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Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 6, 2007, 8:15pm

Cultic City And Fortress Unearthed In Southern Turkey


One of two famous rock reliefs from this area is on the rock cliff in the left of this image. The better preserved of the two rock reliefs shows the Hittite King Muwatalli II (ca. 1290--1272 BC), opponent of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the famous Battle of Qadesh in Syria and is thus the oldest Hittite rock relief known so far.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2007) — New excavations conducted by the University of Tübingen (Germany) and the Onsekiz Mart University of Çanakkale (Turkey) at the site of Sirkeli Höyük near Adana (southern Turkey) have revealed the remains of a massive bastion fortification dating to the Hittite Imperial Period (ca. 1300 BC). Sirkeli Höyük, one of the largest settlement mounds in Cilicia during the Bronze- and Iron Ages, was already known to archaeologists and historians because of two Hittite rock reliefs located at the site.

The better preserved rock relief of the two shows the Hittite King Muwatalli II (ca. 1290–1272 BC), opponent of Pharaoh Ramesses II in the famous Battle of Qadesh in Syria and is thus the oldest Hittite rock relief known so far.

On the upside of the rock, just above the reliefs, various shallow pits or basins are found which apparently are to be connected with the reliefs and were used for libations in the course of cultic activities.

These pits were part of a larger cultic installation which also included a building to the west of the rock reliefs. This ensemble is thought to be a cultic installation for the Hittite King.

Excavations at the site were conducted between 1992-1997 by the Universities of Munich and Innsbruck. In 2006 excavations were resumed by the University of Tübingen and the University of Çanakkale. The project and its organization are based at the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology and Assyriology at the University of Tübingen. The Institute of Prehistorical Archaeology and the Institute of Classical Archaeology are associated with the project.

At the University of Çanakkale the project is based at the Institute of Prehistorical Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology and Classical Archaeology. The project is carried out under the patronage of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

In the course of the first two campaigns conducted in 2006 and 2007 the massive fortification bastion in the north-western part of the city was excavated. Finds made within the complex show that the building was constructed during the Late Bronze Age (1500-1200 B.C.) and apparently modified and re-used during the Iron Age (1200-600 B.C.). Later, the surrounding area of the mound was occupied by Hellenistic buildings. The finds reveal that the site was engaged in cultural exchange and trade with the Levant, the Aegean and different regions of Anatolia in the 2nd and 1st millennium B.C.

The site of Sirkeli Höyük may possibly also be identified with the ancient cultic city of Lawazantiya which is known to have been the home town of Hittite Queen Puduhepa, wife of King Hattusili III (ca. 1265-1240 B.C.).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030133030.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 12, 2007, 8:45am

From: Ljilja Cvekic
Published November 12, 2007 08:22 AM

Prehistoric women had passion for fashion

PLOCNIK, Serbia (Reuters) - If the figurines found in an ancient European settlement are any guide, women have been dressing to impress for at least 7,500 years.

Recent excavations at the site -- part of the Vinca culture which was Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization -- point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion, archaeologists say.

In the Neolithic settlement in a valley nestled between rivers, mountains and forests in what is now southern Serbia, men rushed around a smoking furnace melting metal for tools. An ox pulled a load of ore, passing by an art workshop and a group of young women in short skirts.

"According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today's girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms," said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.

The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. Near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe's oldest spa.

"They pursued beauty and produced 60 different forms of wonderful pottery and figurines, not only to represent deities, but also out of pure enjoyment," said Kuzmanovic.

The findings suggest an advanced division of labor and organization. Houses had stoves, there were special holes for trash, and the dead were buried in a tidy necropolis. People slept on woolen mats and fur, made clothes of wool, flax and leather and kept animals.

The community was especially fond of children. Artifacts include toys such as animals and rattles of clay, and small, clumsily crafted pots apparently made by children at playtime.

