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A letter from a female to a male upon realizing they were left behind when their clan migrated (a poem I wrote earlier, but I thought would be funny in this context)

Neanderthals are dead.

Denisovans are too.

You're the only one left,

So I guess you'll do.

Sure, she’s a little weird looking. But after a few dozen fermented berries, you won’t care (Neanderthal woman reconstruction and photo by University of Zurich).

A paper published in Cell this week describes the results of whole-genome sequencing for five Africans from three hunter/gatherer tribes. The paper reports the discovery of “ancient DNA” sequences in all five Africans. The sequences are previously unknown in modern humans, including other modern Africans, and although the sequences are similar neither to modern humans nor to other human populations — such as Neanderthals — the paper’s authors say the DNA sequences most closely resemble Neanderthals.

One of the paper coauthors, U-Dub genomicist Joshua Akey, told the Washington Post that this was evidence a “sister species” of Neanderthals once roamed Africa (weird because Neanderthals are believed to have originated in Europe and their bones have never been found anywhere in Africa, and Neanderthals were not a species).

It’s not impossible that the gist of what Akey is saying is true — that some population of ancient Europeans went south into Africa and bred with local populations — but the evidence he and his colleagues present is not strong enough to support that claim.

I also disagree with the scientists calling the human source of these ancient DNA sequences a “sister species” of Neanderthals. That suggests the population from which these sequences came were European in origin. We don’t know that.

The New York Times article about the Cell paper is better.

At stake here is how modern humans came into being.

The old idea is that our ancestors originated in Africa, then migrated and replaced populations of human-like (but nonhuman) species wherever they ended up.

The newer, more accepted idea is that new humans (who originated in Africa) actually interbred with older humans wherever they went, and this melding of genes helped produce the world’s many unique groups of modern humans.

Despite what the Post and Times articles suggest, Neanderthals were not a separate species — they were human. And so too could the genetic sequences found in these Africans have come from another group of early humans, perhaps endemic to Africa, as yet unnamed, and roaming through and amidst populations of more modern humans, occasionally interbreeding and mixing new genes with old, old genes with new. Gene flow works both ways, after all.

"What kind of parent names their kid 'River Song'?" Amy pondered.

Daleks are attacking street art!!!

Finding these made my day.

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

- James Nicoll

English Is Essentially __________.

“English is essentially Norse as spoken by a gang of French thugs.”—Benct Philip Jonsson

“English is essentially a language that uses vowels no other language would accept.”—Luís Henrique

“English is what you get from Normans trying to pick up Saxon girls.”—Bryan Maloney

“English is essentially a French menu stuttered by a fish-and-chips dealer.”—Kala Tunu

“English is essentially the works of Joyce with the hard bits taken out.”—Jon Hanna

“English is essentially all exceptions and no rules.”—Jonathan Bettencourt

—A selection of “Essentialist Explanations.” Thanks to the Penguin Press for pointing out this gem.

Kanzi is a one of the coolest apes I have ever had the pleasure of reading about. Look him up!

Kanzi the bonobo chimp learns to create tools by himself - repeating humanity’s first steps towards civilisation | Mail Online

There's a... fly on a bump on a log in a hole in the bottom of the sea!

A Bacterium on a Diatom on an Amphipod

I see a lot of science stuff, and it’s pretty hard to get me to say “wow” … Just kidding, I say it all the time!

Definitely said it when I saw this wonderful representation of the scale differences between the domains of life. In one picture! Just remember, there’s about a trillion of those little bacteria on and in you all the time, just that tiny.