Word: homo
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...anthropologist, I firmly object to the theories presented by paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus [PALEONTOLOGY, May 3], who supports the idea that there was interbreeding between prehistoric Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens. Archaeologists merely uncovered a single skeleton of a child with a mixture of modern and Neanderthal features. To deduce that this indicates a peaceful coexistence or gradual immersion of Neanderthals into the Homo sapiens gene pool is groundless and inconsistent in the face of DNA testing recently conducted. The Neanderthals, like other hominids, are no more. Perhaps mankind's evolution was a more violent affair than we would like...
...years of digging in the ancient, arid sediments of East Africa has told scientists a great deal about the long evolutionary trail that led to modern human beings. They know about Lucy, the upright-walking proto-human australopithecine that strode the continent some 3.2 million years ago; about Homo habilis, the first known human species, which was making and using stone tools in the same region by 1.2 million years later; about Homo erectus, which emerged from Africa soon thereafter and spread across the world...
...Bouri. When the paleontologists looked closely at the skull, they were shocked. The combination of teeth and bones clearly came from a species more primitive than the earliest humans yet more modern than known australopithecines. That means it could be the transitional species that led directly to the Homo lineage--or it could be a branch of the family tree that became an evolutionary dead...
...paleontologists can't be sure that they are from the same species. But like the skull, these fossils show a mix of primitive and advanced traits. Australopithecus afarensis, which lived between 3.6 million and 2.9 million years ago, had forearms that were long compared with its legs, while Homo erectus, which appeared about 1.7 million years ago, had shortened forearms and longer legs, more like modern humans. The new fossils fall right in the middle, both chronologically and anatomically, suggesting that the leg bones lengthened at least a million years before the forearm bones shrank...
...sense Ehrenreich's motivation but no dent in sociobiology. She overlooks the most striking evidence ("normal frequency" of intercourse: daily to weekly), which shows that the human sexual impulse is coupled to pleasure. It appears reproductively senseless only at the individual level but is probably the ace that ensured Homo sapiens' domination of the planet. (Hinduism recognizes this connection as one of the prime goals in life.) Familyists should welcome it as a great elixir for the daily tussle and tumble inevitable in marital life. This synergy between reproduction and pleasure explains the huge social benefit a family offers. SHARADCHANDRA...