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Earlier this year, I wrote a massive summary on the genetics of pigmentation for one of my graduate courses. I wasn’t particularly keen on the topic before but it has since grown on me and I’m now a big fan.

What you may call the hip or pelvis is actually formed by the joining of ilia, ischia, pubis bones to the sacrum and the coccyx. The shape of the human pelvis is unique amongst primates and part of the complex of anatomical changes which allow us for bipedal motility.

The other day Dienekes pointed out a paper on ancestral human population dynamics within Africa before the out of Africa migrations. The paper is very similar to one I reviewed in April, which also focuses on the diversity of the mitochondrial haplogroup L — one of the oldest mtDNA haplogroups out there.

Mark Stoneking is a population geneticist at the Max Planck anthropology powerhouse. He uses genetics to study the origin, relationships, structure and migration patterns of human populations. He’s written up a review of the origins of humans in the journal EMBO Reports under the title, “Human origins.

There are a couple of interesting items on Neanderthals coming our way today, courtesy of the National Geographic. First is this short video that presents the contrasting views of I. Tattersall and J. Hawks on modern human-Neanderthal interactions:Now, I'm sure it was unintentional, but this cracked

I’m back to internet land a bit earlier than expected and even though I’ve got several thousand unread items in my RSS reader, hundreds of emails and photos to sort through, I’ve stumbled upon some really interesting news first shared by Dienekes that I just had to pass on: A reconstruction of a Neandertal’s face using DNA and morphometrics.

I don’t regularly make announcements about my life, but I wanted to let you that blogging here will be sparse because I’m leaving to Turkey to do some fieldwork. I should return in two weeks time, unless we find something that needs a bit more time or if the PKK and Turkish government have another flare up like they did earlier this year.

Lee Berger’s got a big problem. Rex Dalton was on his case earlier this year about Berger’s political and cultural approach to his Palaun study. And now Scott Fitzpatrick, one of the most vocal critics of Berger’s dwarves from Palau, has a new paper out in the open access journal PLoS One, where he sinks his teeth into the science behind Berger’s Palaun dwarves.

Michelle Glantz, Sheela Athreya, and Terrence Ritzman have taken up yet another a reassessment of Teshik-Tash Neandertal child in the latest issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. They’ve published the paper under the title, “Is Central Asia the Eastern Outpost of the Neandertal Range?

Ivan Nasidze and Mark Stoneking, along with a half dozen or so other colleagues, have studied the mitochondrial and Y-chromosome diversity of the Talysh. They’ve published their analysis in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.