Sometimes I get curious about something our baby is doing, and 20 minutes later, I'm reading an academic paper entitled "What Does Prone Skateboarding in the Newborn Tell Us About the Ontogeny of

My thesis, work from a year or so, is now patented ("to lay open") under danakil.eth, secured by the 50 million dollar "world computer" Ethereum. Here it can be accessed over an IPFS

The Danakil block separated from the Ethiopian continent around 6 million years ago[1], and became a place where evolution could flourish in a new direction. The coast-lines that developed along where

Like many other mammals, including horses, chimpanzees and gorillas cannot choke on food, since their ability to swallow relies on the epiglottis being closed. In humans, the descent of the larynx over

This is pretty cool, Neanderthals are from Paranthropus. Look here: rib cage of Paranthropus, including P. neanderthalensis, conical rib cage of Australopithecus and Homo, cylindrical and the two lineages

Based on these images and reading a bit on the internet, Neanderthals seem to not have a descended larynx. The human larynx descended as early as 4 million years ago, as Australopithecus adapted to forage

The Pthirus gorillae host switch around 3.3 Ma[1] points to that Au. afarensis would have been in contact with ancestors of gorilla. The Danakil-CHLCA (chimpanzee-human-last-common-ancestor) hypothesis

There is some evidence that points to a hybridization event between Au. afarensis and gorilla ancestors around 3 million years ago. Based on that, the idea is that Paranthropus, as a form of hybrid species,

Kenyanthropus platyops, that I would say is a descendant of Au. anamnesis, is often positioned as the ancestor of the Homo lineage. The idea that I blogged about the other day, that the host switch of

Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5 to 3.2-million-year-old (Pliocene) hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1999 by Justus Erus, who was part of Meave Leakey's team (brown dot in the map below.

The loss of olfactory receptors in Au. afarensis around 3.86 Ma meant that a sort of “external noses” in the form of dogs, as pets, has been valuable. Paranthropus, as a hybrid of gorillae and Au.

The human genome was sequenced in 2001, followed by the chimpanzee in 2005 and the gorilla in 2012.[1] The standard view of the great-ape family tree is that humans and chimps are more similar to each

The host switch of Pthirus gorillae to Australopithecus afarensis 3.3 million years ago (Reed et al, 2007) could be explained by interbreeding of A. afarensis with ancestors of gorilla, around the region

Chororapithecus abyssinicus (10–10.5 Ma) is found at the Chorora Formation at the southern margin of the Afar rift. The teeth of Chororapithecus appear specialized for eating stems and leaves, and resemble

A model for human lice in two evolutionary steps, more parsimonious than 'pair of lost lice' hypothesis (reed et al, 2007) The Pthirus and Pediculus lineage diverged via co-speciation with their hosts

The idea that there was a loss of functional olfactory receptor (OR) genes in Australopithecus, as a result of geographical isolation on the Danakil micro-continent, and a speciation to forage from the

The mammalian sense of smell is governed by the largest gene family, which encodes the olfactory receptors (ORs). The gain and loss of OR genes is typically correlated with adaptations to various ecological

The fossil record of speciation as a result of geographical isolation, would follow the movement of Danakil. Within the Kolpochoerus lineage on Danakil, the earlier K. deheinzelini, is found in 4.3 to

Based on the hypothesis that the chimpanzee-human-last-common-ancestor (CHLCA) split resulted from geographical isolation on the Danakil micro-continent (where species endemic to the Pliocene Afar region,