The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution (31 page)

3
R. A. Lutz and J. R. Voight, “Close encounter in the deep,”
Nature
371 (1994): 563.

4
P. Brown et al., “A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,”
Nature
432 (2004): 1055–1061.

5
See for example S. O’Connor, “New evidence from East Timor contributes to our understanding of earliest modern human colonization east of the Sunda Shelf,”
Antiquity
81 (2007): 523–535; and B. David et al., “Sediment mixing at Nonda Rock: Investigations of stratigraphic integrity at an early archaeological site in northern Australia and implications for human colonization of the continent,”
Journal of Quaternary Science
22 (2007): 449–479.

6
A. Brumm et al., “Hominins on Flores, Indonesia, by one million years ago,”
Nature
464 (2010): 748–752.

7
The term “hominin” might be unfamiliar and deserves a note of explanation. It means any species, living or extinct, that is more closely related to modern humans (
Homo sapiens
) than to our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes
and
Pan paniscus
). Importantly, this designation does not demand or imply direct ancestry, although it does not rule it out. The most we can say of any hominin other than
Homo sapiens
is that we are related to it, at the very least as cousins. I discuss this concept of relatedness and much else besides in my book
In Search of Deep Time
.

8
M. J. Morwood et al., “Archaeology and age of a new hominin from Flores in eastern Indonesia,”
Nature
431 (2004): 1087–1091.

9
M. R. Palombo, “Endemic elephants of the Mediterranean islands: Knowledge, problems and perspectives,” in G. Cavarretta, ed.,
The World of Elephants—International Congress
(Rome: CNR, 2001), 486–491.

10
E. M. Northcote, “Size, form and habit of the extinct Maltese swan
Cygnus falconeri
,”
Ibis
124 (1982): 148–158.

11
S. L. Vartanyan et al., “Holocene dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Siberian Arctic,”
Nature
362 (1993): 337–340.

12
M. J. Morwood et al., “Further evidence for small-bodied hominins from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,”
Nature
437 (2005): 1012–1017.

13
Dean Falk summarizes the story very well in her book
The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). This book is especially interesting given that she has been an important player in the debate. Her work comparing the skulls and brains of humans (both normal and microcephalic),
Homo floresiensis
, and other extinct hominins has led her to conclude that
Homo floresiensis
represents a distinct species rather than a variant of
Homo sapiens
. See for example D. Falk et al., “Brain shape in human microcephalics and
Homo floresiensis
,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
104 (2007): 2513–2518; and D. Falk et al., “The brain of
LB1,
Homo floresiensis
,”
Science
308 (2005): 242–245. More support comes from D. Argue et al., “
Homo floresiensis
: Microcephalic, pygmoid,
Australopithecus
, or
Homo
?,”
Journal of Human Evolution
51 (2006): 360–374.

14
See for example I. Hershkovitz et al., “Comparative skeletal features between
Homo floresiensis
and patients with primary growth hormone insensitivity (Laron syndrome),”
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
134 (2007): 198–208; G. D. Richards, “Genetic, physiologic and ecogeographic factors contributing to variation in
Homo sapiens
:
Homo floresiensis
reconsidered,”
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
19 (2006): 1744–1767; T. Jacob et al., “Pygmoid Australomelanesian
Homo sapien
s skeletal remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population affinities and pathological abnormalities,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
103 (2006): 13421–13426.

15
J. Krause et al., “The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia,”
Nature
464 (2010): 894–897.

16
R. E. Green et al., “A draft sequence of the Neandertal genome,”
Science
328 (2010): 710–722.

17
See Richard Fortey’s book
Survivors: The Animals and Plants That Time Has left Behind
(London: HarperCollins, 2011) for a charming roundup of living fossils.

18
C. Oxnard et al., “Post-cranial skeletons of hypothyroid cretins show a similar anatomical mosaic as
Homo floresiensis
,”
PLOS One
5 (2010): e13018, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013018.

