On Sunday night, The Simpsons begins its 20th season. The show has won seven Environmental Media Awards for episodes like “The Bonfire of the Manatees” and “On a Clear Day I Can’t See My Sister.” And since National Geographic cares about the environment just as much as the Simpsons do, the time seemed right to interview a spokescharacter. The show runners offered up Lisa. True, she is a cartoon, with yellow skin and improbably spiked hair. But who could resist a chance to pose questions to the tree-huggingest Simpson of them all?

What is your family doing to “go green?”
Well, my Dad said his bald spot is “a solar panel for a love machine.”  I don’t know what that means, but I’m looking into whether we can hook it into the grid and get carbon credits.

What is your favorite (or least favorite) endangered animal?
I love all creatures, great and small... but if one had to go, I’d say mosquitoes.  I mean, they can really ruin an Earth Day.  Oh, now I feel so guilty.

Have you been able to convince your Dad to recycle his Duff beer cans?
Yes.  Though he was upset about having to dismantle his 80-foot “Beer-amid” as well as his “Duff Lite-House of Alexandria” and his “Colossus of Suds.”

Since nuclear power has low carbon emissions, do you now respect Mr. Burns?
You know what has really low carbon emissions and releases no radiation?  Wind power!  Sorry I lost my cool... you know what else is losing its cool?  THE EARTH!

Will the Simpsons ever become eco-tourists?
I don’t know.  My Dad loves to be a tourist, but hates anything eco.  So it could go either way.   

Does Maggie use disposable diapers?
Yes, and so does my Grampa.

Has Springfield been affected by climate change?
Yes, the most powerful greenhouse gases are escaping from me, Lisa Simpson.  Bart!  Get away from my computer!  Sorry about that.

Does your family subscribe to National Geographic?
No, but we’d read it in the library, if we ever went to the library, which we don’t because crazy homeless people hang out there, like my Grampa.

-Marc Silver

Scientists advised artist Keith Kasnot that the Kennewick man had a skull similar to the Ainu of Japan. That's not much to go on when the final appearance of a reconstruction depends so much on skin color, subtle facial features, and hair. This image is of a National Geographic magazine spread from an article on the first Americans.

Glaring out from the cover of the October issue of National Geographic you will see a female Neandertal. I love reconstructions like that because they help bring the past to life. But they make some people, particularly scientists, squirm. Why? Because they are primarily art. The reason is there are so many gaps in our knowledge that artists have to make guesses in order to complete the image. I know this because I have been involved in many of these reconstructions in my career, including the Iceman, the Kennewick man, the “hobbit” from Flores, and King Tut. In each case I was intimately aware of what we knew and what we didn’t know. In the end this makes one feel somewhat vulnerable to criticism, but I always felt we did the best we could, under the circumstances.

Here are some of the problems we encountered. In the case of the Ice Man, we didn’t have access to a three-dimensional cast of the skull. This was a severe limitation. Artist John Gurche had to reconstruct the skull from CT scans and photos before he could make his model. For the Kennewick man, who Keith Kasnot reconstructed digitally, we had a 3d scan of the skull, but some facial features, skin color, and hair amount and color were all quite speculative and based solely on the advice we were given that the closest match to the Kennewick man’s skeletal features were the Ainu people of northern Japan. For the hobbit we had a nice 3d model generated from a scan of the skull, but again, skin color, hair type, etc… were all quite speculative. The wild dark countenance of the final model looked frightening to some. Would a lighter-skinned, better groomed version have been easier to look at?  In the case of King Tut, we had a good skull to work from, based on a scan provided to us by Dr. Zahi Hawass of Egypt’s Supreme Council on Antiquities. But in this case, skin color and other facial features, such as nose and lip size, were not only unknown, but were highly political issues. I remember picking out eye color from a selection of glass eyes (of course we had no idea what color Tut's eyes were). I also remember asking the artist to make Tut's skin color darker in order to reach some intuitive midway point between "white" and "black," only to be defeated by the camera lights, which made Tut look light-skinned again.

