I put together a map based activity and a trends chart for H. habilis and H. erectus. You can find it here as activity #9, and I hope you find it helpful!
Early Genus Homo Activities
Hair Evolution and Variation
Check out this fantastic Sausage of Science episode where the amazing Tina Lasisi discusses hair evolution and variation!
Early Hominin Teaching Activities
There is a lot to cover in the Plio-Pleistocene when it comes to hominin evolution. So, I put together 4 activities that will hopefully help students determine how one might identify an early hominin, assess the bipedal ability of the current earliest hominin contenders, critically assess competing hypotheses for why bipedality evolved, examine the wide range of Australopithecine variation during the Plio-Pleistocene.
You can find all four under #8 of my Teaching Activities Page.
Fossil Primate Guide
I put together a fossil primate guide for my Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology course. My hope is it will help students make a bit more sense of all the names, places, dates, and details. The blank and filled versions are below, or you can find more details here.
Paleo-Reconstruction Activity Results
Today I ran the Paleo-Reconstruction activity in my class, and I could not be happier with how it went. Students were provided with a picture of a fossil as though they were the ones to take it out of the ground. They had to analyze the anatomy and infer behavior. They were given more information as time went on such as the date of the fossil, other specimens found, and comparative specimens to refine their reconstruction.
You can find the activity, #6, here. Below is a compilation of the students’ work. Each slide has picture of the initial fossil, a professional reconstruction, and the students’ reconstruction. I am stunned how close they got – especially with the Tully Monster!
Powerlifting & Anthropology
Having recently changed jobs, I also recently changed gyms. I have an incredibly complicated relationship with my previous gym and a deep emotional attachment. In order to work through my experience there, I wrote a piece for Sapiens.
This was an incredibly difficult bit of writing to work through, and brought me to tears countless times. I hope this is the start of a future project looking at culture and performance among powerlifters.
I hope you enjoy, or at least get something out of it.