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Elevator Speech

If I happen to find myself standing in an elevator next to congressional leaders and only have four minutes to convince them that the next federal budget should include additional funding for the study of human evolution I would start out by stating that studying human evolution is such an important base layer of knowledge to understand science and the world in general. It is important for students to know that our evolution did not happen overnight, and by learning about our ancestors we can understand ourselves better. Additional funding can bring in new opportunities such as buying model skulls and bones of hominins for students to receive hands on experience to compare and contrast. From personal experience, being able to interact with models of skulls and other pieces like that made me even more interested in Biological Anthropology. Having a place such as a lab that is strictly dedicated to a specific topic allows the individuals who are working within it explore all different po
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Chimps

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The question of if humans came from chimps why are there still chimps is a very complex question that honestly has me very puzzled. In the article “Explorations: An Open Invitation To Biological Anthropology” edited by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, and Lara Braff one of the first things that they do is define the term hominin. I like the way that they describe it as if, “an imaginary line were drawn between ourselves and our closest relatives, the great apes, bipedalism is where that line would be. Hominin, then, means everyone on ‘our’ side of the line: humans and all of our extinct bipedal ancestors and relatives since our divergence from the last common ancestor with chimpanzees” (Shook, Nelson, Aguilera, Braff 2). This gives background information on where we stand compared to chimps and other great apes. The evolution of the brain, bipedalism, and diet changes are some of the most important traits that humans obtained unlike chimps who had smaller brains and larger de
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Ardipithecus ramidus

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The article that I read for this blog was “The  Ardipithecus ramidus  Skull and Its Implications for Hominid Origins” written by Gen Suwa, Berhane Asfaw, Reiko T. Kono, Daisuke Kubo, C. Owen Lovejoy, and Tim D. White. This article is about brain size and how the increase in size of the brain and skull evolution is an indicator of  Homo sapiens.  A larger brain leads to the ability to communicate, create tools, plan, and modify the environment. Mostly the skulls that are found are only partial bones of the crania and hominid skulls are rare in the fossil record. They were able to scan the fragments of the fossils into the computer and view what they saw in person and create it online. An  Australopithecus  skull measured to be around 400-550 cm and  A. ramidus  measured to be about 300 to 350 cm cubed, so slightly smaller than the  Australopithecus.  Data that was used for   A. ramidus  reconstruction included upper facial projections, midfacial projection, facial mask index, overlap in
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Bipedalism

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    There are multiple bones and characteristics that can be linked with bipedalism but the one I am going to talk about is the femur. Bipeds have features on their femur and these features are how  Orrorin  was identified as a biped. Those features include moderate intertrochanteric line that is associated with a weak femoral tubercle, large gluteal tuberosity and osseous structure distal to the tuberosity precursor of the  linea aspera , shallow trochanteric fossa, presence of a groove for the obturator externus, destruction of cortex in the femoral neck, the sectional shape of the femoral neck, size of the femoral head relative to shaft diameter, the orientation of femoral head on the neck, and the shallowness of the superior femoral notch. With these characteristics we can see bipedalism in the femur and how it supported the individuals that were walking and how they held themselves up due to gravity.     
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Gender and Race

Just like many other things, white supremacy has found its way into evolution. It digs its wicked claws into the science and evidence and some individuals believe that the world was made to follow a patriarchy and can be used as an excuse for people to claim that this is the way it is ‘supposed to be’. This kind of thinking leads to more inequality and discrimination to Black individuals because they are not seen as equal, even in present day. Evolutionary thinking like this in the wrong hands can lead to people justifying civil rights restrictions, human rights violations, white supremacy, and the patriarchy and as a result evolution is avoided.  Black feminist theory is used in historical archaeology to help get rid of the idea of the patriarchy in evolution that can be used to provide different perspectives from events that have taken place in the past by examining the practice of archaeology and by building interpretive approaches that include the identity and difference of hum
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Hello everyone! My name is Millie and I just recently graduated but need to finish a few hours for my degree because I transferred to App my junior year of college and lost some credits. I absolutely love App and my major is Biological Anthropology with a minor in Criminal Justice. Currently I am trying to pursue a career as an autopsy technician. This is definitely how I thought I would end my senior year however I get to spend more time in Boone and that is alright with me!
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