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Yes, my avatar is a pic of me and my DYH Amazon, Sammy. I was a follower of the Alex studies with Dr. Pepperberg (she was working out of Arizona initially if I remember correctly). It was very sad for me when Alex died -- he and I were the same age (I was also "hatched" in 1976). I understand...

As a slight aside, has anyone following this read Anne Rice's The Witching Hour and its sequels, Lasher and Taltos? I know they were fiction, but she did a beautiful job of injecting her story into a historical reference. She created the Taltos species as being somewhat similar in appearance to...

Proponents of the "separate species" idea say that the "hobbit" evolved from Homo erectus or a related species, not as an offshoot of Homo sapiens. The article about the "hobbit's" feet mentions this a bit. If they lived side-by-side with our species, it was only after that species had been...

That was one of the arguments after the find was first published -- the remains were simply of humans who suffered from some form of disease. This started a debate and further analysis of the skulls, comparing them to those of humans who were known to have some of the proposed conditions --...

Well, I'm happy that the article prompted such a lengthy and geeky discussion, even if it does veer off-topic. Relating back to it....what do we think about the "hobbit" that was discovered a few years back? Imagine if we found a living population of them today...

It's true -- we seek to impose black-and-white categories onto something that is not static. The definition of a species is more defined than many examples in nature. Nowadays, speciation is often measured in terms of genetic differences between populations, but that doesn't mean hybrids will...

The hybrids are not sterile, and an increasing frequency in their occurrence can indicate that the boundaries between the two species are blurring, probably as a result of the arctic warming. Female polar bears must range further inland searching for food, more often encountering brown bears...

Science is limited in its method of understanding the natural world by interpreting natural evidence. Claims made that invoke the supernatural can not be tested, and fall outside the realm of science. Using the scientific method, we can find evidence, draw conclusions, and make interpretations...

My interpretation of that story was that Adam and Eve were the beginnings of the Jewish people. Embedded within the Jewish religion is that they are a people apart, separated by their special covenant with their God. Their Genesis story might not be about the beginnings of ALL people, but THEIR...

Getting back to the original article, I just thought of something that might lead to some serious re-investigation of what we think we "know" about various collected remains and artifacts -- now that we have evidence of a third type of human that existed at this time, will we have to go back and...

Oh, of course I agree with you about shelters and tools and such. In my readings for my classes, it was emphasized that we can't study what wasn't left behind and preserved. Artifacts made from wood are (for the most part) lost to time, and while it's likely that wooden tools existed earlier...

From what I remember, the theorized split between the human and chimpanzee/bonobo lineages was about 5-6 million years ago, and the split from gorillas a couple million years more -- meaning that the last common ancestor of Homo, Gorilla, and Pan lived no more than ten million years ago. The...

Advances in technology and understanding follow a logarithmic, not linear, graph. Thus the difference between now and 100 years ago would be much more great than the difference between 1100 and 1200 years ago. Additionally, during the period you cite (2000 years ago to 1000 years ago) there was...

We do not know they had the same intelligence -- we know only that their brain volume was similar. Intelligence does tend to increase along with brain volume, but it's not the only factor. Cognition relies on the interconnectedness of neurons, which can differ even when brain volume remains the...

I will reiterate -- that evolution occurs (changes in the gene frequencies and heritable traits within a population over time) has been proven. How, exactly, the lines connect fossil forms to living forms is something that can't (at present) be proven, but is inferred by balancing evidence from...

In that case it is the scientist -- not science -- that does so. And it leaves room for another scientist to debunk the claim in publication. Anything that withstands the onslaught must have strong evidence to back it up.

No, science holds all interpretations to be tentative should new contradictory evidence be forthcoming. What happens is that in popular media and pre-college education, the language is simplified for the audience from saying "thus far, the evidence indicates that ____ is the process by which ___...

It's not just fossils, though. As genetics became more advanced, we used it as a tool to offer a second-line of evidence, and it corroborates the "out of Africa" hypothesis -- more genetic diversity is found among the peoples of Africa than elsewhere, and migratory paths of ancestors can be...

Could it be that the land masses currently found in the arctic circle were not there at the time the fossilized plants actually lived? I know that in Antarctica, fossils have been found which are dated from a time when the continent was further north -- it actually used to connect what is now...