The Evenings at Whitney Lecture Series hosted by the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, continues at 7 p.m. Oct. 12 with the program titled “Bones, stones, and DNA: A Nature editor's-eye view of human evolution.” Luíseach Nic Eoin Ph.D., Senior Editor at Nature Ecology and Evolution, will be the speaker.
This free lecture will be presented in person at the UF Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Blvd., in St. Augustine. Those interested also have the option of registering to watch via Zoom live the night of the lecture.
Register to watch online: ufl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0bWg0Zu4QCmp5kEgv7BvLw.
Human evolution is a complex and fast-moving topic that’s key to understanding who we are and where we come from. The past decade and a half have seen something of a molecular revolution in archaeology and palaeoanthropology that means we know more than ever about the complexities of the human family tree, but classic techniques of stone tool and fossil bone analysis remain key to discovery and interpretation. The speaker will talk about who’s who, who’s where, who’s when, what we know, what we don’t know and what we’d like to know.
Luíseach will spend the first part of this talk explaining what exactly the job entails as an editor for arguably the most prestigious group of science journals in the world, discuss the pros and cons of scientific “gatekeeping,” share some exciting and some frankly odd discoveries from her inbox, and make a case that this field where both stakes and tensions run high needs a bird’s eye view to make sense of it.
