Rowdy's Roadtrip in Review

Back in August I wrote a post anticipating my meeting with Lucy.  Well, that day has come and gone.  A few weeks back I packed the wife and kid in the car and drove them to Houston to see the exhibition.  I was impressed.  In addition to Lucy, they had a number of skulls from various hominid species, some I hadn't even heard of.  Granted, just about all I know on the subject comes from Donald Johanson's book, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind.  Johanson is the guy who discovered Lucy back in 1974.

The book contains this chart:

It shows Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy's species) as a common ancestor to two branches of the hominid tree.  The genus Australopithecus continues to include the species africanus and robustus and the genus Homo breaks off and includes the species habilis, erectus and sapien.  The chart also shows that the genus Australopithecus went extinct a little over a million years ago.

The book discussed several other species as well, but those listed on this chart were the ones I remembered most vividly after finishing the book. The problem was, the book was published around 1980 and hadn't been updated.  Therefore it didn't contain discoveries made in the past 25 years.  So you can only imagine how fascinated I was when I got to the museum and saw a chart that looked more like this:

To my delight, it contained three new genera: Ardipithecus, Kenyanthropus and Paranthropus.  Obviously the number of species had grown as well.

The book discussed the controversies that invariably arise when it's time to name a new genus or species.  The controversy usually isn't so much about what to call it, but whether it's truly distinct from one already acknowledged.  Needless to say, distinguishing where one ends and another begins can be tricky and paleoanthropologists don't often agree.  As a result, there's not always consensus and a skull might go by two or three names depending on the academic holding it.

The Institute for Human Origins has an incredible interactive documentary on its website called Becoming Human.  If you launch the documentary, click on "Lineages," then click on "The Human Family Tree" you can then select the name of an academic and the tree will highlight their theory.  It's pretty amazing.

At any rate, the exhibition was wonderful. 

So last night I found myself back at the museum in Houston, this time by myself, holding a ticket to hear Donald Johanson speak.  The lecture was conducted in the museum's IMAX theater.  He spoke for nearly an hour and a half and presented slides on the giant screen.  Me and about 400 other nerds sat enraptured the entire time.  We were the lucky ones.  I was told by one of the staff that the lecture had sold out almost immediately (I got my ticket on September 7) and that tickets were being scalped online for up to $400!

After the lecture I had a chance to meet Johanson and tell him how great it was to hear about all that's happened in the field since his book was published.  He then told me he's currently working on a book to be published in a little over a year that'll pick up where the last one left off.  Hurray!

R.T & Donald Johanson, Houston Museum of Natural Science, 6 Nov 2007.

Comments

[S. Reed]

That's really cool.

Are these celebrities you meet ever intitially put-off by your beard? Just wondering. ;-)

[Rowdy Theologian]

S. Reed-- No, they're usually not put-off until I rip open my shirt and ask them to sign my tit.

[evil little brother]

Please refrain from referencing your tit...I just threw up a little in my mouth.

[Dirk Van Tuerenhout]

For those interested in Lucy, check out this website: www.eLucy.org (courtesy of the anthropology department at the University of Texas, Austin campus and especially Dr. Kappelman)

Thanks

Dirk Van Tuerenhout