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M3GA V 7.1 :: CHANNEL 11 :: Outersphere :: Digging In The Dirt III
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #270 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:35am »
Ancient 'Monster' Insect: 'Unicorn' Fly Never Before Observed

[image]
This image of an ancient fly in amber shows the strange horn on its head, topped by three eyes. (Credit: Photo by George Poinar)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2009) — Just in time for Halloween, researchers have announced the discovery of a new, real-world "monster" -- what they are calling a "unicorn" fly that lived about 100 million years ago and is being described as a new family, genus and species of fly never before observed.

A single, incredibly well-preserved specimen of the tiny but scary-looking fly was preserved for eternity in Burmese amber, and it had a small horn emerging from the top of its head, topped by three eyes that would have given it the ability to see predators coming. But despite that clever defense mechanism, it was apparently an evolutionary dead end that later disappeared.

"No other insect ever discovered has a horn like that, and there's no animal at all with a horn that has eyes on top," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor of zoology at Oregon State University who just announced the new species in Cretaceous Research, a professional journal.

"It was probably a docile little creature that fed on the pollen and nectar of tiny tropical flowers," Poinar said. "But it was really bizarre looking. One of the reviewers of the study called it a monster, and I have to admit it had a face only another fly could have loved. I was thinking of making some masks based on it for Halloween."

This fly lived in the jungles of Myanmar and was found trapped in amber that was from 97 to 110 million years old. The gooey, viscous tree sap that flowed down over the fly and later turned to stone preserved its features in lifelike detail, including its strange horn topped by three functional eyes.

"If we had seen nothing but the wings of this insect, it would have looked similar to some other flies in the family Bibionomorpha," Poinar said. "But this was near the end of the Early Cretacous when a lot of strange evolutionary adaptations were going on. Its specialized horn and eyes must have given this insect an advantage on very tiny flowers, but didn't serve as well when larger flowers evolved. So it went extinct."

Poinar named the new fly Cascoplecia insolitis -- from the Latin "cascus" for old and "insolates" for strange and unusual.

The fly also had other very unusual characteristics, the study found, such as an odd-shaped antenna, unusually long legs that would have helped it crawl over flowers and extremely small vestigial mandibles that would have limited it to nibbling on very tiny particles of food.

Pollen grains found on the legs of the fly suggest that it primarily must have fed on flowers.

This fly lived during the time of the dinosaurs, but also in a period when Triassic and Jurassic species were becoming extinct, modern groups were appearing and angiosperms, or flowering plants, were diversifying. Some of the characteristics of the fly were common to other families found around that time, but others were extremely different -- especially the horn with eyes on top.

The specimen found in amber was well-preserved, lacking only the rear left portion of the abdomen and a portion of the left hind leg. It's rare to find specimens with essentially a complete body as well as wings, scientists noted in the report. The fossil came from an amber mine in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar, first excavated in 2001.

Poinar is an expert on insects and other life forms that have been preserved in amber, and has used them as clues to create detailed portraits of ancient ecosystems.

"None of the specialized body characters of Cascoplecia occurs on previously reported Cretaceous bibionids," the report concluded. "This 'unicorn' fly was one of the oddities of the Cretaceous world and was obviously an evolutionary dead end."

Unless, of course, it shows up once again as a scary looking Halloween costume -- with wings, grasping claws, and a horn with three piercing eyes on top.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091026152934.htm
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #271 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:37am »
Snail Fossils Suggest Semiarid Eastern Canary Islands Were Wetter 50,000 Years Ago

[image]
Fossil land snail shells from the Eastern Canary Islands. (Credit: Image courtesy of Southern Methodist University)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2009) — Fossil land snail shells found in ancient soils on the subtropical eastern Canary Islands show that the Spanish archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa has become progressively drier over the past 50,000 years.

Isotopic measurements performed on fossil land snail shells resulted in oxygen isotope ratios that suggest the relative humidity on the islands was higher 50,000 years ago, then experienced a long-term decrease to the time of maximum global cooling and glaciation about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to new research by Yurena Yanes, a post-doctoral researcher, and Crayton J. Yapp, a geochemistry professor, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

With subsequent post-glacial climatic fluctuations, relative humidity seems to have oscillated somewhat, but finally decreased even further to modern values.

Consequently the eastern Canary Islands experienced an overall increase in dryness during the last 50,000 years, eventually yielding the current semiarid conditions. Today the low-altitude eastern islands are characterized by low annual rainfall and a landscape of short grasses and shrubs, Yanes says.

