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HOMINOID DIVERSITY. "Recent discoveries of taxa such as Kenyanthropus platyops, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis and Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba suggest a far wider degree of taxonomic diversity in the African fossil hominin record than had previously been thought." Not so simple as once thought. https://lnkd.in/eicfqZV View in LinkedIn

GORILLA PORTAL. "Comparative analysis of the human, anthropoid, and other primate feet clearly indicates that the foot of man was evolved from a grasping, arboreal type such as is peculiar to the modern great apes. Furthermore, the great ape or gorilloid type of foot presents an intermediate stage in structural and functional modification through which, of necessity, the evolutionary development of the human foot had to pass." https://lnkd.in/eXEMMAm View in LinkedIn

THE FAIRY STORY. "It all used to seem so simple. The human lineage evolved in Africa. Only at a relatively late date did early humans finally migrate from the continent of their birth, in the guise of the long-known species Homo erectus, whose first representatives had arrived in eastern Asia by around one million years ago." https://lnkd.in/ejdbPT4 View in LinkedIn

NOT DESIGNED FROM SCRATCH. "The origin of our feet dates back to lobe-finned fishes, and has evolved into five-rayed, weight supporting structures since." https://lnkd.in/esuQhhw View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues from last weekend on the evolution of the human foot as an example of the structural work-around that evolution imposed on development, and an illustration of the principle that nothing has been designed from scratch for its current purpose. While this theme is structural, it applies equally to every protein and genome. And every living mite on planet earth. View in LinkedIn

DISTINCTION. "Such a transition may be akin to more traditional physical transitions (e.g. thermodynamic phase transitions), with the crucial distinction that determining which phase (non-life or life) a given system is in requires dynamical information and therefore can only be inferred by identifying causal architecture." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

PHYSICAL TRANSITION. "Here, we propose that the emergence of life may correspond to a physical transition associated with a shift in the causal structure, where information gains direct and context-dependent causal efficacy over the matter in which it is instantiated." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

SUBTLE CHANGES. "The human foot is manifestly different from that of other primates but apart from simple overt differences, such as the lack of divergence of the hallux its distinctions are subtle and have proved difficult to pinpoint." https://lnkd.in/eC74CRQ View in LinkedIn

"FLOW OF INFORMATION from DNA to RNA and thence to protein is known as the Central Dogma of cell biology. This direction of flow has operated in all organisms since the last universal common ancestor." https://lnkd.in/eKjEK6c View in LinkedIn

PRE-ADAPTATION. "An affinity with other Primates, and particularly the great apes, is abundantly manifest and the unique human attributes are progressive modifications of functional complexes which were initially evolved for arboreal life; in this sense the arboreal foot was pre-adapted to the specialized structure required by terrestrial bipedal man." https://lnkd.in/eC74CRQ View in LinkedIn