June 11, 2006, 8:20 AM CT

Random Notes From Texas

As Craig Woolheater said to Skeptical Inquirer's Ben Radford and me, after circling for the third time to get a drive-by view of the Alamo, "Now, we can remember the Alamo!".

To me, the thing I believe that I will most remember about San Antonio is the quite impressive Bigfoot exhibition that Craig has stimulated via curator Willie Mendez at the University of Texas San Antonio's Institute of Texan Cultures.

We got a sneak preview Friday night.

As you walk into the darkened beginning section of the huge display, you are taken down a path through a recreated nighttime scene in the Big Thicket. Hanging Spanish moss, tree trunks, and animal sounds surround you. Both Ben and I got to the trail's end, but were called back by Craig's wife, Marcy, because we had missed the star of the entryway - Bigfoot. Craig's comment was on target: "It looks like an old tree in the background there, guys, and you two missed it completely."........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 10, 2006, 7:18 PM CT

Third Franciscan Order Should Be Taken Seriously

In the late Middle Ages the diocese of Utrecht had more than 150 monasteries of the third order of St Francis. The majority of these were affiliated to the Chapter of Utrecht, an umbrella organisation founded in 1399. This can be considered part of the Modern Devotion, the religious reform movement which -starting in the valley of the river IJssel - influenced large parts of Europe. Based on a large number of archives within the Netherlands and further afield, Hildo van Engen investigated the history of this Utrecht Chapter and its communities in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In Antwerp, Van Engen came across two copies of letters from Geert Grote concerning the third Franciscan order, which were previously unknown. These date from about 1380 and were possibly intended for third order sisters in Zwolle. As per Grote they did not adhere strictly enough to third Franciscan order regulations concerning food and clothing. The letters reveal that contrary to prior opinion, the early modern devout had a favourable attitude towards the third Franciscan order. Eventhough Grote reprimanded the sisters, he found the principles of their lifestyle could be of the highest service. Interestingly these letters were written in Medieval Dutch, whereas the majority of Grote's work is written in Latin.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

June 9, 2006, 0:30 AM CT

Much Of The World Emerged From Last Ice Age Together

The Earth Institute at Columbia University, June 8, 2005--The end of the recurring, 100,000-year glacial cycles is one of the most prominent and readily identifiable features in records of the Earth's recent climate history. Yet one of the most puzzling questions in climate science has been why different parts of the world, most notably Greenland, appear to have warmed at different times and at different rates after the end of the last Ice Age.

However, a new study appearing in the upcoming issue of the journal Science suggests that, except for regions of the North Atlantic, most of the Earth did, in fact, begin warming at the same time roughly 17,500 years ago. In addition, researchers suggest that ice core records from Greenland, which show that average temperatures there did not warm appreciably until about 15,000 years ago, may have remained in a hyper-cold state largely as a result of events triggered by warming elsewhere.

The research, led by Joerg Schaefer from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a member of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and George Denton at the University of Maine, relied on a method known as cosmogenic or surface-exposure dating, which enabled the researchers to determine how long rock surfaces have been exposed since the glaciers retreated. As cosmic rays penetrating the Earth's atmosphere strike the scoured rock, they form an isotope of the element beryllium, 10Be, at a known rate. By measuring the minute amounts of 10Be in rock samples from glacial moraines in California and New Zealand and comparing these data to previously published results from Wyoming, Oregon, Montana Argentina, Australia and Switzerland, Schaefer and colleagues were able to narrow down when glaciers around the world began to retreat. They found that almost everywhere they looked the glaciers began to pull back approximately 17,500 years ago. Additional studies from tropical South America southern Tibet have also produced similar results.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 7, 2006, 11:53 PM CT

The Mini-dinosaurs From The Harz Mountains

When uncommonly small dinosaur fossils were found in a quarry on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains in 1998, it was initially assumed that these were the remains of a group of young dinosaurs. This was a fallacy, as the Bonn palaeontologist, Dr. Martin Sander, recently discovered. The microstructure of the bones, he says, makes it very likely that the animals involved were adults - a scientific sensation: at a maximum estimated weight of one tonne they were only a fiftieth the weight of their closest relatives, the brachiosaurs, and thus by far the smallest of the giant dinosaurs which have ever been found. The study will be published on 8 June in the journal 'Nature'.

In dinosaur bones there are what are known as growth marks, similar to the annual rings on trees. When the dinosaurs are young the growth marks are comparatively far apart, because the animal is still growing fast. When the dinosaur has reached its maximum size, the growth marks lie correspondingly close together. 'And it is precisely these tightly compressed marks that we have discovered just beneath the surface of the fossil's bones,' says Bonn lecturer Dr. Martin Sander, one of the few experts worldwide on the micro-structure of dinosaur skeletons. 'So the dinosaurs must have been fully grown when they died.' The newly discovered species is a dwarf compared with the other giant dinosaurs: the animals were only just longer and heavier than a car. 'They stopped growing when they reached 6 metres in length and a tonne in body mass,' Martin Sander estimates. Their cousins, by contrast, were up to 45 metres long and weighed in at 80 tonnes - as much as a small town of over 1,000 inhabitants. They are the biggest land animals which have ever existed.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 7, 2006, 11:44 PM CT

Human Activities And Ecological Patterns

A new study reported in the Journal of Biogeography provides some of the first evidence that ecological patterns at large spatial scales have been significantly altered within recent human history suggesting a role for human activities as potential drivers.

The role of human activities in shaping ecological patterns at continental and global spatial scales has been understudied. This is due in part to the assumption that these large-scale patterns are generated primarily through non-human processes. A study in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Biogeography, using data on breeding bird assemblages in North America from 1968 to 2003, finds evidence suggesting that human activities have played a role in shaping large-scale ecological patterns.

