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Rounding off a hectic end to 2008 was a trip to visit Molly, currently on sabbatical in New York city.
Joanna and I flew out to spend the final weekend before Christmas discussing projects and frequenting the local coffee shops, restaurants and bars. I took the opportunity to visit the American Museum of Natural History adjacent to Central Park after reading about its dinosaur collections in the Catcher in the Rye; pictured is an
Allosaurus skeleton, which stands in the main entrance hall. Of particular interest was the
Spitzer Hall of Human Origins which features a wealth of fossil remains and artefacts including a cast of the Laetoli footprints and a diorama of an
Australopithecus afarensis nuclear family. Fittingly, the very focus of the New York trip was to discuss the on-going project to characterize natural selection between hominid species.