A.L.-288-1 It is hard to discuss the relevance of A.L.-288-1 (aka Lucy) in only a few words. There is little doubt that Lucy is one of the most famous hominin fossils ever found. The story of its discovery by Tom Gray & Don Johanson, has been told in countless places, including a best-selling book. Rather than even attempt to do her justice, here are just a few facts that might not be as well known
image from DeSilva et al. 2018
Dikika Foot This fossil is part of the 3.3 mya skeleton of a Australopithecus afarensis child. If you don’t know about this skeleton, named Selam, check out Paige Madison’s story that details this amazing fossil find.
Feet are not well-known in the early human fossil record. This is a shame, since feet tell us a lot about how a species moved.
LH 4 sample from efossils
Laetoli Hominid 4 was discovered by Mary Leakey in 1974. Among other important traits, it serves as the type specimen for Australopithecus afarensis!
When they first described it, Leakey and colleagues noted that “presence of a C/P3 diastema, inclined symphyseal axis, bulbous anterior corpus, and low placement of the mental foramen on the adult mandible”. Originally they placed LH 4 and the other fossils from the site in the genus Homo but later work by Tim White, Don Johanson, and others linked the Laetoli fossils to the ones being uncovered 1,500 KM north in Hadar, where the famous Lucy skeleton was found.
MRD-VP-1/1 was announced only a few months ago (fun fact: you can tell when there is going to be a new fossil find by just asking me when I am planning to print my course syllabus and then banking on the fossil being published 24 hrs later…). Its importance is hard to overstate, as up till now we didn’t know much about the facial architecture of early members of the Australopith genus, with the expectation of the Little Foot fossil from Sterkfontein in South Africa that may date to ~3.
Orrorin tugenensis sample from Senut et al 2001
These set of fossils (collected by Evalyne Kiptalam, Kiptalam Cheboi, Martin Pickford, Brigitte Senut, Dominique Gommery, Samuel Chetalam, & Joseph Chebet) date to ~ 6 million years ago. While no cranium has been published so far, we do have parts of the upper & lower dentition (including a fragment of the lower left mandible), femora, part of the humerus, & a proximal finger bone.
This is a work-in-progress as I think more on how to become a better teacher. I wrote a draft of this in response to a colleague’s question. I wasn’t going to share it especially after seeing this amazing piece in the Chronicle by Beckie Supiano which goes over all this and more. But I wanted something to give to students and writing this helped me think more on it.
WHEN I WAS a college student (which was somewhat back in the Early Holocene…) I read the New York Times almost every day.
#Exploring hominin data
This is a version of data for my Human Evolution course next Fall. Wanted to spend the first day showing some data and talking about how we can visualize hominin evolution.
##interactive plot
Below is a scatterplot of the cranial capacity of various hominin species (species designation taken from referenced sources. Your mileage may vary as to whether these are true species or not…).
This week marks the end of my first year of teaching at Appalachian State University. It has been great getting to know my colleagues in the anthro department and learning to live in the mountains (before coming here we lived in South Bend, IN, which is a lot flatter than Boone, NC…In South Bend you can watch your dog run away for 2 days). I’ve been teaching two of the General Education courses in the department (Our Primate Heritage and Gender, Race, & Class).