Archaeology & Paleontology, News & Press - A Blog by F.Intilla (WWW.OLOSCIENCE.COM)

Missing 500-Years of Loggias, Porticos Described.

2010-01-15T03:48:00.000-08:00

Porticos are roof-covered structures supported by columns. (Credit: iStockphoto/Nils Kahle)

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ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2010) — Using texts and images, a University of Arkansas researcher has for the first time reconstructed the time when the use of porticos -- roof-covered structures supported by columns -- gave way to loggias, or recessed porticos.

In an article in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, architecture professor Kim Sexton accounts for the time between the 7th and 12th centuries when there are no surviving porticos. In European history, loggias represented more than just interesting architectural features. They also served important cultural functions.
"It's important because we had porticos in Roman times, and then they come back in the Renaissance," she said. "It's unaccounted time -- what happened in between?"
Sexton argues that they returned to prominence because different ethnic groups used them "to display their judicial systems." As court proceedings were held outdoors, "they used different styles to frame that." At times there was German law and at other times, Roman law, and certain loggia announced each style.
"In this competitive kind of culture, they start to use the portico again," Sexton said. "From there it comes back into prominence in the Renaissance and late medieval Italy."
Loggias were "used to display activities that were kind of new, and maybe people felt unsure about their value. So that they wanted to display there was something good about the justice system." She compares it to television today, as a powerful medium that can influence behavior.
Loggias and porticos have long interested Sexton. "They seem at once so transparent in their function because they seem like simple shelters," she said. "But then, why did they come to be built with such magnificent architecture by some of the best architects of the Renaissance?"
Sexton discovered images in several medieval sources -- the center of a gem, illustrations of the book of Psalms, illuminations from law codes and encyclopedias. The article's most important image, which is in color on the journal's cover, shows the only known instance of a king in a loggia where a trial is actually in progress.
"If you see them empty, you're not getting what it's about," she said of loggias. "You have to see it when they're full of activity."
Sexton is associate professor of architecture, Fay Jones School of Architecture, University of Arkansas.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, via Newswise.

Shipworm Threatens Archaeological Treasures.

2010-01-13T11:59:00.001-08:00

The shipworm, Teredo navalis, infesting a pier pole in the Swedish province of Bohuslän.

Source: ScienceDaily

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ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — The dreaded shipworm is moving into the Baltic Sea, threatening artefacts of the area's cultural heritage. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, suspect that the unfortunate spread is due to climate change, and are currently involved in an EU project to determine which archaeological remains are at risk.

The shipworm is capable of completely destroying large maritime archaeological finds in only 10 years, and while it has avoided the Baltic Sea in the past, since it does not do well in low salinity water, it can now be spotted along both the Danish and German Baltic Sea coasts.

Malmö landmark infested:
'The shipworm has for example attacked shipwrecks from the 1300s off the coast of Germany, and we are also starting to see its presence along the Swedish coast, for example at the Ribersborg cold bath house in Malmö,' says Christin Appelqvist, doctoral student at the Department of Marine Ecology, University of Gothenburg.

Effect of climate change:
Appelqvist and her colleagues believe that the development may be due to climate change. In short, the increased water temperature may help the shipworms to become adapted to lower salinity. The group is part of the EU project WreckProtect, a cooperative effort to assess which archaeological treasures are at risk. The project includes researchers from Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, as well as experts from France and Germany.

Covering the shipwrecks:
One of the objectives is to develop methods to protect the shipwrecks, for example by covering them with geotextile and bottom sediment, and another is to try to predict to which areas the shipworm is likely to spread in the future. The researchers say there are some 100 000 well-preserved shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea.
'Around 100 wrecks are already infested in the Southern Baltic, but yet it hasn't even spread past Falsterbo. We know it can survive the salinity of the Stockholm archipelago, although it needs water with higher salinity than that to be able to reproduce,' says Appelqvist.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Gothenburg.

Use of Body Ornamentation Shows Neanderthal Mind Capable of Advanced Thought.

2010-01-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

Source: ScienceDaily

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ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — The widespread view of Neanderthals as cognitively inferior to early modern humans is challenged by new research from the University of Bristol published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor João Zilhão and colleagues examined pigment-stained and perforated marine shells, most certainly used as neck pendants, from two Neanderthal-associated sites in the Murcia province of south-east Spain (Cueva de los Aviones and Cueva Antón). The analysis of lumps of red and yellow pigments found alongside suggest they were used in cosmetics. The practice of body ornamentation is widely accepted by archaeologists as conclusive evidence for modern behaviour and symbolic thinking among early modern humans but has not been recognised in Neanderthals -- until now.
Professor Zilhão said: "This is the first secure evidence that, some 50,000 years ago -- ten millennia before modern humans are first recorded in Europe -- the behaviour of Neanderthals was symbolically organised."
A Spondylus gaederopus shell from the same site contained residues of a reddish pigmentatious mass made of lepidocrocite mixed with ground bits of hematite and pyrite (which, when fresh, have a brilliant black, reflective appearance), suggesting the kind of inclusion 'for effect' that one would expect in a cosmetic preparation.
The choice of a Spondylus shell as the container for such a complex recipe may relate to the attention-grabbing crimson, red, or violet colour and exuberant sculpture of these shells, which have led to their symbolic- or ritual-related collection in a variety of archaeological contexts worldwide.
A concentration of lumps of yellow colorant from Cueva de los Aviones (most certainly the contents of a purse made of skin or other perishable material) was found to be pure natrojarosite -- an iron mineral used as a cosmetic in Ancient Egypt.
While functionally similar material has been found at Neanderthal-associated sites before, it has been explained by stratigraphic mixing (which can lead to confusion about the dating of particular artefacts), Neanderthal scavenging of abandoned modern human sites, or Neanderthal imitation without understanding of behaviours observed among contemporary modern human groups.
For example, controversy has surrounded the perforated and grooved teeth and decorated bone awls found in the Châtelperronian culture of France. In earlier work, Professor Zilhão and colleagues have argued they are genuine Neanderthal artefacts which demonstrate the independent evolution of advanced cognition in the Neanderthal lineage.
However, the Châtelperronian evidence dates from 40,000 to 45,000 years ago, thus overlapping with the period when anatomically modern human people began to disperse into Europe (between 40,000 and 42,000 years ago) and leaving open the possibility that these symbolic artifacts relate, in fact, to them.
Professor Zilhão said: "The evidence from the Murcian sites removes the last clouds of uncertainty concerning the modernity of the behaviour and cognition of the last Neanderthals and, by implication, shows that there is no reason any more to continue to question the Neanderthal authorship of the symbolic artefacts of the Châtelperronian culture.
"When considering the nature of the cultural and genetic exchanges that occurred between Neanderthals and modern humans at the time of contact in Europe, we should recognise that identical levels of cultural achievement had been reached by both sides."
Accurate radiocarbon dating of shell and charcoal samples from Cueva de los Aviones and Cueva Antón was crucial to the research. The dating was undertaken at the University of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit.
Dr Thomas Higham, Deputy Director of the Radiocarbon Unit in the School of Archaeology said: "Dating samples that approach the limit of the technique, at around 55,000 years before present, is a huge challenge. We used the most refined methods of pre-treatment chemistry to obtain accurate dates for the sites involved by removing small amounts of more modern carbon contamination to discover that the shells and charcoal samples were as early as 50,000 years ago."

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol.

Journal Reference:
1.João Zilhão, Diego E. Angelucci Ernestina Badal-García, Francesco d%u2019Errico, Floréal Daniel, Laure Dayet, Katerina Douka, Thomas F. G. Higham, María José Martínez-Sánchez, Ricardo Montes-Bernárdez, Sonia Murcia-Mascarós, Carmen Pérez-Sirvent, Clodoaldo Roldán-García, Marian Vanhaeren, Valentín Villaverde, Rachel Wood, and Josefina Zapata. Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Online Jan. 11, 2010

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2010-01-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

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Fossil Footprints Give Land Vertebrates a Much Longer History.

2010-01-10T01:33:00.001-08:00

Source: ScienceDaily

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ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010) — The discovery of fossil footprints from early backboned land animals in Poland leads to the sensational conclusion that our ancestors left the water at least 18 million years earlier than previously thought.

The results of the Polish-Swedish collaboration are published online in the journal Nature.
"These results force us to reconsider our whole picture of the transition from fish to land animals," says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, one of the two leaders of the study.
For nearly eighty years, palaeontologists have been scouring the planet for fossil bones and skeletons of the earliest land vertebrates or "tetrapods" -- the ultimate progenitors of all later amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals including ourselves. Their discoveries have suggested that the first tetrapods evolved relatively rapidly from lobe-finned fishes, through a short-lived intermediate stage represented by "elpistostegids" such as Tiktaalik, about 380 million years ago. But there is another potential source of information about the earliest tetrapods: the fossilized footprints they left behind.
In the new study a Polish-Swedish team describe a rich and securely dated footprint locality from Zachelmie Quarry in Poland that pushes back the origin of tetrapods a full 18 million years beyond the earliest skeletal evidence and forces a dramatic reassessment of the transition from water to land.
The trackways show that large tetrapods, up to three metres in length, inhabited the marine intertidal zone during the early Middle Devonian some 395 million years ago.
"This means not that not only tetrapods but also elpistostegids originated much earlier than we thought, because the position of elpistostegids as evolutionary precursors of tetrapods is not in doubt, and so they must have existed at least as long," says Per Ahlberg.
The elpistostegids, it seems, were not at all a short-lived transitional stage but must have existed alongside their descendants the tetrapods for at least 10 million years. The environment is also a major surprise: almost all previous scenarios for the origin of tetrapods have placed this event in a freshwater setting and have associated it with the development of land vegetation and a terrestrial ecosystem.
"Instead, our distant ancestors may first have left the water in order to feed on stranded marine life left behind by the receding tide," says Per Ahlberg.

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University.

Journal Reference:
1.Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, Piotr Szrek, Katarzyna Narkiewicz, Marek Narkiewicz & Per E. Ahlberg. Tetrapod trackways from the early Middle Devonian period of Poland. Nature, 2010; 463 (7277): 43 DOI: 10.1038/nature08623

30,000-Year-Old Child's Teeth Shed New Light on Human Evolution.

2010-01-10T01:26:00.000-08:00

Source: ScienceDaily

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ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010) — The teeth of a 30,000-year-old child are shedding new light on the evolution of modern humans, thanks to research from the University of Bristol published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The teeth are part of the remarkably complete remains of a child found in the Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal and excavated in 1998-9 under the leadership of Professor João Zilhão of the University of Bristol. Classified as a modern human with Neanderthal ancestry, the child raises controversial questions about how extensively Neanderthals and modern human groups of African descent interbred when they came into contact in Europe.
'Early modern humans', whose anatomy is basically similar to that of the human race today, emerged over 50,000 years ago and it has long been the common perception that little has changed in human biology since then.
When considering the biology of late archaic humans such as the Neanderthals, it is thus common to compare them with living humans and largely ignore the biology of the early modern humans who were close in time to the Neanderthals.
With this in mind, an international team, including Professor Zilhão, reanalysed the dentition of the Lagar Velho child (all of its deciduous -- milk -- teeth and almost all of its permanent teeth) to see how they compared to the teeth of Neanderthals, later Pleistocene (12,000-year-old) humans and modern humans.
Employing a technique called micro-tomography which uses x-rays to create cross-sections of 3D-objects, the researchers investigated the relative stages of formation of the developing teeth and the proportions of crown enamel, dentin and pulp in the teeth.
They found that, for a given stage of development of the cheek teeth, the front teeth were relatively delayed in their degree of formation. Moreover, the front teeth had a greater volume of dentin and pulp but proportionally less enamel than the teeth of recent humans.
The teeth of the Lagar Velho child thus fit the pattern evident in the preceding Neanderthals, and contrast with the teeth of later Pleistocene (12,000-year-old) humans and living modern humans.
Professor Zilhão said: "This new analysis of the Lagar Velho child joins a growing body of information from other early modern human fossils found across Europe (in Mladeč in the Czech Republic, Peştera cu Oase and Peştera Muierii in Romania, and Les Rois in France) that shows these 'early modern humans' were 'modern' without being 'fully modern'. Human anatomical evolution continued after they lived 30,000 to 40,000 years ago."
The team was led by Priscilla Bayle (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, France) and Roberto Macchiarelli (Université de Poitiers, France) and included Erik Trinkaus (Professor of Anthropology at Washington University, St.-Louis, Cidália Duarte (Câmara Municipal do Porto, Portugal), and Arnaud Mazurier (CRI-Biopôle-Poitiers, France).

Story Source:
Adapted from materials provided by University of Bristol.

Journal Reference:
Priscilla Bayle, Roberto Macchiarelli, Erik Trinkaus, Cidália Duarte, Arnaud Mazurier, and João Zilhão. Dental maturational sequence and dental tissue proportions in the early Upper Paleolithic child from Abrigo do Lagar Velho, Portugal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0914202107

Ancient Rainforests Resilient To Climate Change.

2009-10-01T11:22:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2009) — Climate change wreaked havoc on the Earth’s first rainforests but they quickly bounced back, scientists reveal. The findings of the research team, led by Dr Howard Falcon-Lang from Royal Holloway, University of London, are based on spectacular discoveries of 300-million-year-old rainforests in coal mines in Illinois, USA.

Preserved over vast areas, these fossilized rainforests in Illinois are the largest of their kind in the world. The rocks at this site - in which the rainforests occur - contain evidence for climate fluctuations. During cold ‘ice ages’, fossils show that the tropics dried out and rainforests were pushed to the brink of extinction. However, rainforests managed to recover and return to their former glory.
Dr Falcon-Lang, from the Department of Earth Sciences, worked with colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution and Illinois Geological Survey. In their paper published in the journal Geology, they show that rainforest species all but vanished at the height of the ice ages. Yet they also reveal that the coal beds that formed shortly after, as the climate warmed, contain abundant rainforest species.
Falcon-Lang said, ‘These discoveries radically change our understanding of the Earth’s first rainforests. We used to think these were stable ecosystems, unchanged for tens of millions of years. Now we know they were incredibly dynamic, constantly buffeted by climate change’.
The research may also shed light on how climate change will affect the Amazon rainforest in the future. Dr Falcon-Lang commented, ‘If we can understand how climate shaped rainforests in the distant past, we can infer how they will respond in the future. We’ve shown that within certain limits, rainforests are resilient to climate change; however, extreme climate change may push rainforests beyond a point of no return’.
The work is part of a five-year project funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council and aims to study how climate change affected the Earth’s first rainforests. These ancient rainforests date from the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, when most of the world's coal resources were formed.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Royal Holloway London, via AlphaGalileo.

Archaeologists Discover Amphitheatre In Excavation Of Portus, Ancient Port Of Rome.

2009-10-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2009) — University of Southampton archaeologists leading a major excavation of Portus, the ancient port of Rome, have uncovered the remains of an amphitheatre-shaped-building, solving a mystery which has puzzled experts for over 140 years.

The excavation team, working in collaboration with the British School at Rome, is conducting the first ever large-scale dig at Portus on the banks of a hexagonal shaped man-made lake which formed the 2nd century harbour, near the Italian capital.
"When the site was visited by archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani in the 1860s he marked on his plans the remains of a theatre, but subsequently no trace of the building could be found," says Portus Project Director and leading expert in Roman Archaeology at the University of Southampton, Professor Simon Keay.
"Our team has rediscovered this 'theatre' and proved it was in fact a building more akin to an amphitheatre. Lanciani had only found half of the structure, leading him to misinterpret its shape and function."
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, experts from Southampton have been working with colleagues from the BSR, The Italian Archaeological Superintendency for Ostia and the University of Cambridge, to carry out extensive excavation at Portus. They have uncovered a large Roman warehouse, the 'amphitheatre' and what the team have identified as an Imperial palace. This is likely to have played host to renowned emperors such as Hadrian.
Portus was Rome's gateway to the Mediterranean for most of the Imperial period and played a key role in funnelling food, slaves, wild animals, marble and all manner of luxury goods from across the Mediterranean and beyond to the citizens of Rome. It was vital to the survival of the Empire and the only real 'transport hub' serving the city.
"The 'amphitheatre' we have discovered was similar in ground area to the Pantheon in Rome, but it is unclear exactly what it was used for," continues Professor Keay.
"Gladiatorial combat may have taken place there - wild beast baiting, the staging of mock sea battles, or it may have been a form of Roman 'folly', shaped like an amphitheatre, but used as a monumental garden. It is unusual to find this type of building so close to a harbour."
Having solved one riddle, archaeologists have now uncovered another; the white marble head of a statue unearthed at the site of once-luxurious rooms close to the 'amphitheatre'. It is thought the head dates back to the 2nd or early 3rd century, however it is less clear who it depicts.
"The elderly bearded male wearing a flat skull-cap could suggest it is Ulysses, however it is equally possible it is a representation of one of the Greek sailors who accompanied him on his travels. For the moment his identity remains a mystery," concludes Professor Keay.
Part of the 'Portus Project' involves the work of the University of Southampton's Archaeological Computing Research Group. They are producing computer generated images which bring the port to life and provide archaeologists with a valuable 'tool' with which to explore the site. The University of Southampton and the BSR are jointly using ground-penetrating radar and other techniques to map buried buildings and other structures. The Portus Project has also been undertaking a geophysical survey of the Isola Sacra, an island to the south of Portus, and has found a major new canal and traces of Rome's marble yards.
Research has been underway at Portus for several years and Professor Keay hopes to continue working there. "This is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world," he says.
"Certainly it should be rated alongside such wonders as Stonehenge and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. So much of this Imperial port has been preserved and there is much more to learn about its role in supplying Rome and in the broader economic development of the Roman Mediterranean."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Southampton, via AlphaGalileo.

Before 'Lucy,' There Was 'Ardi': First Major Analysis Of Early Hominid Published In Science.

2009-10-01T11:07:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2009) — In a special issue of Science, an international team of scientists has for the first time thoroughly described Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia.

This research, in the form of 11 detailed papers and more general summaries, will appear in the journal's 2 October 2009 issue. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.
This package of research offers the first comprehensive, peer-reviewed description of the Ardipithecus fossils, which include a partial skeleton of a female, nicknamed "Ardi."
The last common ancestor shared by humans and chimpanzees is thought to have lived six or more million years ago. Though Ardipithecus is not itself this last common ancestor, it likely shared many of this ancestor's characteristics. For comparison, Ardipithecus is more than a million years older than the "Lucy" female partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis. Until the discovery of the new Ardipithecus remains, the fossil record contained scant evidence of other hominids older than Australopithecus.
Through an analysis of the skull, teeth, pelvis, hands, feet and other bones, the researchers have determined that Ardipithecus had a mix of "primitive" traits, shared with its predecessors, the primates of the Miocene epoch, and "derived" traits, which it shares exclusively with later hominids.
Because of its antiquity, Ardipithecus takes us closer to the still-elusive last common ancestor. However, many of its traits do not appear in modern-day African apes. One surprising conclusion, therefore, is that it is likely that the African apes have evolved extensively since we shared that last common ancestor, which thus makes living chimpanzees and gorillas poor models for the last common ancestor and for understanding our own evolution since that time.
"In Ardipithecus we have an unspecialized form that hasn't evolved very far in the direction of Australopithecus. So when you go from head to toe, you're seeing a mosaic creature, that is neither chimpanzee, nor is it human. It is Ardipithecus," said Tim White of the University of California Berkeley, who is one of the lead authors of the research.
"With such a complete skeleton, and with so many other individuals of the same species at the same time horizon, we can really understand the biology of this hominid," said Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo, Project paleoanthropologist and also a lead Science author.
"These articles contain an enormous amount of data collected and analyzed through a major international research effort. They throw open a window into a period of human evolution we have known little about, when early hominids were establishing themselves in Africa, soon after diverging from the last ancestor they shared with the African apes," said Brooks Hanson, deputy editor, physical sciences, at Science.
"Science is delighted to be publishing this wealth of new information, which gives us important new insights into the roots of hominid evolution and into what makes humans unique among primates," said Hanson.
The special collection of Science articles begins with an overview paper that summarizes the main findings of this research effort. In this article, White and his coauthors introduce their discovery of over 110 Ardipithecus specimens including a partial skeleton with much of the skull, hands, feet, limbs and pelvis. This individual, "Ardi," was a female who weighed about 50 kilograms and stood about 120 centimeters tall.
Until now, researchers have generally assumed that chimpanzees, gorillas and other modern African apes have retained many of the traits of the last ancestor they shared with humans – in other words, this presumed ancestor was thought to be much more chimpanzee-like than human-like. For example, it would have been adapted for swinging and hanging from tree branches, and perhaps walked on its knuckles while on the ground.
Ardipithecus challenges these assumptions, however. These hominids appear to have lived in a woodland environment, where they climbed on all fours along tree branches – as some of the Miocene primates did -- and walked, upright, on two legs, while on the ground. They do not appear to have been knuckle-walkers, or to have spent much time swinging and hanging from tree-branches, especially as chimps do. Overall, the findings suggest that hominids and African apes have each followed different evolutionary pathways, and we can no longer consider chimps as "proxies" for our last common ancestor.
"Darwin was very wise on this matter," said White.
"Darwin said we have to be really careful. The only way we're really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it. Well, at 4.4 million years ago we found something pretty close to it. And, just like Darwin appreciated, evolution of the ape lineages and the human lineage has been going on independently since the time those lines split, since that last common ancestor we shared," White said.
This special issue of Science includes an overview article, three articles that describe the environment Ardipithecus inhabited, five that analyze specific parts of Ardipithecus' anatomy, and two that discuss what this new body of scientific information may imply for human evolution.
Altogether, forty-seven different authors from around the world contributed to the total study of Ardipithecus and its environment. The primary authors are Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, Berhane Asfaw of Rift Valley Research Service in Addis Ababa, Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo, and C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University.
"These are the results of a mission to our deep African past," said WoldeGabriel, who is also Project co-Director and geologist.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the University of California at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and others.
Adapted from materials provided by American Association for the Advancement of Science, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Was Mighty T. Rex 'Sue' Felled By A Lowly Parasite?

2009-10-01T10:43:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — When pondering the demise of a famous dinosaur such as 'Sue,' the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex whose fossilized remains are a star attraction of the Field Museum in Chicago, it is hard to avoid the image of clashing Cretaceous titans engaged in bloody, mortal combat.

It is an image commonly promoted by museums and dinosaur aficionados. Sue's remains, in fact, exhibit holes in her jaw that some believed were battle scars, the result of conflict with another dinosaur, possibly another T. rex.
But a new study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, provides evidence that Sue, perhaps the most famous dinosaur in the world, was felled in more mundane fashion by a lowly parasite that still afflicts modern birds. The study, conducted by an international team of researchers led by Ewan D.S. Wolff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Steven W. Salisbury of the University of Queensland, Australia, pins the demise of Sue and other tyrannosaurs with similar scars on an avian parasitic infection called trichomonosis, caused by a single-celled parasite that causes similar pathologies on the mandibles of modern birds, raptors in particular.
It is possible the infection in her throat and mouth may have been so acute that the 42-foot-long, 7-ton dinosaur starved to death, says Wolff, a vertebrate paleontologist and a third-year student at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. Co-authors of the study include famed paleontologist John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies, which funded the study, and David J. Varricchio of Montana State University.
The focus of the new study was a survey of lesions on the jaws of Sue and nine other tyrannosaur specimens. The lesions had previously been attributed to bite wounds or, possibly, a bacterial infection.
"What drew my attention to trichomonosis as a potential candidate for these mysterious lesions on the jaws of tyrannosaurs is the manifestation of the effects of the disease in [bird] raptors," explains Wolff. "When we started looking at trichomonosis in greater depth, there was a story that matched some lines of evidence for transmission of the disease in tyrannosaurs."
In birds, trichomonosis is caused by a protozoan parasite called Trichomonas gallinae. It can be transmitted from birds such as pigeons, which commonly carry the parasite but often suffer few ill effects, to raptors such as falcons and hawks, where it causes serious lesions in the mandibles. The pattern of lesions, says Wolff, closely matches the holes in the jaws of tyrannosaurs and occurs in the same anatomical location.
The scars of combat among tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs, Wolff notes, are not uncommon, but differ notably from the lesions that are the focus of the current study. The holes caused by trichomonosis tend to be neat and have relatively smooth edges, while bite marks are often messy, and they scar and puncture bone in ways that are not readily comparable.
Tyrannosaurs, notes Wolff, are known to have been gregarious, intermingling, fighting amongst themselves, and sometimes eating one another. Transmission of the parasite may have been through salivary contact or cannibalism, he says, noting that there is no known evidence of trichomonosis in other dinosaurs.
"This leads us to suspect that tyrannosaurs might have been the source of the disease and its transmission in its environment," Wolff says.
For the disease to manifest itself in the jaws of Sue and other tyrannosaurs, it would have had to be at an advanced stage as the parasite typically sets up housekeeping as a film in the back of the throat.
"The lesions we observe on Sue suggest a very advanced stage of the disease and may even have been the cause of her demise," says Wolff. "It is a distinct possibility as it would have made feeding incredibly difficult. You have to have a viable pharynx. Without that, you won't make it for very long, no matter how powerful you are."
Journal reference:
Ewan D. S. Wolff, Steven W. Salisbury, John R. Horner, David J. Varricchio. Common Avian Infection Plagued the Tyrant Dinosaurs. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4(9): e7288 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007288
Adapted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Human Spear Likely Cause Of Death Of Neandertal

2009-07-23T00:14:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) — The wound that ultimately killed a Neandertal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neandertals did not, according to Duke University-led research.

"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals. I want to say that loud and clear."
But Churchill's analysis indicates the wound was from a thrown spear, and it appears that modern humans had a thrown-weapons technology and Neandertals didn't. "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."
Churchill is the first author of a new report now posted online in the Journal of Human Evolution on the long-ago incident in what is now Iraq. He and four other investigators used a specially calibrated crossbow, copies of ancient stone points and numerous animal carcasses to make their deductions.
Neandertals, stoutly-built and human-like, lived at the same time and in the same areas as some modern humans before going extinct. Anthropologists have been puzzling over Neandertal's fate for many years, proposing that perhaps they inter-bred with modern humans, failed to compete for food or resources, or were possibly hunted to extinction by the humans.
While narrowing the range of possible causes for the Iraqi Neandertal's wound, and raising the possibility of an encounter between humans and a now-extinct close cousin, the research does not definitively conclude who did it, or why.
The victim was one of nine Neandertals discovered between 1953 and 1960 in a cave in northeastern Iraq's Zagros Mountains. Now called "Shanidar 3," he was a 40- to 50-year-old male with signs of arthritis and a sharp, deep slice in his left ninth rib.
The wounded Neandertal's rib had apparently started healing before he died. Comparing the wound to medical records from the American Civil War, a time before modern antibiotics, suggested to the researchers that he died within weeks of the injury, perhaps due to associated lung damage from a stabbing or piercing wound.
"People have been speculating about that rib injury for going on 50 years now," Churchill said. "Some said it was interpersonal violence. Others said it could have been an accident. Did it involve only Neandertals? Now we, for the first time, have brought some experimental evidence to bear on these questions."
While scientists have been unable to precisely date the remains, Shanidar 3 could have lived and died as recently as 50,000 years ago. If so, he could have encountered modern humans who were just returning to the area then after a 30,000-year hiatus.
Archaeological evidence also suggests that by 50,000 years ago humans, but not their Neandertal cousins, had developed projectile hunting weapons, Churchill said. They used spear throwers, detachable handles that connected with darts and spears to effectively lengthen a hurler's arm and give the missiles a power boost.
As human weapons technology advanced, Neandertals continued using long thrusting spears in hunting, which they probably tried -- for personal safety -- to keep between themselves and their prey instead of hurling them, Churchill added.
Both Neandertals and humans were also armed with stone knives. And both species had developed techniques for making sharp stone points.
Looking back at this Paleolithic cold case, the study's authors evaluated all the possible causes of the rib wound with the aid of contemporary tools.
The injury is "consistent with a number of scenarios, including wounding from a long-range projectile (dart) weapon, knife stab, self-inflicted accidental injury and accidental stabbing by a hunting partner," the report said.
Drawing from studies aimed at improving police and prison guard protection, the researchers concluded that the downward sweep of a knife could have the correct trajectory to produce Shanidar 3's rib injury. "Knife attacks generally involve a relatively higher kinetic energy," the report said. However, "whatever created that puncture was carrying fairly low kinetic energy at a low momentum," said Churchill. "That's consistent with a spear-thrower delivered spear."
The investigators rigged up a special crossbow to fire stone-age projectiles, using calibration marks on the crossbow to tell them how much force they were delivering with each launch.
Those tests revealed the delivered energy needed to create similar wounds in the ribs of pig carcasses, which the researchers used as an approximation of a Neandertal's body.
The researchers also used measurements from a 2003 study to estimate the impact of using a thrusted rather than thrown spear, the kind of jabbing that Neandertals are thought to have employed. That produced higher kinetic energies and caused more massive rib damage than Shanidar 3 sustained.
Another clue was the angle of the wound. Whatever nicked his rib entered the Neandertal's body at about 45 degrees downward angle. That's consistent with the "ballistic trajectory" of a thrown weapon, assuming that Shanidar 3 -- who was about 5 feet, 6 inches tall -- was standing, Churchill said.
Shanidar 3 is one of two known Neandertal skeletons bearing evidence of a possible stone tool injury. The other remains, found in France, had an almost-healed head wound. That individual is known to have lived "at a time of overlap with modern humans we call the Cro-Magnon," Churchill said.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation and the University of New Mexico. Other co-authors of the Journal of Human Evolution report include Robert Franciscus, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Iowa; and three Duke alumni who assisted Churchill as undergraduates -- Hilary McKean-Peraza, Julie Daniel and Brittany Warren.
Adapted from materials provided by Duke University.