COPPER AGE

One of the most exciting finds for archaeologists was the discovery of a sophisticated metal workshop with a furnace and tools including a copper chisel and a two-headed hammer and axe.

"This might prove that the Copper Age started in Europe at least 500 years earlier than we thought," Kuzmanovic said.

The Copper Age marks the first stage of humans' use of metal, with copper tools used alongside older stone implements. It is thought to have started around the 4th millennium BC in south-east Europe, and earlier in the Middle East.

The Vinca culture flourished from 5500 to 4000 BC on the territories of what is now Bosnia, Serbia, Romania and Macedonia.

It got its name from the present-day village of Vinca, 10 km east of Belgrade on the Danube river, where early 20th-century excavations uncovered the remains of eight Neolithic villages.

The discovery of a mine -- Europe's oldest -- at the nearby Mlava river suggested at the time that Vinca could be Europe's first metal culture, a theory now backed up by the Plocnik site.

"These latest findings show that the Vinca culture was from the very beginning a metallurgical culture," said archaeologist Dusan Sljivar of Serbia's National Museum. "They knew how to find minerals, to transport them and melt them into tools."

The metal workshop in Plocnik was a room of some 25 square meters, with walls built out of wood coated with clay.

The furnace, built on the outside of the room, featured earthen pipe-like air vents with hundreds of tiny holes in them and a prototype chimney to ensure air goes into the furnace to feed the fire and smoke comes out safely.

"In Bulgaria and Cyprus, where such workshops have also been found, they didn't have chimneys but blew air on the fire with straws, exposing man to heat and carbon dioxide," Sljivar said.

COLOURFUL MINERALS

He said the early metal workers very likely experimented with colorful minerals that caught their eye -- blue azurite, bright green malachite and red cuprite, all containing copper -- as evidenced by malachite traces found on the inside of a pot.

The settlement was destroyed at some point, probably in the first part of the fifth millennium, by a huge fire.

The Plocnik site was first discovered in 1927 when the then Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was building a rail line from the southern city of Nis to the province of Kosovo.

Some findings were published at the time but war, lack of funds and objections from farmers meant it was investigated only sporadically until digging started in earnest in 1996.

"The saddest thing for us is always the moment when we finish our work and everything has to be covered up with earth again," Kuzmanovic said. "That's the easiest for the state, conservation is very expensive and the land owners want to work in their fields."

But there was some hope that the latest excavation would be preserved due to its importance, Kuzmanovic added.

"We dream of uncovering the entire town one day, and people will be able to see prehistoric life at its fullest," she said.

http://www.enn.com/lifestyle/article/24392

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 12, 2007, 9:21am

Space Particles to 'X-Ray' Hidden Pyramids
Sarah Goforth, Discovery News


What Lies Beneath
The Mayan ruins of Cahal Pech in Belize. Physicist Ray Schwitters and his colleagues plan to study nearby mounds -- believed to hold structures dating to A.D. 250-900 by using a non-invasive technique called muon tomography. The technique, Schwitters believes, will allow him to spot hidden chambers inside and target future excavations to these locations, where they would be more likely to unturn valuable relics.

Oct. 31, 2007 -- Imagine getting to the bottom -- literally -- of a mystery buried for thousands of years by taking an X-ray of the ground.

Thanks to the revival of a 30-year-old technique, a team of physicists and archaeologists is doing something like that to learn about hidden Mayan temples. But rather than using X-rays, they're exploiting tiny, Earth-penetrating particles created by cosmic rays that stream in from space.

Physicist Roy Schwitters and his colleagues at the University of Texas, Austin, hope to find chambers hidden in underground temples built by the Mayans at a site dating to A.D. 250-900 in Belize. Many of the mounds there remain largely unstudied for fear of disturbing their fragile walls or the relics inside.

The hope is to target future excavations directly to the chambers, where the researchers would be more likely to find the sophisticated vestiges of Mayan life. The vibrant pre-Columbian culture remains veiled in mystery.

