
Did you blink at any point in the last week? If so, you may have missed some incredible paleoanthropology announcements. This exciting branch of science is out to remind us, once again, that big things are unfolding–and a blink or a short doze might mean you miss another exciting news story. Because so much happened in…
In 2004, the discovery of a tiny hominin catapulted the limestone cave of Liang Bua into the scientific spotlight. Few people realize, however, that Liang Bua’s scientific history extends both long before the hobbit’s discovery and continues unfolding to the present day. On a recent trip to the cave, where I was hoping to learn more…
The story of an unexpected hobbit discovery on the Indonesian island of Flores is fairly well known (–and if you don’t know it, check out this piece by Ewen Callaway, or my post on the discovery). A team of interdisciplinary scientists led by archaeologist Mike Morwood was looking for clues about human migration to Australia in…
There’s a moment, I’ve realized, for each scientist I study, when they transform from an abstract, historical figure into a human being. This character-to-human transition happens quickly, and the shift is striking—as if they’ve transcended the two dimensional world left behind in their written letters and suddenly sprung to life. In this moment, without warning, I feel empathy…
“Oh, this is absolutely bizarre,” scientist Bert Roberts exclaimed, referring to the fossil species Homo floresiensis. Bizarre is a word that sums up the floresiensis creatures (known as the hobbits) quite nicely. These primitive hominins–with their small brains, huge feet, and tiny stature–were discovered almost accidently in 2003, and they were completely unexpected. “We would have been less…
Charles Darwin was born today (February 12), 208 years ago. The world he was born into would be entirely unrecognizable to us today. Bicycles had yet to be invented, steam engines were just beginning to appear, and slavery was commonly practiced in both England and the United States. During the course of his lifetime, Darwin saw the…
