BACKGROUND Worldwide there is growing research interest in the ethnobiology of mangrove forests. Notwithstanding that, little information has been published about ethnobiology of mangrove forests in Cameroon. The aims of this study were a) to analyze the harvesting methods and the local selling of mangrove wood products by loggers in the vicinity of Wouri estuary and b) to investigate the patte...

37 evolution, part of an intractable debate that continues to swirl over the origins of anatomically modern people. Many readers are assuredly familiar with the contours of this debate, between those who advocate a recent, uniregional origin for modern Homo sapiens in Africa (henceforth termed the “recent out of Africa,” or ROA, hypothesis) versus those who support a more deeply rooted, multire...

The Presapiens theory, suggesting completely separate lineages leading to Neandertals and to Homo sapiens, has recently received a number of setbacks. However, the discovery of two hominids at Vertesszollos could be corroborating evidence. The teeth of the first individual were described as those of Homo erectus, as were most features of the second, represented by an occipital. The two main cha...

Unique among animals, humans eat a diet rich in cooked and nonthermally processed food. The ancestors of modern humans who invented food processing (including cooking) gained critical advantages in survival and fitness through increased caloric intake. However, the time and manner in which food processing became biologically significant are uncertain. Here, we assess the inferred evolutionary c...

Archaea play crucial roles in a number of key ecological processes including nitrification and methanogenesis. Although several studies have been conducted on these organisms, the roles and dynamics of coral reef archaeal communities are still poorly understood, particularly in host and nonhost biotopes and in high (HMA) and low microbial abundance (LMA) sponges. Here, archaeal communities dete...

Introduction Paleoanthropologists who seek correspondences between the fossil and archaeological records of the Pleistocene have a frustrating task. The fossil record suggests that Homo erectus (or possibly H. ergaster) migrated out of Africa by 1.8 Ma and then evolved in Africa, Europe and Asia into a group of taxa or populations—often termed collectively as “archaic Homo”—that are chiefly dis...

For paleoanthropologists working in the Middle Pleistocene, these are interesting times. New discoveries of artifacts and human fossils have been reported from western Europe, so that it now looks as though this continent was populated 800,000 years ago, if not earlier. One of the fossils, from Ceprano in Italy, is described as Homo erectus. Whether this ancient species ever reached Europe has ...

The Sangiran dome is the primary stratigraphic window for the Plio-Pleistocene deposits of the Solo basin of Central Jawa. The dome has yielded nearly 80 Homo erectus fossils, around 50 of which have known findspots. With a hornblende (40)Ar/(39)Ar plateau age of 1.66 +/- 0.04 mega-annum (Ma) reportedly associated with two fossils [Swisher, C.C., III, Curtis, G. H., Jacob, T., Getty, A. G., Sup...