Department Members Publish on Hominin Evolution

Anthropology post-doc Erin Marie Williams, Professor Brian Richmond, and Dr. Adam Gordon of SUNY Albany published an article in the April issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. In the article, entitled “Hand pressure distribution during Oldowan stone tool production,” they dispute the hypothesis that the modern human thumb evolved in reaction to high pressure experienced during Oldowan stone tool production. The article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004724841200036X.

Professor Bernard Wood has been featured in the August 8, 2012 International Herald Tribune discussing the three recent fossil finds made by Dr. Meave Leakey and her team in Koobi Fora, Kenya. Their discovery is published in the most recent issue of Nature. Dr. Wood wrote an article to accompany theirs, in which he argues that there were at least two parallel lineages in the evolution of the genus Homo. The full Herald Tribune article is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/science/new-fossils-indicate-offshoots-in-human-family-tree.html, and the entire Nature article at: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7410/full/488162a.html.