Institute of Human Origins
News
>(July 21, 2010) The IHO: Notes from the Field blog now has a new writer—IHO PhD student Amy Shapiro, who will be writing about the current field school in Langebaanweg, South Africa. To read her first entry, go to <http://asuiho.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/amy-shapiro-langebaanweg-week-1/>.>(July 12, 2010) IHO Board Member Ian Tattersall tells NPR.org that "it makes sense that arboreal primates may have been "primed," for upright walking on the ground. "I don't think you come down to the ground and decide it would be a really good idea to stand upright and move around," he says. "I think the only reason you would do it is because this is what came naturally to you in the first place." Link to NPR.org >(July 9,2009) ASU alumna Christine Lee selected as one of National Geographic's 2010 Emerging Explorers for her bioarchaeological work investigating the mysteries of ancient China's diverse populations. Professor Don Johanson was Lee's dissertation committee co-chair. Link to story. >(June 22, 2010) Don Johanson quoted in msnbc.com about new finding of "Lucy's 'great grandfather'" Link to msnbc.com article That doesn't mean Australopithecus afarensis is out of the spotlight when it comes to studying human origins. Johanson said Lucy and her kin provide an "important reference for assessing other hominid species," in large part because so many specimens have been found over such a wide span of evolutionary time. Going forward, paleoanthropologists may well turn to Lucy, Kadanuumuu and other members of the species to unravel the deeper secrets of ancient human development. >Just added: April 2009 Origins Symposium lectures and panels featuring Don Johanson, Bill Kimbel, and Curtis Marean are available through TheScienceNetwork.org and have been posted to the Multimedia news section. See three features at this link. >New IHO blog—Notes from the Field—by Ben Schoville on-site at Mossel Bay This new blog features images and notes from a PhD student working on excavations in the caves at Mossel Bay during the summer of 2010. >(May 22, 2010) Curtis Marean Mossel Bay research noted in Wall Street Journal article: Humans, Why They Triumphed
". . . Recently at Pinnacle Point in South Africa, Curtis Marean of Arizona State University found evidence of seafood-eating people who made sophisticated "bladelet" stone tools, with small blades less than 10 millimeters wide, and who used ochre pigments to decorate themselves (implying symbolic behavior) as long as 164,000 years ago. They disappeared, but a similar complex culture reemerged around 80,000 years ago at Blombos cave nearby." >Making Sense of the Family Tree (April 2010) New fossil remains discovered in South Africa by Lee Berger of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in April 2010 may be a transitional species between “Lucy,” the 3.2 million-year-old fossils discovered by ASU Professor Donald Johanson, and our own evolutionary branch of the human family tree. Top national news outlets contacted ASU paleoanthropologist Bill Kimbel and Johanson prior to the announcement of the new discovery in the journal Science for expert analysis and evolutionary context.
>Don Johanson is featured on "The Big Think" discussing the development of early human creativity
>Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History opens the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins
Events and Special Tours
>Future trips planned to South Africa and Ethiopia
+more Events + Lectures
Of Interest
>Becoming Human, IHO's Webby award-winning website, brings together interactive multimedia, research, and
scholarship to promote greater understanding of the course of human evolution. For all ages.