Beyond Stones & Bones - Tracing Human Evolution

[photon]

Very interesting article!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17542627/site/newsweek/

By analyzing the DNA of today's humans as well as chimps and other species (even lice), scientists are zeroing in on turning points in evolution, such as when and how language and speech developed, and when our ancestors left Africa. DNA can even reveal how many pilgrims made that trek. At the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, DNA gets equal billing with fossils. And by comparing the impressions that brains left on the inside of skulls, "paleoneurology" is documenting when structures that power the human mind arose, shedding light on how our ancestors lived and thought. Whether or not you believe the hand of God was guiding these changes, the discoveries are overturning longstanding ideas about how we became human.

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Very cool article! I like how they're using lice to make conclusions about humans and their behaviour--very ingenious.

although skulls from millions of years ago testify to the increase in brain size as one species of human ancestor evolved into the next, and although the architecture of spine and hips shows when our ancestors first stood erect, the fossil record is silent on when they fully lost their body hair and replaced it with clothing. Which makes it fortunate that Mark Stoneking thought of lice.

It's like CSI: Pleistocene!