Ancient Humans Left Evidence From The Party That Ended 4,000 Years Ago

2009-07-22T08:07:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) — The party was over more than 4,000 years ago, but the remnants still remain in the gourds and squashes that served as dishware. For the first time, University of Missouri researchers have studied the residues from gourds and squash artifacts that date back to 2200 B.C. and recovered starch grains from manioc, potato, chili pepper, arrowroot and algarrobo. The starches provide clues about the foods consumed at feasts and document the earliest evidence of the consumption of algarrobo and arrowroot in Peru.

"Archaeological starch grain research allows us to gain a better understanding of how ancient humans used plants, the types of food they ate, and how that food was prepared," said Neil Duncan, doctoral student of anthropology in the MU College of Arts and Science and lead author of the study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). "This is the first study to analyze residue from bottle gourd or squash artifacts. Squash and bottle gourds had a variety of uses 4,000 years ago, including being used as dishes, net floats and symbolic containers. Residue analysis can help determine the specific use."
In the study, researchers recovered starch grains from squash and gourd artifacts by a method that currently is used to recover microfossils from stone tools and ceramics. First, the artifact was placed in a special water bath to loosen and remove adhering residue. Then the artifact's interior surface was lightly brushed to remove any remaining residue. The residues were collected, and starch grains were isolated from each of these sediments.
"The starch residues of edible plants found on the artifacts and the special archaeological context from which these artifacts were recovered suggest that the artifacts were used in a ritual setting for the serving and production of food," Duncan said. "The method used in this study could be used in other areas and time periods in which gourds and squash rinds are preserved."
Scientists believe the Buena Vista site, where the starch grains were recovered, served as a small ceremonial center in the central Chillon Valley. The social and ritual use of food is not well understood during this time period in Peru, but this research will enhance the potential for understanding, Duncan said.
The study, "Gourd and squash artifacts yield starch grains of feasting foods from preceramic Peru," is coauthored by Duncan; Deborah Pearsall, professor of anthropology; and Robert Benfer, emeritus professor of anthropology.
Journal reference:
Neil Duncan et al. Gourd and squash artifacts yield starch grains of feasting foods from preceramic Peru. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, July 21, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia.

Could Cannon Balls From The Early 19th Century Sink Warships?

2009-07-17T02:09:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 16, 2009) — A joint experiment by researchers at the University of Haifa and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. succeeded in solving the riddle: Could cannon balls from the early 19th century sink warships?

At first glance, the hull of the warship that sank off the coast of Acre seemed strong; but a unique experiment indicated that the thick timbers could not withstand the cannon balls.
A joint experiment carried out by researchers from the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa and staff of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. has solved the riddle that has been puzzling researchers ever since they first observed the thick wooden sides of the sunken ship opposite the shore of Acre: could cannon fire have penetrated the hull?
The ship was discovered in 1966, but only since University of Haifa researchers began examining it about three years ago have its mysteries been exposed. The initial matters of interest related to the ship's origins, date and the reason why it sank. A map drawn up by a British officer in 1799, during Napoleon's siege of Acre, led the researchers to assume that this was a blockship sunk by the British to bar French vessels from entering the port.
Another puzzle that has occupied the researchers, however, relates to the thickness of the ship's hull. According to Dr. Yaacov Kahanov, who heads the research team, it was evident at first glance that the hull, which was constructed of oak, was unusually thick, leading the team to question the possibility of cannon-ball penetration. Experimental firings of cannons at replicas of wooden warships have been carried out in other countries, but due to the cost and complexity of such experiments, they have been few and far between. In general, they were only firing demonstrations, and scientific data has not always been obtained. So it was still hard to tell for sure whether the cannon balls found in the wreck would have been capable of sinking this particular ship.
The University of Haifa marine researchers received assistance from a team of Rafael engineers, who developed a unique model that enabled firing experiments to be carried out on a reduced scale, thereby reducing costs, and enabling controlled, measured and documented experimentation. The present experiment was carried out at a scale of 1:2, for which five models of the ship's hull, based on the archaeological findings, were constructed at the University. In parallel, Rafael adapted an experimental gun to fire steel balls, modeling the cannon balls. Meticulous measurements were taken to ensure setting the range of muzzle velocities of the period; 100-500 meters per second.
The experiments showed in the most dramatic way that, despite the hull's strength, it could not withstand the impact of the cannon fire, which penetrated it even at the lowest velocities. It also became evident that the lower the velocity, the more energy was absorbed in causing damage to the hull, and the more the wood splintered, which would have caused more harm to the ship's personnel. The results of this experiment, according to the researchers, are of much significance to the study of the vessel and to the study of naval battles in this period.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Haifa, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Crocodile Skull Unearthed At Arlington Archosaur Site In Texas

2009-07-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — Paleontologists have made the most important discovery to date at the Arlington Archosaur Site, a prolific fossil site in North Arlington, Texas. The disassembled skull of a crocodile with two and a half inch long teeth that lived nearly 100 million years ago has been unearthed.

"We have over 50 bones exposed," said The University of Texas at Arlington dinosaurs lecturer Derek Main, who heads the project. "They are truly impressive. The teeth measure 6.5 centimeters, larger than my thumb."
To date, more dinosaur fossils have been recovered from the Arlington Archosaur Site, where excavation began little more than a year ago, than from any other site in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The site lies within Cretaceous rocks, formed 95 million years ago when Arlington was the beachhead for a giant sea that divided the continent.
The site has yielded fossils from various species of animals, including dinosaurs. A skeleton of a large herbivorous "duck billed" dinosaur was excavated from the northern hillside at the site. Crocodile fossils are among the most commonly found.
Main said the site is unique because it is a major dinosaur excavation in the middle of a large metropolitan setting and it preserves many fossils from different animals. he site also has fossils from turtles, lungfish, fish and sharks. The excavation of the Arlington Archosaur Site began in the spring of 2008 when the Huffines Group obtained the property and granted land access to UT Arlington.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Texas At Arlington.

Last Supper Of The Hominids Establishes Times They Lived At Sites

2009-07-15T11:18:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) — In the French cave of Arago, an international team of scientists has analyzed the dental wear of the fossils of herbivorous animals hunted by Homo heidelbergensis. It is the first time that an analytical method has allowed the establishment of the length of human occupations at archaeological sites. The key is the last food that these hominids consumed.

For many years, the mobility of the groups of hominids and how long they spent in caves or outdoors has been a subject of discussion among scientists. Now, an international team headed by researchers from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) in Tarragona has based its studies on the dental fossils of animals hunted by hominids in order to determine the vegetation in the environment and the way of life of Homo heidelbergensis.
Florent Rivals is the main author and a researcher from the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), attached to the IPHES in Tarragona. "For the first time, a method has been put forward which allows us to establish the relative length of the human occupations at archaeological sites as, up until now, it was difficult to ascertain the difference between, for example, a single long-term occupation and a succession of shorter seasonal occupations in the same place", he explained to SINC.
In the study, recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution, the researchers analyze the dental wear of the ungulates (herbivorous mammals) caused by microscopic particles of opaline silica in plants. These marks appear when eating takes place and erase the previous ones. This is why they are so useful.
Thanks to the "last supper phenomenon", the scientists have been able to analyze the last food consumed by animals such as the Eurasian wild horse (Equus ferus), the mouflon (Ovis ammon antiqua) and the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus). "This method allows us to confirm the seasonal nature of the occupation", Rivals added. According to the team, the microwear of the teeth is sensitive to seasonal changes in the diet.
The application has allowed the researchers to estimate the length of the occupation of the site from the Lower Paleolithic Age in the cave of Arago (France) by the number of marks on the fossils and, therefore, the variation in the diet of several species of herbivores, as "each season presented food resources which were limited and different in the environment", the paleontologist clarified.
High and low periods of occupation
After confirming the hypothesis in present-day animals whose age and date of death was known to the scientists, the researchers demonstrated that, if a group of animals is seen during a specific season (a short-term occupation), the signs of dental wear undergo little variation. But if the occupation lasts several seasons, the dental marks are more diverse.
"If the animals are hunted during long periods of occupation, more variable dental wear would be expected", Rivals declared. In the case of the French cave of Arago, the study of the dental wear confirms that it was occupied in different ways. "With this method, we were able to prove that at the site, which belonged to Homo heidelbergensis, there is evidence of differing mobility, as there were highly mobile groups and others with little mobility", the scientist confirmed.
The Spanish and German researchers have combined this application with multidisciplinary studies of archaeological sites in order to apply it to other settlements of the Mid-Paleolithic Age such as Payre (France), Taubach (Germany) and Abric Romani (Spain).
Journal reference:
Rivals et al. A new application of dental wear analyses: estimation of duration of hominid occupations in archaeological localities. Journal of Human Evolution, 2009; 56 (4): 329 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2008.11.005
Adapted from materials provided by FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.

Sharks: Missing Piece Of Fossil Puzzle Found

2009-07-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 14, 2009) — The mode of reproduction seen in modern sharks is nearly 400 million years old. That is the conclusion drawn by Professor Per Erik Ahlberg, Uppsala University, from his discovery of a so-called "clasper" in a primitive fossil fish earlier this year. The research results are published in Nature.

In February this year, a paper published in Nature by a team of Australian and British researchers showed that placoderms, a group of ancient fishes that died out more than 350 million years ago, gave birth to live young. Beautifully preserved fossil embryos in the body cavity of the placoderm Incisoscutum showed that these fishes, close to the common origin of all jawed vertebrates, had a mode of reproduction similar to modern sharks.
Live birth requires internal fertilization. Sharks achieve this by using a "clasper", an extension of the pelvic fin that functions like a penis. The authors looked for a clasper in their placoderm fossils but couldn't find one, so they were forced to argue that it had been made of soft cartilage and had not been preserved.
Shortly afterwards, Per Erik Ahlberg from Uppsala University visited one of the Australian researchers and spotted a perfectly preserved bony clasper in one of their Incisoscutum fossils.
"It was lying in plain view but had been misinterpreted as part of the pelvis and overlooked," he says.
Together with the original authors he is publishing a short paper in the journal Nature that presents this missing piece of the puzzle and completes the picture of placoderm reproduction from mating to birth.
"It provides a pedigree of nearly 400 million years for the "advanced" and seemingly specialized reproductive biology of modern sharks," says Per Ahlberg.
Journal reference:
Per Ahlberg, Kate Trinajstic, Zerina Johanson & John Long. Pelvic claspers confirm chondrichthyan-like internal fertilization in arthrodires. Nature, 2009; DOI: 10.1038/nature08176
Adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University.

Down Under Dinosaur Burrow Discovery Provides Climate Change Clues

2009-07-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — On the heels of his discovery in Montana of the first trace fossil of a dinosaur burrow, Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin has found evidence of more dinosaur burrows – this time on the other side of the world, in Victoria, Australia. The find, to be published this month in Cretaceous Research, suggests that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period, when some dinosaurs lived in polar environments.

"This research helps us to better understand long-term geologic change, and how organisms may have adapted as the Earth has undergone periods of global cooling and warming," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory. Martin is also an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne.
In 2006, in collaboration with colleagues from Montana State University and Japan, Martin identified the 95-million-year-old skeletal remains of a small adult dinosaur and two juveniles in a fossilized burrow in southwestern Montana. They later named the dinosaur species Oryctodromeus cubicularis, meaning "digging runner of the lair."
The researchers hypothesized that, besides caring for young in their dens, burrowing may have allowed some dinosaurs to survive extreme environments – throwing a wrench in some extinction theories.
A year after the Montana find, Martin traveled to the Victoria coast, which marks the seam where Australia once snuggled against Antarctica. Lower Cretaceous strata of Victoria have yielded the best-documented assemblage of polar dinosaur bones in the world.
During a hike to a remote site known as Knowledge Creek, west of Melbourne, Martin rounded the corner of an outcropping and was astounded to see, right at eye level, the trace fossil of what appeared to be a burrow almost identical to the one he had identified in Montana. "I stared at it for a long time," recalls Martin. "In paleontology, the saying, 'where luck meets preparation' really holds true."
The probable burrow etched into the Early Cretaceous outcrop is about six-feet long and one-foot in diameter. It gently descends in a semi-spiral, ending in an enlarged chamber. Martin later found two similar trace fossils in the same area.
Last period of global warming
The Victoria fossils are about 110 million years old, around the time that Australia split with Antarctica, and dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness along forested southern Australia river plains. It was one of the last times the Earth experienced global warming, with an average temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit – about 10 degrees higher than today.
During the polar winter, though, the temperature could plunge below freezing. Previously, researchers theorized that the small dinosaurs in the region survived harsh weather by sheltering beneath large tree roots or in hollows. Martin's find, however, indicates that they may have dug into the soft banks of rivers flowing out of the rift valley.
The age, size and shape of the likely burrows led Martin to hypothesize that they were made by small ornithopod dinosaurs – herbivores that were prevalent in the region. These ornithopods stood upright on their hind legs and were about the size of a large, modern-day iguana.
"It's fascinating to find evidence connecting a type of behavior between dinosaurs that are probably unrelated, and lived in different hemispheres during different times," Martin says. "It fills in another gap in our understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs, and ways they may have survived extreme environments."
An eye for subtle clues
A specialist in trace fossils – including tracks, scat and burrows – Martin is known for detecting subtle paleontology clues. He also identified the first tracks of a large, carnivorous dinosaur in Victoria, and the first fossil crayfish burrows from the same area.
Martin teaches a seminar at Emory on modern-day animal tracking, a skill that he says aids him in finding signs of prehistoric life. "It's important to do as much field work as possible, because it gives your mind a better library of search images," he says.
Adapted from materials provided by Emory University.

Preserved organic molecules in the skin of a dinosaur that died around 66-million years ago, identified.

2009-07-07T23:49:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 8, 2009) — Scientists from The University of Manchester have identified preserved organic molecules in the skin of a dinosaur that died around 66-million years ago.

The well-preserved fossil of the plant-eating hadrosaur – known as ‘Dakota’ – has been analysed by researchers writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The team report how the fossil's soft tissues were spared from decay by fine sediments that formed a mineral cast.
A wide range of tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures, although the constituent proteins have decayed.
Advanced imaging and chemical techniques have revealed that the mummified duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin – just like the skin of modern birds and reptiles, which scientists believe are closely related to duckbilled dinosaurs.
They believe the hippo-sized Dakota fell into a watery grave, with little oxygen present to speed along the decay process. Meanwhile, very fine sediments reacted with the soft tissues of the animal, forming a kind of cement.
As a result, the 66 million-year-old fossil still retains some of the organic matter of the original dinosaur, mixed in with the minerals.
"You're looking at cell-like structures; you slice through this and you're looking at the cell structure of dinosaur skin,” said Dr Phil Manning, Senior Lecturer in Palaeontology & Research Fellow School of Earth, Atmospheric & Environmental Sciences (SEAES). “That is absolutely gobsmacking."
The Manchester research team comprised Dr Phil Manning (SEAES and Manchester Museum), Peter Morris (SEAES and the Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science), Adam McMahon and Emrys Jones (Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre), Andy Gize and Joe Macquaker (SEAES), Prof Simon Gaskell and Onrapak Reamtong (Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre), Dr Bill Sellers (Faculty of Life Science), Bart van Dongen (SEAES and Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science), Mike Buckley and Dr Roy Wogelius (SEAES and Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science)
Scientists at The University of Liverpool, Manchester Metropolitain University, Yale University and The University of York also took part in the study.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Manchester.

Coralline Algae In The Mediterranean Lost Their Tropical Element Between 5 And 7 Million Years Ago

2009-07-07T12:23:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — An international team of researchers has studied the coralline algae fossils that lived on the last coral reefs of the Mediterranean Sea between 7.24 and 5.3 million years ago. Mediterranean algae and coral reefs began to resemble present day reefs following the isolation of the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean and global cooling 15 and 20 million years ago respectively.

The research team from the University of Granada (UGR) and the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italia) show coralline algae distribution patterns in the west and centre of the Mediterranean Sea (in Salento, Italy and Almería, Spain) by way of a fossil register of 21 species collected in the two areas.
"Coralline algae are calcareous algae that are very common nowadays, although unknown to the general public, including naturalists, and quite often in fossil form, particularly in relatively modern rocks", Juan C. Braga, the chief author and a researcher at the Stratigraphy and Paleontology Department of the UGR explained to SINC.
The study, which was published recently in Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, describes and interprets the disappearance of the last Messinian coral reefs (between 7.24 and 5.3 million years ago) in the Mediterranean Sea. "In subsequent, more recent eras, this sea has not had the right oceanographic conditions (above all a high enough temperature) to house coral reefs," Braga added.
When Tropical Coral Reefs Became Atlantic
During the period studied by the scientists through the coralline algae fossils found in the Mediterranean, the last few reefs boasted very little coralline diversity. "This is the result of the long history of global cooling over the last 20 million years and the isolation (separation) of the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean, some 15 million years ago," the research says.
According to the results of the research, the relative abundance of coralline algae in reefs and slope deposits is 1-5% and 18% lower respectively in the Sorbas basin (Almería) than in Salento (Italy). Furthermore, the main components of the coralline algae assemblages found in shallow water are extant species that are very common in the Mediterranean.
Other species, such as Spongites fruticulosus and Phymatolithon calcareum, have lived in the western Mediterranean for more than 25 million years. However, the typical components of present-day coral reefs, such as Hydrolithon species with thick thalli, which were no longer present in the western region of the Mediterranean 7 million years ago.
"Just like reef corallines, algae flora reflects the cooling of the Mediterranean and its isolation from the Indian Ocean, and only a few tropical biotas existed in the Messinian era. Moreover, most of them already had Atlantic affinities and resembled the algae that still inhabits our coasts today", Braga states.
The Mediterranean-Atlantic characteristics of Messinian reef corallines therefore reflect the decrease in tropical biotas that occurred during the Miocene (around 20 million years ago). According to the research team, the widespread decline of this type of algae was due to global cooling and the isolation of the Mediterranean during the middle Miocene.
Journal reference:
Braga et al. Coralline algae (Corallinales, Rhodophyta) in western and central Mediterranean Messinian reefs. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 2009; 275 (1-4): 113 DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.02.022
Adapted from materials provided by FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.

A DNA analysis was performed of shed hairs found in a book owned by Copernicus for decades.

2009-07-07T12:19:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — Swedish and polish researchers now publish results from the analysis of the putative remains of Copernicus. A DNA-analysis of shed hairs found in a book from Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala University, was one interesting piece in the project.

The efforts to identify the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), found under the cathedral in Frombork, was made in a collaborative project between Swedish and Polish scientists in a team consisting of archaeologists, anthropologists and geneticists. The results is published this week in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
At Uppsala University a DNA analysis was performed of shed hairs found in a book owned by Copernicus for decades, and now kept in Museum Gustavianum at Uppsala University.
"The analysis of several hairs resulted in interpretable profiles for four of the hairs. Of these, two of the hairs have the same profile as the putative remains of Copernicus", says Marie Allen, researcher at Uppsala University.
The Uppsala researchers also made tests of a tooth as well as bone tissue from the putative remains of Copernicus. Results from the analysis of the remains from the Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow and the Museum and institute of zoology in Warsaw and the Uppsala laboratory were identical.
"Although these results points towards the materials being from the same individual, there is a probability of random match", says Marie Allen.
The DNA material in this case was limited and also degraded. Therefore, a so called mitochondrial DNA test was performed, which yields a relatively low evidentiary value. This test is commonly used in criminal investigations, but as circumstantial evidence to strengthen the case.
"The DNA results should be looked at and evaluated in the light of, and together with the information from other disciplines as the archaeological, anthropological and facial reconstruction data", says Marie Allen.
Adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University.

Largest Carnivorous Dinosaur Tooth Ever Found In Spain

2009-07-07T00:53:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — Researchers from the Teruel-Dinópolis Joint Palaeontology Foundation have compared an Allosauroidea tooth found in deposits in Riodeva, Teruel, with other similar samples. The palaeontologists have concluded that this is the largest tooth of a carnivorous dinosaur to have been found to date in Spain.

The features and size of the 9.83cm tooth provide key information needed to identify its former owner. The researchers are in no doubt – it was a large, predatory, carnivorous dinosaur (theropod) belonging to the Allosauroidea clade (one of the branches of the phylogenetic tree), a group that contains large carnivorous dinosaurs measuring between six and 15 meters.
"Given the great variations between the teeth of different kinds of allosauroids, it would be prudent for us to assign this fossil to an indeterminate Allosauroidea", Luis Alcalá, one of the researchers involved in the study to be published in the upcoming issue of Estudios Geológicos and managing director of the Teruel-Dinópolis Joint Palaeontology Foundation, tells SINC.
The tooth, found by local residents in Riodeva, Teruel, in the Villar del Arzobispo Formation, has been compared with other samples from the Allosauroidea group from the Iberian Peninsula – in particular with a large tooth from Portugal (measuring 12.7cm) and another belonging to an Allosauroidea indet in Spain, until now described as the largest in Spain at 8.27cm.
Working towards a complete faunal record of Riodeva
The palaeontologists say that "the presence of a large Allosauroidea is a great addition to the faunal record of the dinosaurs described in the Villar del Arzobispo Formation in Riodeva".
Plant-eating dinosaur groups (phytophages) discovered in the deposit to date have been identified as sauropods, stegosaurids and basal ornithopods (from tooth remains and a complete rear leg). "Now the carnivorous dinosaurs are also represented, at least by two medium-sized theropods and a large predator belonging to the Allosauroidea clade", adds Alcalá.
Carnivorous dinosaurs grew new teeth over their lifetimes, which increase the likelihood of finding them. In this case, the condition of the crown of the tooth found (without any reabsorption surfaces) indicates that it was not a discarded tooth. The palaeontologists hope to discover the remains of this large predator, which could have attacked Turiasaurus riodevensis, the 'European giant'.
Journal reference:
Royo-Torres et al. Diente de un gran dinosaurio terópodo (Allosauroidea) de la Formación Villar del Arzobispo (Titónico-Berriasiense) de Riodeva (España). Estudios Geológicos, 2009; DOI: 10.3989/egeol.39708.049
Adapted from materials provided by FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology.

Underground Cave Dating From The Year 1 A.D. Exposed In Jordan Valley

2009-07-07T00:34:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 7, 2009) — An artificial underground cave, the largest in Israel, has been exposed in the Jordan Valley in the course of a survey carried out by the University of Haifa's Department of Archaeology. Prof. Adam Zertal, who headed the excavating team, reckons that this cave was originally a large quarry during the Roman and Byzantine era and was a "one of a kind." Various engravings were uncovered in the cave, including cross markings, and it is assumed that this could have been an early monastery.

"It is probably the site of "Galgala" from the historical Madaba Map," Prof. Zertal says.
The enormous and striking cave covers an area of approximately 1 acre: it is some 100 meters long and about 40 meters wide. The cave is located 4 km north of Jericho. The cave, which is the largest excavated by man to be discovered in Israel, was exposed in the course of an archaeological survey that the University of Haifa has been carrying out since 1978.
As with other discoveries in the past, this exposure is shrouded in mystery. "When we arrived at the opening of the cave, two Bedouins approached and told us not to go in as the cave is bewitched and inhabited by wolves and hyenas," Prof. Zertal relates. Upon entering, accompanied by his colleagues, he was surprised to find an impressive architectonic underground structure supported by 22 giant pillars. They discovered 31 cross markings on the pillars, an engraving resembling the zodiac symbol, Roman letters and an etching that looks like the Roman Legion's pennant. The team also discovered recesses in the pillars, which would have been used for oil lamps, and holes to which animals that were hauling quarried stones out of the cave could have been tied.
The cave's ceiling is some 3 meters high, but was originally probably about 4 meters high. According to Prof. Zertal, ceramics that were found and the engravings on the pillars date the cave to around 1-600 AD. "The cave's primary use had been as a quarry, which functioned for about 400-500 years. But other findings definitely indicate that the place was also used for other purposes, such as a monastery and possibly as a hiding place," Prof. Zertal explains.
The main question that arose upon discovering the cave was why a quarry was dug underground in the first place. "All of the quarries that we know are above ground. Digging down under the surface requires extreme efforts in hauling the heavy rocks up to the surface, and in this case the quarrying was immense. The question is, why?"
For a possible answer to this mystery, Prof. Zertal points to the famous Madaba map. This is a Byzantine mosaic map that was found in Jordan and is the most ancient map of the Land of Israel. Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley are depicted with precision on the map, and a site called Galgala is depicted next to a Greek inscription that reads "Dodekaliton", which translates as "Twelve Stones." This place is marked at a distance from Jericho that matches this cave's distance from the city.
According to the map, there is a church next to Dodekaliton; there are two ancient churches located nearby the newly discovered cave. According to Prof. Zertal, until now it has been hypothesized that the meaning of "Twelve Stones" related to the biblical verses that describe the twelve stones that the Children of Israel place in Gilgal. However, it could be that the reference is a description of the quarry that was dug where the Byzantines identified the Gilgal.
"During the Roman era, it was customary to construct temples of stones that were brought from holy places, and which were therefore also more valuable stones. If our assumption is correct, then the Byzantine identification of the place as the biblical Gilgal afforded the site its necessary reverence and that is also why they would have dug an underground quarry there," Prof. Zertal concludes. "But" he adds, "much more research is needed."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Haifa, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Triple Fossil Find Puts Australia Back On The Dinosaur Map

2009-07-03T05:32:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 3, 2009) — Scientists have discovered three new species of Australian dinosaur discovered in a prehistoric billabong in Western Queensland.

