The Visible Ape Project: A free, comprehensive, web-based anatomical atlas for scientists and veterinarians designed to raise public awareness about apes.

The Visible Ape Project (VAP) is a free online platform providing unprecedented access to a suite of resources designed to comprehensively illustrate and educate about the anatomy of our closest relatives, the apes. It contains photographs, magnetic resonance images, and computed tomography scans, as well as three-dimensional models that can be manipulated to explore homologies and variations in soft and hard tissues in hylobatids, orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. Based at Howard University, a historically black university, it aims to reach communities underrepresented in anthropology and evolutionary biology, providing educational materials appropriate for K-12 and college classrooms in both English and Spanish.

A quantification of calcaneal lateral plantar process position with implications for bipedal locomotion in Australopithecus.

The evolution of bipedalism in the hominin lineage has shaped the posterior human calcaneus into a large, robust structure considered to be adaptive for dissipating peak compressive forces and energy during heel-strike. A unique anatomy thought to contribute to the human calcaneus and its function is the lateral plantar process (LPP). While it has long been known that humans possess a plantarly positioned LPP and apes possess a more dorsally positioned homologous structure, the relative position of the LPP and intraspecific variation of this structure have never been quantified.

Breaking with Tradition: A Scoping Meta-Analysis Analyzing the Effects of Student-Centered Learning and Computer-Aided Instruction on Student Performance in Anatomy.

While prior meta-analyses in anatomy education have explored the effects of laboratory pedagogies and histology media on learner performance, the effects of student-centered learning (SCL) and computer-aided instruction (CAI) have not been broadly evaluated. This research sought to answer the question, "How effective are student-centered pedagogies and CAI at increasing student knowledge gains in anatomy compared to traditional didactic approaches?" Relevant studies published within the past 51 years were searched using five databases. Predetermined eligibility criteria were applied to the screening of titles and abstracts to discern their appropriateness for study inclusion.

A meta-analysis of anatomy laboratory pedagogies.

The debate regarding anatomy laboratory teaching approaches is ongoing and controversial. To date, the literature has yielded only speculative conclusions because of general methodological weaknesses and a lack of summative empirical evidence. Through a meta-analysis, this study compared the effectiveness of instructional laboratory approaches used in anatomy education to objectively and more conclusively synthesize the existing literature.

Hominin taxic diversity: Fact or fantasy?

In this review of the evidence for and against taxic diversity within the hominin clade, we begin by looking at the logic and the history of simple "ladder-like" interpretations of the hominin fossil record. We then look at the hominin fossil record in a series of time intervals and use current published evidence about the first and last appearance dates of each taxon to decide whether a species or specimens should be included in one, or more, of the intervals. Within each time interval, we consider the strength of the evidence that more than one hominin species is sampled.