"There is good reason to believe [the structures] contain rooms and chambers ... that have been likely undisturbed since the time of the Maya," Schwitters said during a talk at the annual meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing last week.

Their technique relies on tiny, high-energy particles that rain harmlessly on Earth as a byproduct of constant cosmic rays streaming from the sun and other sources. Those particles, called muons, penetrate the ground and begin to decay, reaching depths of hundreds of feet before dissipating entirely.

Since their energy frequencies change depending on the density of the material they have recently encountered, muons tell a story about what’s in the upper layers of the ground.

Schwitters' idea is to place half a dozen muon detectors around a structure, let them collect data for a few weeks, and then analyze that data to find the chambers.

"It literally is like tomography in the medical sense," Schwitters explained. "You can image big things -- like 100-meter-sized things -- with a couple of months' worth of data."

His proof of concept came 30 years ago, when the technique was conceived and developed by physicist and Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez to study the Second Pyramid of Chephren in Egypt. Alvarez conducted one experiment with his detector, and though he found no unknown chambers, he considered the experiment a success.

The technique never caught on, Schwitters told Discovery News, because "the high-energy physics community was totally engaged in a very exciting period of discovery which took off about the time of the Alvarez experiment with the advent and subsequent confirmation of the standard model of particle physics."

What's more, detectors at the time were large, unwieldy and expensive to build.

"The detectors are more robust and somewhat less expensive today, and no other technology has proven to be superior for imaging such large structures," Schwitters said.

He and a team of graduate students have built and are testing a prototype detector, which weighs about 200 pounds (lightweight compared to the original, which weighed almost a ton). They hope to begin field work in Belize by the spring of 2009.

There are other ways to study buried structures without disturbing them, such as ground-penetrating radar. But muon tomography has an advantage because muons penetrate so deeply into the ground -- on average, a few miles rather than a few hundred feet, as is the case with radar.

"It's not practical to consider when we're talking about going in 50 meters," said Schwitters.

Still, the technique hasn't caught on widely.

"To my knowledge, no one is using [muon tomography] in mainstream archaeology," said Kenneth Kvamme, an anthropologist at the University of Arkansas and editor of the journal Archaeological Prospection, which specializes in underground studies.

In the future, that could change, said Schwitters.

"This technology, even though it sounds futuristic, could hold promise as an energy source for looking in the ground in ways we have never considered before," added Conyers.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/31/muon-archaeology.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 12, 2007, 9:44am

November 10, 2007

Temple built 4,000 years ago unearthed in Peru

By Marco Aquino

LIMA (Reuters) - A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday.

The temple, inside a larger ruin, includes a staircase that leads up to an altar used for fire worship at a site scientists have called Ventarron, said Peruvian archaeologist Walter Alva, who led the dig.

It sits in the Lambayeque valley, near the ancient Sipan complex that Alva unearthed in the 1980s. Ventarron was built long before Sipan, about 2,000 years before Christ, he said.

"It's a temple that is about 4,000 years old," Alva, director of the Museum Tumbas Reales (Royal Tombs) of Sipan, told Reuters by telephone after announcing the results of carbon dating at a ceremony north of Lima sponsored by Peru's government.

"What's surprising are the construction methods, the architectural design and most of all the existence of murals that could be the oldest in the Americas," he said.

Lambayeque is 472 miles from Lima, Peru's capital.

Discoveries at Sipan, an administrative and religious center of the Moche culture, have included a gold-filled tomb built 1,700 years ago for a pre-Incan king.

Peru is rich in archaeological treasures, including the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in the Andes.

Until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1500s, the Incas ruled an empire for several centuries that stretched from Colombia and Ecuador in the north to what are now Peru and Chile in the south.

"The discovery of this temple reveals evidence suggesting the region of Lambayeque was one of great cultural exchange between the Pacific coast and the rest of Peru," said Alva.

(Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Peter Cooney)

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=t....&modsrc=reuters

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 16, 2007, 9:32pm

Fossil is new family of dinosaur



A fossilised bone dug up near Hastings 113 years ago has been recognised as a completely new family of dinosaur.

The animal belongs to a general type of dinosaur called a sauropod - which was characterised by a large body, a long neck and a small head.

A PhD student from the University of Portsmouth stumbled upon the specimen while browsing through the shelves of London's Natural History Museum.

The work is to appear in the academic journal Palaeontology.

The fossil represents the dorsal vertebra (back bone) of a new family, genus and species of dinosaur now named Xenoposeidon proneneukus .

It lived about 140 million years ago, was about the size of an elephant and weighed 7.5 tonnes.



"It leapt out at me as being different," said Mike Taylor, a computer programmer who is studying sauropod vertebrae as part of his PhD at Portsmouth.

"It was unmistakably a dorsal vertebra from a sauropod, but it didn't look like any dorsal I'd ever seen before."

The bone has lain in the Natural History Museum since its discovery in the early 1890s in Ecclesbourne Glen, near Hastings, by fossil collector Philip James Rufford.

Odd one out

It was briefly described by the British palaeontologist Richard Lydekker but was then left untouched for the next 113 years.

Dr Paul Barrett, a researcher in palaeontology at the museum, said: "Dinosaur bones are being constantly reassessed and our collections still offer us lots of surprises."

Mr Taylor and fellow palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish know the preserved bone came from near the hip area of the dinosaur.

From this they made an informed guess about the size and shape of the animal and were able to establish why Xenoposeidon is not only a new genus and species, but probably a new family of dinosaur.

"The difference between this specimen and other sauropod vertebrae is sufficiently great that I concluded that it could not be placed in any existing species or genus," said Mr Taylor.

"In fact it can't be placed in any existing sauropod family."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7096104.stm

Published: 2007/11/15 11:15:05 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 16, 2007, 9:34pm

Dinosaur From Sahara Ate Like A 'Mesozoic Cow'



This bizarre dinosaur skull was found in the Sahara. It had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull bones. (Photo by Mike Hettwer, courtesy of Project Exploration, National Geographic)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2007) — A 110-million-year-old dinosaur that had a mouth that worked like a vacuum cleaner, hundreds of tiny teeth and nearly translucent skull bones has been discovered.

Found in the Sahara by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno, paleontologist and professor at the University of Chicago, the dinosaur is a plant eater known as Nigersaurus taqueti. Originally named by Sereno and his team in 1999 with only a few of its distinctive bones in hand, Nigersaurus has emerged as an anatomically bizarre dinosaur.

Nigersaurus, a younger cousin of the more familiar North American dinosaur Diplodocus, is small for a sauropod, measuring only 30 feet in length. It managed to sustain its elephant-sized body with a featherweight skull armed with hundreds of needle-shaped teeth, said Sereno. Barely able to lift its head above its back, Nigersaurus operated more like a Mesozoic cow than a reptilian giraffe, mowing down mouthfuls of greenery that consisted largely of ferns and horsetails.

The dinosaur's oddest feature was a broad, straight-edged muzzle, which allowed its mouth to work close to the ground. Unlike any other plant eater, Nigersaurus had more than 50 columns of teeth, all lined up tightly along the front edge of its squared-off jaw, forming, in effect, a foot-long pair of scissors.

A CT scan of the jaw bones showed up to nine "replacements" stacked behind each cutting tooth, so that when one wore out, another immediately took its place. There were more than 500 teeth in total, with a new tooth in each column joining the scissors edge every month. "Among dinosaurs," Sereno said, "Nigersaurus sets the Guinness record for tooth replacement."

