The discussion forums are an invaluable place to share your knowledge, listen to others, and engage in dialogue about the various issues pertaining to human evolution brought up by the course. But they can also be intimidating to navigate. Each week, I will highlight some of the best comments from students on this page, both to show them off, and encourage others to follow their excellent lead.
WEEK 2 HONOR ROLL
On Apes and Humans...
Humans are Hominids by JohnBingham
Charles and I by Korinne
Humans and apes, by Phil_G
On primate morphology...
Bicondylar Angle, by jmswatson
And from our twitter feed (#207x)...
Week 2 of #207x was awesome. This video on human adaptations for running seems relevant. "Chimps have tiny butts" https://t.co/zz4KlqiuaS
— Ximena Pereyra (@TacticalPinUp) May 16, 2015
Week 1 Honor Roll
From the discussion of evolutionary forces...
Is mutation itself a mutation? by Carol Roede
Vitamin C loss - Us and the Guinea Pigs by GerardDunne
Gene flow, variability, and what "homogenous" means in this context by tacticalpinup
And from the Thought Question of the Weekend (lots of good responses, by the way...)
To Whom? by BarbTenn
Many of you might be new to Twitter, or maybe just Twitter-curious. I wanted to highlight the example of a twitter exchange that I find really valuable from a professional context. This exchange was between Chris Stringer (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/departments-and-staff/staff-directory/chris-stringer.html) who you might recognize if you have watched many human evolution documentaries, Aylwyn Scally (http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/directory/aylwyn-scally), and myself. The exchange was about new research, being presented at a conference, on new paleo-genetic data extracted from an enigmatic late Pleistocene fossil from Oase, Romania. Erik Trinkaus has argued that this fossil is a Neandertal-modern human "hybrid." The new genetic data, indeed, suggests it has a much higher percentage of Neandertal ancestry than contemporary modern humans.
Here is a link to the exchange:
