Essay --

Step 1. Provide a summary of the scientific article addressing these questions: The publication Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society from the United Kingdom claims to be a publication devoted to a specific area of the biological sciences that aims to define a research frontier that is advancing rapidly, often bridging traditional disciplines. Hand before foot? Cortical somatotopy suggests manual dexterity is primitive and evolved independently of bipedalism, published October 7, 2103 by Teruo Hashimoto et al, certainly seems to support this publication’s claims. 1. What issues in physical and biological anthropology are addressed and why are they important? This newly published research from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute addresses a long-standing question in physical and biological anthropology; did manual dexterity evolve first in early hominins, as a requirement to make and use tools with their hands, or did it evolve in response to bipedal locomotion, after their hands were free to use? This mystery in human evolution is important to solve because by knowing what evolved first (dexterous hand or agile foot) researchers can better learn how early hominins lived and how they evolved into modern humans. This newly published research also addresses another very important issue in physical and biological anthropology; it introduces new scientific testing methods available to study evolution that can be used to re-evaluate long-standing evolutionary theories. In this case the study of comparative brain physiology for humans and monkeys was used to help establish the study findings. 2. What is the hypothesis or main question being tested? -The hypothesis/main question being tested is what evolved first, dexterous... ...arranted based on the new comparative brain physiology research methodology that was performed, and the study of the more recent hand and foot fossil remains of the species Ardipithecus ramidus support the findings. Step 2. Compare scientific article with press report addressing the following questions: How well did the press report accurately reflect the research article? I believe that the press report reflected the research article very accurately. The hypothesis was stated and was accurately answered. Is the information present correct or misleading? The information that is present in the press report is correct and does not mislead How would you have presented this report differently? The way in which I would have presented this report is I would have done more research along the lines of other evolutionary traits of monkeys and humans and then looked at