Sereno and coauthors write in PLoS One that Nigersaurus' downwardly deflected muzzle may characterize most diplodocoids, such as North America's Diplodocus. "Some of these unusual sauropods thrived to become the pre-eminent ground-level feeders of the Mesozoic," said coauthor Jeffrey Wilson, assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

CT scanning allowed Sereno and team to look inside the dinosaur's braincase. There, small canals of the brain's balancing organ revealed the habitual pose of the head. Reconstructed from CT scans, these canals showed that the muzzle of Nigersaurus angled directly toward the ground, unlike the forward-pointing snouts of most other dinosaurs. This feature, along with unusual wear facets on the animal's teeth, led Sereno and colleagues to conclude that Nigersaurus largely fed by cropping plants near the ground.

Coauthor Lawrence Witmer, professor at Ohio University, who imaged the brain and organ of equilibrium, said, "What we have here is the first good look at a sauropod brain, and it has important things to say about this animal's posture and behavior."

Jaw design was not Nigersaurus' only odd characteristic: It had a backbone that was more air than bone. "The vertebrae are so paper-thin that it is difficult to imagine them coping with the stresses of everyday use -- but we know they did it, and they did it well," said Wilson, who was an expedition team member.

The first bones of Nigersaurus were picked up in the 1950s by French paleontologists, though the species was not named. Sereno and his team honored this early work by naming the species after French paleontologist Philippe Taquet. Sereno's team member Didier Dutheil first spotted the skull bones of Nigersaurus in 1997, and on that expedition and the next, teams collected about 80 percent of the skeleton.

The fossil area, in the present-day nation of Niger, was home to the enormous extinct crocodilian nicknamed SuperCroc as well as the likely fish eater Suchomimus, both found by Sereno and both on the prowl for Nigersaurus some 110 million years ago. Then, the African continent was just beginning to free itself of land connections it inherited as a central part of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea. Nigersaurus' closest relative has been found recently in Spain.

Coauthors on the PLoS One paper include Jeffrey A. Wilson, Lawrence M. Witmer, John A. Whitlock, Abdoulaye Maga, Oumarou Ide and Timothy A. Rowe. Funders of the research in addition to the National Geographic Society include The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pritzker Foundation and the Women's Board of the University of Chicago.

Citation: Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al (2007) Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur. PLoS One 2(11): e1230.doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001230

Details of the dinosaur's anatomy and lifestyle will be published Nov. 21, 2007, (available Nov. 15) in PLoS One, the online journal from the Public Library of Science, as well as in the December 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine, "Extreme Dinosaurs."

Sereno's research was partly funded by the National Geographic Society.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071115113252.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 16, 2007, 10:01pm

Eco-ruin 'felled early society'

One of Western Europe's earliest known urban societies may have sown the seeds of its own downfall, a study suggests.


The Argaric culture was an early urban society

Mystery surrounded the fall of the Bronze Age Argaric people in south-east Spain - Europe's driest area.

Data suggests the early civilisation exhausted precious natural resources, helping bring about its own ruin.

The study provides early evidence for cultural collapse caused - at least in part - by humans meddling with the environment, say researchers.

Archaeologists are convinced that something happened in the ecological structure of the area just prior to the collapse of the Argaric culture
Jose Carrion, University of Murcia

It could also provide lessons for modern populations living in water-stressed regions.

The findings were based on pollen preserved in a peat deposit located in the mountains of eastern Andalucia, Spain.

The researchers drilled a sediment core from the Canada del Gitano basin high up in Andalucia's Sierra de Baza region.



By studying the abundances of different pollen types - along with other indicators - preserved in sedimentary deposits, researchers can reconstruct what kind of vegetation covered the area in ancient times.

They can compile a pollen sequence, which shows how vegetation changed over thousands of years. This can give them clues to how human settlement and climate affected ecosystems.

The Argaric culture emerged in south-eastern Spain 4,300 years ago. This civilisation, which inhabited small fortified towns, was one of the first in Western Europe to adopt bronze working.


Copper objects like this axe were common until the Argaric era

But about 3,600 years ago, the culture mysteriously vanished from the archaeological record.