The research advances understanding of the global paleoclimate during an important time in human evolution, when the transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture first occurred in the fertile Middle East and subsequently spread to Asia, North Africa and Europe.

"In the Canary Archipelago, land snails are one of the rare 'continuous' records of paleoclimatic conditions over the last 50,000 years," Yanes says. "The results of this study are of great relevance to biologists and paleontologists investigating the evolution of plants and animals linked to climatic fluctuation in the islands."

The researchers' isotopic evidence reflects changing atmospheric and oceanic circulation associated with the waxing, waning and subsequent disappearance over the past 50,000 years of vast ice sheets at mid- to high latitudes on the continents of the Northern Hemisphere.

The research also is consistent with the observed decline in diversity of the highly moisture-sensitive land snails.

Land snail shells are abundant and sensitive to environmental change and as fossils they are well-preserved. Measurement of variations in oxygen isotope ratios of fossil shells can yield information about changes in ancient climatic conditions.

The shells are composed of the elements calcium, oxygen and carbon, which are combined to form a mineral known as aragonite. Oxygen atoms in aragonite are not all exactly alike. A small proportion of those atoms is slightly heavier than the majority, and these heavier and lighter forms of oxygen are called isotopes of oxygen.

Small changes in the ratio of heavy to light isotopes can be measured with a high degree of accuracy and precision. Variations in these ratios are related to climatic variables, including relative humidity, temperature and the oxygen isotope ratios of rainwater and water vapor in the environments in which land snails live.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091027170853.htm
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Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #272 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:38am »
Novel Evolutionary Theory For The Explosion Of Life

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2009) — The Cambrian Explosion is widely regarded as one of the most relevant episodes in the history of life on Earth, when the vast majority of animal phyla first appear in the fossil record. However, the causes of its origin have been the subject of debate for decades, and the question of what was the trigger for the single cell microorganisms to assemble and organize into multicellular organisms has remained unanswered until now.

Within a longstanding research collaboration between the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and Bielefeld University together with the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute in Basel and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole (Massachusetts), Xavier Fernàndez-Busquets (Barcelona) and Dario Anselmetti (Bielefeld) and their colleagues published online in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution their biophysical single molecule results on the effect of calcium on the interactions of cell adhesion molecules from marine sponges. These simply organized organisms do not have specialized muscle or nerve cells and nevertheless survived the last 500 million years almost unchanged and are considered a link between the single-cell dominated Precambrian and later multicellular organisms.

The researchers succeeded to show that the massive and sudden surge in the calcium concentration of the Cambrian seawater -- that is believed to be the result of volcanically active midocean ridges -- not only initiated the buildup of calcified shells, but was also mandatory for the aggregation and stabilisation of multicellular sponge structures. This allows, on the other hand, to formulate a novel theory where the geologically induced increase of marine calcium might be the key for understanding the Cambrian Explosion of Life.

This paper constitutes the first research work where single molecule force spectroscopy studies have provided meaningful answers to such a deep evolutionary biology question as the origin of multicellular animals, and might represent a milestone for both disciplines and an example of how multidisciplinarity and collaboration are essential components of excellent contemporary science.

Journal reference:

1. Xavier Fernández-Busquets, André Körnig, Iwona Bucior, Max M. Burger, and Dario Anselmetti. Self-Recognition and Ca2 -Dependent Carbohydrate-Carbohydrate Cell Adhesion Provide Clues to the Cambrian Explosion. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2009; 26 (11): 2551 DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msp170

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091016224153.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #273 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:43am »
Climate Events Let Ice Age Mammoths Pass Far Below 40 Degrees North Latitude

[image]
Almost complete lower jaw of a male woolly mammoth from Padul (Granada, southern Spain). (Credit: Copyright Senckenberg Research Institutes)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2009) — Europe’s southern-most skeletal remains of Mammuthus primigenius were unearthed in a moor on the 37°N latitude. This is considerably south of the inhospitable habitat than one usually imagines for mammoths, and for the characteristically dry and cold climate that prevailed during the ice ages in the north of Eurasia.

The remains of the ice age giants from Padul were examined in a joint scientific project of four research institutions, namely, the Quaternary Paleontology arm of the Senckenberg Research Institutes of Germany, the Universities of Madrid and Oviedo in Spain, and the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

"These woolly mammoths finds do not belong to stray animals who only chanced to head south, but belonged to Granada's permanent inhabitants at this time”, says Diego Álvarez-Lao from the University of Oviedo. Dick Mol, ice age expert at the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam adds: “Nevertheless, the Spanish mammoths have not differed anatomically from their congeners in more northern regions.”