Reporting on July 3 in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal, PLoS ONE, Scott Hocknull and colleagues at the Queensland Museum and the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History describe the fossils of three new mid-Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Winton Formation in eastern Australia: two giant, herbivorous sauropods and one carnivorous theropod, all of which are to be unveiled in Queensland on July 3. The three fossils add to our knowledge of the Australian dinosaurian record, which is crucial for the understanding of the global paleobiogeography of dinosaurian groups.
Australia’s dinosaurian fossil record is extremely poor, compared with that of other similar-sized continents, such as South America and Africa. However, the mid-Cretaceous Winton Formation in central western Queensland has, in recent years, yielded numerous fossil sites with huge potential for the discovery of new dinosaurian taxa. Between 2006 and 2009, extensive excavations have yielded many well-preserved dinosaur fossils, as well as the remains of other contemporaneous fauna.
In a single, comprehensive, publication, Hocknull and colleagues describe the remains of three individual dinosaur skeletons, found during joint Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and Queensland Museum digs in two different sites in the Winton Formation. They represent three new genera and species of dinosaur: two giant herbivorous sauropods and a carnivorous theropod.
The carnivore, named by the authors on the paper Australovenator wintonensis (nicknamed “Banjo”) is the most complete meat-eating dinosaur found in Australia, to date and sheds light on the ancestry of the largest-ever meat-eating dinosaurs, the carcharodontosaurs, a group of dinosaurs that became gigantic, like Giganotosaurus.
“The cheetah of his time, Banjo was light and agile,” said lead author Scott Hocknull. “He could run down most prey with ease over open ground. His most distinguishing feature was three large slashing claws on each hand. Unlike some theropods that have small arms (think T. rex), Banjo was different; his arms were a primary weapon.
“He’s Australia's answer to Velociraptor, but many times bigger and more terrifying.”
The skeleton of Australovenator solves a 28-year-old mystery surrounding an ankle bone found in Victoria, which was originally classified as a dwarf Allosaurus, although this classification remained controversial until the discovery of Australovenator—the researchers are now able to confirm that the ankle bone belonged to the lineage that led to Australovenator.
The two plant-eating theropods, named Witonotitan wattsi (“Clancy”) and Diamantinasaurus matildae (“Matilda”), are different kinds of titanosaur (the largest type of dinosaur ever to have lived). While Witonotitan represents a tall, gracile animal, which might have fitted into a giraffe-like niche, the stocky, solid Diamantinasaurus represents a more hippo-like species.
All three dinosaurs are nicknamed after characters from a world-famous, Australian poet. Banjo Patterson composed Waltzing Matilda in 1885 in Winton, where the song was also first performed (and where the fossils were discovered). Waltzing Matilda is now considered to be Australia’s national song.
In a quirky twist of fate, the song Waltzing Matilda describes the unfortunate demise of a swag-man, who steals a jumbuck (sheep) but is driven to leap into a billabong (an Australian word for a small oxbow lake) to avoid being captured by the police. He ends up drowning in the billabong alongside the stolen sheep.
Banjo and Matilda were found buried together in what turns out to be a 98-million-year-old billabong. Whether they died together or got stuck in the mud together remains a mystery; however, echoing the song, both predator and possible prey met their end at the bottom of a billabong, 98 million years ago. This shows that processes that were working in the area over the last 98 million years are still there today. “Billabongs are a built-in part of the Australian mind,” said Hocknull, “because we associate them with mystery, ghosts and monsters.”
The finding and documentation of the fossils was a 100% Australian effort. Both Matilda and Banjo were prepared by Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum thanks to thousands of hours of volunteer work and philanthropy.
“This is the only place in Australia where you can come off the street and be taught to be a palaeontologist and find, excavate and prepare your own part of Australian natural history,” said Hocknull. The dinosaurs will now be part of a museum collection and this effort will enable future generations of scientists to be involved in a new wave of dinosaur discoveries and to bring the general public in touch with their own natural heritage.”
This collaborative effort links closely with PLoS ONE’s philosophy of making science freely accessible to the general public. “One of my major motivations for submitting to PLoS ONE was the fact that my research will reach a much wider community, including the hundreds of volunteers and public who gave their time and money to the development of natural history collections,” said Hocknull. “They are the backbone of our work (excuse the pun) and they usually never get to see their final product because they rarely subscribe to scientific journals.”
All three new taxa, along with some fragmentary remains from other taxa, indicate a diverse Early Cretaceous sauropod and theropod fauna in Australia, and the finds will help provide a better understanding of the Australian dinosaurian record, which is, in turn, crucial for the understanding of the global palaeobiogeography of dinosaurian groups.
The authors agree that even though hundreds of bones have already been found at the site, these fossils are just the tip of the iceberg. “Many hundreds more fossils from this dig await preparation and there is much more material left to excavate,” they said. Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and Queensland Museum staff and volunteers will continue to dig at this and other sites in 2010.
The fossils will be unveiled at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History in Queensland, Australia, July 3 by Anna Bligh, the Premier of Queensland. Stage 1 of the museum, a non-profit, volunteer-driven, science initiative that aims to bring Australian dinosaurs to the world, will also be opened by Ms Bligh on July 3.
Journal reference:
Scott A. Hocknull, Matt A. White, Travis R. Tischler, Alex G. Cook, Naomi D. Calleja, Trish Sloan, David A. Elliott. New Mid-Cretaceous (Latest Albian) Dinosaurs from Winton, Queensland, Australia. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4 (7): e6190 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006190
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

Dino Tooth Sheds New Light On Ancient Riddle: Major Group Of Dinosaurs Had Unique Way Of Eating

2009-07-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 30, 2009) — Microscopic analysis of scratches on dinosaur teeth has helped scientists unravel an ancient riddle of what a major group of dinosaurs ate -- and exactly how they did it!

Now for the first time, a study led by the University of Leicester, has found evidence that the duck-billed dinosaurs -- the Hadrosaurs -- in fact had a unique way of eating, unlike any living creature today.
Working with researchers from the Natural History Museum, the study uses a new approach to analyse the feeding mechanisms of dinosaurs and understand their place in the ecosystems of tens of millions of years ago. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Palaeontologist Mark Purnell of the University of Leicester Department of Geology, who led the research, said: "For millions of years, until their extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, duck-billed dinosaurs – or hadrosaurs - were the World's dominant herbivores. They must have been able to break down their food somehow, but without the complex jaw joint of mammals they would not have been able to chew in the same way, and it is difficult to work out how they ate. It is also unclear what they ate: they might have been grazers, cropping vegetation close to the ground - like today's cows and sheep - or browsers, eating leaves and twigs - more like deer or giraffes. Not knowing the answers to these questions makes it difficult to understand Late Cretaceous ecosystems and how they were affected during the major extinction event 65 million years ago.
"Our study uses a new approach based on analysis of the microscopic scratches that formed on hadrosaur's teeth as they fed, tens of millions of years ago. The scratches have been preserved intact since the animals died. They can tell us precisely how hadrosaur jaws moved, and the kind of food these huge herbivores ate, but nobody has tried to analyse them before."
The researchers say that the scratches reveal that the movements of hadrosaur teeth were complex and involved up and down, sideways and front to back motion. According to Paul Barrett palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum "this shows that hadrosaurs did chew, but in a completely different way to anything alive today. Rather than a flexible lower jaw joint, they had a hinge between the upper jaws and the rest of the skull. As they bit down on their food the upper jaws were forced outwards, flexing along this hinge so that the tooth surfaces slid sideways across each other, grinding and shredding food in the process".
The scratch patterns provide confirmation of a theory of hadrosaur chewing first proposed 25 years ago, and provides new insights into their ecology, say the researchers.
The research also sheds light on what the dinosaurs ate. Vince Williams of the University of Leicester said: "Although the first grasses had evolved by the Late Cretaceous they were not common and it is most unlikely that grasses formed a major component of hadrosaur diets. We can tell from the scratches that the hadrosaur's food either contained small particles of grit, normal for vegetation cropped close to the ground, or, like grass, contained microscopic granules of silica. We know that horsetails were a common plant at the time and have this characteristic; they may well have been an important food for hadrosaurs".
One of the big surprises of this study is that so much information about such large animals can be gleaned from such a tiny patch of tooth. "By looking at the pattern of scratches in an area that is only about as wide as a couple of human hairs we can work out how and what these huge herbivores were eating" notes Williams. "And because we can analyse single teeth, rather than whole skeletons, the technique has the potential to tell us a lot more about dinosaur feeding and the ecosystems in which they lived."
Notes:
1. The erroneous idea that all dinosaurs could chew is so widely accepted that the memorable 'Chewits' advertising campaigns of the 1980s were based on the idea. Note that the dinosaur shown in the adverts is not a hadrosaur:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJUwQIXPCBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=420UecB2YZQ
2. The paper "Quantitative analysis of dental microwear in hadrosaurid dinosaurs, and the implications for hypotheses of jaw mechanics and feeding" by Vincent S. Williams, Paul M. Barrett and Mark A. Purnell is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online Early Edition).
3. This study is based on Edmontosaurus: Lived USA and Canada 65-68 million years ago; Length up to 13 m, weight up to 3 tonnes; One of the most abundant dinosaurs of its time; Known from many complete skeletons, including several mummies with skin impressions and gut contents preserved.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

New Fossil Primate Suggests Common Asian Ancestor, Challenges Primates Such As 'Ida'

2009-07-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — According to new research published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) on July 1, 2009, a new fossil primate from Myanmar (previously known as Burma) suggests that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, not Africa as many researchers believe.

A major focus of recent paleoanthropological research has been to establish the origin of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes and humans) from earlier and more primitive primates known as prosimians (lemurs, tarsiers and their extinct relatives). Prior to recent discoveries in China, Thailand, and Myanmar, most scientists believed that anthropoids originated in Africa. Earlier this year, the discovery of the fossil primate skeleton known as "Ida" from the Messel oil shale pit in Germany led some scientists to suggest that anthropoid primates evolved from lemur-like ancestors known as adapiforms.
According to Dr. Chris Beard–– a paleontologist at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a member of the international team of researchers behind the Myanmar anthropoid findings––the new primate, Ganlea megacanina, shows that early anthropoids originated in Asia rather than Africa. These early Asian anthropoids differed radically from adapiforms like Ida, indicating that Ida is more closely related to modern lemurs than it is to monkeys, apes and humans.
The 38-million-year-old Ganlea megacanina fossils, excavated at multiple sites in central Myanmar, belong to a new genus and species. The name of the new species refers to a small village, Ganle, near the original site where the fossils were found, and the greatly enlarged canine teeth that distinguish the animal from closely related primates. Heavy dental abrasion indicates that Ganlea megacanina used its enlarged canine teeth to pry open the hard exteriors of tough tropical fruits in order to extract the nutritious seeds contained inside.
"This unusual type of feeding adaptation has never been documented among prosimian primates, but is characteristic of modern South American saki monkeys that inhabit the Amazon Basin," says Dr. Beard. "Ganlea shows that early Asian anthropoids had already assumed the modern ecological role of modern monkeys 38 million years ago."
Ganlea and its closest relatives belong to an extinct family of Asian anthropoid primates known as the Amphipithecidae. Two other amphipithecids, Pondaungia and Myanmarpithecus, were previously discovered in Myanmar, while a third, named Siamopithecus, had been found in Thailand. A detailed analysis of their evolutionary relationships shows that amphipithecids are closely related to living anthropoids and that all of the Burmese amphipithecids evolved from a single common ancestor. Some scientists had previously argued that amphipithecids were not anthropoids at all, being more closely related to the lemur-like adapiforms.
The discovery of Ganlea strongly supports the idea that amphipithecids are anthropoids, because adapiforms never evolved the features that are necessary to become specialized seed predators. Indeed, all of the Burmese amphipithecids appear to have been specialized seed predators, filling the same ecological niche occupied by modern pitheciine monkeys in the Amazon Basin of South America. During the Eocene when Ganlea and other amphipithecids were living in Myanmar, they inhabited a tropical floodplain that was very similar to the environment of the modern Amazon Basin.
Fossils of Ganlea megacanina were first discovered in Myanmar in December 2005. The fieldwork is a long-term collaboration by scientists from several institutions in Myanmar; as well as the University of Poitiers and the University of Montpellier in France; Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA; and the Department of Mineral Resources in Bangkok, Thailand. Funding was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France.
Adapted from materials provided by Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Indonesian elephant fossil opens window to past

2009-06-23T05:58:00.001-07:00

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Scientists arrange the bones of an estimated 200,000 year-old giant elephant at Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, Thursday, June 18, 2009. Indonesian scientists are reconstructing the largest, most complete skeleton of an ancient elephant ever found in the tropics, a finding that may offer new clues into the largely mysterious origins of its modern Asian cousin. Based on the fossil, the ancient elephant stood four meters (13-feet) tall, was five meters (16-feet) long and weighed more than 10 tons, considerably larger than the great Asian mammals now on Earth. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

(AP) -- Indonesian scientists are reconstructing the largest, most complete skeleton of a prehistoric giant elephant ever found in the tropics, a finding that may offer new clues into the largely mysterious origins of its modern Asian cousin.

The prehistoric elephant is believed to have been submerged in quicksand shortly after dying on a riverbed in Java around 200,000 years ago. Its bones - almost perfectly preserved - were discovered by chance in March when an old sand quarry collapsed during monsoon rains.
The animal stood four meters (13-feet) tall, five meters (16-feet) long and weighed more than 10 tons - closer in size to the woolly mammoth of the same period than to the great Asian mammals now on Earth.
Animal fossils are rare in the humid, hot climate of the equator because decomposition occurs extremely quickly.
Following a monthlong excavation, a team of seven paleontologists from the Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java, set the bones in plaster for the trip back to their office where they will be laboriously pieced back together.
"We believe from the shape of its teeth that it was a very primitive elephant," but little else has been verified, said paleontologist Fachroel Aziz, who is heading a 12-strong skeletal reconstruction team.
Scientists agree it is the first time an entire prehistoric elephant skeleton has been unearthed since vertebrate fossil findings began to be recorded in Indonesia in 1863.
"It is very uncommon to discover a fossil like this in a tropical region like Indonesia," said Edi Sunardi, an independent expert at Indonesia's Pajajaran University in Bandung, West Java. "It apparently was covered by volcanic sediment that protected it from high temperatures, erosion and decay."
The next challenge will be removing the delicate bones from their molds and joining them into a stable, upright structure, a process that experts said is already being hampered by a lack of funding, inadequate tools and poor expertise.
Indonesia, an emerging and impoverished democracy of 235 million people, cannot afford to allocate more than a token sum to its aging museums, even for projects that have the potential to advance knowledge about the origin of key native species.
Gert van den Berg, a researcher at Australia's Wollongong University who helped dig up the skeleton, said tests are under way to determine its precise age and species, and that they will help provide details "about when the modern elephants evolved into what they are now."
About 2,000 old elephant remains have been found across the island nation over the past 150 years, but never in such good condition, Aziz said.
"We want to exhibit it publicly because this is a spectacular discovery," he said.

Cold Case Techniques Bring Mummy’s Face To 'Life'

2009-06-23T05:51:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — Thanks to the skills of artists who work on cold case investigations, people have a chance to see what the University of Chicago’s mummy Meresamun may have looked like in real life.

A Chicago forensic artist and a police artist in Maryland prepared the images, which depict an engaging woman in her late 20s as she would have looked in 800 B.C. Both artists, though working independently, produced strikingly similar images.*
Dr. Michael Vannier, Professor of Radiology, began the process of restoring the mummy’s facial features with two exhaustive CT examinations of Meresamun in 2008 at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“A huge number of CT scans of the skull were used to create a 3-D digital model of Meresamun’s skull,” said Emily Teeter, Research Associate at the Oriental Institute an curator of a museum exhibition about the mummy. “Those files were given to forensic artists who use methods employed in cold case investigations where skeletal remains need to be identified.”
The Oriental Institute wanted to compare multiple reconstructions, in order to obtain a trustworthy image of Meresamun’s face. Both a digital version of the traditional forensic reconstruction and a missing person-type sketch were submitted.
In the traditional forensic method, layers of fat, muscle and flesh are built up upon the skull. Starting with a three-dimensional image of the skull created from multiple CT scans, Chicago artist Joshua Harker used a technique known as the Gatliff-Snow American Tissue Depth Marker Method to calculate the contours of the face to digitally recreate Meresamun’s appearance.
“The skull is the driving architecture of the face—all the proportions and placements are there, if know how to read it,” Harker explained. “Even the shapes of the lips, nose and eyebrows can be determined if you know what to look for,” The American Tissue Depth Marker method has been shown to be effective in accurately reconstructing a face, both in identifying victims and as admissible evidence in court.
“I try not to make any assumptions without expert direction, whether that be from an anthropologist regarding the race, gender or age, or from and expert like Emily Teeter who can give me an accurate description about details based on historical evidence,” Harker said. “I am ecstatic that my reconstruction of Meresamun has been so well received by the community who knows the most about her.”
Michael Brassell, who works with the Department of Justice/Maryland State Police Missing Persons Unit, used his skills as a trained sketch artist to produce a second, more traditional reconstruction.
“The project was no different then any of the postmortems drawings I have worked on for cold case homicides. The CT scans were very clear, making my job easy,” he said. “If this was a homicide case, I would almost go as far to guarantee a hit on the profile drawing.”
Meresamun lived in Thebes (ancient Luxor) about 800 B.C. and died of undetermined causes about age 29-30. An exhibit, “The Life of Meresamun: A Temple Singer in Ancient Egypt,” features her mummy and coffin and will be featured through Dec. 6 at the Oriental Institute Museum. A video display allows visitors to view features of Meresamun’s physical state and perform a “virtual unwrapping” of the mummy, enabling them to see how it was prepared. Advanced digital techniques have made it possible to recreate Meresamun’s appearance.
She was tall by ancient standards—5-and-a-half feet—her features were regular with wide-spaced eyes and she had an overbite. “Meresamun was, until the time of her death at about 30, a very healthy woman,” Vannier said. “The lack of arrest lines on her bones indicates good nutrition through her lifetime and her well-mineralized bones suggest that she lived an active lifestyle.”
*The drawings are on display at the Oriental Institute Museum, and have been placed on the institute’s Web site (http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/meresamun/), on Meresamun’s Facebook page, her Wikipedia listing and on YouTube.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago.

54-million-year-old Skull Reveals Early Evolution Of Primate Brains

2009-06-23T05:40:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Winnipeg have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight.

The analysis of a well-preserved skull from 54 million years ago contradicts some common assumptions about brain structure and evolution in the first primates. The study also narrows the possibilities for what caused primates to evolve larger brain sizes. The study is scheduled to appear online the week of June 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The skull belongs to a group of primitive primates known as Plesiadapiforms, which evolved in the 10 million years between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the first traceable ancestors of modern primates. The 1.5-inch-long skull was found fully intact, allowing researchers to make the first virtual mold of a primitive primate brain.
"Most explanations on the evolution of primate brains are based on data from living primates," said lead author Mary Silcox, an anthropologist at the University of Winnipeg and research associate at UF's Florida Museum of Natural History. "There have been all these inferences about what the brains of the earliest primates would look like, and it turns out that most of those inferences are wrong."
Researchers used CT scans to take more than 1,200 cross-sectional X-ray images of the skull, which were combined into a 3-D model of the brain.
"A large and complex brain has long been regarded as one of the major steps that sets primates apart from the rest of mammals," said Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist and study co-author Jonathan Bloch. "At our very humble beginnings, we weren't so special. That happened over tens of millions of years."
The animal, Ignacius graybullianus, represents a side branch on the primate tree of life, Bloch said. "You can think of it as a cousin of the main line lineage that would have given rise ultimately to us."
In previous research, Bloch and Silcox established that Plesiadapiforms were transitional species. Ignacius was similar to modern primates in terms of its diet and tree-dwelling but did not leap from tree to tree like modern fast-moving primates.
In many ways, the early primate behaved like living primates but with a brain that was one-half to two-thirds the size of the smallest modern primates. This means that factors such as tree-dwelling and fruit-eating can be eliminated as potential causes for primates evolving larger brain sizes, Silcox said, because "the smaller brained Ignacius was already doing those things."
The mold suggests a "startling combination" of features in the early primate that requires a rethinking of primate brain evolution, said Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk, who was not involved in the study.
"Hypotheses about early primate brain evolution often link keen smell with nocturnal insect-eating, and a more recently evolved increase in visual processing with fruit-eating in arboreal habitats," Falk said.
The move to larger brain size occurred during an evolutionary burst that happened 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. At that point, visual features in the brain became much more prominent while the olfactory bulbs became proportionately smaller.
More than likely, Bloch said, this change in brain structure and size was related to primates living in closed canopy forests that brought trees closer together and allowed for more leaping. But answering that will require the discovery and analysis of new fossils.
Changes in brain size and brain structure in the early stages of primate evolution have generated enormous debates for decades. But until now, fossil evidence has been lacking.
Many models of the ancestral primate brain are based on tree shrews, which come from southeast Asia and are distantly related to humans. But with some 70 million years of evolution between them and humans, "it turns out tree shrew brains are not a good model," Silcox said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Florida.

Obsidian 'trail' provides clues to how humans settled, interacted in Kuril Islands

2009-06-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

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Tiny obsidian flakes such as this found in the Kuril Islands have been traced to their source on Japan's Hokkaido Island and Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to better understand how people settled and interacted in the inhospitable Kuril Islands.

Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometers, archaeologists from the University of Washington and the Smithsonian Institution have found the origin of 131 flakes of obsidian, a volcanic glass. These small flakes were discarded after stone tools were made from obsidian and were found at 18 sites on eight islands in the Kurils. The flakes were found with other artifacts that were dated over a time period spanning about 1,750 years, from 2500 to 750 years before the present.
The Kuril Archipelago stretches for nearly 800 miles between the northern-most Japanese island of Hokkaido and the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Despite the islands' volcanic origin, there are no known local sources of obsidian.
"A key quality of obsidian is you can create very sharp edge. Obsidian flakes easily and fractures in a way that is predictable. When it was available people have used it," said Colby Phillips, lead author of the new study and an anthropology doctoral student at the University of Washington. His co-author is Robert Speakman of the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute.
Obsidian is formed when magma is extruded from a volcano and can be geochemically identified Phillips said. That's because the obsidian from each volcano has a unique chemical signature based on the amount of elements such as rubidium, zirconium and strontium in the glass. Archaeologists gather obsidian samples from volcanoes to create a data base of chemical signatures and compare archaeological samples collected in the field to the data base.
Phillips and Speakman pinpointed the Kuril flakes they analyzed to four locations on Hokkaido and five sources on Kamchatka. The majority of the flakes, slightly more than 60 percent, originated in Kamchatka.
Human occupation of the Kurils began about 4,000 years ago at the southern end of the island chain near Hokkaido and gradually spread northward. And where humans went they carried obsidian with them.
"Obsidian only makes up about 8 percent of the stone tools and the waste left from their manufacture, but it shows up at all sites and over all time periods," said Phillips. "Obsidian may have played a role in maintaining social and trade networks as people migrated across the Kurils. Our work suggests social relationships can be important in local and regional areas. Here we have people living in an isolated area that is covered by fog and clouds and subject to tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. So it would be advantageous to have connections with other people. The fact that we have a material such as obsidian throughout the islands shows people were proactive in maintaining ties in the prehistoric era."
The researchers found a basic pattern of obsidian distribution in the islands. Obsidian from Hokkaido was primarily found in the Southern Kurils with a few samples discovered in the Central Kurils. Kamchatka obsidian was only found in the Central and Northern Kurils.
The Southern Kurils are separated from the other islands in the chain by the 70-mile-wide Bussol Strait. Phillips believes that at some time it became too costly to make the dangerous ocean crossing, and people in the central and northern islands began trading for Kamchatka obsidian.
Since the research was accepted for publication, Phillips and Speakman have analyzed the sources of an additional 700 obsidian flakes and their results mirror the newly published data.
Source: University of Washington (news : web)

Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought

2009-06-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 22, 2009) — The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.

Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
Widely cited estimates for the mass of Apatosaurus louisae, one of the largest of the dinosaurs, may be double that of its actual mass (38 tonnes vs. 18 tonnes).
"Paleontologists have for 25 years used a published statistical model to estimate body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large animals in extinct lineages. By re-examining data in the original reference sample, we show that the statistical model is seriously flawed and that the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed" says Gary Packard from Colorado State University.
The new predictions have implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion.
Journal reference:
. Allometric equations for predicting body mass of dinosaurs. Journal of Zoology, June 21, 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2009.00594.x
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley - Blackwell, via AlphaGalileo.

Ice Sheets Can Retreat 'In A Geologic Instant,' Study Of Prehistoric Glacier Shows

2009-06-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 22, 2009) — Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.

The paper, published on June 21 in Nature Geoscience, describes fieldwork demonstrating that a prehistoric glacier in the Canadian Arctic rapidly retreated in just a few hundred years.
The proof of such rapid retreat of ice sheets provides one of the few explicit confirmations that this phenomenon occurs.
Should the same conditions recur today, which the UB scientists say is very possible, they would result in sharply rising global sea levels, which would threaten coastal populations.
"A lot of glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland are characteristic of the one we studied in the Canadian Arctic," said Jason Briner, Ph.D., assistant professor of geology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and lead author on the paper. "Based on our findings, they, too, could retreat in a geologic instant."
The new findings will allow scientists to more accurately predict how global warming will affect ice sheets and the potential for rising sea levels in the future, by developing more robust climate and ice sheet models.
Briner said the findings are especially relevant to the Jakobshavn Isbrae, Greenland's largest and fastest moving tidewater glacier, which is retreating under conditions similar to those he studied in the Canadian Arctic.
Acting like glacial conveyor belts, tidewater glaciers are the primary mechanism for draining ice sheet interiors by delivering icebergs to the ocean.
"These 'iceberg factories' exhibit rapid fluctuations in speed and position, but predicting how quickly they will retreat as a result of global warming is very challenging," said Briner.
That uncertainty prompted the UB team to study the rates of retreat of a prehistoric tidewater glacier, of similar size and geometry to contemporary ones, as way to get a longer-term view of how fast these glaciers can literally disappear.
The researchers used a special dating tool at UB to study rock samples they extracted from a large fjord that drained the ice sheet that covered the North American Arctic during the past Ice Age.
The samples provided the researchers with climate data over a period from 20,000 years ago to about 5,000 years ago, a period when significant warming occurred.
"Even though the ice sheet retreat was ongoing throughout that whole period, the lion's share of the retreat occurred in a geologic instant -- probably within as little as a few hundred years," said Briner.
The UB research reveals that the period of rapid retreat was triggered once the glacier entered deep ocean waters, nearly a kilometer deep, Briner said.
"The deeper water makes the glacier more buoyant," he explained.
"Because the rates of retreat were so much higher in the deep fjord, versus earlier when it terminated in more shallow waters or on land, the findings suggest that contemporary tidewater glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica that are retreating into deep waters may begin to experience even faster rates of retreat than are currently being observed," said Briner.
Right now, Jakobshavn Isbrae is draining into waters that are nearly a kilometer deep, he said, which means that its current rates of retreat -- as fast as 10 kilometers in the past decade -- could continue for the next hundred years.
"If modern glaciers do this for several decades, this would rapidly raise global sea level, intercepting coastal populations and requiring vast re-engineering of levees and other mitigation systems," said Briner.
Co-authors on the paper were Aaron C. Bini, formerly a master's of science candidate in the UB Department of Geology, and Robert S. Anderson, Ph.D., in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Briner's research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University at Buffalo.

Sudden Collapse In Ancient Biodiversity: Was Global Warming The Culprit?

2009-06-19T02:57:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 19, 2009) — Scientists have unearthed striking evidence for a sudden ancient collapse in plant biodiversity. A trove of 200 million-year-old fossil leaves collected in East Greenland tells the story, carrying its message across time to us today.

Results of the research appear in the journal Science.
The researchers were surprised to find that a likely candidate responsible for the loss of plant life was a small rise in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which caused Earth's temperature to rise.
Global warming has long been considered as the culprit for extinctions--the surprise is that much less carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere may be needed to drive an ecosystem beyond its tipping point than previously thought.
"Earth's deep time climate history reveals startling discoveries that shake the foundations of our knowledge and understanding of climate change in modern times," says H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which partially funded the research.
Jennifer McElwain of University College Dublin, the paper's lead author, cautions that sulfur dioxide from extensive volcanic emissions may also have played a role in driving the plant extinctions.
"We have no current way of detecting changes in sulfur dioxide in the past, so it's difficult to evaluate whether sulfur dioxide, in addition to a rise in carbon dioxide, influenced this pattern of extinction," says McElwain.
The time interval under study, at the boundary of the Triassic and Jurassic periods, has long been known for its plant and animal extinctions.
Until this research, the pace of the extinctions was thought to have been gradual, taking place over millions of years.
It has been notoriously difficult to tease out details about the pace of extinction using fossils, scientists say, because fossils can provide only snap-shots or glimpses of organisms that once lived.
Using a technique developed by scientist Peter Wagner of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., the researchers were able to detect, for the first time, very early signs that these ancient ecosystems were already deteriorating--before plants started going extinct.
The method reveals early warning signs that an ecosystem is in trouble in terms of extinction risk.
"The differences in species abundances for the first 20 meters of the cliffs [in East Greenland] from which the fossils were collected," says Wagner, "are of the sort you expect. "But the final 10 meters show dramatic loses of diversity that far exceed what we can attribute to sampling error: the ecosystems were supporting fewer and fewer species."
By the year 2100, it's expected that the level of carbon dioxide in the modern atmosphere may reach as high as two and a half times today's level.
"This is of course a 'worst case scenario,'" says McElwain. "But it's at exactly this level [900 parts per million] at which we detected the ancient biodiversity crash.
"We must take heed of the early warning signs of deterioration in modern ecosystems. We've learned from the past that high levels of species extinctions--as high as 80 percent--can occur very suddenly, but they are preceded by long interval of ecological change."
The majority of modern ecosystems have not yet reached their tipping point in response to climate change, the scientists say, but many have already entered a period of prolonged ecological change.
"The early warning signs of deterioration are blindingly obvious," says McElwain. "The biggest threats to maintaining current levels of biodiversity are land use change such as deforestation. "But even relatively small changes in carbon dioxide and global temperature can have unexpectedly severe consequences for the health of ecosystems."
The paper was co-authored by McElwain, Wagner and Stephen Hesselbo of the University of Oxford in the U.K.
Journal reference:
. Fossil Plant Relative Abundances Indicate Sudden Loss of Late Triassic Biodiversity in East Greenland. Science, June 18, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.