"Archaeologists are convinced that something happened in the ecological structure of the area just prior to the collapse of the Argaric culture," said Jose Carrion, from the University of Murcia, Spain.

"But we previously lacked a high-resolution record to support this."

Environmental change

Before the appearance of the Argaric civilisation, the slopes of Sierra de Baza were covered with a diverse forest dominated by deciduous oaks and other broad-leaved trees.

But about 4,200 years ago - just after this civilisation emerges - significant amounts of charcoal appear in the pollen sequence. According to the study's authors, this is a sign Bronze Age people were setting fires to clear the forests for mining activities and grazing.


The area's tree cover was rapidly removed

Not long afterwards, about 3,900 years ago, the diverse forest ecosystem disappears, to be replaced by monotonous and fire-prone Mediterranean scrub.

What astonished the researchers was the speed of this change. This ecological transformation is very abrupt, appearing to have taken place in little more than a decade.

About 300 years after this ecological transformation, the Argaric civilisation disappeared.

Climatic effect

Professor Carrion said the term "ecocide" was too strong to apply in this case. Climate must also have played a part, he explained.



There is evidence conditions were becoming progressively arid from about 5,500 years ago onwards. This is indicated by a broad reduction in forest cover, the appearance of plants adapted to dry conditions and a drop in lake levels.

But Jose Carrion added: "The climatic influence began millennia prior to the appearance of the Argaric culture.

"It's not critical to the change in the landscape we see about 3,900-3,800 years ago. What appears to be critical is the evidence of burning, which in our opinion is man-made."


Some isolated patches of pine forest still remain today

The degradation of soils and vegetation could have caused the collapse of agriculture and pastoralism, the foundation of the Argaric economy.

This would have led to massive depopulation of the area.

The findings were outlined at the recent Climate and Humans conference in Murcia, Spain, and appear in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7093685.stm

Published: 2007/11/15 02:47:53 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 21, 2007, 8:23am

Digging Biblical History At 'The End Of The World'


At the Megiddo Dig: The Assyrian palace of Stratum III (Credit: AFTAU)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2007) — Tel Aviv University archaeologists are studying Tel Megiddo, the New Testament location of "Armageddon," and unearthing truths about King Solomon.

Some come to dig the archeological site at Tel Megiddo because they are enchanted by ancient stories of King Solomon. Others come because they believe in a New Testament prophecy that the mound of dirt will be the location of a future Judgment Day apocalyptic battle. Hence the second, rather more chilling name for the site: "Armageddon."

Tel Megiddo has been the subject of a number of decisive battles in ancient times (among the Egyptian, Hebrew and Assyrian peoples) and today it holds a venerated place in archaeology, explains site co-director and world-renowned archeologist Prof. Israel Finkelstein.

Says Prof. Finkelstein, from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University, "Megiddo is one of the most interesting sites in the world for the excavation of biblical remains. Now volunteers and students from around the world can participate in the dig which lets them uncover 3,000 years worth of history -- from the late 4th millennium B.C.E. to the middle of the first millennium C.E."

Prof. Finkelstein, who belongs to the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, has been co-directing the site with Prof. David Ussishkin, also of Tel Aviv University, since 1994.

Likened to a "lightening rod" by the journal Science (2007), Prof. Finkelstein is famous for his unconventional way of interpreting biblical history: he puts emphasis on the days of the biblical authors in the 7th century B.C.E. and theorizes that ancient rulers such as David and Solomon, who lived centuries earlier, were "tribal chieftains ruling from a small hill town, with a modest palace and royal shrine."

Yet, "new archaeological discoveries should not erode one's sense of tradition and identity," he states.

Prof. Ze'ev Herzog, who heads the archaeology institute at Tel Aviv University, says, "There has been an important revolution in biblical history in the last decades. We are now uncovering the difference between myth and history, and between reality and ideology of the ancient authors. This is the role of our generation of archaeologists -- to unearth the real historical reality to find out why and how the biblical records were written."