Climate- and environmental data show that it was not the longing for summery temperatures or the chirp of crickets that lured the ice age giants to the south, but a diet of grass, various herbs and shrubs. The expansion of the mammoth steppe with its typical vegetation allowed the wandering of the giants and other ice age animals below the 40° N latitude and far to the south.

Nuria García from the University Complutense de Madrid explains: "Fossil plants which have been found in drill cores from scientific drilling in Spain and the nearby Mediterranean Sea, as well as our investigations of the Padul sediments indicate that the animals lived on the plants of the mammoth steppe.”

Among the discoverers of Europe's southern-most finds is Senckenberg scientist Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke, who focused on the reasons that Mammuthus primigenius passed below the 40°N latitude. “A comparison with other sites between the 38°N and 36°N latitude shows that the animals pushed south 30 to 40 thousand years ago also in areas outside of Europe”, the ice age paleontologist explains and demonstrates with maps. Thus the southern-most sites of the ice age giants lie on a belt which stretches from Western Europe via Georgia, the Siberian Baikal region to eastern China and from Korea till the Midwest of America.

Nevertheless the dispersal of the giants was blocked now and then. The impressively high Sierra Nevada at Padul formed a natural barrier. Likewise, the Rocky Mountains in North America had a similar effect. Other obstacles were areas that did not offer suitable food, as desert-like regions or the Grait Plains of North America which expanded on account of a vegetation change.

The present study documents for the first time the southerly push of Mammuthus primigenius in Europe and points out that their migration to southern Spain and Italy happened the same time as similar advances into eastern China, to the north of Japan and to Kamchatka. The team of scientists suggests that this phenomenon is related to coupled climate events in the northeast Atlantic and the northwest Pacific. Dr. Kahlke concludes: „This is proof that global mechanisms which regulated climate already during the ice age also influenced vegetation and with it also animal migration”.

Journal reference:

1. Álvarez-Lao et al. The Padul mammoth finds — On the southernmost record of Mammuthus primigenius in Europe and its southern spread during the Late Pleistocene. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 2009; 278 (1-4): 57 DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.04.011

http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2009/07/090709132057.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #274 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:48am »
Largest Bat In Europe Inhabited Northeastern Spain More Than 10,000 Years Ago

[image]
This is what the bat, Nyctalus lasiopterus, looks like nowadays. (Credit: A.G. Popa-Lisseanu et al. / SINC)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — Spanish researchers have confirmed that the largest bat in Europe, Nyctalus lasiopterus, was present in north-eastern Spain during the Late Pleistocene (between 120,000 and 10,000 years ago). The Greater Noctule fossils found in the excavation site at Abríc Romaní (Barcelona) prove that this bat had a greater geographical presence more than 10,000 years ago than it does today, having declined due to the reduction in vegetation cover.

Although this research study, published in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, is the second to demonstrate the bat's presence in the Iberian Peninsula, it offers the first description in the fossil record of the teeth of Nyctalus lasiopterus from a fragment of the left jaw.

"It is an important finding because this species is not common in the fossil record. In fact, the discovery of Nyctalus lasiopterus at the Abríc Romaní site (Capellades, Barcelona) is one of the few cases of fossils existing on the species in the European Pleistocene," says Juan Manuel López-García, principal author of the work and researcher at the Institute of Social Evolution and Human Palaeoecology at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV).

The analysis of the fossilised remains found at the site during the campaigns from 2004 to 2006 reveals that the largest bat in Europe inhabited north-eastern Spain more than 10,000 years ago. "Nyctalus lasiopterus is a fairly unknown species nowadays, with an indistinct geographical distribution in the peninsula, which does not include the region of Catalonia," adds López-García.

Distribution due to environmental factors

"The presence of Nyctalus lasiopterus in the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula strengthens the evidence that this species had a wider geographical range during the Pleistocene than today," says the palaeontologist. During the mild periods, when the development of vegetation gave these animals refuge, the Noctule had a wider territory.

Until now, the large bat had been located in mountainous regions such as the Eastern Pyrenees, the Cantabrian Mountains, the central mountain range or open Mediterranean landscapes where oaks, holm oaks and pines dominate.

However, the study confirms a change from the distribution of the species during the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene (less than 10,000 years ago) to now. "The reduction in vegetation cover could be the reason for the current low densities of the species and its biased geographical distribution," concluded López-García.

