For my anthropology class we had “projects” for “making anthropology public.  As one of my projects I presented to biology classes at a local high school (my alma mater).  It wasn’t really something I was terribly thrilled about, especially with it being so close to finals (eeekkk!) and all, but it went really well.  When I got home this evening the teacher that allowed me to talk to her classes had sent me this e-mail (which follows). I must admit that it is a nice ego-boost! Anyway, just wanted to share it and how well it went!

Hello Ashlee:

(I hope I copied the email address correctly). I want to thank you once again for taking time from your day to speak to my students. They enjoyed your presentation and talked amongst themselves about the things they heard and saw after you were gone. In another city I lived and worked, I used to lead an after school program that brought in guest speakers to teach the students about various careers related to math and science. Your presentation was the type of information that would have been ideal for such a program. In fact, I am thinking about maybe starting up something similar on our campus. If so, I would love to use you as a speaker.

When I did my research for my master’s thesis (in education), the focus of my study was the factors that seem to keep girls and minorities out of the traditional science careers. One important factor was the lack of role models. I think the students saw “one of them” talking passionately about science, and hopefully, it might spark an interest, or at least broaden their horizons of possibilities.

Again, thank you for visiting us!

Nita Lorenzana

Humans in North America earlier than thought

DNA from fossilized human feces found in an Oregon cave is 14,300 years old, at least 1,200 years older than previous evidence for humans in North America, researchers said Thursday.

The find provides the strongest evidence in an archaeological controversy about whether people of the Clovis culture, which manufactured distinctive stone tools and weapons, were the first to populate the Americas. The new evidence, reported online in the journal Science, indicates they were not.

The fossilized DNA “represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas,” said geneticist Eske Willerslev of Denmark’s University of Copenhagen, a co-author of the paper.

“If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them,” added archaeologist Dennis L. Jenkins of the University of Oregon, the lead author of the report.

The find is “a smoking gun” for the pre-Clovis colonization of the Americas, said anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the research.

In addition to changing ideas about when humans arrived here, the new research will also change ideas about how.

Archaeologists theorize that humans from Siberia and eastern Asia migrated to North America across the Bering land bridge when a global warming episode melted the glaciers that had blocked their progress and stranded them for thousands of years in the area known as Beringia.

If humans were on this continent 14,300 years ago — at least 1,000 years before that melting episode — they had to have come before the glacier blocked the route or by a different pathway, Willerslev said.

He argues that a strip of land along the western coast of North America was exposed during the Ice Age, allowing migration along the coast rather than by the favored inland route. Archaeological artifacts from that trek are now submerged under the Pacific Ocean, he said.

The feces fossils, technically called coprolites, were discovered by Jenkins in the summers of 2002 and 2003 in the Paisley Caves in the Summer Lake basin, about 220 miles southeast of Eugene. The eight caves are wave-cut shelters on the shoreline of Lake Chewaucan, whose levels rose and fell with changes in precipitation in the region.

In addition to the coprolites, Jenkins also found manufactured threads of sinew and plant fibers, hides, basketry, cordage, rope, wooden pegs, animal bones and a couple of projectile point fragments — but not enough to link the cave’s inhabitants to the Clovis people or any others.

The small number of artifacts in the cave suggests that whoever occupied it did so only for a short period, rather than using it as a long-term residence, Jenkins said.

Organic material from the coprolites was radiocarbon dated, and the oldest ones were found to be 14,300 years old.

Willerslev’s lab analyzed mitochondrial DNA from the coprolites and concluded that it was similar to DNA from both Native Americans and the populations of Siberia and East Asia.

Fearing contamination of the samples, Willerslev also analyzed samples from all 55 people who visited the cave during the excavations, as well as from all 12 members of his laboratory and showed that none of them had similar DNA.

The coprolites also contained DNA similar to that of the red fox, coyote or wolf. Jenkins said the added DNA could have come from human ingestion of the animals or from the animals urinating on the feces.

Critics, such as anthropologist Gary Haynes of the University of Nevada, Reno, argued that the coprolites could be animal feces and that the human DNA was deposited when humans urinated on them much later.

But Jenkins said that the coprolites also contained human proteins in concentrations too high to have come from urine, as well as human hair.

“Whether the coprolites are human or canine is irrelevant, since for a canine to swallow human hair people had to be present in that environment,” he told Science. “Anyway you cut the poop, people and dogs would have had to be at the site within days of each other 14,000 years ago.”

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

It’s not that I am uninterested in cultural anthropology, far from it in fact, but I can only take so much! Why are there not more people into biological anthro at Fresno State? I wish that there were more coursework offered in that discipline. I feel like I am getting the short end of the stick. I am so excited that the Human Osteology course is being offered in the fall (and it is a night class! SWEET!) ! I just wish more was available, hopefully primate behaviour is not far behind!!

Don’t think that I am unhappy with the department, I am not. I enjoy it and the prof.s and students are great (that I have met so far ) . I am learning loads and having a blast, but still… Perhaps I should have gone out of city for school to a college with a more “popular” biological anthro department. So is life I suppose.

At least I’ll get to fill my world with bones and be stressed out and overwhelmed after the summer!