What Exactly is Physical Anthropology?

This quote from my previous article summarizes Physical Anthropology effectively. It does indeed examine human biology, physical anthropology studies humans as biological animals in addition to being cultural ones. In particular they examine the interaction of biology and culture.

Physical anthropology studies the mechanics of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, the genetic adaptability and variation in individuals, primatoloy, primate morphology as well as the fossil record. Now according to some Physical anthropologists are the most "scientific" of the anthropologists, as they are the anthropologists that appear to the majority's eye to be the most traditionally "scientific".

In essence this simply indicates that you are more likely to find a Physical Anthropologist in a lab wearing a white lab coat than any other kind of anthropologist. You are more likely to find Linguists in a library, or amongst native speakers of a language. You are more likely to find a Cultural Anthropologist working in a given community of people and an archaeologist out in the "field".

Physical anthropologists cross paths with all other anthropological fields frequently. With linguists they will look for linguistic roots within the brain, universal principles of language and the relationship between language and biology. With cultural anthropologists they will study the correlation between culture and biology. And with archaeologists they might examine the bones and fossils of past humans to determine how an individual, or a group, lived and the environment in which they lived.

Sources

Introducing Cultural Anthropology (4th Edition) by Roberta Edwards Lenkeit

The Anthropology of Religion, Magic and Witchcraft (2nd Edition) by Rebecca L. Stein and Philip L. Stein