Journal reference:

1. López-García, Juan Manuel; Sevilla, Paloma; Cuenca-Bescos, Gloria. New evidence for the greater noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus) in the Late Pleistocene of western Europe. Comptes Rendus Palevol, 2009; 8 (6): 551-558

http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2009/10/091029113756.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #275 on Oct 30, 2009, 9:55am »
New Wrinkle In Ancient Ocean Chemistry

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2009) — Scientists widely accept that around 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth's atmosphere underwent a dramatic change when oxygen levels rose sharply. Called the "Great Oxidation Event" (GOE), the oxygen spike marks an important milestone in Earth's history, the transformation from an oxygen-poor atmosphere to an oxygen-rich one paving the way for complex life to develop on the planet.

Two questions that remain unresolved in studies of the early Earth are when oxygen production via photosynthesis got started and when it began to alter the chemistry of Earth's ocean and atmosphere.

Now a research team led by geoscientists at the University of California, Riverside corroborates recent evidence that oxygen production began in Earth's oceans at least 100 million years before the GOE, and goes a step further in demonstrating that even very low concentrations of oxygen can have profound effects on ocean chemistry.

To arrive at their results, the researchers analyzed 2.5 billion-year-old black shales from Western Australia. Essentially representing fossilized pieces of the ancient seafloor, the fine layers within the rocks allowed the researchers to page through ocean chemistry's evolving history.

Specifically, the shales revealed that episodes of hydrogen sulfide accumulation in the oxygen-free deep ocean occurred nearly 100 million years before the GOE and up to 700 million years earlier than such conditions were predicted by past models for the early ocean. Scientists have long believed that the early ocean, for more than half of Earth's 4.6 billion-year history, was characterized instead by high amounts of dissolved iron under conditions of essentially no oxygen.

"The conventional wisdom has been that appreciable atmospheric oxygen is needed for sulfidic conditions to develop in the ocean," said Chris Reinhard, a Ph.D. graduate student in the Department of Earth Sciences and one of the research team members. "We found, however, that sulfidic conditions in the ocean are possible even when there is very little oxygen around, below about 1/100,000th of the oxygen in the modern atmosphere."

Reinhard explained that at even very low oxygen levels in the atmosphere, the mineral pyrite can weather on the continents, resulting in the delivery of sulfate to the ocean by rivers. Sulfate is the key ingredient in hydrogen sulfide formation in the ocean.

Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry, whose laboratory led the research, explained that the hydrogen sulfide in the ocean is a fingerprint of photosynthetic production of oxygen 2.5 billion years ago.

"A pre-GOE emergence for oxygenic photosynthesis is a matter of intense debate, and its resolution lies at the heart of understanding the evolution of diverse forms of life," he said. "We have found an important piece of that puzzle."

Study results appear in the Oct. 30 issue of Science.

"Our data point to oxygen-producing photosynthesis long before concentrations of oxygen in the atmosphere were even a tiny fraction of what they are today, suggesting that oxygen-consuming chemical reactions were offsetting much of the production," said Reinhard, the lead author of the research paper.

The researchers argue that the presence of small amounts of oxygen may have stimulated the early evolution of eukaryotes -- organisms whose cells bear nuclei -- millions of years prior to the GOE.

"This initial oxygen production set the stage for the development of animals almost two billion years later," Lyons said. "The evolution of eukaryotes had to take place first."

The findings also have implications for the search for life on extrasolar planets.

"Our findings add to growing evidence suggesting that biological production of oxygen is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the evolution of complex life," Reinhard said. "A planetary atmosphere with abundant oxygen would provide a very promising biosignature. But one of the lessons here is that just because spectroscopic measurements don't detect oxygen in the atmosphere of another planet doesn't necessarily mean that no biological oxygen production is taking place."

To analyze the shales, Reinhard first pulverized them into a fine powder in Lyons's laboratory. Next, the powder was treated with a series of chemicals to extract different minerals. The extracts were then run on a mass-spectrometer at UC Riverside.

"One exciting thing about our discovery of sulfidic conditions occurring before the GOE is that it might shed light on ocean chemistry during other periods in the geologic record, such as a poorly understood 400 million-year interval between the GOE and around 1.8 billion years ago, a point in time when the deep oceans stopped showing signs of high iron concentrations," Reinhard said. "Now perhaps we have an explanation. If sulfidic conditions could occur with very small amounts of oxygen around, then they might have been even more common and widespread after the GOE."

Said Lyons, "This is important because oxygen-poor and sulfidic conditions almost certainly impacted the availability of nutrients essential to life, such as nitrogen and trace metals. The evolution of the ocean and atmosphere were in a cause-and-effect balance with the evolution of life."