Size Did Matter: Evidence Of Giant Sperm Found In Microfossils

2009-06-19T02:54:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 19, 2009) — The mystery of giant sperm present in some living animal groups today has now taken on a new dimension -- in one group of micro-crustaceans new evidence shows that it is a feature at least 100 million years old.

In the competition for a partner, males typically have to vie with each other – be it with a colorful plumage, a large set of antlers or a seductive courtship dance. The females of some species, however, copulate with several males, so that rivals even after mating are still not defeated. So their sperm become rivals. Because greater size can increase the chance of fertilization, in some species truly giant sperm cells have evolved – some grow to be even larger than the male that produced them.
Now, an international group of researchers led by Dr. Renate Matzke-Karasz, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, has indirectly detected signs of giant sperm in fossilized ostracods. Using synchrotron X-ray holotomography, a highly complex imaging technique developed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the researchers were able to look non-invasively deep inside these tiny crustaceans, which measure only one millimeter in length. "In these microfossils, we detected organs that are required for transferring giant spermatozoa," reports Matzke-Karasz. "Since recent ostracods still produce giant sperm, and maneuver them with the same organs as 100 million years ago, it's safe to say that this distinctive feature evolved only once in this group. It seems to be an evolutionary successful reproduction strategy, even though it comes at an exceedingly high price for both genders."
A human sperm would have to be over 17 meters long in order to measure up against one group of modern ostracods, whose sperm are up to ten times as big as the animals themselves. Roughly 34,000 of the 50 micron-long human sperm would have to line up to match the body length of a man (of 1,70m).
If a female allows more than one male to mate with her, then the males' rivalry has to continue after mating. This situation seems to result in enough pressure to uproot even the most valid theory of sexual selection: According to that, males who produce a large number of tiny spermatozoa quickly and cheaply better their chances for reproduction, while females invest in only a few, yet larger ova. But if the sperm have to compete inside the female's body, quality sometimes seems to trump quantity. In these cases chances of fertilizing an ovum can increase with the size of the sperm cell. This applies as much to the sperm of a single individual as it does to rival sperm of different males. So much so, that the animals invest a lot of energy in producing and carrying such enormous sperm.
This has led to some true giants evolving along the way. A human sperm would have to be 40 meters long in order to measure up against Drosophila bifurca, for example: the males of this fruit-fly are only a few millimeters in size, but produce giant sperm around six centimeters long. Also other insects, as well as some primates, birds and worms are known for the production of giant sperm. Another example is one group of ostracods, whose sperm are up to ten times as big as the animals themselves. These aquatic crustaceans typically grow to only a few millimeters, and are – much like mussels – surrounded by a bivalve-like calcareous shell.
This protective armor fossilizes particularly well, so ostracods are some of the most common fossils found, some dating back to 450 million years ago. "They are an important group in that their remains store information about the environment they lived in," Matzke-Karasz says. "The fossilized shells of ostracods are therefore a kind of archive of earth's history, storing information on climate, ecology and geology thousands, even millions of years ago." Only in rare cases, however, remains of the soft parts of the body and its appendages are preserved along with the calcareous valves. Because these fossils are particularly interesting to evolutionary biologists, the group working with Matzke-Karasz investigated fossils of the Cretaceous Harbinia micropapillosa that still had intact remains of the soft body. Fortunately, these exceptionally rare fossils belong to the same group of ostracods that produces giant sperm today, providing an excellent opportunity to look for fossil evidence of giant sperm.
The highly complex, high-tech investigation was performed at the "European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF, Grenoble, France)", which also financed the project: "Holotomography is a non-destructive imaging technique like computer tomography, where powerful and coherent synchrotron X-rays are used," explains Dr. Paul Tafforeau of ESRF. "With this method, a three-dimensional image of the inner structures even of microscopically small objects can be reproduced without doing any damage, with contrast and precision levels not reachable with any other techniques." Holotomography has been only very recently applied to imaging of fossils, but the recent results demonstrate that such technique will surely lead to many important discoveries on fossils. "We obtained an excellent image of the reproductive apparatus of the fossil ostracods and were in for a real surprise," reports Dr. Giles Miller of the Natural History Museum in London. "Our results show that these 100 million year old Cretaceous ostracods were already reproducing with giant sperm."
Recent relatives of these crustaceans have a complex reproductive apparatus that makes up about a third of their bodies in volume. In both sexes, the reproductive organs exist as two separately functioning units, one on each side of the body. In the males, these include two large sperm pumps called Zenker organs. Matching these, the female ostracods possess two long passages leading to two vaginal openings. These characteristic structures are a perfect adaptation to the transport of giant sperm. The X-ray investigation of the fossilized ostracods revealed pairs of hollow tubes in the males that correspond to Zenker organs.
"In the females, on the other hand, we found two elongated hollow cavities in the abdomen, which we also see in recent species," says Radka Symonova of Charles University in Prague. "These cavities are sperm storage receptacles. They only occur in ostracods whose females retain giant spermatozoa within their bodies until the moment of oviposition, when each ovum is fertilized by one sperm. From recent species we know that the seminal vesicles only obtain their typical shape when they are filled with giant sperm." Accordingly, the fossilized females must have mated shortly before their entombment in the sediment. "Our holotomographies actually revealed a fossil insemination," Symonova resumes.
"So, reproduction with giant sperm had already developed around 100 million years ago in this group of ostracods," Dr. Robin James Smith of Lake Biwa Museum in Shiga, Japan ponders. "Until now, it had been unknown whether giant sperm ostracod sperm arose multiple times over the course of evolution, like those of Drosophila, or whether they have been a persistent feature in certain groups for millions of years," Matzke-Karasz continues. "This question can now be answered once and for all: giant sperm have been produced in at least some species over long periods of time, even though they come at an extremely high price for both, males and females. The next stage of our research is to try to understand why and how it has persisted for so long."
The project led by the LMU Munich paleontologist was funded by ESRF (Grenoble), the European Union in the scope of the Marie Curie RT Network "SEXASEX" and the Lake Biwa Museum.
Journal reference:
R. Matzke-Karasz, R. J. Smith, R. Symonova, C. G. Miller, and P. Tafforeau. Sexual intercourse involving giant sperm in Cretaceous ostracods. Science, 2009; DOI: 10.1126/science.1173898
Adapted from materials provided by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Sands Of Gobi Desert Yield New Species Of Nut-cracking Dinosaur

2009-06-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 17, 2009) — Plants or meat: That's about all that fossils ever tell paleontologists about a dinosaur's diet. But the skull characteristics of a new species of parrot-beaked dinosaur and its associated gizzard stones indicate that the animal fed on nuts and/or seeds. These characteristics present the first solid evidence of nut-eating in any dinosaur.

"The parallels in the skull to that in parrots, the descendants of dinosaurs most famous for their nut-cracking habits, is remarkable," said Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Sereno and two colleagues from the People's Republic of China announce their discovery June 17 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The paleontologists discovered the new dinosaur, which they've named Psittacosaurus gobiensis, in the Gobi Desert of Inner Mongolia in 2001, and spent years preparing and studying the specimen. The dinosaur is approximately 110 million years old, dating to the mid-Cretaceous Period.
The quantity and size of gizzard stones in birds correlates with dietary preference. Larger, more numerous gizzard stones point to a diet of harder food, such as nuts and seeds. "The psittacosaur at hand has a huge pile of stomach stones, more than 50, to grind away at whatever it eats, and this is totally out of proportion to its three-foot body length," Sereno explained.
Technically speaking, the dinosaur is also important because it displays a whole new way of chewing, which Sereno and co-authors have dubbed "inclined-angle" chewing. "The jaws are drawn backward and upward instead of just closing or moving fore and aft," Sereno said. "It remains to be seen whether some other plant-eating dinosaurs or other reptiles had the same mechanism."
The unusual chewing style has solved a major mystery regarding the wear patterns on psittacosaur teeth. Psittacosaurs sported rigid skulls, but their teeth show the same sliding wear patterns as plant-eating dinosaurs with flexible skulls.
Funding sources: National Geographic Society; David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Biological Sciences Division, University of Chicago; and the Long Hao Institute of Stratigraphic Paleontology
Journal reference:
Paul A. Sereno et al. A new psittacosaur from Inner Mongolia and the parrot-like structure and function of the psittacosaur skull. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, June 17, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Maya Intensively Cultivated Manioc 1,400 Years Ago

2009-06-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 17, 2009) — A University of Colorado at Boulder team has uncovered an ancient and previously unknown Maya agricultural system -- a large manioc field intensively cultivated as a staple crop that was buried and exquisitely preserved under a blanket of ash by a volcanic eruption in present-day El Salvador 1,400 years ago.

Evidence shows the manioc field -- at least one-third the size of a football field -- was harvested just days before the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano near San Salvador in roughly A.D. 600, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Payson Sheets, who is directing excavations at the ancient village of Ceren. The cultivated field of manioc was discovered adjacent to Ceren, which was buried under 17 feet of ash and is considered the best preserved ancient farming village in all of Latin America.
The ancient planting beds of the carbohydrate-rich tuber are the first and only evidence of an intensive manioc cultivation system at any New World archaeology site, said Sheets. While two isolated portions of the manioc field were discovered in 2007 following radar work and limited excavation, 18 large test pits dug in spring 2009 -- each measuring about 10 feet by 10 feet -- allowed the archaeologists to estimate the size of the field and assess the related agricultural activity that went on there.
Sheets said manioc pollen has been found at archaeological sites in Belize, Mexico and Panama, but it is not known whether it was cultivated as a major crop or was just remnants of a few garden plants. "This is the first time we have been able to see how ancient Maya grew and harvested manioc," said Sheets, who discovered Ceren in 1978.
Ash hollows in the manioc planting beds at Ceren left by decomposed plant material were cast in dental plaster by the team to preserve their shape and size, said Sheets. Evidence showed the field was harvested and then replanted with manioc stalk cuttings just a few days before the eruption of the volcano.
A few anthropologists have suspected that manioc tubers -- which can be more than three feet long and as thick as a man's arm -- were a dietary salvation for ancient, indigenous societies living in large cities in tropical Latin America. Corn, beans and squash have long been known to be staples of the ancient Maya, but they are sensitive to drought and require fertile soils, said Sheets.
"As 'high anxiety' crops, they received a lot of attention, including major roles in religious and cosmological activities of the Maya," said Sheets. "But manioc, which grows well in poor soils and is highly drought resistant did not. I like to think of manioc like an old Chevy gathering dust in the garage that doesn't get much attention, but it starts right up every time when the need arises."
Calculations by Sheets indicate the Ceren planting fields would have produced roughly 10 metric tons of manioc annually for the 100 to 200 villagers believed to have lived there. "The question now is what these people in the village were doing with all that manioc that was harvested all at once," he said. "Even if they were gorging themselves, they could not have consumed that much."
The CU-Boulder team also found the shapes and sizes of individual manioc planting ridges and walkways varied widely. "This indicates the individual farmers at Ceren had control over their families' fields and cultivated them they way they wanted, without an external higher authority telling them what to do and how to do it," he said.
The team also found that the manioc fields and adjacent cornfields at Ceren were oriented 30 degrees east of magnetic north -- the same orientation as the village buildings and the public town center, said Sheets. "The villagers laid out the agricultural fields and the town structures with the same orientation as the nearby river, showing the importance and reverence the Maya had for water," he said.
The volcano at Ceren shrouded adobe structures, thatched roofs, house beams, woven baskets, sleeping mats, garden tools and grain caches. The height of the corn stalks and other evidence indicate the eruption occurred early on an August evening, he said.
Because it is unlikely that the people of Ceren were alone in their intensive cultivation of manioc, Sheets and his colleagues are now investigating chemical and microscopic botanical evidence at other Maya archaeological sites that may be indicators of manioc cultivation and processing.
Sheets said Maya villagers living in the region today have a long tradition of cutting manioc roots into small chunks, drying them eight days, then grinding the chunks into a fine, flour-like powder known as almidón. Almidón can be stored almost indefinitely, and traditionally was used by indigenous people in the region for making tamales and tortillas and as a thickening agent for stews, he said.
Since indigenous peoples in tropical South America use manioc today to brew alcoholic beverages, including beer, the CU-Boulder team will be testing ceramic vessels recovered from various structures at Ceren for traces of manioc. To date, 12 structures have been excavated, and others detected by ground-penetrating radar remain buried, he said.
Sheets is particularly interested in vessels from a religious building at Ceren excavated in 1991. The structure contained such items as a deer headdress painted red, blue and white; a large, alligator-shaped painted pot; the bones of butchered deer; and evidence that large quantities of food items like meat, corn, beans and squash were prepared on-site and dispensed to villagers from the structure, said Sheets.
Ceren's residents apparently were participating in a spiritual ceremony in the building when the volcano erupted, and did not return to their adobe homes, which excavations showed were void of people and tied shut from the outside. "I think there may have been an emergency evacuation from the ceremonial building when the volcano erupted," he said. To date, no human remains have been found at Ceren.
The research team also included CU-Boulder doctoral student Christine Dixon, Professor David Letz and graduate student Angie Hood from the University of Cincinnati, University of Costa Rica graduate student George Maloof and University of Central Florida graduate student Andrew Tetlow. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

Beaked, Bird-like Dinosaur Tells Story Of Finger Evolution

2009-06-19T02:16:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 18, 2009) — Scientists have discovered a unique beaked, plant-eating dinosaur in China. The finding, they say, demonstrates that theropod, or bird-footed, dinosaurs were more ecologically diverse in the Jurassic period than previously thought, and offers important evidence about how the three-fingered hand of birds evolved from the hand of dinosaurs.

The discovery is reported in a paper published in the June 18 edition of the journal Nature.
"This work on dinosaurs provides a whole new perspective on the evolution of bird manual digits," said H. Richard Lane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research.
"This new animal is fascinating, and when placed into an evolutionary context it offers intriguing evidence about how the hand of birds evolved," said scientist James Clark of George Washington University.
Clark, along with Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, made the discovery. Clark's graduate student, Jonah Choiniere, also was involved in analyzing the new animal.
"This finding is truly exciting, as it changes what we thought we knew about the dinosaur hand," said Xu. "It also brings conciliation between the data from million-year-old bones and molecules of living birds."
Limusaurus inextricabilis ("mire lizard who could not escape") was found in 159 million-year-old deposits located in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang, northwestern China. The dinosaur earned its name from the way its skeletons were preserved, stacked on top of each other in fossilized mire pits.
A close examination of the fossil shows that its upper and lower jaws were toothless, demonstrating that the dinosaur possessed a fully developed beak. Its lack of teeth, short arms without sharp claws and possession of gizzard stones suggest that it was a plant-eater, though it is related to carnivorous dinosaurs.
The newly discovered dinosaur's hand is unusual and provides surprising new insights into a long-standing controversy over which fingers are present in living birds, which are theropod dinosaur descendants. The hands of theropod dinosaurs suggest that the outer two fingers were lost during the course of evolution and the inner three remained.
Conversely, embryos of living birds suggest that birds have lost one finger from the outside and one from the inside of the hand. Unlike all other theropods, the hand of Limusaurus strongly reduced the first finger and increased the size of the second. Clark and Xu argue that Limusaurus' hand represents a transitional condition in which the inner finger was lost and the other fingers took on the shape of the fingers next to them.
The three fingers of most advanced theropods are the second, third and fourth fingers-the same ones indicated by bird embryos-contrary to the traditional interpretation that they were the first, second and third.
Limusaurus is the first ceratosaur known from East Asia and one of the most primitive members of the group. Ceratosaurs are a diverse group of theropods that often bear crests or horns on their heads, and many have unusual, knobby fingers lacking sharp claws.
The fossil beds in China that produced Limusaurus have previously yielded skeletons of a variety of dinosaurs and contemporary animals described by Clark and Xu.
These include the oldest tyrannosaur, Guanlong wucaii; the oldest horned dinosaur, Yinlong downsi; a new stegosaur, Jiangjunosaurus junggarensis; and the running crocodile relative, Junggarsuchus sloani.
This research was also funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, the Jurassic Foundation and the Hilmar Sallee bequest.
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.

Mammoths Survived In Britain Until 14,000 Years Ago, New Discovery Suggests

2009-06-19T02:08:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 18, 2009) — Research which finally proves that bones found in Shropshire, England provide the most geologically recent evidence of woolly mammoths in North Western Europe publishes June 17 in the Geological Journal. Analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment suggests that some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have become extinct.

The mammoth bones, consisting of one largely complete adult male and at least four juveniles, were first excavated in 1986, but the carbon dating which took place at the time has since been considered inaccurate. Technological advances during the past two decades now allow a more exact reading, which complements the geological data needed to place the bones into their environmental context. This included a study of the bones' decay, analysis of fossilised insects which were also found on the site, and a geological analysis of the surrounding sediment.
The research was carried out by Professor Adrian Lister, based at the Natural History Museum in London, who has conducted numerous studies into 'extinction lag' where small pockets of a species have survived for thousands of years longer than conventionally thought.
"Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in North Western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the 'Last Glacial Maximum'" said Lister. "Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago."
As the Shropshire bones are the latest record of mammoths in North Western Europe they not only prove that the species survived for much longer than traditionally believed it also provides strong evidence to settle the debate as to whether mammoth extinction was caused by climate change or human hunting.
"The new dates of the mammoths' last appearance correlate very closely in time to climate changes when the open grassy habitat of the Ice Age was taken over by advancing forests, which provides a likely explanation for their disappearance," said Lister. "There were humans around during the time of the Condover mammoths, but no evidence of significant mammoth hunting."
Dr Lister's findings feature in one of three papers on the Condover Mammoths which are all published in the Geological Journal. The other papers focus on the Palaeoenviromental context of the mammoths (Allen et al) and a geological study of the site in which the mammoths were discovered (Scourse et al).
Journal references:
Lister A. Late-glacial mammoth skeletons (Mammuthus primigenius) from Condover (Shropshire, UK): anatomy, pathology, taphonomy and chronological significance. Geological Journal, DOI: 10.1002/gj.1162
Allen.J.R.M, Scourse.JD, Hall,A.R, Coope G.R. Palaeoenviromental context of the Late-glacial woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) discoveries at Condover, Shropshire, UK(pn/a). Geological Journal, 2009 DOI: 10.1002/gj1161
Scourse, Coope et al. Late-glacial remains of woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius) from Shropshire UK: stratigraphy, sedimentology and geochronology of the Condover site (p n/a). Geological Journal, 2009 DOI: 10.1002/gj.1163
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Prehistoric Whale Discovered On The West Coast Of Sweden

2009-06-12T12:08:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 8, 2009) — The skeleton of a whale that died around 10,000 years ago has been found in connection with the extension of the E6 motorway in Strömstad. The whale bones are now being examined by researchers at the University of Gothenburg who, among other things, want to ascertain whether the find is the mystical "Swedenborg whale".

Similar to the "Swedenborg whale"
There are currently four species of right whale. What is particularly interesting is that the size and shape of the whale bones resemble those of a fifth species: the mystical "Swedenborg whale", first described by the scientist Emmanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century.
"Bones from what is believed to be Swedenborg's right whale have previously been found in western Sweden. However, determining the species of whale bones found in earth is complicated and there is no definitive conclusion on whether the whale actually existed, it could equally well be a myth," says zoologist Thomas Dahlgren and his colleague Leif Jonsson.
DNA tests conducted
To determine the species of whale that has been found Thomas Dahlgren has conducted DNA tests that are to be analysed in conjunction with researchers at the Natural History Museum in London. The whale bones are interesting in several respects. The fragments of bone were collected in a clay deposit and remains of marine organisms that today are also endangered species were found around them.
"The hunt for the large whale species, which led to the extinction of the Atlantic grey whale and perhaps the Swedenborg whale, may also have caused the extinction of a large number of species that are dependent on whale carcasses for their survival," says Thomas Dahlgren.
Preserved in clay
The whale bones are thought to be around 10,000 years old and were found 75 metres above sea level, but in a site that at that time was located out on the coast. It is conjectured that the bones have been preserved for such a long time as they were surrounded by fine, oxygen-free clay. The largest whale bone, approximately 2.5 metres long, is part of a jawbone. Among the smaller bones is a vertebra. Discussions are underway on whether the bones can be put in order and potentially put on public display.
Facts about the Swedenborg whale (Balaena swedenbo´rgii)
The whale species is believed to have existed in the North Sea from the period when the inland ice melted until about 8,000 years ago, and subsequently to have died out. Ten collections of bones from the species have been found in the west of Sweden. However, there is speculation that the bones have been mistaken for other species, and that the Swedenborg whale never existed. Source: Swedish National Encyclopedia
Adapted from materials provided by University of Gothenburg.

Neolithic Age: Prehistoric Complex Including Two 6,000-year-old Tombs Discovered In Britain

2009-06-12T12:05:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — A prehistoric complex including two 6,000-year-old tombs representing some of the earliest monuments built in Britain has been discovered by a team led by a Kingston University archaeologist. Dr Helen Wickstead and her colleagues were stunned and delighted to find the previously undiscovered Neolithic tombs, also known as long barrows, at a site at Damerham, Hampshire.

Some artefacts, including fragments of pottery and flint and stone tools, have already been recovered and later in the summer a team of volunteers will make a systematic survey of the site, recovering and recording any artefacts that have been brought to the surface by ploughing.
Dr Wickstead said that further work would help to reveal more about the Neolithic era. “We hope that scientific methods will allow us to record these sites before they are completely eroded,” she said. “If we can excavate, we’ll be able to say a lot more about Neolithic people in that area and find out things like who was buried there, what kinds of lives they led, and what the environment was like six thousand years ago.”
She said the find was particularly rare because it was close to Cranborne Chase, one of the most thoroughly researched prehistoric areas in Europe. “I was really excited. It’s rare to find sites of this kind and the tombs are likely to be of national importance,” said Dr Wickstead. ”What’s really extraordinary is the location – it’s one of the most famous prehistoric landscapes, a mecca for prehistorians, and you would have thought the archaeological world would have gone over it with a fine tooth comb.”
Dr Wickstead, a visiting researcher in the Faculty of Science, is also project manager of Damerham Archaeology Project, an educational body set up last year to discover more about the archaeology of the area around Damerham village.
The importance of the site at Damerham first emerged in 2003 when English Heritage spotted crop marks – which can indicate buried archaeological sites - on aerial photographs of the area. Dr Wickstead volunteered to begin geophysical tests of the area and it was while her team was planning the work that Martyn Barber, a member of the Damerham Archaeology Project, looked at a Windows Live Map of the area to find the car park where he was due to meet his colleagues and was astonished to see another tomb a few hundred metres from the first. “To find any new monuments of this date still visible as humps on the ground is unusual,” said Dr Wickstead, “But to find two is fantastic – we were flabbergasted.”
Work on the site is in its early stages but Dr Wickstead said the tombs may contain human bones, while nearby there are cropmark traces of some larger circular enclosures which may have been built at the same time as the prehistoric monument at Stonehenge, which is 15 miles away.
In Neolithic times, a ritual burial involved leaving a body out so the flesh would decay. Some of the bones were later put in a tomb, or relatives may even have kept some bones as a special talisman. ”We don’t know whether these sites contained chambers with bones in them - some long barrows never contained bones at all, rather like cenotaphs today. We may also find that any chambers have been destroyed by ploughing – only by excavating could we find out for sure,” said Dr Wickstead.
She said her team were sensitive to the emotions stirred by discovering human remains. “The recovery of ancient human remains is always handled sensitively,” said Dr Wickstead. “We feel respect for the dead people we study, and we treat their remains,with care.”
Adapted from materials provided by Kingston University, via AlphaGalileo.

Archeological Evidence Of Human Activity Found Beneath Lake Huron

2009-06-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.

The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period.
"This is the first time we've identified structures like these on the lake bottom," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology and professor in the Department of Anthropology. "Scientifically, it's important because the entire ancient landscape has been preserved and has not been modified by farming, or modern development. That has implications for ecology, archaeology and environmental modeling."
A paper about the findings is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors are O'Shea and Guy Meadows, director of the Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories and a professor in the departments of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences.
O'Shea and Meadows found features that they believe to be hunting pits, camps, caribou drive lanes and stone piles used to attract the caribou to the drive lanes. Drive lanes are long rows of rocks used to channel caribou into ambushes. The 1,148-foot structure they believe is a drive lane closely resembles one on Victoria Island in the Canadian subarctic.
The hunting formations are on the 10-mile-wide Alpena-Amberley ridge that stretches more than 100 miles from Point Clark, Ontario to Presque Isle, Michigan. The ridge was a bridge between 10,000 and 7,500 years ago when water levels were much lower. Its surface is relatively unspoiled, unlike coastal areas where scientists believe other archeological sites exist. These coastal sites would now be deeply covered in sediment, so they're often considered lost forever.
Scientists have hypothesized for some time that the ridge might hold signs of ancient occupations. But they didn't know what signs to look for. O'Shea and Meadows zeroed in on caribou-hunting structures after considering the region's climate at the time, which would have been similar to the subarctic. Subarctic hunters are known to utilize caribou drive lanes.
The U-M researchers then narrowed down where to look for these structures by modeling the lake ridge as it would have been when it was dry. They worked with a Robert Reynolds a professor of computer scientist at Wayne State University to reconstruct the ancient environment and then simulate caribou migrations across the corridor. Based on this, they picked three spots to examine.
O'Shea and Meadows used U-M's new, cutting-edge survey vessel Blue Traveler, sonar equipment and underwater remote-operated vehicles with video cameras to survey these areas.
"The combination of these state-of-the art tools have made these underwater archeological investigations possible," Meadows said. "Without any one of these advanced tools, this discovery would not have happened."
Archaeologist will begin examining these areas this summer.
The Paleo-Indian and early Archaic periods are poorly known in the Great Lakes region because most of their sites are thought to have been lost beneath the lakes. Yet they are also times of major shifts in culture and the environment.
The Paleo-Indians were nomadic and pursued big game, O'Shea said. With the Archaic period, communities were more settled, with larger populations, a broad spectrum economy, and new long distance trade and ceremonial connections.
"Without the archeological sites from this intermediate time period, you can't tell how they got from point A to point B, or Paleo-Indian to Archaic," O'Shea said. "This is why the discovery of sites preserved beneath the lakes is so significant."
Perhaps more exciting than the hunting structures themselves is the hope they bring that intact settlements are preserved on the lake bottom. These settlements could contain organic artifacts that deteriorate in drier, acidic soils on land.
The research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Journal reference:
. Evidence for early hunters beneath the Great Lakes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 8, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

Fossil Bone Bed Helps Reconstruct Life Along California's Ancient Coastline

2009-06-12T11:51:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 10, 2009) — In the famed Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield, Calif., shark teeth as big as a hand and weighing a pound each, intermixed with copious bones from extinct seals and whales, seem to tell of a 15-million-year-old killing ground.