19
S. G. Larson et al., “Descriptions of the upper limb skeleton of
Homo floresiensis
,”
Journal of Human Evolution
57 (2009): 555–570; M. W. Tocheri et al., “The primitive wrist of
Homo floresiensis
and its implications for hominin evolution,”
Science
317 (2007): 1743–1745; W. L. Jungers et al., “The foot of
Homo floresiensis
,”
Nature
459 (2009): 81–84.

20
M. M. Lahr and R. Foley, “Human evolution writ small,”
Nature
431 (2004): 1043–1044.

21
D. Lordkipanidze et al., “Postcranial evidence from early
Homo
from Dmanisi, Georgia,”
Nature
449 (2007): 305–310.

22
E. M. Weston and A. M. Lister, “Insular dwarfism in hippos and a model for brain size reduction in
Homo floresiensis
,”
Nature
459 (2009): 85–88.

23
A. D. Gordon et al., “The
Homo floresiensis
cranium (LB1): Size, scaling and early
Homo
affinities,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
105 (2008): 4650–4655.

24
I have heard that the voice-over was provided by a prominent evolutionary biologist, though I should emphasize that this is just gossip.

25
This is a reasonable assumption given that all the great apes—the chimps, the gorillas, and the orangutans—are much more similar to one another, as regards their general features, biology, and life habits, than any one in particular resembles humans. It used to be the case that the apes were placed in a single family, the Pongidae. However, it turns out that chimps
are in fact more closely related to humans than are gorillas, with the orangutans at a more remote remove. This means that the term “Pongidae” doesn’t refer to what zoologists call a “natural group”—unless humans are included.

26
This doesn’t mean that the common ancestor of all creatures living today was the first creature to have evolved. It is possible that other essays in self-reproducing systems appeared, but became extinct and left no trace. Scientists therefore sometimes refer to the common ancestor of all extant life as LUCA, which stands for “last universal common ancestor.”

27
D. L. Theobald, “A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry,”
Nature
465 (2010): 219–222.

28
R. D. Martin, “Primate origins: Plugging the gaps,”
Nature
363 (1993): 223–234.

29
This is why the expression “this research raises more questions than it answers” is a cliché.

30
P. J. Turnbaugh et al., “The Human Microbiome Project,”
Nature
449 (2007): 804–810.

CHAPTER 2

1
National Health Statistics Report 10, 22 October 2008.

2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height
, accessed 4 January 2013.

3
B. C. Msamati and P. S. Igbigbi, “Anthropometric profile of urban adult black Malawians,”
East African Medical Journal
77 (2000): 364–368.

4
UK National Health Service,
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles-related-surveys/health-survey-for-england/health-survey-for-england-2008-trend-tables
, accessed 22 January 2011.

5
J. Cohen, “Knife-edge of design,”
Nature
411 (2001): 529.

6
I discuss this idea in my book
Jacob’s Ladder
.

7
OED
, June 2011,
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/65447
, accessed 6 September 2011. All the examples of the use of the word “evolution” in this chapter come from that source, unless otherwise stated.

8
W. Bateson,
Materials for the Study of Variation, Treated with Especial Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of Species
(London: Macmillan, 1894), v–vi.

9
L. Oken,
Abriss des Systems der Biologie
(1805); this translation in R. J. Richards,
The Meaning of Evolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 39.

10
Most notably William Bateson, a cofounder of the science of genetics.

11
J. Z. Young,
The Life of Vertebrates
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).

12
N. Eldredge and S. J. Gould, “Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism,” in T. J. M. Schopf, ed.,
Models in Paleobiology
(San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper, 1972), 82–115.

CHAPTER 3

1
For example, see K. Chong, “
Bacillus cereus
in ‘Poon Choi,’
” in Food Safety Focus (Hong Kong: Centre for Food Safety),
http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/multimedia/multimedia_pub/multimedia_pub_fsf_40_01.html
, accessed 29 March 2012.