Reinhard and Lyons were joined in the research by Clint Scott of UCR; Ariel Anbar of the Arizona State University, Tempe; and Rob Raiswell of the University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

The two-year study was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029141217.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #276 on Nov 1, 2009, 6:40pm »
Spider web confirmed as 'oldest'

[image]
The web is believed to have become trapped in amber during a forest fire

Spider webs encased in amber which were discovered on an East Sussex beach have been confirmed by scientists as being the world's oldest on record.

The amber, which was found in Bexhill by fossil hunter Jamie Hiscocks and his brother Jonathan, dates back 140 million years to the Cretaceous period.

Professor Martin Brasier said they were the earliest webs to be incorporated into the fossil record.

He has published his findings in the Journal of the Geological Society.

Professor Brasier, who is a palaeobiologist at the University of Oxford, said: "This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it."

'Sticky droplets'

He added: "These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey.

"We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber. These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge."

His studies revealed that the spider that spun the web is related to the modern day orb-web or garden spider.

Scientists think the web became trapped in conifer resin after a forest fire and then became fossilised inside the resulting amber.

Mr Hiscocks and his brother also found the fossilised remains of an Iguanodon jaw bone on the coastline.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/sussex/8335719.stm

Published: 2009/10/31 18:54:33 GMT
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #277 on Nov 7, 2009, 1:55am »
Dinosaur prints found in NZ South Island

November 7, 2009 - 2:54PM

AFP

Scientists have discovered the first evidence that dinosaurs roamed the South Island of New Zealand with 70-million-year-old footprints found in six locations.

They are the first dinosaur footprints found in the country although bones, mostly vertebrae, have been discovered in two North Island locations.

The footprints were found by scientist Greg Browne in the remote Whanganui Inlet in the northwest of Nelson at the top of the South Island.

They are spread over 10 kilometres and in one area there are up to 20 footprints, Browne said.

Browne, a sedimentologist, believes the footprints belonged to sauropods - plant-eating dinosaurs which were among the largest animals to have lived, growing up to six metres in length and weighing several tonnes.

He said he carefully considered all possible geological and biological explanations for the features in the rock and was able to rule them out one by one.

His investigation included comparisons with dinosaur footprints in similar-aged rocks in other parts of the world.

The footprints were made in beach sands and were probably quickly covered and preserved by mud from subsequent tides.

"What makes this discovery special is the unique preservation of the footprints in an environment where they could easily have been destroyed by waves, tides, or wind," Browne said.

As with much of New Zealand, northwest Nelson was largely submerged between 70 and 20 million years ago and the footprints would have been covered by hundreds of metres of marine sediments.

However, after the country was uplifted and northwest Nelson emerged from the sea, the overlying sedimentary rock has been eroded away over the past 20 million years to expose the footprints again, Browne said.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-wor....91107-i2oj.html
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #278 on Nov 11, 2009, 11:57am »
New dinosaur discovered in South Africa

Posted 2 hours 21 minutes ago

A new species of dinosaur that roamed the Earth 197 million years ago, likely an ancestor of the enormous brontosaurus, has been discovered in South Africa, scientists said.

Dubbed Aardonyx Celestae, a combination of Afrikaans and Greek that means "Earth Claw", fossils of the seven-metre long dinosaur were uncovered in the central Free State province by a team of post-graduate students from Johannesburg's Witswatersrand University.

"We knew that there were likely to be some fossils in these bone beds... but we did not expect to find anything of this magnitude," said Adam Yates, the scientist who supervised the work.

The Aardonyx appears to be ancestors of the massive sauropod dinosaurs, the largest backboned animals ever to walk on land, he said.

The fossils from a partial skeleton unveiled on Wednesday came from a young dinosaur, Mr Yates said.

"Growth rings in the rib and shoulder blade sections show that Aardonyx was not full grown - it was probably less than 10 years when it died near a river or stream," he said.

Mr Yates said the Aardonyx was a vegetarian, with a wide gaping mouth and a powerful back. Its claws measured about five centimetres long, and it likely walked on two legs, but was strong enough to drop on all fours as well.

The fossils will be put on display at the Transvaal Museum in the South African capital Pretoria.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/12/2740313.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #279 on Nov 17, 2009, 6:32pm »
Mummies had heart disease: research

MARILYNN MARCHIONE
November 18, 2009 - 8:44AM

AP

You can't blame this one on McDonald's: Researchers have found signs of heart disease in 3,500-year-old mummies.

"We think of it as being caused by modern risk factors," such as fast food, smoking and a lack of exercise, but the findings show that these aren't the only reasons arteries clog, said Dr Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City.

