Sunday, October 20, 2013

Skull Fossil Suggests Simpler Human Lineage


In a recent article, published by the New York Times, scientists have come to a conclusion about a 1.8 million year old skull found in the Republic of Georgia. After eight years of debate scientists have decided that this skull may tell us that instead of having many Homo species there might have just been variation among one species. Scientists were led to believe that the different bone structure among historic skeletons might just mean that they looked different. Just like how we each look different today. This skull was called skull 5 and had many primitive features. It was found in a cave with 4 other skulls, this lucky find gave scientists the chance to compare and contrast the 5 skulls.
 This has a big effect on our history as humans. Instead of our development being explained as a merge of multiple species, our history could be explained as one or two species that came together to create humans. This find means that our lineage as humans is much more simple than scientists had previously thought. Scientists believe this is one of the most important discoveries yet. They believe this because it is a key component is the understanding of the development of the early Homo species.
 This was a really good article and had a lot of information. The article could have been a little more detailed about what had happened and why it took them eight years to figure out what this skull meant or where in Georgia the skull was found. The article did have a lot of information, which was helpful, but the author could have put in more detail, but the author did give a lot of background information that helped me understand the article better.

 Wilford, John N. "Skull Fossil Suggests Simpler Human Lineage." Newyorktimes.com. New York Times, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/science/fossil-skull-may-rewrite-humans-evolutionary-story.html?ref=science&_r=0>.

16 comments:

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  4. Katie incorporated the fact that this article was published by the New York Times which I think is a great way to start off an article because people want to know where their information that they are reading came from. I liked it how Katie really made it known that this this new information really has an impact on our human history. Her personality flowed throughout the writing so it really sounded like she enjoyed this article, which makes it more interesting to read.
    Overall I think Katie did a good job on writing this review but she did have some flaws. In the last paragraph she repeats herself by saying, “ The article did have a lot of information.” Also what I didn’t like about this review was that she never included the article title or the author so I don’t know the name of what I am reading unless I look at the top.
    I believe Katie presented an uplifting article that really caught my attention. As a race we pride ourselves on our achievements and studies and this article just shows years of useless research, it is truly interesting.

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  5. The descriptions were that the author of this summary were easy to understand, and succinct. She clearly explained the enormous discovery made by scientists. I also thought that she made a neutral stance on the article, which made her thesis stronger. What could have made this article summary better would have been to explain what the other sculls importance was other than the fact that they were compared with the scull 5. It also would have been better if she had described the scull's features that distinguished the sculls from one another. what impressed me was that there might be another explanation about how humans came to be, which will be a huge leap in scientific discovery.

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  6. Katie picked a really interesting and important article. Because the article is about humans everyone will want to read it because it is about our own species. This helps us understand how we evolved and what species were like before us. Katie also used words that help the reader understand what she is talking about. The reader will not want to continue if they had no idea what she is talking about, so she did this well. Last Katie included what this tells us about humans today. There may have been just one Homo species just different mutations.

    Overall Katie wrote this review well but a few things could have been better. In the last paragraph Katie repeated herself a lot and it seemed like she was just making sentences for no reason. Another flaw Katie had was she left out a few grammar pieces that were needed. In a few spots she could have had a comma or she had a few run on sentences and the reader loses track of what they are reading.

    This article interested me a lot. Katie's review really caught me by surprise and I am glad I read it. It is always a joy to learn something new about our race and it makes you begin to think what people were like before we came. Overall this article was extremely fascinating.

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  7. I think that Katie did a great job at giving an overall summary and reflection of this article she read about scientists having come to a conclusion about a 1.8 million year old skull found in the Republic of Georgia. I liked the way that she had a thorough, yet short and sweet summary. Another thing I liked was how she said how this discovery can change our lineage as humans and give scientists more information about evolution. A third thing well-presented was how she clearly stated the pros and cons of the article and what she thought of it.
    One thing that could have been better in this review would have been if she included the article title and the author in the first paragraph, so that the reader could use it as a reference. Another thing that could have been better would have been if she included a link to the article so the reader could look at the article if they wanted to.
    I thought the fact that these skulls from so long ago were just found and the information it can give everyone about our evolution and our lineage as humans.

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  8. I think Katie did a very thorough job with the review. I liked how at the beginning Katie told about the skull: where it came from and what it looked like. She also went further than that and told about how this changed the way scientists thought of things, as well as giving a connection in real life by connecting different skulls to the way everyone is different. Another thing that Katie incorporated that was very helpful was how this discovery has an effect on our history; that our lineage is simpler than thought. Finally, I liked how Katie talked about how other items were discovered along with this skull. It gave the full view of what was discovered, and how these artifacts piece together to help create the bigger picture that rather than being made of many species, humans were created by the combination of two species.
    Some things that could have made the review better would have been to not just list the location, Republic of Georgia, but also explain where it is and what the climate is like. I also thought more background information on the setting would have been more helpful, like what civilizations have lived there, as well as more information on the artifact itself. It would have been nice to know what about the artifacts helped scientists come to their conclusion that humans were only derived from two species.
    I was impressed that something like this hadn't been unearthed yet, and that scientists are still making discoveries like this. I was impressed how just now we are finding out something about our history, that changes what are path looked like.

