Since human evolution is such a sensitive topic for many students, it was great to have a symposium at the meeting taking this topic head on. There are so many wonderful approaches one could use in the classroom indicated at this symposium, from detailed comparative work on chimps to close examination of emergence of modern humans in the fossil record.

One common refrain of the creationist/ID supposed “controversy” is the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. This is of course totally untrue, both for non-human and human evolution. In the evolution symposium, the talk on Neanderthal DNA offers excellent resources for testing hypotheses of transitional forms in human evolution. Seeing different DNA polymorphisms in neanderthals that are sometimes more similar to other great apes and sometimes more similar to modern humans is wonderful support for neanderthals as a transitional form from our common ancestor with chimps to us.