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Friday, August 24, 2007

Donald Johanson and Freshman and Honors Convocation


This morning I went to honors freshman convocation because I will probably be working with some of the senior honors students this semester. I think I will be supervising a directed study for three students.








Then tonight we went to hear Donald Johanson the paleanthropologist who discovered Lucy. I'm really too tired to say anything worthy of the topic and the presentation, but I'll put in a little here. Here he talks about Lucy and what he's going to talk about.
Default-tiny DJ at UAA1 uploaded by AKRaven 
[UPDATE Oct. 13, 2011: the website that hosted my audio shut down, but they did recently email me and said they would try to get me my audio.  Sorry.]




Here's Lucy. She's going to tour the US starting soon in Houston, Texas. He pointed out that this is controversial among anthropologists because many feel that something this unique shouldn't do anything that might endanger it. (The article linked above identifies Richard Leakey as condeming the visit. Johanson didn't mention him by name.) Lucy belongs to the Ethiopian government and they are hoping Lucy will help make people more aware of Ethiope and attract tourists. Johanson seemed to hope that she would help enlighten some Americans who still do not believe in evolution.





The last slide compares the pelvis of Lucy to that of a human and of a chimp to show how much closer Lucy is to a human. The human and Lucy are built for walking upright, while the chimp pelvis is more for walking on all fours.

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