April 23, 2007, 9:43 PM CT

The emerging fate of the Neandertals

For nearly a century, anthropologists have been debating the relationship of Neandertals to modern humans. Central to the debate is whether Neandertals contributed directly or indirectly to the ancestry of the early modern humans that succeeded them.

As this discussion has intensified in the past decades, it has become the central research focus of Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Trinkaus has examined the earliest modern humans in Europe, including specimens in Romania, Czech Republic and France. Those specimens, in Trinkaus' opinion, have shown obvious Neandertal ancestry.

In an article appearing the week of April 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trinkaus has brought together the available data, which shows that early modern humans did exhibit evidence of Neandertal traits.

"When you look at all of the well dated and diagnostic early modern European fossils, there is a persistent presence of anatomical features that were present among the Neandertals but absent from the earlier African modern humans," Trinkaus said. "Early modern Europeans reflect both their predominant African early modern human ancestry and a substantial degree of admixture between those early modern humans and the indigenous Neandertals"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

April 12, 2007, 6:36 PM CT

Ancient T. rex and mastodon protein discovered

Researchers have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon.

Their results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as cancer.

When an animal dies, protein immediately begins to degrade and, in the case of fossils, is slowly replaced by mineral. This substitution process was believed to be complete by 1 million years. Scientists at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Harvard Medical School now know otherwise.

The researchers' findings appear as companion papers in this week's issue of the journal Science.

"Not only was protein detectably present in these fossils, the preserved material was in good enough condition that it could be identified," said Paul Filmer, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research. "We now know much more about what conditions proteins can survive in. It turns out that some proteins can survive for very long time periods, far longer than anyone predicted".

Mary Schweitzer of NCSU and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences discovered soft tissue in the leg bone of a T. rex and other fossils recovered from the Hell Creek sediment formation in Montana......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

April 11, 2007, 9:27 PM CT

Earliest Evidence Of Maize Farming In Mexico

A Florida State University anthropologist has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years earlier than scholars previously thought.

Professor Mary Pohl conducted an analysis of sediments in the Gulf Coast of Tabasco, Mexico, and concluded that people were planting crops in the "New World" of the Americas around 5,300 B.C. The analysis extends Pohl's prior work in this area and validates principles of microfossil data collection.

The results of Pohl's study, which she conducted along with Dolores R. Piperno of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the Republic of Panama, Kevin O. Pope of Geo Arc Research and John G. Jones of Washington State University, would be reported in the April 9-13 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This research expands our knowledge on the transition to agriculture in Mesoamerica," Pohl said. "These are significant new findings that fill out knowledge of the patterns of early farming. It expands on research that demonstrates that maize spread quickly from its hearth of domestication in southwest Mexico to southeast Mexico and other tropical areas in the New World including Panama and South America"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

April 2, 2007, 10:07 PM CT

China's earliest modern human

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing have been studying a 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton found in China and have determined that the "out of Africa" dispersal of modern humans may not have been as simple as once thought.

The research result would be reported in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on April 3.

Erik Trinkaus, Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, his colleague Hong Shang, and others at the IVPP examined the skeleton, recovered in 2003 from the Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, near Beijing City.

The skeleton dates to 42,000 to 38,500 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated modern human skeleton in China and one of the oldest modern human fossils in eastern Eurasia.

The specimen is basically a modern human, but it does have a few archaic characteristics, especially in the teeth and hand bone. This morphological pattern implies that a simple spread of modern humans from Africa is unlikely, particularly since younger specimens have been found in Eastern Eurasia with similar feature patterns.

As per Trinkaus and Shang, "the discovery promises to provide relevant paleontological data for our understanding of the emergence of modern humans in eastern Asia"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

March 25, 2007, 9:11 PM CT

Man's earliest direct ancestors

Modern man"s earliest known close ancestor was significantly more apelike than previously believed, a New York University College of Dentistry professor has found.

A computer-generated reconstruction by Dr. Timothy Bromage, a paleoanthropologist and Adjunct Professor of Biomaterials and of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology, shows a 1.9 million-year-old skull belonging to Homo rudolfensis, the earliest member of the human genus, with a surprisingly small brain and distinctly protruding jaw, features usually linked to more apelike members of the hominid family living as much as three million years ago.

Dr. Bromage"s findings call into question the extent to which H. rudolfensis differed from earlier, more apelike hominid species. Specifically, he is the first scientist to produce a reconstruction of the skull that questions renowned paleontologist and archeologist Richard Leakey"s depiction of modern man"s earliest direct ancestor as having a vertical facial profile and a relatively large brain an interpretation widely accepted until now.

Dr. Bromage"s reconstruction also suggests that humans developed a larger brain and more vertical face with a less pronounced jaw and smaller teeth at least 300,000 years later than usually believed, perhaps as recently as 1.6 million to one million years ago, when two later species, H. ergaster and H. erectus, lived. Dr. Bromage presented his findings today at the annual scientific session of the International Association for Dental Research in New Orleans......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:12:40 GMT

17,000-year Old Cave Painting Reveals Prehistoric Trade of Scarce Mineral

Prehistoric peoples of the French Pyrenees may be trading scarce manganese oxide mineraevidence from the bulls muzzle of a cave painting, with 17,000-year old mineral composition. The ancient painting is the — Great Bull of Lascaux. It is a lithograph in Dordogne, France.