He and several other researchers used CT scans, a type of X-ray, on 22 mummies kept in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo. The subjects were from 1981 BC to 334 AD. Half were thought to be over 45 when they died, and average lifespan was under 50 back then.

Sixteen mummies had heart and blood vessel tissue to analyse. Definite or probable hardening of the arteries was seen in nine.

"We were struck by the similar appearance of vascular calcification in the mummies and our present-day patients," said another researcher, Dr Michael Miyamoto of the University of California at San Diego. "Perhaps the development of atherosclerosis is a part of being human."

One mummy had evidence of a possible heart attack but scientists don't know if it was fatal. Nor can they tell how much these people weighed - mummification dehydrates the body.

Of those whose identities could be determined, all were of high social status, and many served in the court of the Pharaoh or as priests or priestesses.

"Rich people ate meat, and they did salt meat, so maybe they had hypertension (high blood pressure), but that's speculation," Thompson said.

With modern diets, "we all sort of live in the Pharaoh's court," said another of the researchers, Dr Samuel Wann of the Wisconsin Heart Hospital in Milwaukee.

The oldest mummy with heart disease signs was Lady Rai, a nursemaid to Queen Ahmose Nefertari who died around 1530 BC - 200 years before King Tutankhamun.

German imaging company Siemens AG, the National Bank of Egypt and the Mid-America Heart Institute paid for the work. Results are in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association and were reported on Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference.

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-wor....91118-ikuc.html
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #280 on Nov 18, 2009, 1:21pm »
Extinct Moa Rewrites New Zealand's History

[image]
Pachyornis - one of the extinct species of moa from New Zealand. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of New South Wales)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) — The evolutionary history of New Zealand's many extinct flightless moa has been re-written in the first comprehensive study of more than 260 sub-fossil specimens to combine all known genetic, anatomical, geological and ecological information about the unique bird lineage.

That lineage ended only about 600 years ago after a journey through time that most likely began about 80 million years earlier on the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team of researchers.

Found on the south and north islands of New Zealand, the evolutionary history and relationships between the moa species has long been subject to scientific debate, with past studies suggesting that up to 64 species existed with as many as 20 generic groups.

The new study found that moas should be grouped into only three families, six genera and it reduced the number of species to nine. The most recent species were relatively modern, evolving in the South Island only after the uplift of the Southern Alps between 5 and 8.5 million years ago.

Periodical land bridges, created by geological events and sea-level changes, allowed some of these species to cross over to the North Island.

The many species of moa are thought to have descended from a common ancestor of other large living flightless birds that evolved on separate southern landmasses when Gondwana broke up: the ostrich in Africa; the emu and cassowary in Australia; the rhea in South America; and New Zealand's kiwi. Another presumed relative was the extinct giant elephant bird in Madagascar.

New Zealand broke away from Gondwana at least 60 million years ago and a wide variety of moas subsequently evolved there, ranging in size from a large turkey to the three-metre tall Dinornis, which weighed up to 300 kg.

Maori people are known to have killed large numbers of birds for their meat, eggs and feathers -- moa is a Polynesian word for chicken -- after they arrived on the islands about 1,000 years ago. All the nine living species were gone within a few centuries.

The study also presents an important new geological/paleogeographical model, which suggests that land-dwelling animals on the North and South Island landmasses were isolated for most of the past 20-30 million years.

"The prolonged geographic isolation of New Zealand and the paucity of terrestrial mammals created a unique ecosystem dominated by an estimated 245 species of birds, providing an unparalleled opportunity to observe evolutionary processes," says Dr Trevor Worthy, a palaeontologist from the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, who was one of the 11 members of study team.

"Our study reveals that the patterns of genetic diversity within and between different moa groups reflect a complex history following a major drowning of the New Zealand landmass in the Oligocene [23 to 34 million years ago]. Their history was then affected by a series of marine barriers, tectonic activity and glacial cycles.

"We were surprised to discover just how recently many of the moa species -- and probably many of the iconic New Zealand animals and plants -- evolved in the South Island after the uplift of the Alps. The Alps brought rain and allowed wet rainforests to develop in the west and generated a drier, warmer climate to the east, creating a mix of upland and lowland environments, wet and dry habitats and a variety of forest, shrubland, and grasslands."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118092633.htm
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #281 on Nov 20, 2009, 10:17pm »
Mammoth dung clue to extinction
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

[image]

Mammoth dung has proved to be a source of prehistoric information, helping scientists unravel the mystery of what caused the great mammals to die out.

