52 min listen
Going All to Species
ratings:
Length:
54 minutes
Released:
Feb 13, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
ENCORE Meet your new relatives. The fossilized bones of Homo naledi are unique for their sheer number, but they may also be fill a special slot in our ancestry: the first of our genus Homo. Sporting modern hands and feet but only a tiny brain, this creature may link us and our ape-like ancestors. Some anthropologists hail the discovery as that of a new hominid species. Not all their colleagues agree. Find out what’s at stake in the debate. Also, the scientist who helped retrieve the fossils describes her perilous crawl through a cave with only ten inches of elbow room. And a radical theory about what these old bones might mean: could they be from a burial two million years ago? Guests: Marina Elliott – Paleoanthropologist, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa Carl Ward – Biological anthropologist, University of Missouri John Hawks- Anthropologist, University of Wisconsin, Madison Tim White - Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley
Released:
Feb 13, 2017
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Pave New Worlds: The extra-solar planet count is more than 400 and rising. Before long we may find an Earth-like planet around another star. If we do, and can visit, what next? Stake out our claim on an alien world or tread lightly and preserve it? We’ll look... by Big Picture Science