The results of this study were published in the 13th International Conferences November 2006 edition. The conference was held on X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure. Collaborator and Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) researcher and Faculty Chair Gordon Brown said,

This cave painting is among the world’s oldest and most exquisite. Archeologists have been concerned about the interpretation of this rock art and its pigments since it was discovered.


The researchers had taken microscopic black pigment samples — one from the bull’s ears and another from his muzzle. With the help of these samples, they identified manganese oxide minerals in the samples by using an X-ray absorption method at SSRL Beamline 11-2 and at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

The absorption spectra revealed an “unanticipated” variety of manganese oxide minerals! It also included a rare occurrence of hausmannite (Mn3O4), which has never been encountered before in prehistoric pigments. Posted by: Irani      Read more     Source

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:11:14 GMT

Thai Health Promotion Foundation: Exercise Anywhere

Thai Health Promotion Foundation has launched this print advertisement to draw attention of people about as there is always time and space can be created for few games to play even exercise can be done in similar fashion. The campaign has taken efforts to outline the scope of exercise can be created any moment as per convenience. To exemplify the idea campaign has shown some games that need proper and huge arrangement are being played in smaller makeover.

The campaign has certainly used indicative message to be delivered to the general mass. However, the campaign does not have a very simplistic presentation and there was some room for improvement in its execution. However, the art direction of the campaign is considerably good. The text of the ad reads, ‘Exercise anywhere’, which is crisp, short and direct. The campaign was developed by TBWA.

Via Ads of the World Posted by: Balendu      Read more     Source

March 14, 2007, 10:12 PM CT

New Mammal From Mesozoic Era

n international team of American and Chinese paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived 125 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, in what is now the Hebei Province in China.

The new mammal, documented in the March 15 issue of the journal Nature, provides first-hand evidence of early evolution of the mammalian middle ear--one of the most important features for all modern mammals. The discovery was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"This early mammalian ear from China is a rosetta-stone type of discovery which reinforces the idea that development of complex body parts can be explained by evolution, using exquisitely preserved fossils," said H. Richard Lane, program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences, which co-funded the discovery with NSF's Division of Environmental Biology and its Assembling the Tree of Life (AToL) program.

Named Yanoconodon allini after the Yan Mountains in Hebei, the fossil was unearthed in the fossil-rich beds of the Yixian Formation and is the first Mesozoic mammal recovered from Hebei. The fossil site is about 300 kilometers outside of Beijing.

The scientists discovered that the skull of Yanoconodon revealed a middle ear structure that is an intermediate step between those of modern mammals and those of near relatives of mammals, also known as mammaliaforms......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

March 13, 2007, 9:38 PM CT

Fossil From 160,000 Years Ago Resemble Modern Man

An international team of researchers have observed that the oldest member (160,000 years old) of the genus Homo shows a life history profile similar to modern humans. These findings, based on experiments at ESRF, are in contrast to prior studies suggesting that early fossil humans possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans.

The origins of modern humans continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics among anthropologists, and there is little consensus about where and when the first members of our species, Homo sapiens, became fully modern. While fossil evidence tells a complex tale of mosaic change during the African Stone Age, almost nothing is known about changes in human 'life history', or the timing of development, reproductive scheduling, and lifespan. Research during the past two decades has shown that early fossil humans (australopithecines and early Homo) possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans. However, it is unclear when and in which group of fossil humans the modern condition of a relatively long childhood arose.

The team of researchers examined the tooth growth and eruption in a fossil from an 8 year old child using the unique tool that is the X-rays beams of the ESRF. The fossil is from one of the earliest representatives of Homo sapiens. It was found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and was dated to approximately 160,000 years ago......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

March 12, 2007, 9:07 PM CT

About Caribbean extinctions

Smithsonian scientists and colleagues report a new study that may shake up the way paleontologists think about how environmental change shapes life on Earth. The researchers summarized the environmental, ecological and evolutionary consequences for Caribbean shallow-water marine communities when the Isthmus of Panama was formed. They concluded that extinctions resulting when one ocean became two were delayed by 2 million years.

Researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and London's Natural History Museum report their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on March 12.

Three to 4 million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama land bridge rose to connect North and South America, and divided one vast ocean into two. In response, a major extinction of marine animals that had flourished under open seaway conditions occurred on the Caribbean side of the new Isthmus.

"We may be way off-track when we search for the causes of extinctions by looking only at the time the extinctions occur in the fossil record, which is what paleontologists normally do," said Aaron O'Dea, postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "In our case, we see that most coral and snail species died off a good 2 million years after the environmental change that caused their demise"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source