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Friday Nite Videos -- September 11, 2015

Portside
Odetta: Long Ago, Far Away. How Many Trees Are There in the World? Mexican Donald Trump with George Lopez. New Human Species Discovered: Homo naledi. Bernie Sanders: Why 'Socialism' Isn't a Dirty Word.

New Human Species Discovered: Homo naledi

Homo naledi adds a new human relative that was primitive but shared physical characteristics with modern humans. The location of the fossil bones suggests that they were deliberately disposed of underground.

On World Dog Day, How Dogs Saved Humankind

Caren Cooper PLOS blogs
August 26 is World Dog Day, a good time to reflect on the very reasonable possibility that dogs enabled modern humans to outcompete Neanderthals, and also on the fact that dogs are smarter, more empathetic and more devious than you knew. These days, both ordinary dogs and their ordinary humans can participate in Citizen Science, advancing our understanding of this oldest human coevolution.

New Stone Tool Discoveries Predate Humans

Jacob Kastrenakes The Verge
Stone tools unearthed at a site in Kenya predate any identified human ancestors -- previously thought to be the first makers of stone tools -- by hundreds of thousands of years. These finds "will force us [to rethink] what makes us humans ... Increasing knowledge of our remote past is casting doubts on previous certainties and is showing that the process of becoming what we are now is far more gradual than what we previously thought."

Under the Sea, a Missing Link in the Evolution of Complex Cells

Carl Zimmer New York Times
Scientists estimate that the first eukaryotes evolved about 2 billion years ago, in one of the greatest transitions in the history of life. But there is little evidence of this momentous event, no missing link that helps researchers trace the evolution of life from simple microbes to eukaryotes. On Wednesday, a team of scientists announced the discovery of just such a transitional form.

Learning to Make a Stone Age Axe Gives Clues to How the Brain Evolved

Gary Stix Scientific American
Experimental archaeology involves moderns crafting Stone Age tools by chipping away at rocks. One reason is to get at the question of what role toolmaking may have played in brain evolution, given the demands this task places on both mental faculties and motor skills.

This Jay Is Evolving in a Very, Very Weird Way

Matt Simon Wired Science
Being on the way to becoming a new species isn’t the same thing as actually speciating. Actual speciation without isolation is quite rare, and even the Santa Cruz Island jays have not actually speciated, and may never even do so. But the implications for long-held evolutionary principles are intriguing. Darwin’s famous Galapagos finches certainly prove that isolation leads to speciation, but now it may be that isolation isn’t always necessary to get species to diverge.

Neanderthals Practiced Sexual Division of Labor

Spanish National Research Council
Neanderthals divided some of their tasks according to their sex. A new study analyzed 99 teeth of 19 individuals from three different sites (El Sidron, in Asturias - Spain, L'Hortus in France, and Spy in Belgium), reveals that the dental grooves in the female fossils follow the same pattern, different to that found in male individuals.
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