Primate Biology Group
The PBG is an informal group of people from the departments of ESPM, Integrative Biology, Anthropology, Molecular and Cell Biology, as well as other scientists in the local community who meet every other week during the semester to discuss research ideas, results, and recent publications related to primate biology, ecology, behavior, conservation, taxonomy, evolution, and paleontology.
We meet in room 4110 in the Valley Life Science Building from 4-5pm every other Tuesday. If you are interested in joining our group, please feel free to come to any of these presentations. Contact Leslea Hlusko for further information on this year's schedule or to be added to the email list.
This course is being taught as IB 290 Section 015 for the 2008 spring semester. Students are welcome to enroll for 1 unit on a pass/no pass or satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. The course control number for IB 290 Section 015 is 43672.
Special Event, Summer 2008:
May 29, 2008: Dr. Paul Sereno, University of Chicago
"Living Lakeside in the Sahara: A Chronicle of Holocene Adaptation", 7.30pm HERC (5070 VLSB)
Some 10,000 years ago, humans re-colonized a Sahara 'greened' by the northward shift of monsoonal rain. A persistent semi-sedentary way of life, based on fishing, hunting, and gathering of wild grains, has been inferred from scattered burials across the Sahara. In 2000 a major archaeological discovery was made in hyperarid Tenere Desert in Niger. Called Gobero the site preserves cemeteries composed of hundreds of burials on the edge of a paleolake. Spectacular burials include a man seated in a turtle shell, a girl wearing an upper arm bracelet, and a triple burial involving a mother and two children in symbolic embrace. Their tools, ornaments, diet, health, stature, genetic relationships, and life appearance are reconstructed from the extraordinary record at Gobero by an interdisciplinary team. Soon to appear in the pages of National Geographic, this is the largely untold story of a succession of occupants of a once greener Sahara.
Schedule of speakers, Spring 2008:
Jan 22, 2008 Organizational meeting - please come with suggestions for speakers/topics for the semester!
Feb 5, 2008 Denise Su, postdoctoral researcher, HERC, "Paleontological Explorations in Yunnan Province, China"
Feb 19, 2008 Rasmus Nielsen, Assoc Professor, Integrative Biology, "Detecting Darwinian selection in the genomes of humans and chimpanzees"
Mar 4, 2008 Axel Visel, postdoctoral fellow, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Genomics Division, "The regulatory genome in human-specific evolution"
Mar 18, 2008 Dan Levitis, PhD Candidate, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology/Integrative Biology, "The evolution of sex-biased longevity in primates: Work in progress"
Apr 1, 2008 Kyle Brudvik, PhD Candidate, Integrative Biology, "Remote hominid field survey: harnessing digital technology for paleoanthropological research"
Apr 8, 2008 Special Event: Dr. Alban Defleur will give a flint knapping demonstration in room 18 Hearst, 4pm
Apr 15, 2008 Sarah Amugongo, PhD candidate, Integrative Biology, "Long term impact of prenatal stress on the bone quality of rats: an experimental model for examining the thrifty phenotype."
Apr 29, 2008 Seth Roberts, Dept Psychology, UCBerkeley, "How economics shaped human naure"
Other events of interest:
Mar 24-25, 2008: Paleoanthropology Society annual meeting, Vancouver, BC Canada
Apr 7-13, 2008: American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting, Columbus, OH
Field Schools:
Rudabánya, Hungary: Late Miocene paleontology
LINK TO: PrimateLit