Episode 119
Hominins: Paranthropus
Thomas Plummer, an archaeologist, had received information about the discovery of stone tools on the Homa Peninsula hillsides in Kenya. In an attempt ...
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Episode 118
Hominins: Lucy and the Australopithecus
We’ve come quite a long way along the Hominin River. We’ve passed tributaries and navigated some pretty large bends. On the way we’ve heard rumors a...
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Hominins: Ardipithecus ramidus
Between 1992 and 1994, working in the Awash region of Ethiopia, the same region that Ardipithecus kadabba would be found a few years later, paleoanthr...
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Hominins: Ardipithecus kadabba
In the last couple of episodes we’ve met two early travellers along the Hominin River. Today, we will meet yet another one. This one lived approxima...
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Hominins: Orrorin tugenensis
We continue with our exploration into hominin history by introducing one who once walked the earth six million years ago – the Orrorin tugenensis. It ...
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Hominins: Sahelanthropus tchadensis
We begin our exploration into hominin history with an introduction to what is arguably the oldest hominin fossil yet found. Does Sahelanthropus tchad...
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Hominids or Hominins
When talking about our ancient anscestors the question often comes up over how we refer to them. Are they hominins or hominids? It’s a good question...
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Walk This Way
When did our ancestors decsend from the trees and walk on two legs instead of four? How exactly did bipedalism develop? We have some ideas but that’...
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Return of the Naledi
Our study of the Homo Naledi continues to surprise us. In December 2022, Professor Lee Berger announced yet another insight into the mystery surround...
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A Spandrel in the Works
In 1979 Stephen Jay Gould and genetecist Richard C. Lewontin presented the paper “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique ...
Listen Now Episode 109
The Eclipse: A Watchmaker
In Part 4 of a 4 Part Series on “The Eclipse of Darwinism”, we take a look at William Paley’s watch analogy and how it evolved into another explanatio...
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The Eclipse: Mutationism
In Part 3 of a 4 Part Series on “The Eclipse of Darwinism”, we take a look at “Mutationism”. Can a new species evolve in a single step or is it a ser...
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The Eclipse: Neo-Lamarkism
In Part 2 of a 4 Part Series on “The Eclipse of Darwinism”, we take a look at “Neo-Lamarkism” as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamark. Proponents hoped i...
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The Eclipse of Darwinism
After Charles Darwin’s death, the period from the 1880s to the 1920s is known as “The Eclipse of Darwinism”. Coined by Julian Huxley, it was a time w...
Listen Now Episode 105
Speciation Pt.2
In this continuation of the look at speciation we began in the last episode, we will tackle some more “not so obvious” causes. Evolution Talk is also...
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Speciation Pt.1
It’s been awhile since we took a look at speciation and its causes. In the first of two parts we’ll jump right in with Allopatric speciation. Evolut...
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One Cell's Junk
For decades, ever since we first began to study and understand our cell’s biology and the coding sequences of DNA, we saw bits and pieces that didn’t ...
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Orthogenesis
In 1893, the German zoologist Wilhelm Haacke published Design and Inheritance. In it, Haacke introduced the concept of orthogenesis. According to Ha...
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Gone Forever
Consider this episode a memorial to the millions of extinct animals that once walked the earth long before we inherited it. Like fragments of novels ...
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Eureka Moments
Great idea don’t spring out of a vacuum, but they do sometimes seem to. In this episode we take a look at a few. Evolution Talk is also a book! You ...
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