The archeologists aren't the only ones looking for answers. More than one hundred volunteers come from all corners of the world to dig Megiddo alongside Prof. Finkelstein every year. They are teachers, journalists, actors, construction workers, professors and housewives, as well as archaeology, history and divinity students who dig for credit.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071120142829.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 21, 2007, 9:07am

Man-sized sea scorpion claw found


How the creature compares for size with a human

The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.



The 390-million-year-old specimen was found in a German quarry, the journal Biology Letters reports.

The creature, which has been named Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, would have paddled in a river or swamp.

The size of the beast suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the team says.

The claw itself measures 46cm - indicating its owner would have been longer even than the average-sized human.

Overall, the estimated size of the animal exceeds the record for any other sea scorpion (eurypterid) find by nearly 50cm.

The eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of modern land scorpions and possibly all arachnids (the class of animals that also includes spiders).

"The biggest scorpion today is nearly 30cm so that shows you how big this creature was," said Dr Simon Braddy from the University of Bristol, UK.

It was one of Dr Braddy's co-authors, Markus Poschmann, who made the discovery in the quarry near Prum in western Germany.

"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab," he recalled.

"After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out.

"The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilise it."

Super-sized meals

The species existed during a period in Earth history when oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today.

And it was those elevated levels, some palaeo-scientists believe, that may have helped drive the super-sized bodies of many of the invertebrates that existed at that time - monster millipedes, huge cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies.

But Dr Braddy thinks the large scales may have had a lot to do with the absence early on of vertebrate predators. As they came on the scene, these animals would have eaten all the biggest prey specimens.

"The fact that you are big means you are more likely to be seen and to be taken for a tastier morsel," he told BBC News. "Evolution will not select for large size; you want to be small so you can hide away."

The scorpions are thought to have made their first scuttles on to land about 450 million years ago.

While some would have taken up a fully terrestrial existence, others like Jaekelopterus rhenaniae would have maintained an aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7104421.stm

Published: 2007/11/21 00:55:50 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 21, 2007, 9:15am

'Dramatic' ancient cemetery found

A freelance archaeologist has uncovered what is thought to be the only known Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in the north of England.



Spectacular gold jewellery, weapons and clothing were found at the 109-grave cemetery, believed to date from the middle of the 7th Century.

Excavations were carried out after Steve Sherlock studied an aerial photo of the land near Redcar, Teesside.

Traditionally, Anglo-Saxon royalty were buried in the south, say experts.

The royals found near Redcar could be linked to the Kentish Princess Ethelburga who travelled north to marry Edwin, King of Northumbria.

Excavations began in 2005 and continued under Mr Sherlock's supervision with help from local archaeologists and volunteers.

After working six weeks every summer, the team has uncovered an area the size of half a football pitch near Loftus.

Gold brooch

Mr Sherlock, an archaeologist since 1979, said: "Whilst human bone does not survive because of the acidic soils, a range of high status jewellery was found, including glass beads, pottery, iron knives and belt buckles.

"Five of the graves had gold and silver brooches and a further burial had a seax, a type of Anglo-Saxon sword."

One of the graves also contained a gold brooch "unparalleled" in Anglo-Saxon England, he added.

The Teesside coroner will now carry out an inquest to confirm the find can be defined as "treasure".

The artefacts will then be valued by a panel of experts from the British Museum.

Tees Archaeology officer Robin Daniels said: "This is the only known Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in the North of England.

"It is the most dramatic find of Anglo-Saxon material for generations."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/tees/7104498.stm

Published: 2007/11/20 18:49:43 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 21, 2007, 9:23am

'Mythical Roman cave' unearthed

Italian archaeologists say they have found the long-lost underground grotto where ancient Romans believed a female wolf suckled the city's twin founders.

The cave believed to be the Lupercal was found near the ruins of Emperor Augustus' palace on the Palatine hill.



The 8m (26ft) high cave decorated with shells, mosaics and marble was found during restoration work on the palace.