Yet, new research by a team of paleontologists from the University of California, Berkeley, the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and the University of Utah paints a less catastrophic picture. Instead of a sudden die-off, the researchers say that the bone bed is a 700,000-year record of normal life and death, kept free of sediment by unusual climatic conditions between 15 million and 16 million years ago.
The team's interpretation of the fossils and the geology to establish the origins of the bone bed, the richest and most extensive marine deposit of bones in the world, are presented in the June 2009 issue of the journal Geology.
The mix of shark bones and teeth, turtle shells three times the size of today's leatherbacks, and ancient whale, seal, dolphin and fish skeletons, comprise a unique six-to-20-inch-thick layer of fossil bones, 10 miles of it exposed, that covers nearly 50 square miles just outside and northeast of Bakersfield.
Since the bed's discovery in the 1850s, paleontologists have battled over an obvious question: How did the bones get there? Was this a killing ground for megalodon, a 40-foot version of today's great white shark? Was it a long-term breeding area for seals and other marine mammals, like Mexico's Scammon's lagoon is for the California gray whale? Did a widespread catastrophe, like a red tide or volcanic eruption, lead to a massive die-off?
The new and extensive study of the fossils and the geology of Sharktooth Hill tells a less dramatic story, but an important one, for understanding the origin of rich fossil accumulations, said Nicholas Pyenson, a former UC Berkeley graduate student who is now a post-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia.
"If you look at the geology of this fossil bed, it's not intuitive how it formed," Pyenson said. "We really put together all lines of evidence, with the fossil evidence being a big part of it, to obtain a snapshot of that period of time."
Pyenson and his colleagues, totaling five UC Berkeley Ph.D.s and UC Berkeley integrative biology professor Jere Lipps, hope that the study will draw renewed attention to the bone bed, which Lipps said needs protection even though a small portion of it was added to the National Natural Landmark registry in 1976.
"This deposit, if properly developed, would look just like Dinosaur National Monument," said Lipps, referring to a popular park in Colorado and Utah. "(Sharktooth Hill) is actually much more extensive, and the top of the bone bed has complete, articulated skeletons of seals and other marine mammals."
One 12-foot-long fossil seal skeleton that Lipps helped excavate during the 50 years he has visited the bone bed was mounted and displayed for decades at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), which houses thousands of fossils excavated from the Sharktooth Hill deposits during expeditions in the 1960s and 1980s. Other collections are in the California Academy of Sciences, San Diego Natural History Museum, Buena Vista Museum of Natural History in Bakersfield, and UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), where students over the years have made studies of the bone bed's extinct sea turtles, sharks, marine mammals and seabirds. Lipps is a faculty curator in the UCMP.
The paper's other coauthors - all of whom obtained their Ph.D.s from UC Berkeley - are Randall B. Irmis, now an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah, and Lawrence G. Barnes, Edward D. Mitchell Jr. and Samuel A. McLeod of NHM's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology.
When the bone bed formed between 15,900,000 and 15,200,000 years ago, the climate was warming, sea level was at a peak, California's Central Valley was an inland sea dubbed the Temblor Sea and the emerging Sierra Nevada was shoreline. By closely studying the geology of the Sharktooth Hill area, the paleontologists determined that it was part of an underwater shelf in a large embayment, directly opposite a wide opening to the sea.
Pyenson and Irmis examined some 3,000 fossilized bone and teeth specimens in the collections of many museums, including the NHM and UCMP, and they and Lipps also cut out a meter-square section of the bone bed, complete with the rock layers above and below, and transported it to UC Berkeley for study.
Below the bone bed, they found several feet of mudstone interlaced with shrimp burrows, typical of ocean floor sediment several hundred to several thousand feet below the surface. The bone bed itself averaged 200 bones per square meter, most of them larger bones, with almost no sediment. Most were disarticulated, as if the animal carcasses had decayed and their bones had been scattered by currents.
"The bones look a bit rotten," Lipps said, "as if they lay on the seafloor for a long time and were abraded by water with sand in it." Many bones had manganese nodules and growths, which form on bones that sit for long periods in sea water before being covered by sediment.
Toward the top of the bone bed, some articulated skeletons of seals and whales were found, while in the layer above the bone bed, most skeletons were articulated and encased in sediment.
The team's conclusion is that the climatic conditions were such that currents carried sediment around the bone beds for 100,000 to 700,000 years, during which time bones remained exposed on the ocean floor and accumulated in a big and shifting pile.
Given the rarity of bones marked by shark bites, plus the occurrence of terrestrial animals such as tapirs and horses that must have washed out to sea, predation by sharks like Carcharocles megalodon seems unlikely to have been the major source of the bone bed, the authors wrote. Because of few young or juvenile specimens, the team also discounted the hypothesis that this was a breeding ground for early seals such as Allodesmus. The absence of volcanic ash makes a volcanic catastrophe unlikely, while the presence of land mammal fossils makes red tide an unlikely cause.
"These animals were dying over the whole area, but no sediment deposition was going on, possibly related to rising sea levels that snuffed out silt and sand deposition or restricted it to the very near-shore environment," Pyenson said. "Once sea level started going down, then more sediment began to erode from near shore."
Pyenson noted that, while bone beds around the world occur in diverse land and marine environments, the team's analysis of the Sharktooth Hill Bone Bed could have implications for other fossil-rich marine deposits.
The work was funded by UCMP and UC Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology, as well as by grants from the Geological Society of America and the American Museum of Natural History, and graduate fellowships from the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Berkeley.

High Arctic Mammals Wintered In Darkness 53 Million Years Ago

2009-06-05T07:23:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 1, 2009) — Ancestors of tapirs and ancient cousins of rhinos living above the Arctic Circle 53 million years ago endured six months of darkness each year in a far milder climate than today that featured lush, swampy forests, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Jaelyn Eberle said the study shows several varieties of prehistoric mammals as heavy as 1,000 pounds each lived on what is today Ellesmere Island near Greenland on a summer diet of flowering plants, deciduous leaves and aquatic vegetation. But in winter's twilight they apparently switched over to foods like twigs, leaf litter, evergreen needles and fungi, said Eberle, curator of fossil vertebrates at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and chief study author.
The study has implications for the dispersal of early mammals across polar land bridges into North America and for modern mammals that likely will begin moving north if Earth's climate continues to warm. A paper on the subject co-authored by Henry Fricke of Colorado College in Colorado Springs and John Humphrey of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden appears in the June issue of Geology.
The team used an analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes extracted from the fossil teeth of three varieties of mammals from Ellesmere Island -- a hippo-like, semi-aquatic creature known as Coryphodon, a second, smaller ancestor of today's tapirs and a third rhino-like mammal known as brontothere. Animal teeth are among the most valuable fossils in the high Arctic because they are extremely hard and better able to survive the harsh freeze-thaw cycles that occur each year, Eberle said.
Telltale isotopic signatures of carbon from enamel layers that form sequentially during tooth eruption allowed the team to pinpoint the types of plant materials consumed by the mammals as they ate their way across the landscape through the seasons, Eberle said.
"We were able to use carbon signatures preserved in the tooth enamel to show that these mammals did not migrate or hibernate," said Eberle. "Instead, they lived in the high Arctic all year long, munching on some unusual things during the dark winter months." The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
An analysis of oxygen isotopes from the fossil teeth helped determine seasonal changes in surface drinking water tied to precipitation and temperature, providing additional climate information, said Eberle. The results point to warm, humid summers and mild winters in the high Arctic 53 million years ago, where temperatures probably ranged from just above freezing to near 70 degrees Fahrenheit, Eberle said.
The environment on central Ellesmere Island, located at about 80 degrees north latitude, was part of a much larger circumpolar Arctic region at the time, she said. It probably was similar to swampy cypress forests in the southeast United States today and still contains fossil tree stumps as large as washing machines, Eberle said.
On central Ellesmere Island in today's high Arctic -- a polar desert that features tundra, permafrost, ice sheets, sparse vegetation and a few small mammals -- the temperature ranges from roughly minus 37 degrees F in winter to 48 degrees F in summer and is the coldest, driest environment on Earth. There is sunlight in the high Arctic between October and February, and the midnight sun is present from mid-April through the end of August.
The year-round presence of mammals such as the hippo-like Coryphodon, tapirs and brontotheres in the high Arctic was a "behavioral prerequisite" for their eventual dispersal across high-latitude land bridges that geologists believe linked Asia and Europe with North America, Eberle said. Their dietary chemical signatures, portly shapes and fossil evidence for babies and juveniles in the Arctic preclude the idea of long, seasonal migrations to escape the winter darkness, she said.
"In order for mammals to have covered the great distances across land bridges that once connected the continents, they would have required the ability to inhabit the High Arctic year-round in proximity to these land bridges," Eberle said.
Instead, the animals likely made their way south from the Arctic in minute increments over millions of years as the climate shifted. "This study may provide the behavioral smoking gun for how modern groups of mammals like ungulates -- ancestors of today's horses and cattle -- and true primates arrived in North America," said Eberle, also an assistant professor in CU-Boulder's geological sciences department.
The surprising menagerie of Arctic creatures during the early Eocene epoch, which lasted from roughly 50 million to 55 million years ago, first became evident in 1975 when a team led by Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg discovered fossil alligator jaw bones. Since then, fossils of aquatic turtles, giant tortoises, snakes and even flying lemurs -- one of the earliest forms of primates -- have been found on Ellesmere Island, said Eberle.
The new Geology study also foreshadows the impacts of continuing global warming on Arctic plants and animals, Eberle said. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as those at mid-latitudes as greenhouse gases build up in Earth's atmosphere from rising fossil-fuel burning, and air temperatures over Greenland have risen by more than 7 degrees F since 1991, according to climate scientists.
"We are hypothesizing that lower-latitude mammals will migrate north as the temperatures warm in the coming centuries and millennia," she said. If temperatures ever warm enough in the future to rival the Eocene, there is the possibility of new intercontinental migrations by mammals."
Because the oldest known tapir fossils are from the Arctic, there is the possibility that some prehistoric mammals could have evolved in the circumpolar Arctic and then dispersed through Asia, Europe and North America, said Eberle. "We may have to re-think the world of the early Eocene, when all of the Arctic land masses were connected in a supercontinent of sorts," she said.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

New Hominid 12 Million Years Old Found In Spain, With 'Modern' Facial Features

2009-06-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 2, 2009) — Researchers have discovered a fossilized face and jaw from a previously unknown hominoid primate genus in Spain dating to the Middle Miocene era, roughly 12 million years ago. Nicknamed "Lluc," the male bears a strikingly "modern" facial appearance with a flat face, rather than a protruding one. The finding sheds important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salvador Moyà-Solà, director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and colleagues present evidence for the new genus and species, dubbed Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The scientific name is derived from the region where the fossil was found (l’Anoia) and also from its "modern" facial morphology, characterized by a very short face.
The research team at the ICP also includes collaborator David M. Alba, predoctoral researcher Sergio Almécija, postdoctoral researcher Isaac Casanovas, researcher Meike Köhler, postdoctoral researcher Soledad De Esteban, collaborator Josep M. Robles, curator Jordi Galindo, and predoctoral researcher Josep Fortuny.
Their findings are based on a partial cranium that preserves most of the face and the associated mandible. The cranium was unearthed in 2004 in the fossil-rich area of Abocador de Can Mata (els Hostalets de Pierola, l’Anoia, Barcelona), where remains of other fossilized hominid species have been found. Preparing the fossil for study was a complicated process, due to the fragility of the remains. But once the material was available for analysis, the results were surprising: The specimen (IPS43000) combined a set of features that, until now, had never been found in the fossil record.
Anoiapithecus displays a very modern facial morphology, with a muzzle prognathism (i.e., protrusion of the jaw) so reduced that, within the family Hominidae, scientists can only find comparable values within the genus Homo, whereas the remaining great apes are notoriously more prognathic (i.e., having jaws that project forward markedly). The extraordinary resemblance does not indicate that Anoiapithecus has any relationship with Homo, the researchers note. However, the similarity might be a case of evolutionary convergence, where two species evolving separately share common features.
Lluc's discovery may also hold an important clue to the geographical origin of the hominid family. Some scientists have suspected that a group of primitive hominoids known as kenyapithecines (recorded from the Middle Miocene of Africa and Eurasia) might have been the ancestral group that all hominids came from. The detailed morphological study of the cranial remains of Lluc showed that, together with the modern anatomical features of hominids (e.g., nasal aperture wide at the base, high zygomatic rood, deep palate), it displays a set of primitive features, such as thick dental enamel, teeth with globulous cusps, very robust mandible and very procumbent premaxilla. These features characterize a group of primitive hominoids from the African Middle Miocene, known as afropithecids.
Interestingly, in addition to having a mixture of hominid and primitive afropithecid features, Lluc displays other characteristics, such as a very anterior position of the zygomatic, a very strong mandibular torus and, especially, a very reduced maxillary sinus. These are features shared with kenyapithecines believed to have dispersed outside the African continent and colonized the Mediterranean region, by about 15 million years ago.
In other words, the researchers speculate, hominids might have originally radiated in Eurasia from kenyapithecine ancestors of African origin. Later on, the ancestors of African great apes and humans would have dispersed again into Africa -- the so-called "into Africa" theory, which remains controversial. However, the authors do not completely rule out the possibility that pongines (orangutans and related forms) and hominines (African apes and humans) separately evolved in Eurasia and Africa, respectively, from different kenyapithecine ancestors.
The project at els Hostalets de Pierola is continuing and, the researchers anticipate, more fossil remains will be found in the future that will provide key information to test their hypotheses.
Journal reference:
Salvador Moyà-Solà, David M. Alba, Sergio Almécija, Isaac Casanovas-Vilar, Meike Köhler, Soledad De Esteban-Trivigno, Josep M. Robles, Jordi Galindo, and Josep Fortuny. A unique Middle Miocene European hominoid and the origins of the great ape and human clade. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811730106
Adapted from materials provided by Barcelona, Universitat Autònoma de.

Ancient Mammals Shifted Diets As Climate Changed

2009-06-05T07:09:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (June 3, 2009) — A new University of Florida study shows mammals change their dietary niches based on climate-driven environmental changes, contradicting a common assumption that species maintain their niches despite global warming.

Led by Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Larisa DeSantis, researchers examined fossil teeth from mammals at two sites representing different climates in Florida: a glacial period about 1.9 million years ago and a warmer, interglacial period about 1.3 million years ago. The researchers found that interglacial warming resulted in dramatic changes to the diets of animal groups at both sites.
"When people are modeling future mammal distributions, they're assuming that the niches of mammals today are going to be the same in the future," DeSantis said. "That's a huge assumption."
Co-author Robert Feranec, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the New York State Museum, said scientists cannot predict what species will do based on their current ecology.
"The study definitively shows that climate change has an effect on ecosystems and mammals, and that the responses are much more complex than we might think," Feranec said.
The two sites in the study, both on Florida's Gulf Coast, have been excavated quite extensively, DeSantis said. During glacial periods, lower sea levels nearly doubled Florida's width, compared with interglacial periods. But because of Florida's low latitude, no ice sheets were present during the glacial period. Despite the lack of glaciers in Florida, the two sites show dramatic ecological changes occurred between the two periods.
Both sites include some of the same animal groups, allowing DeSantis, Feranec and Bruce MacFadden, Florida Museum curator of vertebrate paleontology, to clarify how mammals and their environments responded to interglacial warming.
The research examined carbon and oxygen isotopes within tooth enamel to understand the diets of medium to large mammals, including pronghorn, deer, llamas, peccaries, tapirs, horses, mastodons, mammoths and gomphotheres, a group of extinct elephant-like animals.
Differences in how plants photosynthesize give them distinct carbon isotope ratios. For example, trees and shrubs process carbon dioxide differently than warm-season grasses, resulting in different carbon isotope ratios. These differences are incorporated in mammalian tooth enamel, allowing scientists to determine the diets of fossil mammals. Lower ratio values suggest a browsing diet (trees and shrubs) while a higher ratio suggests a grazing diet (grasses).
Animals at the glacial site were predominantly browsing on trees and shrubs, while some of those same animals at the warmer interglacial site became mixed feeders that also grazed on grasses. Increased consumption of grasses by mixed feeders and elephant-like mammals indicates Florida's grasslands likely expanded during interglacial periods.
Tooth enamel locks in the chemical signatures of the plants and water an animal consumes, allowing paleontologists to understand the diets and associated climate of fossil specimens that are millions of years old. To find these signatures, researchers run samples of tooth enamel through a mass spectrometer.
DeSantis and her collaborators analyzed enamel samples from 115 fossil teeth. For two of the specimens she took serial samples, small samples that run perpendicular to the growth axis and give insight into how the diet and climate changed over a specific period of time.
"That's one of the cool things about using mammal teeth," she said. "We can actually look at how variable the climate was within a year, millions of years ago."
The study highlights the importance of the fossil record in understanding long-term ecological responses to changes over time, DeSantis said. While ecological studies of modern impacts can cover only limited spans of time, "this study emphasizes the importance of using the fossil record to look at how mammals and other animals responded to climate change in the past, also helping us gain a better understanding of how they might respond in the future."
Journal reference:
DeSantis LRG, Feranec RS, MacFadden BJ. Effects of Global Warming on Ancient Mammalian Communities and Their Environments. PLoS ONE, 4(6): e5750 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005750
Adapted from materials provided by University of Florida.

Neandertals Sophisticated And Fearless Hunters, New Analysis Shows

2009-05-14T13:32:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 14, 2009) — Neandertals, the 'stupid' cousins of modern humans were capable of capturing the most impressive animals. This indicates that Neandertals were anything but dim. Dutch researcher Gerrit Dusseldorp analysed their daily forays for food to gain insights into the complex behaviour of the Neandertal. His analysis revealed that the hunting was very knowledge intensive.

Although it is now clear that Neandertals were hunters and not scavengers, their exact hunting methods are still something of a mystery. Dusseldorp investigated just how sophisticated the Neandertals' hunting methods really were. His analysis of two archaeological sites revealed that Neandertals in warm forested areas preferred to hunt solitary game but that in colder, less forested areas they preferred to hunt the more difficult to capture herding animals.
The Neandertals were not easily intimated by their game. Rhinoceroses, bisons and even predators such as the brown bear were all on their menu. Dusseldorp established that just as for modern humans, the environment and the availability of food determined the choice of prey and the hunting method adopted. If the circumstances allowed it, Neandertals lived in large groups and even the most attractive and difficult to catch prey were within their reach.
Coordination and communication
Although herding animals are difficult to surprise and isolate, many such game lived on the open steppes. This large supply attracted large groups of Neandertals. That the Neandertals were capable of hunting down such elusive game demonstrates that they had good coordination skills and could communicate well with each other.
Each prey has a specific cost-benefit scenario. For example, game that are more difficult to catch yield more calories and have a more usable, thick fleece. Dusseldorp used these data to examine the Neandertal's preferences. He also analysed the prey of hyenas in the same manner. Hyenas were important competitors of Neandertals as they had a similar dietary pattern.
Dusseldorp demonstrated that Neandertals, thanks to their intelligence, even surpassed hyenas at capturing the strongest game. All things being considered, the Neandertals were skilled and highly intelligent hunters. So the idea that Neandertals were brute musclemen can be dismissed.
This study was part of NWO project "Thoughtful Hunters? The Archaeology of Neandertal Communication and Cognition." Dusseldorp is continuing his research with a postdoc position in Johannesburg. There he shall focus on the modern humans that evolved in Africa.
Adapted from materials provided by Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, via AlphaGalileo.

Ivory sculpture in Germany could be world's oldest

2009-05-14T00:14:00.001-07:00

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The Venus of Hohle Fels. Foto: H. Jensen. Copyright: Universität Tübingen
(PhysOrg.com) -- The 2008 excavations at Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany recovered a female figurine carved from mammoth ivory from the basal Aurignacian deposit. This figurine, which is the earliest depiction of a human, and one of the oldest known examples of figurative art worldwide, was made at least 35,000 years ago. This discovery radically changes our views of the context and meaning of the earliest Paleolithic art.

Between September 5 and 15, 2008 excavators at Hohle Fels near the town of Schelklingen recovered the six fragments of carved ivory that form the Venus. The importance of the discovery became apparent on September 9 when an excavator recovered the main piece of the sculpture that represents the majority of the torso. The figurine lay about 3 meters below the current surface of the cave in an area about 20 meters from the cave’s entrance. The finds come from a single quarter meter and were recovered from within 8 cm in the vertical dimension. The Venus from Hohle Fels is nearly complete with only the left arm and shoulder missing. The excellent preservation and the close stratigraphic association of the pieces of the figurine indicate that the Venus experienced little disturbance after deposition.
The figurine originates from a red-brown, clayey silt at the base of about one meter of Aurignacian deposits.The Venus lay in pieces next to a number of limestone blocks with dimension of several decimeters. The find density in the area of the Venus is moderately high with much flint knapping debris, worked bone and ivory, bones of horse, reindeer, cave bear, mammoth, ibex, as well as burnt bone.
Radiocarbon dates from this horizon span the entire range from 31,000 - 40,000 years ago. The fact that the venus is overlain by five Aurignacian horizons that contain a dozen stratigraphically intact anthropogenic features with a total thickness of 70 - 120 cm, suggests that figurine is indeed of an age corresponding to the start of the Aurignacian around 40,000 years ago.
Although much ivory working debris has been recovered from the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels and the nearby site of Geißenklösterle, this sculpture is the first example of figurative art recovered from the basal Aurignacian in Swabia. The discovery of the Venus of Hohle Fels refutes claims that figurative representations and other symbolic artifacts first appear the later phases of the Swabian Aurignacian.
The Venus shows a range of entirely unique features as well as a number of characteristics present in later female figurines. The Venus of Hohle Fels lacks a head. Instead an off-centered, but carefully carved ring is located above the broad shoulders of the figurine. This ring, despite being weathered, preserves polish suggesting that the figurine was worn as a pendant. Beneath the shoulders, which are roughly as thick as they are wide, large breasts project forward. The figurine has two short arms with two carefully carved hands with visible fingers resting on the upper part of the stomach below the breasts.

The Venus has a short and squat form with a waist that is slightly narrower than the broad shoulders and wide hips. Multiple deeply incised horizontal lines cover the abdomen from the area below the breast to the pubic triangle. Several of these horizontal lines extend to the back of the figurine and are suggestive of clothing or a wrap of some sort. Microscopic images show that these incisions were created by repeatedly cutting along the same lines with sharp stone tools.

The legs of the Venus are short and pointy. The buttocks and genitals are depicted in more details. The split between the two halves of the buttocks is deep and continues without interruption to the front of the figurine where the vulva is visible between the open legs. There can be no doubt that the depiction of oversized breast, exentuated buttocks and genetalia result from the deliberate exaggeration of the sexual features of the figurine. In addition to the many carefully depicted anatomical features, the surface of the Venus preserves numerous lines and deliberate markings.
Many of the features, including the emphasis on sexual attributes and lack of emphasis on the head, face and arms and legs, call to mind aspects of the numerous Venus figurines well known from the European Gravettien, which typically date between 22 and 27 ka BP. The careful depiction of the hands is reminiscent of those of Venuses including that of archetypal Venus of Willendorf, which was discovered 100 years earlier in summer of 1908. Despite the far greater age of the Venus of Hohle Fels, many of its attributes occur in various forms throughout the rich tradition of Paleolithic female representations.
The new figurine from Hohle Fels radically changes our view of origins of Paleolithic art. Prior to this discovery, animals and therianthropic imagry dominated the over two dozen figurines from the Swabian Aurignacian. Female imagry was entirely unknown. With this discovery, the notion that three dimensional female imagry developed in the Gravettian can be rejected. Also the interpretations suggesting that strong, aggressive animals or shamanic depictions dominate the Aurignacian art of Swabia, or even Europe as a whole, need to be reconsidered. Although there is a long history of debate over the meaning of Paleolithic Venuses, their clear sexual attributes suggest that they are a direct or indirect expression of fertility. The Venus of Hohle Fels provides an entirely new view of the art from the early Upper Paleolithic and reinforces the arguments that have been made for innovative cultural manifestations accompanying the rise of the Swabian Aurignacian.
While many researchers, including Nicholas Conard, assume that the Aurignacian artworks were made by early modern humans shortly after their migration into Europe, this assumption can neither be confirmed or refuted based on the available skeletal data from the Swabian caves.
The Venus of Hohle Fels forms a center piece for a major exhibit in Stuttgart, Germany, entitled Ice Age Art and Culture, which will run from September 18, 2009 - January 10, 2010.

More information: The author of the paper: A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian deposits of Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany is Nicholas J. Conard. http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Provided by Universitaet Tuebingen

New dinsour species possible in Northwestern Alberta

2009-05-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

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The discovery of a gruesome feeding frenzy that played out 73 million years ago in northwestern Alberta may also lead to the discovery of new dinosaur species in northwestern Alberta. University of Alberta student Tetsuto Miyashita and Frederico Fanti, a paleontology graduate student from Italy, made the discovery near Grande Prairie, 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.
Miyashita and Fanti came across a nesting site and found the remains of baby, plant-eating dinosaurs and the teeth of a predator. The researchers matched the teeth to a Troodon, a raptor-like dinosaur about two metres in length. This finding has opened new doors in dinosaur research on this part of the continent: "It established that dinosaurs were nesting at this high latitude," said Miyashita. "It also shows for the first time a significant number of Troodons in the area [who] hunted hatchling dinosaurs."
Over the course of two summers of field work Miyashita and Fanti began building a theory that Grande Prairie is a "missing link" between known dinosaur species that existed much further to the north and south. "Prior to this there were no localities with a variety of dinosaurs and other animals between Alaska and southern Alberta," said Myiashita. The list of new finds for the area includes armoured and thick-headed plant eaters and fossilized freshwater fish and reptiles.
Miyashita says this small pocket of previously undiscovered life could have had interactions that lead to the evolution of new species.
"New dinosaurs weren't created by interbreeding," said Miyashita. "Having a variety of dinosaurs in one area creates new ecological interactions such as competition for food and predation.
"That can lead to the evolution of a new species."
One Grande Prairie dinosaur the researchers suspect is a new species is the Duck bill. Miyashita says unlike the Duck bill found further north in Alaska, the Grande Prairie has a visible bump or crest on its forehead. The pair will go back to Grande Prairie area in 2010 to focus on finding other dinosaur species in the area.
More information: Miyashit and Fanti's work was published this month in Palaeogeoraphy, Palaeocilmatology, Palaeoecology.
Source: University of Alberta (news : web)

Method Of Repairing Cadiz’s Walls Has Hardly Changed Since The 17th Century

2009-05-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 11, 2009) — In the year 1596, a sacking at the hands of the Count of Essex almost destroyed the city of Cadiz. Since then, authorities have focused their efforts on establishing a barrier between the city and the sea, a reconstruction task which has accompanied the inhabitants of Cadiz throughout the last 400 years. The problems that Philip II encountered in halting marine erosion are similar to those that exist today, as well as the solutions.

This research project, carried out by researchers from the University of Cadiz and the Andalusian-Atlantic Coasts Department, traces a historic continuity in the tasks of maintaining and reforming Cadiz's walls. Juan José Muñoz, from the department of Applied Physics at the UOC, explains to SINC that the first mention of the city's walls, which Lord Byron baptized as the ¨Siren of the Ocean¨, was in the 13th century, along with the city's repopulation carried out by Alfonso X the Wise. In his Papal Bull of 1263, Pope Urban IV spoke to the King, referring to ¨the reparation that you are carrying out on the Hercules buildings and the restoration of the old walls in a place called Cadiz¨.
Through an exhaustive documentation labour, the authors of the project, ¨The walls of Cadiz and its struggle against the sea¨, published in the latest Revista de Obras Públicas, compared different sources from the 16th century which made reference to the construction or reinforcement processes of these defensive structures. In one of them, one of Philip II's collections officers, named Horozco, recounts the construction of ¨a new and high wall, all made of mason stone, with battlements and towers and parapets in each stretch, with a castle and a fortress of ashlar stone, situated on some very old and very strong foundations¨.
After the city resisted numerous attacks, among which figure those carried out by adversaries as feared as Redbeard or Admiral Drake, in 1596, the Count of Essex managed to overcome the scarce resistance offered by Cadiz, and disembarked through the isthmus which joined the city with the island of San Fernando. According to Muñoz, ¨As a result of the city's destruction, Philip II decided to reconstruct it, after ruling out its abandon and reconversion into a prison¨. That process brought to light, through the writings of the period, the use of oyster stone in its construction, a shell-fish sandstone from the region extracted from the quarry waters of Puerto Real which has been used throughout the centuries.
Even though the progressive construction and reinforcement of the walls and bastions made attacks on the city less frequent, the sea and its sudden attacks have traditionally been the greatest and most constant enemy of this defensive line. Restoration labours have been carried out in an almost permanent fashion. According to Muñoz, ¨this is so much the case, that the authors on many occasions have a feeling of déjà vu when observing old photographs¨.
Of course, progress has given erosion and undermining solutions a greater capacity in site positioning and material resistance in respect of previous centuries, but these are almost the only differences.
The walls of San Rafael and San Miguel, known as the ¨gale walls¨, suffered much more from the elements than from any army. Its remodelling was constant between the 17th and 19th centuries, a time in which many of the grand ideas which are applied up to today were developed, such as a breakwater step at the foot of the wall, forming a dike with a 45º angle so that the waves would bounce off of it and hit the wall with much less force. This solution, proposed by the engineer Ignacio Sala in 1728, was improved on by Juan Cavallero (circa 1772), who proposed setting back the upper part to achieve a ¨wave-bouncing effect¨. According to the researcher, ¨the period's techniques knew the advantages of inclined planes based on granular material to dissipate energy in breaking swells¨.
Then in the 20th century, although a reinforced concrete footing attachment to the wall had been included, the restoration of the southern area of the wall was still being considered-as in previous centuries-with a defence based on blocks, whose size (which before had been calculated by a method of trial and error) began to be defined based on existing scientific-technical knowledge, according to the project.
The study indicates that ¨in 1981, engineers López, Peláez and Fages, from what was then the Headquarters of Ports and Coasts, warned that the blocks from 1949 in the Baluarte de San Roque area had rounded edges and that the swells used them as projectiles against the wall's surface¨. On this occasion, as in the 17th century, the breakwater was again used.
¨Let's take note that the breakwaters placed in previous centuries were cubic in form, very similar in size and weight to the first concrete blocks. As can be seen, the transition from one to the other is not coincidental¨, comments Juan José Muñoz. With the latest labours carried out in 1993, during which the section of the wall in front of the Cárcel Vieja was restored and where the greatest difference in respect of previous designs lay in the wall's inclination angle, a task that has occupied Cadiz during the last 400 years was completed.
Adapted from materials provided by Plataforma SINC.