An examination of a fungus that is found in the ancient dung and preserved in lake sediments has helped build a picture of what happened to the beasts.

The study sheds light on the ecological consequences of the extinction and the role that humans may have played in it.

Researchers describe this development in the journal Science.

The study was led by Jacquelyn Gill from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.

She and her colleagues studied the Sporormiella fungal spores contained in the sediment deep within the bed of Appleman Lake in Indiana.

Many very large mammals including mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths inhabited forests in this area of North America about 20,000 years ago.

Sporormiella produces spores in the dung of large herbivores. These are then preserved in the layers of mud and can provide an index of the number of these great animals, or megafauna, that roamed the environment at a particular time.

"Sediment cores are much like ice cores, except with lake mud," explained Ms Gill. "The spores [and other materials] settle out into the lake mud and get buried over time."

She and her team simply counted the pollen, charcoal and Sporormiella in these layers of mud, tracking the timescale of ancient environmental changes.

Their results showed a slow decline in megafauna that began about 15,000 years ago and appeared to last for about 1,000 years.

This discovery rules out one idea that the extinction might have been caused by an extraterrestrial object striking Earth 13,000 years ago.

The scientists also spotted signals of major environmental changes around the time of the extinction.

"This study is exciting because we're getting some solid data about the ecological consequences of the removal of these animals," said Ms Gill.

"After their decline we see an increase in the more warm-adapted deciduous trees, and an increase in charcoal [which means there was] an increase in the number of forest fires.

"So we can see that the forest is reassembling following the extinction."

Human or environment

The study also shows that the decline began about 1,000 years before the Clovis period - when the archaeological record shows that humans were making stone tools designed specifically to hunt large animals.

Prior to this discovery, some scientists believed that Clovis people hunted the animals to extinction.

But Professor Christopher Johnson from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, said the study still supports the hypothesis that humans were primarily responsible for the mammals' decline.

Professor Johnson was not involved in the study but wrote an accompanying article in the same issue of Science, outlining its significance.

He wrote: "If people were responsible... they must have been pre-Clovis settlers.

"The existence of such people has been controversial, but archaeological evidence is slowly coming to light."

Ms Gill commented: "We can't resolve the climate versus humans debate but we have eliminated one of the main hypotheses for each camp."

She added that there were "modern conservation implications" to the study.

"We know the large herbivores on the landscape today are some of the most threatened," she said.

"And we're starting to learn that they're ecological keystones. They're not just charismatic, they might also be ecologically significant."

Professor Johnson told BBC News: "If we want to understand the history of ecosystems across the planet we really need to understand the effects of megafaunal extinction."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8368485.stm

Published: 2009/11/19 19:07:50 GMT
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #282 on Nov 21, 2009, 8:55am »
Galileo's lost tooth, fingers found

Posted 11 hours 53 minutes ago
Updated 10 hours 33 minutes ago

[image]
A finger from Galileo's right hand that was removed from his corpse in 1737. (AFP: Catola and Partners)

An art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei who died in the 17th century, Florence's History of Science museum said.

The body parts, along with another finger and a vertebra, were cut from Galileo's corpse by scientists and historians during a burial ceremony held 95 years after his death in 1642.

Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, a science historian who cut away the parts and wrote about the ceremony, "confessed he had found it hard to resist the temptation to take away the skull which had housed such extraordinary genius," the museum said.

The newly-found relics had passed from one collector to another until they went missing in 1905.

The remaining finger and the vertebrae have been conserved since 1737 in a mummified state in museums in Florence and Padua.

"All the organic material extracted from the corpse has therefore now been identified and is conserved in responsible hands," the museum said in a statement.

"On the basis of considerable historical documentation, there are no doubts about the authenticity of the items."

They will be exhibited from early 2010, when the museum will re-open after current renovation work and will change its name to the Galileo museum.

Galileo, born in Pisa in 1564, is considered one of the fathers of modern science due to his studies in physics, mathematics and particularly astronomy, where he led great advances in developing the telescope.

His lost fingers and tooth were bought by an unnamed collector at a recent auction, where they were being sold as unidentified artifacts contained in an 17th century wooden case, the museum said.

For 95 years after his death, ecclesiastical authorities refused to allow Galileo to be buried in consecrated ground because his findings were considered contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church.

His body now lies in Florence's Santa Croce church, opposite the tomb of Michelangelo.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/21/2749572.htm
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #283 on Nov 21, 2009, 9:09am »
Word made flesh: text found on shroud
ARIEL DAVID ROME
November 22, 2009

[image]
Controversial text ... the four-metre shroud revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, is displayed at Turin’s cathedral. Photo: AP

A VATICAN researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as the burial cloth of Jesus.

