Languages and their uses

I'm grading test number three of my class, thus I am "profe".  I'm hearing the following:

"We have a lot of butt cream.  It's in Monteverde, so maybe Fran can bring us the butt cream down."

Butt cream, butt cream, we all scream for butt cream.

The range of my test scores for test number three is wide.  I haven't calculated the butt cream--I mean, average--yet, but it'll be up there.  Each of my tests ends with 2-3 extra credit questions.   These were the questions for this test:

1) Why is the fossil species Kenyatropus platyops considered controversial by some paleoanthropologists?



2) What the hell is a plesiadapiform?



3) The oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire comes from ___________ and is associated with the following date:


Answers below (come on,  I need something to hook you to read further.  All I have going so far is butt cream).


As I grade kin mention boob cream too.

I stumble upon a stellar specimen of undergraduate knowledge, but remember that this one was associated with candor.  As the guy (unnameable, of course) turned it in, he colorfully said:

"Profe lo mame pero fue porque no estudie"  (Literally "Prof, I sucked it but because I didn't study", and figuratively something like "Prof, I bombed it, but because I didn't study.")

To which I said, "Oh...?"  But I couldn't get my eyebrows quite right.

So this colorful guy got an 18%.  He definitely sucked it.  He butt-cream sucked it.


Just two more weeks of classes for me.  It's been an amazing experience.  I love my students.  Even the bad ones are great.  Not a single one of them tries to pin anything on me.  If they do poorly, it's their own fault, self-admittedly.  I'm not perfect as a teacher, far from it.  But it's nice to have students who take responsibility for their actions.

Ok, now for the extra credit:


1) Why is the fossil species Kenyatropus platyops considered controversial by some paleoanthropologists?
This species is contentious given that it is comprised of only one skull.  Further, this skull was in over 1000 pieces when first found, so detractors of its status as an unique species state that the purported differences it demonstrates in relation to hominins of around the same time period (3.5-2.7 million years ago) stem from the reconstruction of the skull as well as from the fossilization process.  These detractors state that it should be considered as another individual from Australapithecus afarensis, a much better known species.


2) What the hell is a plesiadapiform?
The plesiadapiforms are a group of mammals that rise at the beginning of the Paleocene (65,000,000 years ago) that are thought to be ancestral to the primate order.  They had opposable thumbs (a defining characteristic of primates) and were small and arboreal (like a tree shrew).  They didn't have stereoscopic vision or a post-orbital bar.


3) The oldest evidence of the controlled use of fire comes from _China_ and is associated with the following date of 400,000 years ago.   It is thus associated with a species from the genus Homo, but not our species, Homo sapiens.   It could have been Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis.

Butt cream.