The Welsh pantothere Kuehneotherium praecursoris

A new genus and species of pantothere ( Kuehneotherium praecursoris ) from the Welsh Rhaetic is defined, named and briefly described. Its molars are tritubercular, with a lingual cingulum in the uppers and a tiny talonid with a large hypoconulid in the lowers. The molars and premolars do not appear to intergrade. There were between nine and eleven lower posteanines; at least five of these were premolars. The number of upper postcanines is unknown; it is unlikely to have differed by more than one from the number of lowers. The dentary terminated in a, well-developed condyle, there was no angle, and there is evidence of a full complement of accessory jaw bones including a coronoid. A new family Kuehneotheriidae is established for Kuehneotherium and related forms. The pantotheres are divided among three suborders: the new suborder Amphitheria, which includes the families Kuehneotheriidae, Amphitheriidae, Peramuridae and Paurodontidae; the Dryolestoidea and the Symmetrodonta.     

The doctrine of specific etiology

Modern medicine is often said to have originated with nineteenth century germ theory, which attributed diseases to bacterial contagions. The success of this theory is often associated with an underlying principle referred to as the “doctrine of specific etiology”. This doctrine refers to specificity at the level of disease causation or etiology. While the importance of this doctrine is frequently emphasized in the philosophical, historical, and medical literature, these sources lack a clear account of the types of specificity that it involves and why exactly they matter. This paper argues that nineteenth century germ theory involves two types of specificity at the level of etiology. One type receives significant attention in the literature, but its influence on modern medicine has been misunderstood. A second type is present in this model, but it has been completely overlooked in the extant literature. My analysis clarifies how these types of specificity led to a novel conception of etiology that continues to figure in medicine today.     

Evolution and devolution of knowledge: a tale of two biologies

Anthropological enquiry suggests that all societies classify animals and plants in similar ways. Paradoxically, in the same cultures that have seen large advances in biological science, practical knowledge of nature has dramatically diminished. Here we describe historical, cross-cultural, and developmental research on the ways in which people ordinarily conceptualize organic nature (folk biology), concentrating on cognitive consequences associated with knowledge devolution. We show that the results of psychological studies of categorization and reasoning from 'standard populations' fail to generalize to humanity at large. The populations most commonly used in studies by psychologists (Euro-American college and university students) have impoverished experience of nature, and this generates misleading results about knowledge acquisition and the ontogenetic relationship between folk biology and folk psychology. We also show that groups living in the same habitat can manifest strikingly distinct behaviours, cognitions, and social relations relative to it. This has novel implications for environmental decision making and management, including commons problems.     

The political consequences of Welsh identity*

The 1991 British Census was the first to ask a question on ethnic group. This Research note provides a brief review of the development of the question and then uses the Samples of Anonymised Records, also newly available in 1991, to explore the construction of the ten ethnic groups derived by the Census Offices; the family and household composition of the ten groups and the implications of this construction for the analysis of ethnic differences.     

The molar dentition of a Welsh pantothere

The paper describes the molar teeth of a primitive therian mammal from the early Jurassic of S. Wales. The teeth are all isolated with largely intact crowns but with the roots usually broken. An attempt is made to reproduce a molar series and it is suggested that the animal has five constant molars with a sixth which was inconstant in size and probably not always present. The teeth exhibit a number of very primitive features. The animal may well be congeneric with Kuehneotherium praecursoris , from which it differs in a number of details.     

The European Union and Migrant Labour

The European Union and Migrant Labour. Gareth Dale and Mike Cole. eds. New York: NYU Press, 1999. 256 pp.