So how did we do with our Neandertal? The Herculean effort by the paleoartist team, the Kennis brothers, was able to capture a lot of information. The body itself, based on known Neandertal bones, reflects some new information about the female Neandertal pelvis, which is especially interesting in light of new reports about the large brained Neandertal babies that had to pass through the birth canal. The model's beat up appearance and "hunting" pose is consistent with the notion that Neandertal life was rough, injuries were high, and we have no reason to believe that females did not participate in hunts one way or the other. But the real fun begins with the pigmentation of her skin and the color of her hair. Studies of the DNA from Neandertal bones found in Spain and Italy show they had a pigmentation gene, MC1R. It suggests Neandertals could have had red hair and freckles.

These reconstructions are tremendously time consuming and expensive. Is it worth it to try to bring the past to life, even if it our efforts will never be perfect?

Did paleoanthropolgist Lee Berger speak too soon about his discovery of human remains in Palau? He claimed their extremely small body size suggested island dwarfism. This skull, which he did not make any claims about, is too covered with calcite to say much. Critics say this skull, and others Berger studied, were probably children. Photo by author.

Were some of the earliest inhabitants of Palau dwarfed, as suggested by NGS grantee Lee Berger’s PloS One paper? Not according to a new report from Scott Fitzpatrick and colleagues whose critique of Berger’s work in PloS One can only be described as scathing. The thrust of Fitzpatrick's paper is that about the only thing that Berger and his colleagues got right was the name of the caves in which they found bones.

Fitzpatrick and his colleagues claims that the early people of Palau are well studied and fit within the spectrum of what is already known about early peoples of Pacific islands after decades of study. Fitzpatrick personally studied remains from a beach site in Palau called Chelechol ra Orrak. Among the remains were complete skeletons. Based on Berger's measurements, Fitzpatrick says the bones Berger found may have been small, but no smaller than those from Chelechol ra Orrak or other contemporaneous Pacific island populations.  Fitzpatrick argues it is known that small bones such as these appeared on people of normal size in Palau.

Berger suggests Fitzpatrick misinterpreted his findings (see NG News). I worked with Berger behind the scenes as he was studying the specimens and know that he would be the first to say that his report was based on a collection of fragmentary remains and would have to be considered a preliminary report. Thousands of bones, a lifetime of work for an archaeological team, remain in the caves awaiting study. He knew that much more work would be needed before anything more could be said about the bones from the caves. He explained how he felt that publishing a preliminary report was more responsible than withholding information.

In the closing section of Fitzpatrick’s paper he and his colleagues admit that they used a “sledgehammer to crack a nut,” meaning they deliberately pounded Berger. The negative tone of the paper, and statements like “some may see the Berger et al. paper as being so egregious that few will take it seriously,” will almost certainly influence Palauan officials who decide who is permitted to work in their islands and who is not.

This makes me wonder. Was such a heavy-handed treatment by Fitzpatrick necessary? Should Berger and his colleagues have kept their finds to themselves, even though they felt they were relevant to the ongoing debate about the hobbit from Flores?

What do you think?

Addressing the concerns of many professional photographers who want to love the M8, Leica has introduced a second iteration of their digital rangefinder—the M8.2. The most notable of the many enhancements is the dramatic reduction in shutter and winder noise. Not only is the camera operationally quieter, the reworked shutter gives the camera a much smoother feel—harking back to the M4 experience.

The M8.2 also targets the new less experienced Leica user with the addition of a snapshot mode, where the camera controls all the key settings needed to create the perfect exposure.

The Leica M rangefinder has always been a pleasure to use and a brilliant tool for discreet reportage. Version two of the M8 certainly sets this camera back on the path forged in 1925, a path that changed modern photography.

For more information on the M8.2 check out the Leica website; it also has details on how you can have your current M8 upgraded to the functionality of the M8.2.