Unique Roman Glass Dish Discovered At London Grave

2009-05-08T05:53:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 7, 2009) — Archeologists have discovered an exquisite Roman polychrome millefiori dish in East London, U.K. The dish is made up of hundreds of indented glass petals (the term millefiori means simply “a thousand flowers”) in an intricate repeated pattern and was found during excavations in Prescot Street, Aldgate, by L – P : Archaeology. It was highly fragmented but miraculously held together by nothing more than the earth around it.

It has been painstakingly reassembled by Museum of London Archaeology conservator Liz Goodman.
The dish is extremely rare and an unprecedented find, not only from London but from across the Western Roman empire. Originally the blue translucent petals, bordered with white, would have been embedded in a bright red opaque glass matrix. The hue was still present when the dish was uncovered, with the vermillion appearance diminishing as the water-saturated glass dried out. The red colouring can be seen around the rim. The complexity of its manufacture indicates that the dish was a highly-prized and valuable item. Beautifully crafted vessels like this were particularly in vogue in the 1st and early 2nd centuries. Dating is underway to establish the precise period of the find.
The dish formed part of the grave goods of a Roman Londoner whose cremated remains were uncovered, probably buried in a wooden container, in a cemetery in Londinium’s Eastern quarter. A number of other ceramic and glass vessels were also ranged along the sides of the casket, suggesting a rich and unusual burial.
The excavations at Prescot Street have continued the process of the recording of the extensive eastern cemetery of Roman London which, by law, lay outside the city wall. This and previous excavations have found both cremations and inhumations (burial of the body) that spanned over 400 years of Roman occupation from the late 1st to early 5th century. This burial came from an area of intense burials at the eastern end of the site where there was also a stone mausoleum, a possible funerary structure and a series of burial groups which perhaps indicate the on-going use of cemetery plots. Indeed, this particular burial had, at a later date, had another cremation burial interred on the same spot which may point to a family connection.
Liz Goodman, Museum of London Archaeology conservator said ““Piecing together and conserving such a complete artefact offered a rare and thrilling challenge. We occasionally get tiny fragments of millefiori, but the opportunity to work on a whole artefact of this nature is extraordinary. The dish is extremely fragile but the glasswork is intact and illuminates beautifully nearly two millennia after being crafted.”
Guy Hunt, Director, L – P : Archaeology said “The dig at Prescot Street produced an amazing range of Roman cemetery archaeology; it is fantastic for us that one of the many finds is such an exciting and beautiful object. It is great to be able to put an object such as this into context and to get a first hand impression of a rather wealthy east Londoner.”
About Milleflore Glass
Millefiore is a glass-working technique created from glass rods with multi coloured patterns that are only visible at the cut ends – like a stick of rock with the writing only visible once cut. These rods are created by heating and melding lengths of different coloured glass to create an individual pattern. Here, a solid red cane is set at the core with blue and white canes set around it to produce the petal effect. The small cross sections of glass rod are then used to create bigger pieces. It is a very labour intensive – and hence very exclusive – craft.
Adapted from materials provided by Museum Of London.

Small Brain Of Dwarf 'Hobbit' Explained By Hippo's Island Life

2009-05-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 8, 2009) — Ancient Madagascan hippos have shed light on the origins of the small brain of the 1-metre-tall human, known as the hobbit, scientists at the Natural History Museum report in the journal Nature May 7.

By examining the skulls of extinct Madagascan hippos, Museum scientists discovered that dwarfed mammals on islands evolved much smaller brains in relation to their body size.
So Homo floresiensis may have had a tiny brain because it lived on an island. This is something which has been at the heart of the debate of the Hobbit’s origins, whose remains were uncovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.
The team suggests that the hobbit became a dwarf after its Homo erectus ancestor became isolated on the large island of Madagascar many years ago.
‘The discovery of a small fossil human from the island of Flores with normal facial proportions but a brain the size of chimpanzee has baffled scientists,’ explained Natural History Museum palaeontologist, Dr Eleanor Weston, who led the research.
‘It could be that its skull is that of a dwarfed mammal living on an island. Looking at pygmy hippos in Madagascar, which possess exceptionally small brains for their size, suggests that the ‘hobbit’ was a dwarf resulting from its H. erectus ancestors being isolated on the island in the past.’
Analysing hippos
Madagascar has many diverse habitats and in the past, has been the home to at least 3 species of hippo.
The team studied species of extinct Madagascan hippos and their mainland ancestor, the large common hippopotamus.
One of the specimens used, from the Museum’s mammal collection, was a nearly 3000-year-old dwarf hippo skull belonging to the extinct Hippopotamus madagascariensis.
Brain calculations
Hippo brain-body scaling trends were calculated from the relationship of brain to skull size.
‘We found that the brain sizes of extinct dwarf hippos were still up to 30% smaller than you would expect by scaling down their mainland African ancestor to the dwarf’s body size’ explains Dr Weston.
‘If the hippo model is applied to a typical H. erectus ancestor the resulting brain capacity is comparable to that of H. floresiensis.’
The brain of Homo floresiensis is the smallest yet known for any hominid, at around 400 mL.
A first for brain size
Although the phenomenon of dwarfism on islands is well recognised in large mammals, an accompanying reduction in brain size, as Dr Weston and Museum palaeontologist Professor Adrian Lister found, has never been clearly demonstrated before.
Energy use of brain
It may be advantageous to the survival of animals that become isolated on islands with unique environments, not only to become dwarfs, but also to reduce the size of their brain.
‘The brain is a costly organ that uses a lot of energy,’ says Dr Weston. ‘Whatever the explanation for the tiny brain of floresiensis relative to its body size, it’s likely that the fact that it lived on an island played a significant part in its evolution,’ concludes Dr Weston.
Journal reference:
Weston et al. Insular dwarfism in hippos and a model for brain size reduction in Homo floresiensis. Nature, 2009; 459 (7243): 85 DOI: 10.1038/nature07922
Adapted from materials provided by The Natural History Museum, London.

'Hobbits' Couldn't Hustle: Feet Of Homo Floresiensis Were Primitive But Not Pathological

2009-05-06T22:51:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 6, 2009) — A detailed analysis of the feet of Homo floresiensis—the miniature hominins who lived on a remote island in eastern Indonesia until 18,000 years ago—may help settle a question hotly debated among paleontologists: how similar was this population to modern humans?

A new research paper, featured on the cover of the May 7 issue of Nature, may answer this question. While the so-called "hobbits" walked on two legs, several features of their feet were so primitive that their gait was not efficient.
"The hobbits were bipedal, but they walked in a different way from modern humans," explains William Harcourt-Smith, a Research Scientist in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and an author on the paper. "Their feet have a combination of human-like and more primitive early hominin traits, some of which are more akin to those in Lucy." Lucy is an early bipedal but small-brained hominin, or australopithecine, that lived in Africa 3.2 million years ago.
The "hobbits," excavated from Liang Bua Cave on the island of Flores, were first described in 2004. Known specimens range in age from 90,000 to 18,000 years old, making them contemporaneous with modern humans. This, in combination with the unusually small stature and brain size of H. floresiensis, led to considerable debate among researchers and in the press. Some consider the population a separate species, while others have assessed the fossils as pathological modern humans. But a number of recent analyses of the skull, face, and wrist have found many unusually primitive features among the "hobbits" that are more similar to chimpanzees and Australopithecus, suggesting that the Flores inhabitants represent a remnant population of early hominins.
The anatomy of the foot described in the new paper might finally answer the pathological modern vs. primitive population question. Although the foot is characteristic of a biped—being stiff and having no opposable big toe—many other traits fall outside of the range for modern humans. The H. floresiensis foot is very long in proportion to the lower limb and considerably more than half the length of the thighbone; modern human feet are relatively shorter at about half of the femur's length. The stubby big toe of the hobbits is another primitive, chimp-like trait. But the pivotal clue comes from the navicular bone, an important tarsal bone that helps form the arch in a modern human foot. The "hobbit" navicular bone is more akin to that found in great apes, which means that these hominins lacked an arch and were not efficient long-term runners.
"Arches are the hallmark of a modern human foot," explains Harcourt-Smith. "This is another strong piece of the evidence that the "hobbit" was not like us."
Researchers also assessed the pathology hypothesis by comparing "hobbit" feet to those of typical modern humans and pathological modern specimens such as pituitary dwarfs. While the pathological specimens fell well within the range of modern humans, the "hobbits" did not. This suggests that H. floresiensis was an unusual, isolated population of early hominins.
"The fossil record continues to surprise us," says William Jungers, Chairman of the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University Medical Center, and an author on the study. "H. floresiensis is either an island-dwarfed descendant of H. erectus that not only underwent body-size reduction but also extensive evolutionary reversals, or, as our analysis suggests, it represents a new species full of primitive retentions from an ancestor that dispersed out of Africa much earlier than anyone would have predicted. Either way, the implications for human evolution are profound."
In addition to Jungers and Harcourt-Smith, authors of the research paper include Roshna Wunderlich, James Madison University; Matthew Tocheri, National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution); Susan Larson, Stony Brook Medical Center; Thomas Sutikna and Rhokus Awe Due, National Research and Development Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Mike Morwood, University of Wollongong in Australia. Research was funded by grants form the Australian Research Council, the National Geographic Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Wellcome Trust, and the Leakey Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by American Museum of Natural History, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

World’s Oldest Manufactured Beads Are Older Than Previously Thought

2009-05-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 5, 2009) — A team of archaeologists has uncovered some of the world’s earliest shell ornaments in a limestone cave in Eastern Morocco. The researchers have found 47 examples of Nassarius marine shells, most of them perforated and including examples covered in red ochre, at the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt.

The fingernail-size shells, already known from 82,000-year-old Aterian deposits in the cave, have now been found in even earlier layers. While the team is still awaiting exact dates for these layers, they believe this discovery makes them arguably the earliest shell ornaments in prehistory.
The shells are currently at the centre of a debate concerning the origins of modern behaviour in early humans. Many archaeologists regard the shell bead ornaments as proof that anatomically modern humans had developed a sophisticated symbolic material culture. Up until now, Blombos cave in South Africa has been leading the ‘bead race’ with 41 Nassarius shell beads that can confidently be dated to 72,000 years ago.
Aside from this latest discovery unearthing an even greater number of beads, the research team says the most striking aspect of the Taforalt discoveries is that identical shell types should appear in two such geographically distant regions. As well as Blombos, there are now at least four other Aterian sites in Morocco with Nassarius shell beads. The newest evidence, in a paper by the authors to be published in the next few weeks in the Journal of Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that the Aterian in Morocco dates back to at least 110,000 years ago.
Research team leader, Professor Nick Barton, from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: ‘These new finds are exciting because they show that bead manufacturing probably arose independently in different cultures and confirms a long suspected pattern that humans with modern symbolic behaviour were present from a very early stage at both ends of the continent, probably as early as 110,000 years ago.’
Also leading the research team Dr Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, from the Institut National des Sciences de l’Archéologie et du Patrimoine in Morocco, said: ‘The archaeological and chronological contexts of the Taforalt discoveries suggest a much longer tradition of bead-making than previously suspected, making them perhaps the earliest such ornaments in the world.’
Archaeologists widely believe that humans in Europe first started fashioning purely symbolic objects about 40,000 years ago, but in Africa this latest evidence shows that humans were engaged in this activity at least 40,000 years before this.
Excavations in April 2009 also continued in the upper levels of Taforalt to investigate a large well-preserved cemetery dating to around 12,500 years ago. The project, co-ordinated by Dr Louise Humphrey, from the Natural History Museum in London, has found adult as well as infant burials at the site. The infant burials throw an interesting light on early burial traditions as many of the infants seem to be buried singly beneath distinctive blue stones with the undersides smeared with red ochre. By contrast, studies by Dr Elaine Turner of the Römisch Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, show that the adults’ grave pits were generally marked by the horn cores of wild barbary sheep. Taforalt remains the largest necropolis of the Late Stone Age period in North Africa presently under excavation.
Professor Barton said: ‘Taking our new discovery of the shell beads at Taforalt, together with the discoveries of the decorated burials excavated by Dr Louise Humphrey, it shows that the cave must have retained its special interest for different groups of people over many thousands of years. One of its unique attractions and a focal point of interest seems to have been a freshwater spring that rises next to the cave.’
Adapted from materials provided by University of Oxford.

Dinosaur-Bird Link: Ancient Proteins Preserved In Soft Tissue From 80 Million-Year-Old Hadrosaur

2009-05-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (May 1, 2009) — Ancient protein dating back 80 million years to the Cretaceous geologic period has been preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues of a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, according to a study in the May 1 issue of Science.

Led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and North Carolina State University (NCSU), the research support earlier results from analyses suggesting that collagen protein survived in the bones of a well preserved Tyrannosaurus rex, and offer robust new evidence supporting previous conclusions that birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related.
In April 2007 John Asara, PhD, Director of the Mass Spectrometry Core at BIDMC, together with NCSU paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, PhD, published two papers in Science describing their discovery that collagen extracted from bone fragments of a 68-million-year-old T. rex closely matched the amino acid sequences of modern day chickens. Not surprisingly, the widely publicized findings created a great deal of controversy.
"With this new paper, we hoped to show that our T. rex discovery was not a unique occurrence," notes Asara, who is also an Instructor in Pathology at Harvard Medical School. "This is the second dinosaur species we've examined and helps verify that our first discovery was not just a one-hit wonder. Our current study was the collaborative effort of a number of independent laboratories, whose findings collectively add up to a robust conclusion."
At the heart of the controversy is the idea that ancient protein can exist at all. When an animal dies, protein immediately begins to degrade and, in the case of fossils, is slowly replaced by mineral, a substitution process assumed to be complete by 1 million years. But with this latest evidence, it appears that some proteins do indeed have real staying power.
"We wound up identifying nearly double the number of amino acids we recovered in the T. rex study," says Asara. "The sequences displayed high spectral quality and the interpretations were of high confidence."
The two scientists had decided to collaborate again after Schweitzer and paleontologist Jack Horner of Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies recovered the 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus canadensis femur bone in the summer of 2007 and observed that it appeared to be even better preserved than the original T. rex fossil.
Schweitzer's initial laboratory analyses confirmed this observation: After being subjected to demineralization, the B. canadensis bone fragments showed marked preservation of original tissues and molecules, with microstructures resembling soft, transparent vessels, cells and fibrous matrix – even though the fossil was much older than the T. rex sample.
"Deep burial in sandstone seems to favor exceptional preservation," notes Schweitzer, explaining that this fossil was found under approximately seven meters of sandstone in the Judith River Formation, in parts of what is now Eastern Montana.
Chemical extractions of bone and vessel were subsequently sent to the laboratories of BIDMC scientists Lewis Cantley, PhD, and Raghu Kalluri, PhD, where immunoblots and immunochemistry analyses were conducted to determine the presence of collagen protein in the samples.
"Having been a part of the T. rex study, I was curious to be part of this investigation as well," explains Cantley, Chief of the Division of Signal Transduction at BIDMC. "In view of the skepticism about the original findings, it was important to demonstrate that our findings in T. rex could be verified in another dinosaur and in other laboratories."
The results confirmed the existence of protein. "Because I am a collagen biochemist, our lab was contacted to perform an independent analysis of this new bone find," explains Kalluri, who is Chief of the Division of Matrix Biology at BIDMC. "We isolated the proteins – collagen, laminin and elastin – from the bone, and also extracted bone cells and blood vessels from this sample. Our findings demonstrated that it did contain basement membrane matrix."
In addition, In situ mass spectrometry studies conducted at Montana State University by Recep Avci and Zhiyong Suo independently verified amino acids in dinosaur tissues, including the collagen signature amino acid, hydroxylated proline.
From there, using a combination of two mass spectrometry technologies – linear ion trap and hybrid linear ion trap/orbitrap – Asara was able to improve upon the techniques he had used in analyzing both the T. rex specimen and specimens from bones of other prehistoric animals including a 300,000-year-old mammoth and mastodon.
At the beginning of the study, Asara explains, his lab used an ion trap mass spectrometer, which captures and holds peptides through time so that after the collected peptides are measured for mass they are isolated and fragmented to reveal their amino acid sequence. Then, while the study was in progress, his lab acquired a high-resolution and highly mass-accurate Orbitrap XL mass spectrometer, which was used during the second half of the analysis.
"Because it is capable of sub 2 ppm mass accuracy, the Orbitrap allowed us to make more confident sequence calls than we did in the T. rex study," Asara explains. "For example, the mass difference between a hydroxyproline amino acid residue [which is plentiful in collagen] and a leucine or isoleucine residue is only 0.0364 Da. Although this very small measurement proved to be an obstacle for the ion trap, it was not a problem for the Orbitrap." Material for mass spectrometry sequence analysis was also sent to the lab of William Lane at Harvard University and mass spectrometry sequence data were independently verified by John Cottrell, PhD, at Matrix Science in London, UK.
The end result was a total of eight collagen peptides and 149 amino acids from four different samples, sequences that held up when multiple validation steps were performed, including comparisons with synthetic peptides using a spectral comparison algorithm and statistical evaluation.
In the final portion of the study, coauthor Chris Organ, PhD, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, conducted a rigorous phylogenetic analysis of the identified sequences to determine B. canadensis' place within the evolutionary tree of animals. The B. canadensis collagen sequence data were compared to a database of collagen sequence data from 21 species of living animals and sequences from two other fossils, mastodon and T. rex. The results placed B. canadensis on the same family-tree branch with T. rex, in the same group as chicken and ostrich, and more distantly, to alligator and lizard.
"The phylogenetic analysis yielded clear results, but the placement of the extinct dinosaurs still rests on a limited amount of sequence data," notes Organ. "There is not enough sequence data to correctly parse out the relationships within Dinosauria [the group containing B. canadensis, T. rex and the two birds] but the group as a whole is well supported by the analysis, which is consistent with studies based on morphology."
Ultimately, notes Asara, "We were able to achieve these results, in part, because the mass spectrometry systems that our lab has set up for cancer research are capable of a similar concentration range – low to sub femtomole -- needed for ancient fossil protein sequencing. We hope to meet with similar success when it comes to identifying novel signaling proteins from cancerous tissues."
This study was funded, in part, through grants from the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Merck Postdoctoral Science Research Fellowship, the National Institutes of Health and the Taplin Funds for Discovery, Harvard Medical School.
In addition to Asara and Schweitzer, coauthors include BIDMC investigators Lewis Cantley, Raghu Kalluri, Lisa Freimark, Valerie Lebleu, and Michael Duncan II; Wenxia Zheng of North Carolina State University; Chris Organ, John Neveu and William Lane of Harvard University; Recep Avci, and Zhiyong Suo of Montana State University; John Horner of the Museum of the Rockies (MT); Matthew Vander Heiden of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and John Cottrell of Matrix Science, London, UK.
Journal reference:
Mary H. Schweitzer, Wenxia Zheng, Chris L. Organ, Recep Avci, Zhiyong Suo, Lisa M. Freimark, Valerie S. Lebleu, Michael B. Duncan, Matthew G. Vander Heiden, John M. Neveu, William S. Lane, John S. Cottrell, John R. Horner, Lewis C. Cantley, Raghu Kalluri, and John M. Asara. Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. canadensis. Science, 2009; 324 (5927): 626 DOI: 10.1126/science.1165069
Adapted from materials provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Prehistoric Bears Ate Everything And Anything, Just Like Modern Cousins

2009-04-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2009) — By comparing the craniodental morphology of modern bear species to that of two extinct species, researchers from the University of Málaga have discovered that the expired plantigrades were not so different from their current counterparts. The cave bear, regarded as the great herbivore of the carnivores, was actually more omnivorous than first thought.

The short-faced bear, a hypercarnivore, also ate plants depending on their availability. The work offers key insights into the evolution of the carnivore niches during the Ice Age.
The team of palaeontologists have reconstructed the trophic ecology, or eating habits, of two extinct bear species that lived during the Pleistocene (between 2.59 million and 12,000 years ago): the short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) of North America and the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) of Europe. The morphometric analysis carried out on the eight bear species in existence today has confirmed that prehistoric bears were not fussy eaters.
'Knowing what the extinct bears ate is of utmost relevance to finding out about the evolution of carnivore niches in the Pleistocene when climatic conditions were changing', explains Borja Figueirido, lead author of the study and researcher for the Ecology and Geology Department of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Málaga. Scientists have discovered that, even at that time, bears were 'great opportunists' thanks to their morphological and ecological flexibility.
The study, published recently in the Journal of Zoology, focuses on two species of prehistoric bear because scientists believed that they had disparate feeding preferences. It was presumed that the short-faced bear was a carnivore and the cave bear an herbivore; 'probably the most herbivorous species of the Ursus genus', asserts Figueirido.
'The study has revealed that the craniodental morphologies of these two bears are more suited to the omnivorous diet than the specialised diet previously put forward', the researcher points out.
Fossilised skulls, great biomarkers
The researchers studied the osteological material of the current species (skull and jaw) and the same anatomical elements of the fossilised remains of the extinct bears, conserved in various international museums.
Through a statistical analysis, the experts determined the patterns of morphological variation in bears in order to prove that, rather than ancestral/descendent relations, 'the pattern had more relation to trophic ecology than to phylogenetic heritage', highlights Figueirido.
Given the glaciations of the Pleistocene (in the Quaternary period), prehistoric bears, with morphologies similar to those of present-day omnivores, ate a bit of everything depending on the resources available to them, determined by the climatic conditions. For the palaeontologist, 'during that period there was, in principle, a wide variety of prey and vegetation available, but there was also competition amongst the predators of the time'.
Today there are cases of bears with specialised eating habits. From a morphological and ecological perspective, the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), exclusively carnivorous, and the panda bear (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), strictly herbivorous, have the greatest challenge to change their eating habits in the face of climatic change. 'Although not as specialised as that of a lion, if the few resources that the giant panda and the polar bear depend on were to disappear, their situation would be complicated', confirms Figueirido.
'The study has revealed that the craniodental morphologies of these two bears are more suited to the omnivorous diet than the specialised diet previously put forward', the researcher points out.
Journal reference:
Figueirido et al. Ecomorphological correlates of craniodental variation in bears and paleobiological implications for extinct taxa: an approach based on geometric morphometrics. Journal of Zoology, 2009; 277 (1): 70 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2008.00511.x
Adapted from materials provided by Plataforma SINC, via AlphaGalileo.

Was A 'Mistress Of The Lionesses' A King In Ancient Canaan?

2009-04-11T08:15:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2009) — The legend is that the great rulers of Canaan, the ancient land of Israel, were all men. But a recent dig by Tel Aviv University archaeologists at Tel Beth-Shemesh uncovered possible evidence of a mysterious female ruler.

Tel Aviv University archaeologists Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in female dress, suggesting that a mighty female “king” may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region.
The plaque itself depicts a figure dressed as royal male figures and deities once appeared in Egyptian and Canaanite art. The figure’s hairstyle, though, is womanly and its bent arms are holding lotus flowers -- attributes given to women. This plaque, art historians suggest, may be an artistic representation of the “Mistress of the Lionesses,” a female Canaanite ruler who was known to have sent distress letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt reporting unrest and destruction in her kingdom.
“We took this finding to an art historian who confirmed our hypothesis that the figure was a female,” says Dr. Lederman. “Obviously something very different was happening in this city. We may have found the ‘Mistress of the Lionesses’ who’d been sending letters from Canaan to Egypt. The destruction we uncovered at the site last summer, along with the plaque, may just be the key to the puzzle.”
A Lady Ruler in Pre-Exodus Canaan
Around 1350 BCE, there was unrest in the region. Canaanite kings conveyed their fears via clay tablet letters to the Pharaoh in Egypt, requesting military help. But among all the correspondence by kings were two rare letters that stuck out among the 382 el‑Amarna tablets uncovered a few decades ago by Egyptian farmers. The two letters came from a “Mistress of the Lionesses” in Canaan. She wrote that bands of rough people and rebels had entered the region, and that her city might not be safe. Because the el-Amarna tablets were found in Egypt rather than Canaan, historians have tried to trace the origin of the tablets.
“The big question became, ‘What city did she rule?’” Dr. Lederman and Prof. Bunimovitz say. The archaeologists believe that she ruled as king (rather than “queen,” which at the time described the wife of a male king) over a city of about 1,500 residents. A few years ago, Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Nadav Naaman suggested that she might have ruled the city of Beth Shemesh. But there has been no proof until now.
“The city had been violently destroyed, in a way we rarely see in archaeology,” says Prof. Bunimovitz, who points to many exotic finds buried under the destruction, including an Egyptian royal seal, bronze arrowheads and complete large storage vessels. They suggest a large and important city-state, well enmeshed within East Mediterranean geo-political and economic networks.
Time for a New Interpretation of Biblical History?
Tel Aviv University archaeologists say that the new finds might turn the interpretation of pre-biblical history on its head. The people of the time were pagans who had a very elaborate religious system.
“It was a very well-to-do city,” says Lederman. “Strangely, such extensive destruction, like what we found in our most recent dig, is a great joy for archaeologists because people would not have had time to take their belongings. They left everything in their houses. The site is loaded with finds,” he says, adding that the expensive items found in the recent level points to it as one the most important inland Canaanite cities.
The discovery of the plaque, and the evidence of destruction recorded in the el-Amarna tablets, could confirm that the woman depicted in the figurine was the mysterious “Mistress of the Lionesses” and ruled Canaanite Beth Shemesh. “There is no evidence of other females ruling a major city in this capacity,” Lederman and Bunimovitz say. “She is the only one. We really hope to find out more about her this summer.”
Adapted from materials provided by American Friends of Tel Aviv University.

Largest 17th Century Bead Repository Found In Coastal Georgia

2009-04-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — French and Chinese blue glass, Dutch layered glass, Baltic amber: roughly 70,000 beads manufactured all over the world have been excavated at one of the Spanish empire's remotest outposts, the Santa Catalina de Guale Mission.

