Anthro103
Human Origins and Variation
Writing
Assignment
“Pick a Primate or Hominin”
Due: Friday, May 5th, 11:59pm via
Moodle (turnitin link)
Please read the instructions
carefully.
Pick a primate or extinct hominin species (do not write about yourself) and write a 600-700
word essay on the species’ behavior and ecology (e.g. life history, mating
system, feeding ecology, location etc).
●
If you’re writing
about a living primate, write about their conservation status and what threats
they face (you can find this on IUCN’s Red list online).
●
If you’re writing
about an extinct hominin, write about what particular evolutionary features
(e.g. bipedalism, climbing ability) arose with them, as well as any behaviors
that arose with that species (e.g. making Mousterian tools, first to make
symbolic art, fire, etc)
You should also include two academic bibliographic references. The
reference should be used in the text (eg. Smith, 2018), and listed fully at the
end of the essay (see next page).
As a guideline,
a 600-700 word essay takes about one single-spaced page (Font size 12).
If you have
questions about the appropriateness of the reference, or any aspects of the
assignments, please consult with Dr. Disotell or your TA.
Your essay should be typed and turned in via
Moodle. This
assignment is worth 100 points (10% of your lecture grade) and will be
evaluated as follows:
Form
formatting and length
5
style: spelling, grammar
5
Content
all requirements included
25
clear explanation of the
species
25
understanding of
evolutionary concepts
25
Bibliography/citations
15
Total points
100
Citations &
References
You must use
TWO academic references as bibliographic references. The references cannot be an online source
such as Wikipedia, blogs, twitter, etc., but should come from any of the
following:
a.
One
of the references can be your textbook, but the other one must come from
another source.
b.
a
scientific book (including edited books).
c.
peer-reviewed
journal and scientific magazine (such as Scientific American or Natural
History). A peer-reviewed article has been examined by members in the
appropriate scholarly field before publication.
You can find articles for this assignment in journals such as Journal of
Human Evolution, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Science, Nature,
PLOS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and many others,
depending on the issue you pick (note that most of these journals are on
line, and that is fine).
You MUST use in-text citations. This means your
two bibliographic references must be used in the essay, AND listed at the end
as full bibliographic references. Citations in the text should include the
author’s last name and the date of publication (e.g., Wood (2010) argues that…
.)
In
text citation formats:
For a single
author- Primates eat insects in……
(Jones, 2009).
For multiple
authors- Hominins make this type of
tool…..(Smith et al., 2013).
Academic references
are peer reviewed publications. These may come in the form of professional
journals and/or books. You may search for them in a variety of ways. For
example, with the library ( https://www.library.umass.edu/ (take advantage of the libraries resources, they’re happy to help and
learning these skills are important not only for this class but other
throughout your academic career as well!), as well as Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/ , and JSTOR https://www.jstor.org/ etc.
In-text citations:
Do NOT use direct quotes. It is almost always better to rephrase the argument found in an
academic resource in your own words.
Occasionally, you will find an argument that is so well written that you cannot
see any way to say it better. In this case, use direct quotation: place
quotation marks around the quote and follow with the name of author(s), year
of publication and page number. You can only use one quote per essay, and the quote cannot exceed 3 lines total.
Reference
Formats:
For Chapter in edited book entries:
Tuttle RH and
Cortright GW. 1988. Positional behavior,
adaptive complexes and evolution. In Orang-utan biology. (Ed. J
Schwartz) Oxford Univ. Press: New York and Oxford. pp. 311-330.
For book entries:
Hrdy SB (1981)
The Woman that Never Evolved. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
For journal articles:
Tuttle RH.
1969. Knuckle-walking and the problem of human origins. Science 166(3908):953 961.