The claim, made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale, drew immediate scepticism from several scientists who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.

Ms Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said she had used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.

She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labelled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.

The shroud bears what appears to be the figure of a crucified man, with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet. Believers say Christ's image was imprinted on the linen fibres at the time of his resurrection. The fragile artifact is locked in a special protective chamber in Turin's cathedral.

Sceptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or the 14th century.

But when she showed the words to experts they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century.

She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Ms Frale claimed.

The researcher said the text also partially confirmed the account of the final moments of Jesus contained in the gospels. A fragment in Greek that can be read as "removed at the ninth hour" may refer to Christ's time of death reported in the holy texts.

On an enhanced image studied by Ms Frale, at least seven words can be seen. One short sequence of Aramaic letters has not been translated.

Another Latin fragment – "iber" – may refer to emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of the crucifixion.

"I tried to be objective and leave religious issues aside," Ms Frale said. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place."

Her book, titled in Italian as The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene, raised doubts among some experts. "People work on grainy photos and think they see things," said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written about the shroud. "It's all the result of imagination and computer software."

Mr Lombatti said artifacts bearing Greek and Aramaic texts were found in Jewish burials from the first century, but the use of Latin was unheard of.

He also rejected the idea that authorities would return the body of a crucified man to relatives after filling out some paperwork. Victims of the most cruel punishment used by the Romans would usually be left on the cross or were disposed of in a dump to add to the execution's effect.

He said "the message was that you won't even have a tomb to cry over".

Unusual sightings in the shroud are common and are often proved false, said Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia. He recently led a team of experts who made a replica of the shroud using materials and methods available in the 14th century.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/word-made-fl....91121-is6h.html
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Re: Digging In The Dirt III
« Reply #284 on Nov 21, 2009, 10:04am »
'Hobbits' Are a New Human Species, According to Statistical Analysis of Fossils

[image]
New statistical analysis confirms that the recently discovered human-like "hobbit" -- Homo floresiensis -- is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. (Credit: Image courtesy of Wiley-Blackwell)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2009) — Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans.

Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In 2003 Australian and Indonesian scientists discovered small-bodied, small-brained, hominin (human-like) fossils on the remote island of Flores in the Indonesian archipelago. This discovery of a new human species called Homo floresiensis has spawned much debate with some researchers claiming that the small creatures are really modern humans whose tiny head and brain are the result of a medical condition called microcephaly.

Researchers William Jungers, Ph.D., and Karen Baab, Ph.D. studied the skeletal remains of a female (LB1), nicknamed "Little Lady of Flores" or "Flo" to confirm the evolutionary path of the hobbit species. The specimen was remarkably complete and included skull, jaw, arms, legs, hands, and feet that provided researchers with integrated information from an individual fossil.

The cranial capacity of LB1 was just over 400 cm, making it more similar to the brains of a chimpanzee or bipedal "ape-men" of East and South Africa. The skull and jawbone features are much more primitive looking than any normal modern human. Statistical analysis of skull shapes show modern humans cluster together in one group, microcephalic humans in another and the hobbit along with ancient hominins in a third.

Due to the relative completeness of fossil remains for LB1, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable body design that was unlike any modern human. The thigh bone and shin bone of LB1 are much shorter than modern humans including Central African pygmies, South African KhoeSan (formerly known as 'bushmen") and "negrito" pygmies from the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. Some researchers speculate this could represent an evolutionary reversal correlated with "island dwarfing." "It is difficult to believe an evolutionary change would lead to less economical movement," said Dr. Jungers. "It makes little sense that this species re-evolved shorter thighs and legs because long hind limbs improve bipedal walking. We suspect that these are primitive retentions instead."

Further analysis of the remains using a regression equation developed by Dr. Jungers indicates that LB1 was approximately 106 cm tall (3 feet, 6 inches) -- far smaller than the modern pygmies whose adults grow to less than 150 cm (4 feet, 11 inches). A scatterplot depicts LB1 far outside the range of Southeast Asian and African pygmies in both absolute height and body mass indices. "Attempts to dismiss the hobbits as pathological people have failed repeatedly because the medical diagnoses of dwarfing syndromes and microcephaly bear no resemblance to the unique anatomy of Homo floresiensis," noted Dr. Baab.

Journal Reference:

1. William Jungers and Karen Baab. The geometry of hobbits: Homo floresiensis and human evolution. Significance, Published Online November 19, 2009; Print Issue Date: December 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2009.00389.x

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091119101034.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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