The beads were found as part of an extensive, ongoing research project led by a team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History on St. Catherines Island off the coast of Georgia. Comprising the largest repository ever from Spanish Florida, the beads enlighten archaeologists about past trade routes and provide clues to the social structure and wealth of the people.
"This is the northernmost outpost of the Spanish empire, but we see evidence of ancient trade routes from China via Manila's galleons to Mexico and Spain," says Lorann Pendleton, Director of the Archaeology Laboratory at the Museum. "We also have found perhaps the first evidence of Spanish beadmaking, along with beads from the main centers of Italy, France, and the Netherlands."
The mission of Santa Catalina de Guale was inhabited by Franciscan missionaries and local people for most of the 17th century. The mission was a major source of grain for Spanish Florida and a provincial capital until1680, when the mission was abandoned after a British attack. Since 1974, David Hurst Thomas, Curator of Anthropology at the Museum, and colleagues have been carefully unearthing this part of the island's history.
The current research is based on the complete excavation of the church's cemetery and extensive survey and excavation in other parts of the mission. Years of analysis reveal roughly 130 different types of beads on the island, and numbers of specimens per type range from one to 20,000. Most of the more common beads are of Venetian and potentially French origin, with new research suggesting that one of the most common beads of the 17th century, the Ichtucknee blue, was manufactured in France. Some of the unique beads, though, may be Spanish, Chinese, Bohemian, Indian, or Baltic in origin.
While roughly 2,000 beads were found elsewhere at the mission (such as in the convent), most were found in the cemetery under the church. These were items intentionally deposited with individuals as grave goods, and the analysis of these items shows that there were subtle temporal and spatial changes in how the cemetery was used. Most burials found with large numbers of beads appear to date to the earlier part of the mission's history (the first half of the 17th century); items found with burials that date to the latter half of the 17th century are more likely to be religious medallions and rosaries. But because almost half the beads in the cemetery were buried with a few individuals who tended to be near the altar, it is often assumed that they were of high status in the community.
"A higher number of beads were found toward the altar, and some of the highest-status individuals (by number of beads) were children," says Pendleton. "This gives us lots of information about Guale society and means that status was ascribed with birth."
Elliot Blair, graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, agrees but points out that "the picture that is emerging is turning out to be much more complicated than people had thought. It's hard to say whether the presence of the beads reflects native or church hierarchies, the presence of wealthy individuals, or something else entirely. Still, this is the largest assemblage of beads ever found in a Spanish mission in La Florida, and the study of these materials has yielded considerable information about how Guale society, burial practices, and Spanish missionization changed during the 17th century."
The number of beads found on St. Catherines Island suggests that Santa Catalina de Guale was a relatively wealthy outpost. The island is fertile and was the capital of a mission province, both potential explanations for the high number of beads found when compared to other missions.
"St. Catherines was a frontier mission, but it also was a bread basket for the east-coast Spanish empire," explains Pendleton. "The missionaries at St. Augustine were always starving—you can read this in the letters written at the time—because that area was too humid and hot for corn to grow easily. St. Catherines was able to trade corn for beads."
The new research, authored by Blair, Pendleton, and bead expert Peter Francis, Jr., is published in the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History. Francis, who did much of the detailed analysis of where beads were manufactured, died while on a research trip to Ghana, Africa, in 2002. The research was funded in part by the Edward John Noble Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by American Museum of Natural History, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Triceratops Was A Social Animal, Group Of Dinosaur Fossils Suggests

2009-03-26T01:43:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2009) — Until now, Triceratops was thought to be unusual among its ceratopsid relatives. While many ceratopsids—a common group of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived toward the end of the Cretaceous—have been found in enormous bonebed deposits of multiple individuals, all known Triceratops (over 50 in total) fossils have been solitary individuals.

But a new discovery of a jumble of at least three juveniles the badlands of the north-central United States suggests that the three-horned dinosaurs were not only social animals, but may have exhibited unique gregarious groupings of juveniles.
"This is very thrilling," says Stephen Brusatte, an affiliate of the American Museum of Natural History and a doctoral student at Columbia University. "We can say something about how these dinosaurs lived. Interestingly, what we've found seems to be a larger pattern among many dinosaurs that juveniles lived and traveled together in groups."
In 2005, Brusatte and colleagues found and excavated a site that contained multiple Triceratops juveniles in 66-million-year-old rocks in southeastern Montana. The geological evidence suggests that at least three juveniles were deposited at the same time by a localized flood, and this suggests that they were probably living together when disaster struck. This find indicates that Triceratops juveniles congregated in small herds, a social behavior increasingly identified in other dinosaur groups, such as Psittacosaurus, a small cousin of Triceratops that lived in Asia.
"We don't know why they were grouped together or how much time they spent together," says Joshua Mathews of the Burpee Museum of Natural History and Northern Illinois University, who led the project. "Herding together could have been for protection, and our guess is that this wasn't something they did full time."
The site was discovered in 2005 by Burpee Museum volunteer Helmuth Redschlag. Redschlag, a devoted fan of The Simpsons television program, named the bonebed the "Homer Site."
"It's kind of fitting that these big, bulky, plodding Triceratops are named after Homer Simpson," says Brusatte. "But more than anything, we were able to find something shockingly unexpected, even though there are more Triceratops skeletons than [there are of] nearly any other dinosaur, and southeastern Montana has been combed for fossils for hundreds of years." Excavation at the Homer Site is ongoing, and the Burpee Museum team expects to find additional fossils of Triceratops juveniles.
The research is published in the current issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. In addition to Matthews and Brusatte, Scott Williams and Michael Henderson, also of the Burpee Museum of Natural History and Northern Illinois University, are authors.
Adapted from materials provided by American Museum of Natural History, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Fossil Fragments Reveal 500-million-year-old Monster Predator

2009-03-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2009) — Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods.

The fossil fragments puzzled together come from the famous 505 million year old Burgess Shale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in British Columbia, Canada. Uppsala researchers Allison Daley and Graham Budd at the Department of Earth Sciences, together with colleagues in Canada and Britain, describe the convoluted history and unique body construction of the newly-reconstructed Hurdia victoria, which would have been a formidable predator in its time.
Although the first fragments were described nearly one hundred years ago, they were assumed to be part of a crustacean-like animal. It was not then realised that other parts of the animal were also in collections, but had been described independently as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other arthropods. However, collecting expeditions from in the 1990s uncovered more complete specimens and hundreds of isolated pieces that led to the first hints that Hurdia was more than it seemed. The last piece of the puzzle was found when the best-preserved specimen turned up in the old collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC. This specimen was first classified as an arthropod in the 1970s and 80s, and then as an unusual specimen of the famous monster predator Anomalocaris.
The new description of Hurdia shows that it is indeed related to Anomalocaris. Like Anomalocaris, Hurdia had a segmented body with a head bearing a pair of spinous claws and a circular jaw structure with many teeth. But it differs from Anomalocaris by the possession of a huge three-part carapace that projects out from the front of the animal's head.
"This structure is unlike anything seen in other fossil or living arthropods," says Ph.D. student Allison Daley, who has been studying the fossils for three years as part of her doctoral thesis.
"The use of the large carapace extending from the front of its head is a mystery. In many animals, a shell or carapace is used to protect the soft-parts of the body, as you would see in a crab or lobster, but this structure in Hurdia is empty and does not cover or protect the rest of the body. We can only guess at what its function might have been."
Hurdia and Anomalocaris are both early offshoots of the evolutionary lineage that led to the arthropods, the large modern group that contains the insects, crustaceans, spiders, millipedes and centipedes. They reveal details of the origins of important features that define the modern arthropods such as their head structures and limbs. As well as its bizarre frontal carapace, Hurdia reveals exquisite details of the gills associated with the body, some of the best preserved in the fossil record.
"Most of the body is covered in the gills, which were probably necessary to provide oxygen to such a large, actively swimming animal," says Allison Daley.
Journal reference:
Allison Daley, Graham Budd, Jean-Bernard Caron, Gregory Edgecombe and Desmond Collins. The Burgess Shale anomalocaridid Hurdia and its significance for early euarthropod evolution. Science, 20th March 2009
Adapted from materials provided by Uppsala University.

Byzantine Period Church With Beautiful Mosaics Discovered

2009-03-20T12:53:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2009) — A church that dates to the Byzantine period which is paved with breathtakingly beautiful mosaics and a dedicatory inscription was exposed in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting near Moshav Nes-Harim, 5 kilometers east of Bet Shemesh (at the site of Horvat A-Diri), in the wake of plans to enlarge the moshav.

According to archaeologist Daniel Ein Mor, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The site was surrounded by a small forest of oak trees and is covered with farming terraces that were cultivated by the residents of Nes-Harim. Prior to the excavation we discerned unusually large quantities of pottery sherds from the Byzantine period and thousands of mosaic tesserae that were scattered across the surface level”.
The excavation seems to have revealed the very center of the site, which extends across an area of approximately 15 dunams, along the slope of a spur that descends toward Nahal Dolev.
During the first season of excavation (November 2008) the church’s narthex (the broad entrance at the front of the church’s nave) was exposed in which there was a carpet of polychrome mosaics that was adorned with geometric patterns of intertwined rhomboids separated by flower bud motifs. Unfortunately, at the conclusion of the excavation this mosaic was defaced and almost completely destroyed by unknown vandals. During that excavation season a complex wine press was partly exposed that consists of at least two upper treading floors and elongated, well-plastered arched cells below them that were probably meant to facilitate the preliminary fermentation there of the must. Part of the main work surface, which was paved with large coarse tesserae, was exposed at the foot of these cells. A complex wine press of this kind is indicative of a wine making industry at the site; this find is in keeping with the presence here of a church and is consistent with our knowledge about Byzantine monasteries in the region during this period (sixth-seventh centuries CE).
Other parts of the church were revealed in the current excavation season. The area of the apse was almost entirely exposed, as were other parts of the southern aisle.
Two rooms that are adjacent to the northern and southern sides of the church were also uncovered. In the southern room a mosaic pavement was exposed that is decorated with intertwined patterns of different size concentric circles. The mosaic also includes a dedicatory inscription written in ancient Greek that was deciphered by Dr. Leah Di Signi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
O Lord God of saint Theodorus, protect Antonius and Theodosia the illustres (illustres - a title used to distinguish high nobility in the Byzantine period) [- - - ] Theophylactus and John the priest (or priests). [Remember o Lord] Mary and John who have offe[red - - ] in the 6th indiction. Lord, have pity of Stephen.
Various phases that were used after the church was abandoned in the later part of the Byzantine period were discerned elsewhere in the structure. The mosaic floor was completely destroyed in different places and the area inside the church was put to secondary use. Industrial installations that are ascribed to the same phase were found which attest to the functional change the building underwent during the end of the Byzantine period-beginning of the Early Islamic period (seventh century CE).
According to Daniel Ein Mor, “We know of other Byzantine churches and sites that are believed to be Byzantine monasteries, which are located in the surrounding region. The excavation at Nes-Harim supplements our knowledge about the nature of the Christian-Byzantine settlement in the rural areas between the main cities in this part of the country during the Byzantine period, among them Bet Guvrin, Emmaus and Jerusalem”.
Adapted from materials provided by Israel Antiquities Authority.

What Perfumes Did Ancient Egyptians Use? Researchers Aim To Recreate 3,500-year-old Scent

2009-03-20T06:39:00.001-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2009) — The Ancient Egyptians cherished their fragrant scents, too, as perfume flacons from this period indicate. In its permanent exhibition, Bonn University's Egyptian Museum has a particularly well preserved example on display. Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a power-conscious woman who assumed the reins of government in Egypt around the year 1479 B.C. In actual fact, she was only supposed to represent her step-son Thutmose III, who was three years old at the time, until he was old enough to take over.
But the interregnum lasted 20 years. "She systematically kept Thutmose out of power," says Michael Höveler-Müller, the curator of Bonn University's Egyptian Museum.
Hatshepsut's perfume is also presumably a demonstration of her power. "We think it probable that one constituent was incense – the scent of the gods," Michael Höveler-Müller declares. This idea is not so wide of the mark, as it is a known fact that in the course of her regency Haptshepsut undertook an expedition to Punt – the modern Eritrea, and the Egyptians had been importing precious goods such as ebony, ivory, gold, and just this incense, from there since the third millennium B.C. Apparently the expedition brought back whole incense plants, which Hatshepsut then had planted in the vicinity of her funerary temple.
The filigree flacon now under examination by the researchers in Bonn bears an inscription with the name of the Pharaoh. Hence it was probably once in her possession. The vessel is exceptionally well preserved. "So we considered it might be rewarding to have it screened in the University Clinic´s Radiology Department," Höveler-Müller explains. "As far as I know this has never been done before."
This world premier will now in all probability be followed by another one: "The desiccated residues of a fluid can be clearly discerned in the x-ray photographs," the museum´s curator explains. "Our pharmacologists are now going to analyse this sediment." The results could be available in a good year´s time. If they are successful, the scientists in Bonn are even hoping to "reconstruct" the perfume so that, 3,500 years after the death of the woman amongst whose possessions it was found, the scent could then be revitalised.
Hatshepsut died in 1457 B.C. Analysis of the mummy ascribed to her showed that the ruler was apparently between 45 and 60 years of age at the end of her life; that she was also overweight, and suffering from diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis and arthritis. Obviously for reasons of security, she was laid to rest in the tomb of her wet nurse. In 1903, over 3,300 years later, the famous Egyptologist Howard Carter stumbled upon the two mummies.
However, more than 100 years were to pass before the Pharaoh´s corpse could be identified using DNA and dental analysis in the year 2007. Thutmose III, incidentally, appears not to have shed a single tear for his step-mother, as during his reign he had every image destroyed which showed her as ruler, and which could have belonged to her.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Bonn.

Teeth Of Columbus' Crew Flesh Out Tale Of New World Discovery

2009-03-20T06:36:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2009) — The adage that dead men tell no tales has long been disproved by archaeology.

Now, however, science is taking interrogation of the dead to new heights. In a study that promises fresh and perhaps personal insight into some of the earliest European visitors to the New World, a team or researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is extracting the chemical details of life history from the teeth of crew members Christopher Columbus left on the island of Hispaniola after his second voyage to America in 1493-94.
"This is telling us about where people came from and what they ate as children," explains T. Douglas Price, a UW-Madison professor of anthropology and the leader of the team conducting an analysis of the tooth enamel of three individuals from a larger group excavated almost 20 years ago from shallow graves at the site of La Isabela, founded by Columbus.
Price and colleague James Burton, in collaboration with researchers from the Autonomous University of the Yucatan in Mexico, are attempting to flesh out the details of a colony that lasted less than five years. The human remains used in the study were buried without the formalities of coffins or shrouds, and were excavated from what was once the church graveyard of the town Columbus established. Headstones and other identifying markers have long since faded to nothing or have been lost entirely during the 500 years since the bodies were first interred.
Despite its brief existence, historians and archaeologists believe La Isabela was a substantial settlement with a church, public buildings such as a customhouse and storehouse, private dwellings and fortifications. It is also the only known settlement in America where Columbus actually lived.
Although the town has been the subject of previous archaeological studies, the work by Price, Burton and their colleague Vera Tiesler and Andrea Cucina of the Autonomous University of the Yucatan is revealing new insight into the people who lived and sailed with Columbus, and who died on the shores of a strange and exotic new world.
Histories of La Isabela, named after Spain's queen and Columbus's patron and located in what is today the Dominican Republic, suggest its population was made up only of men from the fleet of 17 vessels that comprised Columbus's second visit to the New World. But the first analysis of the remains of 20 individuals excavated two decades ago by Italian and Dominican archaeologists portray a different picture, suggesting that living among the Spaniards at La Isabela were native Taínos, women and children, and possibly individuals of African origin. If confirmed, that would put Africans in the New World as contemporaries of Columbus and decades before they were believed to have first arrived as slaves.
The study conducted by the Wisconsin researchers relied on isotopic analysis of three elements: carbon, oxygen and strontium.
Carbon isotope ratios provide reliable evidence of diet at the time an individual's adult teeth emerge in childhood. For example, people who eat maize, as opposed to those who consume wheat or rice, have different carbon isotope ratio profiles locked in their tooth enamel.
"Heavy carbon means you were eating tropical grasses such as maize, found only in the New World, or millet in Africa, neither of which was consumed in Europe" at the time, says Burton.
Oxygen isotopes provide information about water consumption and also can say something about geography as the isotopic composition of water changes in relation to latitude and proximity to the ocean. Strontium is a chemical found in bedrock and that enters the body through the food chain as nutrients pass from bedrock to soil and water and, ultimately, to plants and animals. The strontium isotopes found in tooth enamel, the most stable and durable material in the human body, thus constitute an indelible signature of where someone lived as a child.
Three of the individuals whose teeth were subjected to isotopic analysis by the Wisconsin group were males under the age of 40 and who had carbon isotope profiles far different from the rest, suggesting an Old World origin. "I would bet money this person was an African," Price says of one of the three individuals whose teeth were subjected to analysis.
It was known that Columbus had a personal African slave on his voyages of discovery. The new analysis could mean that Africans played a much larger role in the first documented explorations of America.
The strontium isotope analysis, Price notes, is not yet complete, as samples from the teeth of the presumed sailors remain to be matched with strontium profiles of Spanish soils. However, such matches could open an intriguing window to the personal identities of individuals buried in La Isabela.
"All of these sailors — their place of birth, their age — were recorded in Seville before they left on the second voyage," Price explains. "One of the things we're hoping to do with the strontium is identify individuals."
The skeletons also exhibit evidence of scurvy, a common affliction of 15th century sailors who lacked vitamin C on their long voyages, as well as signs of malnutrition and physical stress. Chronicles of the voyage noted that most of the Europeans, including Columbus himself, fell sick shortly after landfall on Hispaniola, and many subsequently died, perhaps becoming the first to be buried in the La Isabela church graveyard.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Byzantine Period Church With Beautiful Mosaics Discovered

2009-03-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2009) — A church that dates to the Byzantine period which is paved with breathtakingly beautiful mosaics and a dedicatory inscription was exposed in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting near Moshav Nes-Harim, 5 kilometers east of Bet Shemesh (at the site of Horvat A-Diri), in the wake of plans to enlarge the moshav.

Cretaceous Octopus With Ink And Suckers -- The World's Least Likely Fossils?

2009-03-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2009) — New finds of 95 million year old fossils reveal much earlier origins of modern octopuses. These are among the rarest and unlikeliest of fossils. The chances of an octopus corpse surviving long enough to be fossilized are so small that prior to this discovery only a single fossil species was known, and from fewer specimens than octopuses have legs.

Even if you have never encountered an octopus in the flesh, the eight arms, suckers, and sack-like body are almost as familiar a body-plan as the four legs, tail and head of cats and dogs. Unlike our vertebrate cousins, however, octopuses don't have a well-developed skeleton. And while this famously allows them to squeeze into spaces that a more robust animal could not, it does create problems for scientists interested in evolutionary history. When did octopuses acquire their characteristic body-plan, for example? Nobody really knows, because fossil octopuses are rarer than, well, pretty much any very rare thing you care to mention.
The body of an octopus is composed almost entirely of muscle and skin, and when an octopus dies, it quickly decays and liquefies into a slimy blob. After just a few days there will be nothing left at all. And that assumes that the fresh carcass is not consumed almost immediately by hungry scavengers. The result is that preservation of an octopus as a fossil is about as unlikely as finding a fossil sneeze, and none of the 200-300 species of octopus known today has ever been found in fossilized form. Until now, that is.
Palaeontologists have just identified three new species of fossil octopus discovered in Cretaceous rocks in Lebanon. The five specimens, described in the latest issue of the journal Palaeontology, are 95 million years old but, astonishingly, preserve the octopuses' eight arms with traces of muscles and those characteristic rows of suckers. Even traces of the ink and internal gills are present in some specimens. '
"These are sensational fossils, extraordinarily well preserved," says Dirk Fuchs of the Freie University Berlin, lead author of the report. But what surprised the scientists most was how similar the specimens are to modern octopus: "these things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species." This provides important evolutionary information. "The more primitive relatives of octopuses had fleshy fins along their bodies. The new fossils are so well preserved that they show, like living octopus, that they didn't have these structures." This pushes back the origins of modern octopus by tens of millions of years, and while this is scientifically significant, perhaps the most remarkable thing about these fossils is that they exist at all.
Journal reference:
Fuchs et al. New Octopods (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) of Hakel and Hadjoula, Lebanon. Palaeontology, 2009; 52 (1): 65 DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00828.x
Adapted from materials provided by The Palaeontological Association, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Mini Dinosaurs Prowled North America

2009-03-17T03:33:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2009) — Massive predators like Albertosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex may have been at the top of the food chain, but they were not the only meat-eating dinosaurs to roam North America, according to Canadian researchers who have discovered the smallest dinosaur species on the continent to date. Their work is also helping re-draw the picture of North America's ecosystem at the height of the dinosaur age 75 million years ago.

"Hesperonychus is currently the smallest dinosaur known from North America. But its discovery just emphasizes how little we actually know, and it raises the possibility that there are even smaller ones out there waiting to be found," said Nick Longrich, a paleontology research associate in the University of Calgary's Department of Biological Sciences. "Small carnivorous dinosaurs seemed to be completely absent from the environment, which seemed bizarre because today the small carnivores outnumber the big ones," he said. "It turns out that they were here and they played a more important role in the ecosystem than we realized. So for the past 100 years, we've completely overlooked a major part of North America's dinosaur community."
In a paper published March 16 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Longrich and University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie describe a new genus of carnivorous dinosaur that was smaller than a modern housecat and likely hunted insects, small mammals and other prey through the swamps and forests of the late Cretaceous period in southeastern Alberta, Canada. Weighing approximately two kilograms and standing about 50 centimetres tall, Hesperonychus elizabethae resembled a miniature version of the famous bipedal predator Velociraptor, to which it was closely related. Hesperonychus ran about on two legs and had razor-like claws and an enlarged sickle-shaped claw on its second toe. It had a slender build and slender head with dagger-like teeth.
"It was half the size of a domestic cat and probably hunted and ate whatever it could for its size – insects, mammals, amphibians and maybe even baby dinosaurs," Longrich said. "It probably spent most of its time close to the ground searching through the marshes and forests that characterized the area at the end of the Cretaceous."
Fossilized remains of Hesperonychus, which means “western claw,” were collected in 1982 from several locations including Dinosaur Provincial Park. The most important specimen, a well-preserved pelvis, was recovered by legendary Alberta paleontologist Elizabeth (Betsy) Nicholls, after which the species is named. Nicholls was the curator of marine reptiles at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller and earned her MSc and PhD degrees at U of C. She passed away in 2004. The fossils remained unstudied for 25 years until Longrich came across them in the University of Alberta’s collection in 2007. Longrich and Currie focused on fossilized claws and a well-preserved pelvis for their description.
"The claws were thought to come from juveniles- they were just so small. But when we studied the pelvis, we found the hip bones were fused, which would only have happened once the animal was fully grown", Longrich said. "Until now, the smallest carnivorous dinosaurs we have seen in North America have been about the size of a wolf. Judging by the amount of material that was collected, we believe animals the size of Hesperonychus must have been quite common on the landscape."
Currie and Longrich last year described the previous record-setting small North American dinosaur, a chicken-sized insectivore named Albertonykus borealis.
The discovery of Hesperonychus is the first sign of small carnivorous dinosaurs in North America and also extends the timeframe of small, birdlike dromaeosaurs known as the Microraptorinae in the fossil record by approximately 45 million years. Specimens from China have been found dating to 120 million years ago, while Hesperonychus appeared to have thrived until the end of dinosaur age in the late Cretaceous.
Journal reference:
Nicholas R. Longrich and Philip J. Currie. A microraptorine (Dinosauria-Dromaeosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811664106
Adapted from materials provided by University of Calgary.

Old Soles: 800-year-old Shoe Soles Yield Clues About Preservation Of Leather

2009-03-17T02:55:00.001-07:00

SOURCE

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2009) — Ancient garbage can be like gold to archaeologists. During excavation of an 800-year-old trash dump in Lyon, France, scientists discovered the archaeological equivalent of golden shoe soles: A trove of leather soles of shoes, which is helping scientists understand how leather stays preserved in wet, oxygen-free environments.

That knowledge could aid restoration of other leather artifacts, according to a report on analysis of the old soles scheduled for the current issue of ACS' semi-monthly journal Analytical Chemistry.
In the article, Michel Bardet and colleagues point out that leather consists of collagen, a tough protein that can remain intact hundreds of thousands of years under ideal conditions. The French soles were buried in mud in the absence of oxygen — good conditions for preservation.
They used laboratory technology called nuclear magnetic resonance to compare composition of the ancient leather to modern leather. It turned out that tannin, which helps to preserve leather, had been washed out of the old soles and replaced by iron oxides. The iron oxides, which leached into the leather from surrounding soil, helped preserve the soles in the absence of tannins.
Journal reference:
Bardet et al. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Electron Paramagnetic Resonance as Analytical Tools To Investigate Structural Features of Archaeological Leathers. Analytical Chemistry, 2009; 81 (4): 1505 DOI: 10.1021/ac802052a
Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Young Dinosaurs Roamed Together, Died Together

2009-03-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

SOURCE

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2009) — A herd of young birdlike dinosaurs met their death on the muddy margins of a lake some 90 million years ago, according to a team of Chinese and American paleontologists that excavated the site in the Gobi Desert in western Inner Mongolia.

The Sudden sudden death of the herd in a mud trap provides a rare snapshot of social behavior. Composed entirely of juveniles of a single species of ornithomimid dinosaur (Sinornithomimus dongi), the herd suggests that immature individuals were left to fend for themselves when adults were preoccupied with nesting or brooding.
"There were no adults or hatchlings," said Paul Sereno, professor at the University of Chicago and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. "These youngsters were roaming around on their own," remarked Tan Lin, from the Department of Land and Resources of Inner Mongolia.
Within an exquisite pair of the skeletons, prepared for display in Sereno's lab and airlifted back to China in late February, preserve stomach stones and the animal's' last meals are preserved.
Sereno, Tan and Zhao Xijin, professor in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led the 2001 expedition that found the fossils. Team members also included David Varricchio of Montana State University (MSU), Jeffrey Wilson of the University of Michigan and Gabrielle Lyon of Project Exploration.
"Finding a mired herd is exceedingly rare among living animals," said Varricchio, an assistant professor of paleontology at MSU. "The best examples are from hoofed mammals," such as water buffalo in Australia or feral horses in the American West, he said.
The first bones from the dinosaur herd were spotted by a Chinese geologist in 1978 at the base of a small hill in a desolate, windswept region of the Gobi Desert. Some 20 years later, a Sino-Japanese team excavated the first skeletons, naming the dinosaur Sinornithomimus ("Chinese bird mimic").
Sereno and associates then opened an expansive quarry, following one skeleton after another deep into the base of the hill. In sum, more than 25 individuals were excavated from the site. They range in age from one to seven years, as determined by the annual growth rings in their bones.
The team meticulously recorded the position of all of the bones and the details of the rock layers to try to understand how so many animals of the same species perished in one place. The skeletons showed similar exquisite preservation and were mostly facing the same direction, suggesting that they died together and over a short interval.
The details provided key evidence of an ancient tragedy. Two of the skeletons fell one right over the other. Although most of their skeletons lay on a flat horizontal plane, their hind legs were stuck deeply in the mud below. Only their hip bones were missing, which was likely the handiwork of a scavenger working over the meatiest part of the body bodies shortly after the animals died.
"These animals died a slow death in a mud trap, their flailing only serving to attract a nearby scavenger or predator," Sereno said. Usually, weathering, scavenging or transport of bone have long erased all direct evidence of the cause of death. The site provides some of the best evidence to date of the cause of death of a dinosaur.
Plunging marks in mud surrounding the skeletons recorded their failed attempts to escape. Varricchio said he was both excited and saddened by what the excavation revealed. "I was saddened because I knew how the animals had perished. It was a strange sensation and the only time I had felt that way at a dig," he said.
In addition to herd composition and behavior, the site also provides encyclopedic knowledge of even the tiniest bones in the skull and skeleton. "We even know the size of its eyeball," Sereno said. "Sinornithomimus is destined to become one of the best- understood dinosaurs in the world."
The work was funded by the National Geographic Society and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Journal reference:
David J. Varricchio, Paul C. Sereno, Zhao Xi-jin, Tan Lin Jeffrey A. Wilson, and Gabrielle H. Lyon. Mud-trapped herd captures evidence of distinctive dinosaur sociality. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, December 2008 [link]
Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Preserved Shark Fossil Adds Evidence To Great White's Origins

2009-03-14T01:01:00.001-07:00

SOURCE

ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2009) — A new University of Florida study could help resolve a long-standing debate in shark paleontology: From which line of species did the modern great white shark evolve?

