ANT332 Human Origins I: Early Ancestors to Homo

There are two (2) written assignments in ANT 332. In these assignments, students are to assume the role of Curator of the Division of Fossil Primates at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, with the purpose of creating the text for a museum exhibit focused on a specific aspect of primate evolution - a fossil primate taxon or a primate fossil locality. 

To get a sense of what the Canadian Museum of Nature's Collections consist of, please take a look at:

• Fossil exhibits
• Zoology collections

Through their research, students will become experts on their topic.  Students are welcome to choose their own topic of interest, subject to approval by the course instructor, or choose from a list of topics provided by the instructor. 

Assignment 1 will be submitted on Quercus on October 22.

Students will first create an overview of their topic using an annotated bibliography.

The annotated bibliography consists of a collection of:

• 12 peer-reviewed resources (e.g., journal articles, chapters in edited volumes) and
• a one (1)-page summary of each resource, including the purpose of the study, methods used, an outline of the findings and significance of these findings to primate evolutionary research. 

Reference format should follow the Journal of Human Evolution Guide for Authors (https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-human-evolution/0047-2484/guide-for-authors#68000) and bibliographies will be formatted using a 12 font, 1.5 or double line spacing, and 1” margins.

Students will be graded on the comprehensiveness and organization of their annotated bibliographies.  Further instructions and examples will be provided early in the semester.

Where to find peer-reviewed references?

Please see sources of peer-reviewed journals articles in the journal gallery below, all available through the University of Toronto Library system. Also consult the reference cited lists in your required readings in Quercus and the peer-reviewed book gallery.

To check what is peer review and how to find peer-reviewed journals using the Ulrichsweb app, please see the Peer Review and Scholarship tab in this Guide.

Please read these authoritative guides to writing annotated bibliographies before you start your assignment:

Assignment 2 will be due in Quercus on November 23, 2021, by 9 pm. 

In the second written assignment, students will create an exhibit poster to organize and present the research gathered in their annotated bibliography.  In their poster, students are required to present three items:

• their topic (fossil primate taxon or locality),
• two (2) images best illustrating their topic,
• and a concise text describing their topic. 

Exhibit posters require a title (no more than 20 words), image labels (no more than 20 words for each image), and approximately 150 words of text, which should tell a detailed story of the selected topic.  Exhibit text should be no more than 200 words in total. 

Posters can be presented as a PowerPoint slide and saved as a PDF, using a legible font size and well organized image and text placement.  Students will be graded on the creativity, organization and level of detail in their exhibit posters.  Further instructions, topics, and examples will be provided early in the semester. 

Combined, the written assignments in ANT 332 are worth 30% of the final grade.  Students must submit both parts of the written assignment for full consideration.

Ideas for this Assignment?

Please use the Journal of Human Evolution Guide for Authors to format in-text citations and references.

General Comments about types of sources cited:

• Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa).
• Unpublished results, manuscripts in preparation, and personal communications should not be included in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text using 'author's unpublished results', 'in prep.', 'pers. comm.', or similar expressions within parentheses. If citing a personal communication, please ensure that you supply verification from the person providing the communication that they agree to it being included in your submission. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication. Submitted manuscripts should not be included in the reference list.
• If gray literature documents (unpublished reports, submitted manuscripts, etc.) are cited, they must be included as such in the reference list.
• For journal articles pre-published online, the volume number and page range should be substituted by the full URL of the DOI.
• For online only articles, page range should be substituted by article number (DOI is not required).
• Issue number within volume should only be included (within parentheses, between volume number and page range) when page numbering is not consecutive throughout successive issues of the same volume.
• In taxonomic papers, taxonomic authorities (i.e., authorships) should be provided after taxon names, and the corresponding references included in the reference list (see specific guidelines for taxonomic papers below).

In-Text Citations

All citations in text should refer to:

1. Single author: the author's name (without initials, unless there is ambiguity) and the year of publication;
2. Two authors: both authors' names and the year of publication;
3. Three or more authors: first author's name followed by'et al.,' and the year of publication.

Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first chronologically, then alphabetically.

Examples:

• Kimura and Yaguramaki (2009), or (Kimura and Yaguramaki, 2009)
• with more than two authors, the citation style is McGrew et al. (2009) or (McGrew et al., 2009)
• the convention (McGrew, 2010a; McGrew, 2010b) or (McGrew, 2010 a,b) should be used where more than one paper by the same author(s) in one year
• citations listed in the text should be arranged in chronological order, not in alphabetical order (e.g., Schoening et al., 2008; Boesch et al., 2009; Ungar and Sponheimer, 2011; Kamilar and Marshack, 2012).

Reference List:

• References should be arranged first alphabetically, based on the last name of the first author, and then further sorted chronologically if necessary.
• More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters "a", "b", "c", etc., placed after the year of publication.

UTL maintains a comprehensive guide to citation management software such as EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley. Please see the CITATION MANAGER TABLE.