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  9. Katie did a great job of reviewing her article. One thing she did well was that she kept the review short and to the point, which keeps readers focused. Another thing she did well was that she explained exactly what the research has concluded about the skull. Finally, she did a nice job of explaining why this discovery is important to help put together the puzzle pieces of human evolution. One thing Katie could have done better was given more background information on what scientists thought before the discovery of the skull. Another thing that could have been improved was that she could have told whether or not there is any more evidence to support this “new species” that helped create modern humans. Overall, I found Katie’s review very informative and the topic seems very interesting. It’s amazing how we are still learning so much about human evolution.

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  10. Katie did a very good of reviewing the enticing article she read. She did something that some reviews do not do and that is to tie all of the information given in the review together in a well-explained conclusion. Se made her article short, sweet, and to the point which kept the reader focused and knew exactly what she was talking about. She also explained the most important, and interesting part of the article well which is what this means for human knowledge of human history.
    I was however, very interested on what scientists thought about human history before the recent discovery and Katie did not include enough information on that in her review in my opinion. She also did not include who found the skull: was it scientists, archaeologists, or did somebody happen to stumble upon the skull. There definitely could have been more clarity in some of the details given in Katie's review. All together, I think Katie did a very good job reviewing the article and she gave lots of great information on a new, fascinating discovery of human history.

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  11. I thought Katie did a very good job of reviewing the article “Skull Fossil Suggests Simpler Human Lineage.” Her summary was very detailed and contained a good amount of information, which was able to get the point of the article across. She also did a good job at keeping it clear and since it is a somewhat complicated topic to describe she did a very good job at explaining it and why.
    Two things I would have improved are first, I thought that her critique was very repetitive, but otherwise well done. I also think it is better to refer to the article directly in a review by including the author’s name and the title of the article in the topic sentence.
    I learned that we had originally thought that we were from many different species, and am surprised that we just figured out that that is wrong. It is very interesting thinking that we come from just two different species, and I wonder which one I am closer to.

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  12. Katie did a good job on this article. I liked how Katie gave us an example on how this discovery has affected our history. Another thing that I liked about Katie’s work is that she gave a strong opinion about how she thought about this article and the way in which the article could improve by putting in more detail for the reader to understand it more. One more thing that I liked about this review is how Katie also added the scientist’s knowledge, and what they have to say about this discovery.

    Even though Katie’s review was well written there are a few things that she could improve on. One thing that Katie could improve is to add more detail, and give some more description on how the skull looked like and what were the species that were involved with this skull. One more thing that Katie could have improved on was that she repeated some of her ideas, like in the last paragraph.

    I found this article very interesting, especially because it is about our kind of species. I am glad that I read about this because it is very interesting, and it good to know about. I loved finding out about the species that had come before us, and how they evolved.

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  13. Chemistry
    Joe Shively

    Katie did an exceptional job in writing her review for the article she read. Katie’s review contained a lot of descriptive information that made it easy for me to understand what the article was about, in a few amount of sentences. Although there was a lot of information in her review, Katie did a good job at bringing all the information together in an interesting way. Also, Katie picked a good article that is very recent in today’s new, so I was able to compare my knowledge of the topic with Katie’s.
    Although Katie did overall outstanding review, she did tend to repeat some sentences. This tends to make the reader bored because he/she is hearing the same information over and over again. Also, I think it would have given me a better visual to compare today’s human skulls with if Katie had given a better description of how the skulls look.
    It impressed me that although I had already read an article on this topic, Katie was able to provide me with information on the topic that I hadn’t known before.

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  14. Katie did an excellent job of reviewing this article. She wrote it well, using good grammar and word choices. Katie also gave background information which made the review easier to understand. Finally, Katie did a superb job of summarizing the article and giving her opinion on it.
    Despite the review. being very well done Katie could improve on a few things. Katie repeated information a few times which, if cleaned up, would improve the writing mechanics of her review. Something else that Katie could improve on would be to add a bit more detail to her writing, she could describe the skull and where it was found specifically for starters.
    I thought this was a very insightful read, it is interesting to know that human evolution might be much simpler than we think.

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  15. I really enjoyed this article because of how “to the point” it was and how the author of the review just took what was needed to explain what the article was about. The author also did a very good job at giving the “who, what, where” aspect of the article in the opening so it was very easy to understand the rest of the review and not to get lost if the reader hadn’t read the article. Finally, this review had a nice third paragraph describing what the article could have used, which, if this is a topic the reader would like to learn more about, would know to look for in other places.
    To make this review even better, the author could have elaborated more on some of the ideas and discoveries made by the scientists due to this finding. For example, how does this finding tell us that we may not have evolved from different species? Also, I had already thought that we had evolved from primates so this idea that we evolved from several different species is new to me; some background knowledge on that theory could have been helpful. Another thing that could have been helpful was some insight to why only skull number five is important versus the others; if they were found from the same time period what makes the one skull more special?
    I was not aware of this finding before reading this article and its review and I also was unaware of this different theory of evolution. Both are very intriguing and I hope to look further into them.

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  16. Katie's review for her article was very good and informative. I like how she included the title of the article and the author, so we know what it was about, and if anyone was very interested they could search the article up to read the whole thing. Katie also gave a very good summary and description of the article and her review gave a lot of details. Also, i love her critique of the article and her personal views about it.
    I think Katie could have maybe improved on describing more how this can affect us as humans, and she could expand that a little more than she did. I also feel Katie could have made her review a little longer and told us more about the article and gave us a little more information, but she did give us a fair enough amount of information.
    This was nothing something i was aware of and I'm happy i chose Katie's article to read and i learnt something new just from reading this review.

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