For the last 150 years, some paleontologists have concluded the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, is a smaller relative of the line that produced Carcharodon megalodon, the largest carnivorous fish known. Other paleontologists disagree, arguing the great white shark evolved instead from the broad-toothed mako shark. The second group contends megalodon, which grew to a length of 60 feet, should have its genus name switched to Carcharocles to reflect its different ancestry.
The study in the March 12 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology falls squarely into the mako camp. It concludes megalodon and modern white sharks are much more distantly related than paleontologists initially believed.
"I think that this specimen will clarify things," said lead author Dana Ehret, a vertebrate paleontology graduate student at the Florida Museum of Natural History located on the UF campus. "When we only have isolated teeth to describe, it's very hard to come to a definitive conclusion."
The study is based on a remarkably well preserved 4- to 5-million-year-old fossil from Peru of an early white shark species: a complete jaw with 222 teeth intact and 45 vertebrae. Most ancient shark species are known only from isolated teeth. Based on tooth size and analysis of growth rings within the vertebrae, the shark was about 20 years old and 17 to 18 feet long, a size in the range of modern white sharks.
Having the teeth in place allows researchers to see important distinguishing characteristics that help determine a fossil's genus and species, such as whether a tooth curves toward the outside of the jaw or its midline, Ehret said. He believes the fossil belongs to a white shark species closely related to Isurus hastalis, a broad-toothed mako shark that probably grew to 27 feet long and lived 9 million to 10 million years ago.
An olive-grove farmer trained in fossil collection discovered it near his home in the desert of southern Peru in 1988. It now belongs to a private collection and was only recently pledged to the Florida Museum of Natural History.
"It's the only fossilized partial skull of a white shark that's ever been found," said Gordon Hubbell, the fossil's owner and study co-author.
Hubbell purchased the fossil from the farmer during his first trip to Peru, which coincidentally occurred only a few days after the discovery.
The specimen came from an area known as the Pisco Formation, famous for its rich fossil beds dating from the late Miocene to Pleistocene, about 1 million to 9 million years ago. The region was once a sheltered, shallow marine environment ideal for preserving skeletons. The formation has produced articulated broad-toothed mako shark skeletons as well as fossils of whales, aquatic sloths and sea turtles.
The study strengthens the evolutionary link between the extinct mako and the modern white shark, said vertebrate paleontologist Kenshu Shimada, an associate professor at DePaul University in Chicago. Shimada said paleontologists now need fossil skeletons from megalodon and a shark from the extinct Otodontidae family such as Otodus, a large prehistoric mackerel shark that lived about 40 million to 60 million years ago.
"If we can demonstrate the strong link between Carcharocles and Otodus from such skeletal remains," Shimada said, "we may be able to settle the evolutionary and taxonomic debates."
Megalodon was first classified in the same genus as the modern white shark in the 1840s based on the similarity of tooth shape and serrations specialized for eating marine mammals. Mako sharks have no serrations because they feed primarily on fish.
Ehret says the shark fossil's coarse serrations are evidence of a transition between broad-toothed mako sharks and modern white sharks.
"Here we have a shark that's gaining serrations," he said. "It's becoming a white shark, but it's not quite there yet."
The transition from megatooth sharks like megalodon to modern white sharks would require changes in body size and tooth serrations, thickness and enamel, Ehret said. By contrast, the transition from the broad-toothed mako shark to modern white sharks would require only the presence of serrations and a shift in the slant of a key tooth position.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Florida, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Archaeologists Find Silos And Administration Center From Early Egyptian City

2008-07-02T09:43:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701121838.htm

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — A University of Chicago expedition at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt has unearthed a large administration building and silos that provide fresh clues about the emergence of urban life. The discovery provides new information about a little understood aspect of ancient Egypt—the development of cities in a culture that is largely famous for its monumental architecture.
The archaeological work at Tell Edfu was initiated with the permission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, headed by Zahi Hawass, under the direction of Nadine Moeller, Assistant Professor at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Work late last year revealed details of seven silos, the largest grain bins found in ancient Egypt as well as an older columned hall that was an administration center.
Long fascinated with temples and monuments such as pyramids, scholars have traditionally spent little time exploring the residential communities of ancient Egypt. Due to intense farming and heavy settlement over the years, much of the record of urban civilization has been lost. So little archaeological evidence remains that some scholars believe Egypt did not have a highly developed urban culture, giving Mesopotamia the distinction of teaching people how to live in cities.
"The traditional view of ancient Egypt has been biased by the fact that most excavation work so far has focused on temples and tombs. The mounds which comprise the remains of Egyptian cities were either ignored, buried under modern towns, or else destroyed by modern agricultural activities. Edfu is one of the very few remaining city mounds that are accessible for scientific study," said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute.
"The work at Edfu is important and innovative in that it finally allows us to examine ancient Egypt as an urban society, whose cities and towns housed bureaucrats, craft specialists, priests, and farmers. Nadine Moeller's discovery of silos and local administrative buildings shows us how these cities actually functioned as places where the agricultural wealth of the Nile valley was mobilized for the state. Grain as currency provided the sinews of power for the pharoahs," he added.
"Ancient Egyptian administration is mainly known from texts, but the full understanding of the institutions involved and their role within towns and cities has been so far difficult to grasp because of the lack of archaeological evidence with which textual data needs to be combined," Moeller said.
At Tell Edfu, archaeologists have uncovered what amounts to a downtown area. The community, halfway between the modern cities of Aswan and Luxor, was a provincial capital an important regional center. Tell Edfu is also rare, in that almost 3,000 years of Egyptian history are preserved in the stratigraphy of a single mound.
The administrative building and silos were at the heart of the ancient community. Because grain was a form of currency, the silos functioned as a bank and a food source. The silos' size indicates the community was apparently a prosperous urban center.
The grain bins are in a large silo courtyard of the 17th Dynasty (1630-1520 B.C.) and consist of at least seven round, mud-brick silos. With a diameter between 5.5 and 6.5 meters, they are the largest examples discovered within a town center.
The team unearthed an earlier building phase for the hall that predated the silos. In that phase, a mud-brick building with 16 wooden columns stood at the site. The pottery and seal impressions found in the hall date it to the early 13th Dynasty (1773-1650 B.C.). The building layout indicates that it may have been part of the governor's palace, which was typical of provincial towns.
There is no exact parallel for such a columned hall being part of the administrative buildings. Scribes did accounting, opened and sealed containers, and received letters in the column hall. The ostraca, or inscribed pottery shards, list commodities written on them.
The administrative center was used when Egypt's political unity was lost and a small kingdom developed at Thebes (modern Luxor) and controlled most of Upper Egypt.
"During this period, we can see an increase in connections between the provincial elite, such as the family of the governor, to the royal family at Thebes, who were keen on strengthening bonds through marriage, or by awarding important offices to these people," Moeller said.
"It is exactly at this period when Edfu seems to have been very prosperous, which can now be confirmed further by archaeological discoveries such as this silo-court, a symbol for the wealth of the town," she said.

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Newcomer In Early Eurafrican Population?

2008-07-02T09:40:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701141030.htm

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — A complete mandible of Homo erectus was discovered at the Thomas I quarry in Casablanca by a French-Moroccan team co-led by Jean-Paul Raynal, CNRS senior researcher at the PACEA laboratory (CNRS/Université Bordeaux 1/ Ministry of Culture and Communication). This mandible is the oldest human fossil uncovered from scientific excavations in Morocco. The discovery will help better define northern Africa's possible role in first populating southern Europe.

A Homo erectus half-jaw had already been found at the Thomas I quarry in 1969, but it was a chance discovery and therefore with no archeological context. This is not the case for the fossil discovered May 15, 2008, whose characteristics are very similar to those of the half-jaw found in 1969.
The morphology of these remains is different from the three mandibles found at the Tighenif site in Algeria that were used, in 1963, to define the North African variety of Homo erectus, known as Homo mauritanicus, dated to 700,000 B.C.
The mandible from the Thomas I quarry was found in a layer below one where the team has previously found four human teeth (three premolars and one incisor) from Homo erectus, one of which was dated to 500,000 B.C. The human remains were grouped with carved stone tools characteristic of the Acheulian civilization and numerous animal remains (baboons, gazelles, equines, bears, rhinoceroses, and elephants), as well as large numbers of small mammals, which point to a slightly older time frame. Several dating methods are being used to refine the chronology.
The Thomas I quarry in Casablanca confirms its role as one of the most important prehistoric sites for understanding the early population of northwest Africa. The excavations that CNRS and the Institut National des Sciences de l'Archéologie et du Patrimoine du Maroc have led there since 1988 are part of a French-Moroccan collaboration. They have been jointly financed by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Plank Institute in Leipzig (Germany), INSAP (Morocco) and the Aquitaine region.

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Crystal Skulls' Murky Tale

2008-05-25T02:27:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121149380315615533-rB8ky5VPoWNGu5VS5OJbZ6G4DlY_20080621.html

An 'Aztec' Artifact Is As Fictional As Indiana Jones
By CHRISTINA PASSARIELLOMay 23, 2008; Page A11

Write to Christina Passariello at christina.passariello@wsj.com

PARIS -- Ever since the Quai Branly Museum placed its crystal skull in a glass display case a week ago, visitors have been swarming around the spooky artifact.
The museum's directors brought it out of storage to coincide with the release of the movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," opening this weekend. The film's plot is loosely based on the legend that 13 crystal skulls, dating from the Aztec period more than 500 years ago, must be reunited by 2012 to prevent the end of the world.

But the Quai Branly's skull, along with others in prestigious museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum, are all phonies. The museum concedes that it knows little about the skull. Explanatory text next to the skull's display case doesn't explain much: "19th century? Europe?"
The bigger question: Why is a museum promoting an artifact it knows isn't authentic?
Partly because the public doesn't really care, notes Esther Pasztory, an art-history professor at Columbia University. "People want to see Aztec art," she notes, even if it isn't really Aztec art. Museums should clearly disclose counterfeit artifacts, she says, adding that known fakes still have their fans.
Fakes were once a source of embarrassment for museums. But more recently, they have become objects of fascination. In 1990, the British Museum put its most famous examples on display, including a sarcophagus that once was thought to be from the sixth century but was actually made in the 19th century.
Some fakes grow so notorious that they have taken on a significance of their own, becoming part of counterfeit lore. In 1896, the Louvre was duped into buying a rare gold tiara that it believed was a Greek treasure from the third century B.C. A German archaeologist soon proved it was a forgery, made by a Russian craftsman only a few years before it was sold. Humiliated by the affair, the Louvre locked it away for decades until the museum allowed the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to feature the tiara in a 1997 exhibition on the Russian craftsman.
"The crystal skulls are legitimate artifacts, just not what they purport to be," says Jane Walsh, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, who has studied 10 skulls since the Smithsonian received one as an anonymous donation in 1992. "We have to think of a new way of describing them. It's hard to call them fakes; sometimes I call them inventions," she says.
Museums are full of imitations, experts say. More than 600 were shown at the British Museum's exhibition. Many museum fakes were acquired during the rush to create large national collections in the late 19th century. "All museums have extraordinary fakes," says Stéphane Martin, the president of the Quai Branly, which opened two years ago to house France's national African, American, Asian and Oceanic collections.
Mr. Martin recalls being awed by the crystal skull as a boy when it was housed at Paris's Musée de l'Homme. But it wasn't until decades later, when preparing for the Quai Branly's opening, that he learned that the skull's Aztec origin was concocted. The British Museum and the Smithsonian shared the research they had done on their respective skulls. In the 1990s, Ms. Walsh of the Smithsonian had pored over excavation documents from pre-Columbian digs. No one had ever claimed to unearth a crystal skull.
Technological advances, which are unearthing previously undetected fakes, also let experts at the British Museum to go further in their study. In 1996, they analyzed the way holes were bored into the rock crystal for eyes, and into the top of the head. These were far too precise to have been done by hand. Using high-powered microscopes and scanners, the researchers concluded the tool marks left on the British and American skulls came from rotary machines. The Aztecs didn't possess such drills.
The British Museum informed Mr. Martin that it thought the French skull also wasn't genuine: Both the British and the French skulls had passed through the hands of a disreputable French antiquarian from the late 1800s, Eugène Boban. He peddled crystal skulls said to be from Mexico, beginning in the 1860s. Experts say he was well aware of their fraudulent origins -- and helped stoke the apocalyptic legend that surrounds them today.
Skulls -- carved out of volcanic rock -- were used in Aztec culture to commemorate human sacrifice. By claiming the crystal skulls were Aztec, which at the time conferred a mystical aura, Mr. Boban cloaked them in enigma. The myth of their significance snowballed for a century.
Mr. Martin decided not to include the French skull in the Quai Branly's permanent display because of space constraints. But the crystal sculpture had already attracted groups of fans and believers. He says he received letters from disgruntled devotees accusing him of not showing the skull out of fear of its curse. That's when he realized there was strong interest in the skull -- despite its dubious origins.
Over the past year, French researchers conducted a new investigation into the skull and reached the same conclusion as the British Museum and the Smithsonian. "Its story is strange and people like to talk about it," he says.
When Mr. Martin learned the title of the new Indiana Jones movie, he saw the opportunity to wheel the crystal skull out of storage. He doesn't deny that he thought the skull would drive visitors to the museum, despite its fake provenance. "We're riding a pop-culture wave, and we're trying to exploit it to our advantage," says Mr. Martin.
"But of course it's fake," said Yvane Hardy Riotte, a tattooed visitor who had come to see the skull. "The real ones are so powerful that no museum would dare to bring them out."

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First Dinosaur Tracks Discovered On Arabian Peninsula

2008-05-21T11:45:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520203013.htm

ScienceDaily (May 21, 2008) — Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. They have discovered evidence of a large ornithopod dinosaur, as well as a herd of 11 sauropods walking along a Mesozoic coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen.

"No dinosaur trackways had been found in this area previously. It's really a blank spot on the map," said Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in The Netherlands. He conducted the study with Ohio University paleontologist Nancy Stevens and Mohammed Al-Wosabi of Sana'a University in Yemen.
The finding also is an excellent example of dinosaur herding behavior, the researchers report. The site preserved footprints of 11 small and large sauropods -- long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods -- traveling together at the same speed.
"It's rare to see such a big example of a dinosaur herd," Schulp said. "This is interesting social behavior for reptiles."
A Yemeni journalist spotted one of the trackways in 2003, about 50 kilometers north of the capital of Sana'a in the village of Madar. Stevens, Al-Wosabi and Schulp identified it as the footprint of an ornithopod, a large, common plant-eater sometimes referred to as the "cow of the Mesozoic," Schulp said. It walked on its hind legs.
Only a few dinosaur fossils have been reported so far from the Arabian Peninsula, including isolated bones from the Sultanate of Oman, which Schulp has studied, and possible fragments of a long-necked dinosaur from Yemen.
In late 2006, the research team conducted further field work at the Madar site. By taking measurements on the shape and angle of the different digits, they were able to identify the bipedal dinosaur as an ornithopod. The size, shape and spacing of the quadrupedal prints were used to identify the body size, travel speed and other distinguishing features of the animals in the sauropod herd, Stevens said.
The rocks in which the dinosaur tracks are preserved are likely Late Jurassic in age, some 150 million years old, according to Al-Wosabi. The tracks probably went unnoticed for so long, Schulp explained, because they were too big to be spotted by the untrained eye and were partially covered by rubble and debris. "It isn't a surprise that they were overlooked," he said.
Though ornithopods and sauropods overlapped in time, it's a bit unusual to find evidence of such a big ornithopod in the late Jurassic, the researchers noted.
"We really want to learn when did which dinosaurs live where, and why was that?" Schulp said. "How did the distribution change over time, why did one replace another and move from one place to another?"
The researchers agreed that discoveries from Yemen could yield more answers to those questions.
"This international collaboration provides an exciting new window into evolutionary history from a critically undersampled region," said Stevens, an assistant professor in Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine. "These trackways help us to assemble a more detailed picture of what was happening on the southern landmasses. It's exciting to see new paleontological data coming out of Yemen -- and I think there is a lot more to discover."
The Yemen Geological Survey has implemented protective measures to preserve the trackways and to improve their accessibility to tourists, the researchers report.
Partial funding for the research was provided by the Yemen Geological Survey and Ohio University.

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Dinosaur Bones Reveal Ancient Bug Bites

2008-05-07T10:11:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080505221645.htm

ScienceDaily (May 6, 2008) — Paleontologists have long been perplexed by dinosaur fossils with missing pieces – sets of teeth without a jaw bone, bones that are pitted and grooved, even bones that are half gone. Now a Brigham Young University study identifies a culprit: ancient insects that munched on dinosaur bones.

BYU professor Brooks Britt will publish his study of these dinosaur bone-eating bugs in the May 8 issue of the scientific journal Ichnos. Britt’s idea for this study came when he first noticed the unique markings on the bones as an undergraduate at BYU.
“As students we noticed these marks and thought it might be due to algae or insects and we started calling them ‘bug bites,’ just for fun,” Britt said.
Years later, current BYU student Anne Dangerfield also wondered about the markings and teamed up with Britt to investigate the cause. They studied insect traces on the 148-million-year-old remains of a Camptosaurus, a plant-eating specimen discovered in Medicine Bow, Wyo., in 1995.
“I knew this trace was something different because I had been looking at fossil termite traces all summer, so I knew we needed to check it out,” Dangerfield said.
Their analysis revealed that beetles, from the family entomologists call Dermestidae, left the markings on the Camptosaurus. Dermestid beetles still exist today and are typically brown or black, oval-shaped and feed on flesh, hair, skin or horns of carcasses.
Information about the beetle’s typical habitat reveals the climate at the time of the Camptosaurus’ death probably had 60-80 percent relative humidity and a temperature of 77-86 F. By comparison, the average yearly temperature in Medicine Bow is now 43.5 F.
When the dinosaur died near what is now Medicine Bow, the carcass was consumed by other insects. The beetles then infested the Camptosaurus within months of its death.
In addition to shedding light on Wyoming’s ancient climate, Dangerfield and Britt’s work shows dermestid beetles existed much earlier than previously thought. The traces on this Camptosaurus predate the oldest body fossils for dermestid beetles by 48 million years.
“This information gives us an idea of the environment during the Jurassic period and the evolution of insects,” Dangerfield said.
To analyze the markings on the bones, Britt went to his family dentist for molding materials, allowing Britt to more quickly create replicas of the bone traces to work with.
He took the castings back to BYU’s Earth Science Museum where he used an electron microscope to look at the mandible markings in the bone, analyzing eating patterns and the width between the teeth marks. Britt and Dangerfield compared the marks to information about the mandibles of moths, termites, mayflies and dermestid beetles – all known to consume bone – to determine the identity of the insect.
“Other people have thought they have seen dermestid beetle marks, or they have interpreted termite marks as dermestids, but this paper provides a guide to identifying insects from the bone traces,” Britt said.
Britt and Dangerfield continued their research by looking at more than 7,000 bones from various quarries and found that insect traces on dinosaur bones are quite common, but dermestid beetle traces were found only on the Camptosaurus skeleton from Medicine Bow.
“Dr. Britt’s work is really exciting and delves into unique aspects of paleobiology that few scientists have yet explored,” said Eric Roberts, an expert in dinosaur decomposition who teaches at South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand. “Insects are among the most diverse and abundant organisms on the planet, yet we know next to nothing about the fossil record of insects because of their extremely limited preservation potential.”
Dangerfield’s undergraduate and graduate mentored research experience has impressed many potential employers. After finishing her master’s degree in August, she will assume a position with Exxon Mobile as an exploration oil and gas geologist.
“Whenever I show my resume, employers are impressed with the amount of undergraduate research I’ve done,” Dangerfield said.
Britt received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at BYU and his Ph.D. at the University of Calgary and is an assistant professor. Rodney Scheetz, another author on the study, is the curator at BYU’s Earth Science Museum.
Adapted from materials provided by Brigham Young University.

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When Did Dinosaurs Go Extinct? Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Dating Refined

2008-04-28T09:59:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424140400.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2008) — Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Berkeley Geochronology Center have pinpointed the date of the dinosaurs' extinction more precisely than ever thanks to refinements to a common technique for dating rocks and fossils.

The argon-argon dating method has been widely used to determine the age of rocks, whether they're thousands or billions of years old. Nevertheless, the technique had systematic errors that produced dates with uncertainties of about 2.5 percent, according to Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and an adjunct professor of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley.
Renne and his colleagues in Berkeley and in the Netherlands now have lowered this uncertainty to 0.25 percent and brought it into agreement with other isotopic methods of dating rocks, such as uranium/lead dating. As a result, argon-argon dating today can provide more precise absolute dates for many geologic events, ranging from volcanic eruptions and earthquakes to the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other creatures at the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the Tertiary period. That boundary had previously been dated at 65.5 million years ago, give or take 300,000 years.
According to a paper by Renne's team in the April 25 issue of Science, the best date for the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K/T, boundary is now 65.95 million years, give or take 40,000 years.
"The importance of the argon-argon technique is that it is the only technique that has the dynamic range to cover nearly all of Earth's history," Renne said. "What this refinement means is that you can use different chronometers now and get the same answer, whereas, that wasn't true before."
Renne noted that the greater precision matters little for recent events, such as the emergence of human ancestors in Africa 6 million years ago, because the uncertainty is only a few tens of thousands of years.
"Where it really adds up is in dating events in the early solar system," Renne said. "A 1 percent difference at 4.5 billion years is almost 50 million years."
One major implication of the revision involves the formation of meteorites, planetessimals and planets in the early solar system, he said. Argon-argon dating was giving a lower date than other methods for the formation of meteorites, suggesting that they cooled slowly during the solar system's infancy.
"The new result implies that many of these meteorites cooled very, very quickly, which is consistent with what is known or suggested from other studies using other isotopic systems," he said. "The evolution of the early solar system - the accretion of planetessimals, the differentiation of bodies by gravity while still hot - happened very fast. Argon-argon dating is now no longer at odds with that evidence, but is very consistent with it."
Renne has warned geologists for a decade of uncertainty in the argon-argon method and has been correcting his own data since 2000, but it took a collaboration that he initiated in 1998 with Jan R. Wijbrans of the Free University in the Netherlands to obtain convincing evidence. Wijbrans and his Dutch colleagues were studying a unique series of sediments from the Messinian Melilla-Nador Basin on the coast of Morocco that contain records of cycles in Earth's climate that reflect changes in Earth's orbit that can be precisely calculated.
Wijbrans' colleague Frits Hilgen at the University of Utrecht, a coauthor of the study, has been one of the world's leaders in translating the record of orbital cycles into a time scale for geologists, according to Renne. Renne's group had proposed using the astronomical tuning approach to calibrate the argon-argon method as early as 1994, but lacked ideal sedimentary sequences to realize the full power of this approach. The collaboration brought together all the appropriate expertise to bring this approach to fruition, he said.
"The problem with astronomical dating of much older sediments, even when they contain clear records of astronomical cycles, is that you're talking about a pattern that is not anchored anywhere," Renne said. "You see a bunch of repetitions of features in sediments, but you don't know where to start counting."
Argon-argon dating of volcanic ash, or tephra, in these sediments provided that anchor, he said, synchronizing the methods and making each one more precise. The argon-argon analyses were conducted both in Berkeley and Amsterdam to eliminate interlaboratory bias.
Argon-argon dating, developed at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, is based on the fact that the naturally-occurring isotope potassium-40 decays to argon-40 with a 1.25-billion-year half-life. Single-grain rock samples are irradiated with neutrons to convert potassium-40 to argon-39, which is normally not present in nature. The ratio of argon-39 to argon-39 then provides a measurement of the age of the sample.
"This should be the last big revision of argon-argon dating," Renne said. "We've finally narrowed it down to where we are talking about fractions-of-a-percent revisions in the future, at most."
Klaudia Kuiper, the lead author of the Science paper, was a Ph.D. student in Amsterdam working with study coauthors Wijbrans, Hilgen and Wout Krijgsman when the study was initiated. She also conducted lab work with Renne and Alan Deino, a geochronologist with Renne at the Berkeley Geochronology Center who was also one of the study's coauthors.
The work was funded by the U.S. and Dutch National Science Foundations and the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Berkeley.

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Molecular Analysis Confirms Tyrannosaurus Rex's Evolutionary Link To Birds

2008-04-25T10:22:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424140418.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2008) — Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein -- along with that of 21 modern species -- confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.
The work, published in the journal Science, represents the first use of molecular data to place a non-avian dinosaur in a phylogenetic tree that traces the evolution of species. The scientists also report that similar analysis of 160,000- to 600,000-year-old collagen protein sequences derived from mastodon bone establishes a close phylogenetic relationship between that extinct species and modern elephants.
"These results match predictions made from skeletal anatomy, providing the first molecular evidence for the evolutionary relationships of a non-avian dinosaur," says co-author Chris Organ, a postdoctoral researcher in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University. "Even though we only had six peptides -- just 89 amino acids -- from T. rex, we were able to establish these relationships with a relatively high degree of support. With more data, we'd likely see the T. rex branch on the phylogenetic tree between alligators and chickens and ostriches, though we can't resolve this position with currently available data."
The current paper builds on work reported in Science last year. In that paper, a team headed by John M. Asara and Lewis C. Cantley, both of Beth Israel Deaconess Medi-cal Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), first captured and sequenced tiny pieces of collagen protein from T. rex. For the current work, Organ and Asara and their colleagues used sophisticated algorithms to compare collagen protein from several dozen species. The goal: placing T. rex on the animal kingdom's family tree using molecu-lar evidence.
"Most of the collagen sequence was obtained from protein and genome databases but we also needed to sequence some critical organisms, including modern alligator and modern ostrich, by mass spectrometry," says Asara, director of the mass spectrometry core facility at BIDMC and instructor in pathology at HMS. "We determined that T. rex, in fact, grouped with birds -- ostrich and chicken -- better than any other organism that we studied. We also show that it groups better with birds than modern reptiles, such as alliga-tors and green anole lizards."
While scientists have long suspected that birds, and not more basal reptiles, are di-nosaurs' closest living relatives, for years that hypothesis rested largely on morphological similarities in bird and dinosaur skeletons.
The scraps of dinosaur protein were wrested from a fossil femur discovered in 2003 by John Horner of the Museum of the Rockies in a barren fossil-rich stretch of land that spans Wyoming and Montana. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State Univer-sity (NCSU) and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences discovered soft-tissue preservation in the T. rex bone in 2005; Asara became involved in analysis of the colla-gen protein because of his expertise in mass spectrometry techniques capable of se-quencing minute amounts of protein from human tumors. While it appears impossible to salvage DNA from the bone, Asara was able to extract precious slivers of protein.
The current work by Organ and Asara suggests that the extracted protein from the fossilized dinosaur tissue is authentic, rather than contamination from a living spe-cies.
"These results support the endogenous origin of the preserved collagen mole-cules," the researchers write.
Organ, Asara, Schweitzer, and Cantley's co-authors on the Science paper are Wenxia Zheng of NCSU and Lisa M. Freimark of BIDMC. Their research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Paul F. Glenn Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by Harvard University.

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Early Elephant 'Was Amphibious'

2008-04-20T22:31:00.001-07:00

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416221459.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2008) — The scientists were investigating the lifestyle of two early elephants (proboscideans) Moeritherium and Barytherium that lived in the Eocene period, over 37 million years ago. By analysing isotopes in tooth enamel from Moeritherium they were able to deduce that it was very likely a semi-aquatic mammal, spending its days in water eating freshwater plants.‘
We know from molecular data that modern elephants share a common ancestry with the sirenians - aquatic sea cows and dugongs,’ said Alexander Liu of Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences, lead author of a report of the research published online in PNAS. ‘It suggests that elephants may have an ancestor which was amphibious in its mode of life and we wanted to know if Moeritherium or Barytherium was this semi-aquatic ancient relative. Unfortunately only fragments of the skeletons of these early elephants survive, so instead of looking at their bones we looked at the chemical composition of their teeth to determine what they ate and how they lived.’
Alex Liu, with colleagues Erik Seiffert from Stony Brook University (USA) and Elwyn Simons from the Duke Lemur Center (USA), analysed the oxygen and carbon isotope ratios contained within tooth enamel from both extinct proboscideans.
While carbon isotopes can give clues as to an animal’s diet, oxygen isotopes found in teeth come from local water sources - and variations in the ratios of these isotopes can indicate the type of environment the animal lived in. They compared the ratios of these isotopes to definitely terrestrial animals from the same period and these results – when combined with results from studies of embryology, molecular data, and sedimentology – lead them to believe that Moeritherium was semi-aquatic.
Alex Liu commented: ‘We now have substantial evidence to suggest that modern elephants do have ancient relatives which lived primarily in water. The next steps are to conduct similar analyses on other elephant ancestors to determine when the switch from water to land occurred, and to determine exactly when the now fully-aquatic sirenians split from their semi-aquatic proboscidean relatives.’
Adapted from materials provided by University Of Oxford.

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