— Ken Geiger

The professional community has been eagerly awaiting news of the EOS 5D replacement, and today the long anticipated full-frame Canon EOS 5D Mark II was unveiled. The 5D was first released in 2005 with a palatable price point; its low weight and full frame sensor have made it a favorite tool for many National Geographic photographers.

The 5D MK II comes with an even larger CMOS sensor, 21.1 megapixels, 3.9 continuous frames per second, and an expanded ISO range compliments of the new DIGIC 4 processor. Live-view video can be captured at 1920x1080 pixels (30 frames per second) with stereo sound and individual clips lasting 4GB—about 12 minutes.  As an added benefit, still frames can also be captured while HD video recording is in progress!

Canon has even lowered the price of the 5D MKII to $2,699, with arrival scheduled at the end of November. More 5D MKII images and details after the jump.

— Ken Geiger

My life has been bracketed by trails. I grew up near the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, which meanders from the Pacific Northwest rain forest to the California desert valley and passes through the Sky Lakes Wilderness in southern Oregon. It’s where I first tasted the magic of two loves, a backpack and a camera. I can remember rolling out of a tent to photograph a small lake as fingers of light poked through a scrim of mist and the rising sun burnished the landscape with the intense gold of late summer.

Thirty-six years later, on the other side of the continent, I can sit on my front porch, look west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and see that other marquee route—the Appalachian Trail. I remember the first time I hiked the Appalachian. Being a Westerner, I imagined I knew what real mountains were; I figured I was in for a cakewalk. I was wrong. The Appalachian Trail upended my arrogance. I realized that a challenging hike and incredible beauty were not exclusive to the Pacific Crest.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of a national system that incorporates 1,077 trails, totaling more than 66,000 miles in all 50 states. We feature one of them—Arkansas’s Ozark Highlands Trail—in this issue. “Build a trail and they will come,” says Pam Gluck, executive director of American Trails, a nonprofit that works to protect trails across the country. Trails, she points out, promote exercise and can help ease traffic congestion and decrease pollution. Most of all, trails put us in touch with nature—and ultimately ourselves.

Photograph by Peter Essick

The hardware continues to roll out in advance of Photokina. SanDisk today announced a whopping 32-gigabyte compact flash card with data transfer speeds of 30 megabytes per second. According to Sandisk the 32GB Extreme III CF card can store more than 80 minutes of HD video. All National Geographic photographs are captured RAW, so a high capacity card is extremely valuable when using high pixel count cameras like the Canon 1Ds MKIII or the new Sony A900. Underwater photographers will also rejoice, as the new 32GB Extreme III will increase bottom shooting time. Imagine matching this card with the Nikon D3 and its dual CF card slots—64GB if in-camera storage!

— Ken Geiger

Digital SLR cameras have come a long way in a few short years; all are feature rich, and with each new model milestones topple. Sony has broken another barrier for the serious photo enthusiast in bringing to market their flagship A900—a full-frame 24.6 megapixel CMOS sensor capable of five continuous frames per second—all for about $3000.

The viewfinder has been designed with a 100 percent field of view, and the A900 also comes equipped with the world’s first anti-shake system for a full-frame sensor.

“The camera’s newly developed, body-integrated SteadyShot Inside unit achieves an anti-shake effect equivalent to shutter speeds faster by 2.5 to 4 stops.”

Among the features, intelligent preview seems to be an option that will save both time and frustration creating properly exposed photographs—by giving you the ability to fine tune an exposure before the next image is committed to one of the camera’s two memory cards.

“After pressing the depth of field preview button, the camera 'grabs' a RAW preview image, which is processed and displayed on the LCD screen. You can then fine-tune white balance, determine the best level and effect of dynamic range optimization, adjust exposure compensation, and check histogram data, all before you actually take the picture.”

The A900 will be available in November with online pre-orders beginning September 10th. More detailed camera images after the jump.   

— Ken Geiger