Zach Throckmorton

my cool older cousin dubbed that onto cassette for me

Need help finding the pterion? Look no further! #MemeMonday

The study shows how individual fingerprint ridges deform when we touch different textures, revealing how subtle stretching and shifting along the ridge flanks may drive our remarkably fine tactile sensitivity.
buff.ly/4z67Vf1

Oldest known evidence of the controlled ignition of fire A 400,000-year-old site excavated in England reveals signs of deliberate fires made using the mineral iron pyrite to produce sparks.

This sheds so much light on a really hot topic and will ignite a lot of discussion debate :)

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I thought parking at Colorado State was expensive! Big yikes, sorry Jamie, that's BS.

years and years ago a colleague sent a draft exam to the wrong printer, and found out when a student brought it to her.

in a remarkable display of teamwork, we re-wrote the exam in 90 minutes. its psychometrics were not great, but acceptable.

H(e)BD Robin! I will have a drink in your honor. Cheers!

(e = early)

the photos are hilariously low-res as they seem to have been taken with a potato-grade digital camera

Never ceases to amaze me how our ancient relatives stuck with the same technology for hundreds of thousands to millions of years, while in my lifetime, we've gone from dial-up internet and Microsoft Encarta on a CD-ROM to wirelessly accessing Wikipedia on a slightly subsonic airliner.

En route to #AABA2025 and this plane's display has a feature that shows locations' Wikipedia entries as you fly over them. What a time to be alive!

Is a bone a viable weapon when combating a Rancor? Estimating the bite force of an intergalactic mega-predator Stephan Lautenschlager1,2 & Thomas Clements3 1School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. 2The Lapworth Museum of Geology, Birmingham, UK. 3…

Just discovered Journal of Geek Studies (not peer reviewed), and it is pure joy.

jgeekstudies.org/2025/03/08/i...

Bighorn sheep in the Big Thompson Canyon.

Tibia, femur, and partial hip bone of SWT1/HR-2 fossil Paranthropus robustus. Photo: Pickering and coworkers 2025

Exciting new discovery of fossil leg and partial pelvis from Swartkrans, South Africa, by Travis Pickering and coworkers.

Attributed to Paranthropus robustus, this individual may have been the shortest fossil human relative known, just over a meter tall.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago - Nature Bone tools shaped by knapping found within Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania precede any other evidence of systematic bone tool production by more than 1 million years.

"Systematic bone tool production at 1.5 million years ago"
really interesting stuff here:
"early Acheulean toolmakers unravelled technological repertoires that were previously thought to have appeared routinely more than 1 million years later."

Target display with a bag labeled “PARTY TIME BOAS” containing boas with yellow, green, and purple feathers.

Happy Mardi Gras, fellow anthropologists! IYKYK

(From a Target display I saw years ago that confused me for a hot minute.)

Long legs and small joints: The locomotor capabilities of Homo naledi The 3D reconstruction of the lower limb of Homo naledi and comparative analyses of the knee reveal remarkably small joint sizes for its body size, a hyper-elongated tibia (and fibula), and a high cru...

"While the small joint sizes [of H. naledi] are not well-suited to repeated high impact loads, the long legs and particularly long tibia would have been useful for walking substantial distances without such high loads." #paleoanthropology 🧪🏺

1/5
Do you like ANIMALS? Do you like #WORDLE ? Then you should try... www.animordle.com The Wordle Game with Animals Names
Thank you Rohit Singhal for creating word.rodeo & @mammalssuck.bsky.social for making March Mammal Madness #2025MMM. They served as inspiration for #animordle.

Also has one of my favorite satirical quotes, "if the cash is there, we do not care!"

In partnership with the #AABA conference in Baltimore, Friend of Darwin and paleoanthropologist Briana Pobiner will be hosting a workshop examining the concept of race, its meaning, and how ‘socialized race’ came to be.

Circles of Voices will take place on 3/15 in Baltimore. Pay what you wish.

A+ department; 10/10 would recommend!

Sketch of a skinny, bearded man dressed in a suit facing a bearded monkey caricature who is seated on a desk atop a stack of books including origin of species. on the floor is the book descent of man.

Charles Darwin published his book Descent of Man #OnThisDay in 1871. In it he wrote: "It has often been asserted that man’s origin can never be known, but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

hetmp Visit the post for more.

For teachers, especially outside universities, I can point to the Human Evolution Teaching Materials Project with printable 3D models of 35 fossil hominin skulls and jaws.

This collection does include the model Australopithecus afarensis skull based on the fossils from A.L. 333.

hetmp.com

Steggy!

A Lady Professor with brown hair and glasses, wearing a scarf in red, green, yellow, & black, a gift from an incredible lactation consultant, sitting in in front of cactus.

I escaped poverty because I am a scientist.

And I am a scientist because of the National Science Foundation.

A 🧵:

Oblique views of two brains, with corresponding features labeled. The brain in the left panel is a color-coded fossil brain mold, and that on the right is from a chimpanzee, rendered in grayscale.

Shawn Hurst & colleagues reanalyze the brain endocast of the iconic Taung (Australopithecus africanus) fossil – variability in a large sample of chimpanzee brains shows possible anatomies not known to previous researchers.

Read free for 50 days with this link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1kdEeAlZXX...

Looking forward to catching up with colleagues and everyone's interesting work!

The Ontogeny of the Human Calcaneus: Insights From Morphological and Trabecular Changes During Postnatal Growth Objectives To investigate the developmental changes in the human calcaneal internal and external morphology linked to the acquisition of mature bipedal locomotion. Methods Seventy seven micro-CT s...

Micro-CT analysis of juvenile human calcanei (birth to 15 years) reveals how internal and external morphology adapt to bipedal locomotion. Early calcanei are dense and featureless, later developing stronger trabeculae and reshaped surfaces to handle increased strain:

SAME/DIFFERENT Division Animals from very different lineages can have similar traits because they have similar adaptations for types of lifestyles- such as traits for digging or gliding from tree to tree. This division celebrates Convergent Evolution! The ONLY ONES Mammals that are the only living species of their genus! ROOTS & RELICTS Species that have existed for so long from such ancient times or in a lost, remnant population. TUXEDO STYLE A division of mammals that are “monochromatic” one color- species that are shades of grey all the way from from black to white. But who will end up… RED ALL OVER?!?

The #2025MMM DIVISIONS!!!

Hi everyone! The Yearbook of Biological Anthropology is now on BlueSky! Please give the journal a follow: @yearbookbioanth.bsky.social

reconstruction of the femur of homo naledi

reconstruction of the tibia, fibula, and foot of homo naledi

I think the most interesting findings from our reconstruction are (at least in Homo naledi) relatively longer legs likely made it a capable striding biped, but its teeny-tiny joints (especially its knee) cast doubt on its endurance running ability. It seems efficient, but not as safe/sturdy.