On the supposed bottleneck 70,000 years ago 3 May 2008 John Hawks has a very nice post for people with basic math, explaining why a recent press release announced that 70,000 years ago the human species encountered a population bottleneck of 2000 individuals, and why it’s most likely wrong. In the process he explains effective population size. It’s a tad too complex even for an Intermediate Concepts post, but still worth the effort. Larry Moran at his blog has opened a comments thread, as the Hawks blog is comment free (I am unsure if I should be censorial or jealous), and John promises to come back and answer them. Evolution General Science Species and systematics
Evolution Rudiments and vestiges 23 Aug 2009 A new paper has just come out on the functionality of the human appendix, or cecum (caecum in British biology). The authors, following some work done on appendix function in 2006, have said that the caecum in humans has a role in repopulating gut flora. I was going to do… Read More
Education Crowdsourcing question: scientific method book? 8 Sep 2010 I need a recommendation of a short simple book that provides a good, but not simplistic, outline of how it is that scientists reach their conclusions. Failing that, a good paper. Targeted at non-philosophy undergraduate students. I have been looking rather hard and nothing much of worth since the 1930s,… Read More
Evolution The first phylogeny 30 Sep 202030 Sep 2020 The only diagram in the Origin is famously the hypothetical series of species forming a tree structure, but it isn’t an actual classification based on his principles. I have previously noted the rise of cladograms towards the end of the 19th century, but in a talk by Ian Hesketh, I was… Read More