2
“The hidden hordes,”
Nature Reviews Microbiology
10 (2010): 517.

3
L. Rothschild and R. Mancinelli, “Life in extreme environments,”
Nature
409 (2002): 1092–1101.

4
See for example D. W. Griffin, “Terrestrial microorganisms at an altitude of 20,000 m in Earth’s atmosphere,”
Aerobiologia
20 (2004): 135–140; A. P. Teske, “The deep subsurface biosphere is alive and well,”
Trends in Microbiology
13 (2005): 402–404.

5
See for example R. C. Blake II et al., “Chemical transformation of toxic metals by a
Pseudomonas
strain from a toxic waste site,”
Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
12 (1993): 1365–1376; J. Lloyd and J. C. Renshaw, “Bioremediation of radioactive waste: Radionuclide-microbe interactions in laboratory and field-scale studies,”
Current Opinion in Biotechnology
16 (2005): 254–260.

6
W. L. Nicholson et al., “Resistance of
Bacillus
endospores to extreme terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments,”
Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
64 (2000): 548–572.

7
E. Szathmáry and J. Maynard Smith, “The major evolutionary transitions,”
Nature
374 (1995): 227–232.

8
J. A. Lake, “Lynn Margulis (1938–2011),”
Nature
480 (2011): 458.

9
L. Margulis,
Origin of Eukaryotic Cells
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).

10
J. W. Costerton et al., “Microbial biofilms,”
Annual Review of Microbiology
49 (1995): 711–745.

11
For a lovely account of stromatolites in their natural habitat, go no further than Richard Fortey’s book
Survivors: The Animals and Plants That Time Has Left Behind
(London: HarperCollins, 2011).

12
J. W. Schopf, “Fossil evidence of Archaean life,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
361 (2006): 869–885.

13
P. K. Singh et al., “Quorum-sensing signals indicate that cystic fibrosis lungs are infected with bacterial biofilms,”
Nature
407 (2000): 762–764.

14
M. W. Gray et al., “The origin and early evolution of mitochondria,”
Genome Biology
2 (2001),
http://genomebiology.com/2001/2/6/reviews/1018
.

15
G. I. McFadden and G. G. van Dooren, “Red algal genome affirms a common origin of all plastids,”
Current Biology
14 (2004): R514–R516.

16
T. Kleine et al., “DNA transfer from organelles to the nucleus: The idiosyncratic genetics of endosymbiosis,”
Annual Review of Plant Biology
60 (2009): 115–138.

17
G. I. McFadden and P. Gilson, “Something borrowed, something green: Lateral transfer of chloroplasts by secondary endosymbiosis,”
Trends in Ecology and Evolution
10 (1995): 12–17; G. I. McFadden, “Primary and secondary endosymbiosis and the origin of plastids,”
Journal of Phycology
37 (2001): 951–959.

18
F. Martin et al., “The genome of
Laccaria bicolor
provides insights into mycorrhizal symbiosis,”
Nature
452 (2008): 88–92.

19
J. Whitfield, “Fungal roles in soil ecology: Underground networking,”
Nature
449 (2007): 136–138.

20
Perhaps the most elegant way to lose your lunch is to read Carl Zimmer’s book
Parasite Rex
(New York: Touchstone, 2001).

21
J. H. Day, “The life history of
Sacculina
,”
Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science
77 (1935): 549–583.

22
S. T. Cole et al., “Deciphering the biology of
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
from the complete genome sequence,”
Nature
393 (1998): 537–544; S. T. Cole et al., “Massive gene decay in the leprosy bacillus,”
Nature
409 (2001): 1007–1011.

23
Carl Zimmer has followed his book on parasites (
Parasite Rex
) with one on viruses—
A Planet of Viruses
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

24
D. Raoult et al., “The 1.2-megabase genome sequence of mimivirus,”
Science
306 (2004): 1344–1350.