Word: homo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world of paleontology was thrown into an uproar last year when Australian scientists Michael Morwood and Peter Brown claimed they?d found fossils from an entirely new (though presumably extinct) human species, which they dubbed Homo floresiensis, on the Indonesian island of Flores. For one thing, the diminutive creatures, nicknamed ?hobbits? by the scientists, were alive as recently as 13,000 years ago-meaning they survived tens of thousands of years longer than the Neanderthals, which we thought were our last surviving cousins. They might even have lived into modern times, if local legends of a race of forest-dwelling...
...Another of Morwood and Brown?s theories-that their hobbits evolved directly from Homo erectus, which was thought to have died out a half-million or so years ago-which the critics lambasted, is now looking less likely. But their new idea is even more audacious: the hobbits, they suggest, may come directly from the Australopithecus family, which went extinct something like 2 million years ago. Their detailed argument for this notion has yet to be published, and critics are still very cautious even about embracing the idea that the hobbits represent a new species at all. But while...
...recently as 18,000 years ago yet was only the size of a modern-day 6-year-old. Because the female skeleton looked humanoid rather than human and the brain size was small, the researchers concluded she was not a Pygmy?a short but otherwise normal version of Homo sapiens you still find in equatorial Africa and pockets of Southeast Asia?but a member of an entirely new species whom its discoverers named Homo floresiensis. This species, say the scientists, probably branched off from Homo erectus, the commonly accepted ancestor of Homo sapiens. The news meant that the two different...
...after they have been the norm for so long a time. In any case, humans everywhere engage in conflict over natural diversity. Clannishness and tribalism, for instance, both common in the rest of black Africa as sources of vicious conflict, are the offspring of the same parents as racism. Homo sapiens, the "wise man," is not yet truly wise. Majority-ruled South Africa, despite remnants of the racist era, has enjoyed remarkable stability and a robust economy, thanks largely to the singular wisdom of the African National Congress (anc) under the leadership of Nelson Mandela...
Here's a healthier way to look at menopause. It's one of those facts of life, like bipedalism, that set Homo sapiens apart from the nonhuman primates. Their females decline pretty rapidly after they stop being fertile. Ours continue to thrive for decades. Scientists still argue about the details, but women have long taken advantage of nature's largesse to help rear grandchildren, start new ventures and, with any luck, pass on some accumulated wisdom...