Dr. Frank La Sorte from New Mexico State University used several novel analytical approaches to examine bird assemblages and their geographic ranges in North America to test for patterns of change over time. His findings suggest that a majority of bird species within these assemblages experienced geographic range expansion and a majority of bird assemblages experienced an increased abundance of common species over the 36 year time period. Overall, the results indicate that common species have become more prevalent across bird assemblages in North America within recent human history and human activities, therefore, cannot be ignored as a possible causal factor when assessing these patterns.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 6, 2006, 11:58 PM CT

Surviving The Snowball Earth

It has been 2.3 billion years since Earth's atmosphere became infused with enough oxygen to support life as we know it. About the same time, the planet became encased in ice that some researchers speculate was more than a half-mile deep. That raises questions about whether complex life could have existed before "Snowball Earth" and survived, or if it first evolved when the snowball began to melt.

New research shows organisms called eukaryotes -- organisms of one or more complex cells that engage in sexual reproduction and are ancestors of the animal and plant species present today -- existed 50 million to 100 million years before that ice age and somehow did survive. The work also shows that the cyanobacteria, or blue-green bacteria, that put the oxygen in the atmosphere in the first place, apparently were pumping out oxygen for millions of years before that, and also survived Earth's glaciation.

The findings call into question the direst models of just how deep the deep freeze was, said University of Washington astrobiologist Roger Buick, a professor of Earth and space sciences. While the ice likely was widespread, it probably was not consistently as thick as a half-mile, he said.

"That kind of ice coverage chokes off photosynthesis, so there's no food for anything, especially eukaryotes. They just couldn't survive," he said. "But this research shows they did survive."........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 4, 2006, 1:29 PM CT

Ancient Fig Find May Push Back Birth of Agriculture

An assortment of 11,400-year-old figs found in Israel may be the fruit of the world's earliest form of agriculture, researchers say.

Archaeologists from Israel and the United States say the find suggests Stone Age humans may have been cultivating fruit trees a thousand years before the domestication of cereal grains and legumes, such as peas and beans.

Previously, the oldest cultivated fruits were believed to be olives and grapes found in the eastern Mediterranean that were dated at about 6,000 years old.

Scientists behind the new study discovered the ancient figs at the Gilgal archaeological site in the Jordan Valley near the city of Jericho (see map of Israel.)

The nine carbonized figs were small but ripe and showed signs of having been dried for human consumption.

The finding adds a new twist to the story of agricultural origins.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

June 1, 2006, 6:34 PM CT

Killer Crater Found Under Ice

Planetary researchers have found evidence of a meteor impact much larger and earlier than the one that killed the dinosaurs -- an impact that they believe caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history.

The 300-mile-wide crater lies hidden more than a mile beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. And the gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest that it could date back about 250 million years -- the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out.

Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.

Researchers think that the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide -- four or five times wider.

"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

May 31, 2006, 9:19 PM CT

Climate History Rewritten

For the first time, researchers have pulled up prehistoric geologic records from the frigid vault of the Arctic Ocean. One of the findings, evidence of glacial Arctic ice from 45 million years ago, recasts a critical chapter of global climate history.

The evidence - pea-sized pebbles locked inside a 430 meter-long sediment core - shows that glaciers formed in the Arctic Ocean about 14 million years earlier than geologists had thought. This means that the immense sheets of ice at the Earth's poles formed simultaneously, something scientists call "bipolar symmetry" in one of three reports on Arctic ice highlighted on the cover of Nature.

Previously, geologists believed glaciers formed in Antarctica long before they appeared in the Arctic. The new evidence clears up this climate mystery and underscores the role that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases play in climate change, as per Steven Clemens, associate professor (research) in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University and a co-author of the Nature papers.

"In the past, researchers thought shifting tectonic plates and changes in ocean circulation patterns in the Southern Hemisphere may have prompted ice to form earlier in Antarctica," Clemens said. "But there was other data that contradicted this theory. Now much of what we know about the evolution of ice on Earth makes more sense. And the evidence underscores the importance of greenhouse gases as a driver of climate change. If you inject or remove large amounts of carbon in the atmosphere, you get truly global climate change".........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

May 25, 2006, 11:09 PM CT

Ancient Etruscans Unlikely Ancestors Of Modern Tuscans

For the first time, Stanford scientists have used novel statistical computer modeling to simulate demographic processes affecting the population of Tuscany over a 2,500-year time span. Rigorous tests used by the scientists have ruled out a genetic link between ancient Etruscans, the early inhabitants of central Italy, and the region's modern day residents.

The findings suggest that something either suddenly wiped out the Etruscans or the group represented a social elite that had little in common with the people who became the true ancestors of Tuscans, said Joanna Mountain, assistant professor of anthropological sciences.

''Very often, we assume the most simple explanation for something,'' said Mountain, an expert in anthropological genetics. ''So when you find in a particular location the archeological remains of people, the simplest explanation is that those people are ancestral to whoever is living there now. How often do you get a chance to check that? Very rarely.''.

The research advances the field of anthropological genetics by moving beyond simple storytelling about an ancient people to rigorous testing, using genetic data analysis, of a set of anthropological hypotheses, Mountain said.

The findings are documented in ''Serial Coalescent Simulations Suggest a Weak Genealogical Relationship Between Etruscans and Modern Tuscans,'' published May 15 in the online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Uma Ramakrishnan, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow, and Elise M. S. Belle and Guido Barbujani of the University of Ferrara in Italy co-authored the paper with Mountain.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

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