According to mythology Romulus and Remus were nursed by a she-wolf after being left on the River Tiber's banks.

The twin sons of the god Mars and priestess Rhea Silvia are said to have later founded Rome on the Palatine in 753 BC.

This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome - the legendary cave where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus
Francesco Rutelli
Italian Culture Minister

The brothers ended up fighting over who should be in charge of the city, a power struggle which ended only after Romulus killed his brother.

In Roman times a popular festival called the Lupercalia was held annually on 15 February.

Young nobles called Luperci, taking their name from the place of the wolf (lupa), ran from the Lupercal around the bounds of the Palatine in what is believed to have been a purification ritual.

Naked, except for the skins of goats that had been sacrificed that day, they would strike women they met on the hands with strips of sacrificial goatskin to promote fertility.

'Astonishing history'

Presenting the discovery, Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said archaeologists were "reasonably certain" that the newly unearthed cave could be the Lupercal.

"This could reasonably be the place bearing witness to the myth of Rome, one of the most well-known cities in the world - the legendary cave where the she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, saving them from death," he said.

"Italy and Rome never cease to astonish the world with continual archaeological and artistic discoveries, and it is incredible to think that we have finally found a mythical site which, by our doing so, has become a real place."

The ancient cave was found 16m (52ft) underground in a previously unexplored area during restoration work on the palace of Augustus, the first Roman emperor.

Exploration of the cavity was hampered, however, by fears that it might collapse and damage the foundations of the surrounding ruins.

Archaeologists therefore used endoscopes and laser scanners to study it, ascertaining that the circular structure was 8m (26ft) high and 7.5m (24ft) in diameter.



A camera probe later sent into the cave revealed a ceiling covered in shells, mosaics and coloured marble, with a white eagle at the centre.

"You can imagine our amazement - we almost screamed," said Professor Giorgio Croci, the head of the archaeological team working on the restoration of the Palatine, told reporters.

"It is clear that Augustus... wanted his residence to be built in a place which was sacred for the city of Rome," he added.



The Palatine hill is covered in palaces and other ancient monuments, from the 8th Century BC remains of Rome's first buildings to a mediaeval fortress and Renaissance villas.

After being closed for decades due to risk of collapse, parts of the hill will re-open to the public in February after a 12m-euro ($17.7m) restoration programme.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7104330.stm

Published: 2007/11/20 20:20:39 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 11:10am

"Strange" British Fossil Is Part of New Dino Family
James Owen
for National Geographic News
November 21, 2007

A forgotten museum fossil that had been gathering dust for more than a century is actually from a mysterious British dinosaur that represents an entirely new family, scientists have discovered.


The dinosaur bone seen here (top) lay hidden in a museum collection for more than a hundred years—until a British researcher identified it as the lone fossil of a previously unknown species from a new family.

An analysis of the unusual backbone revealed that the 140-million-year-old dino was an elephant-size or larger herbivore (bottom).

Images © University of Portsmouth

The newly revealed herbivore was identified from a fragment of backbone stored at the Natural History Museum in London since the 1890s.

The fossil laid unnoticed until 2006, when it was chanced upon by visiting dinosaur researcher Mike Taylor from the University of Portsmouth in England.

The museum specimen "leapt out at me as being different," said Taylor, a postdoctoral student whose dinosaur studies focus on giant, long-necked herbivores known as sauropods.

Having spent the previous five years "doing nothing but looking at sauropod vertebrae," he immediately realized the half-complete fossil bone was "something strange," Taylor said.

"It was unmistakably a dorsal vertebra from a sauropod, but it didn't look like any dorsal vertebrae I'd ever seen before."

Investigation of the foot-tall (30-centimeter-tall) fossil subsequently revealed an unknown species that lived some 140 million years ago, according to findings published in the current issue of Palaeontology, the journal of Britain's Palaeontological Association.

The newly named Xenoposeidon proneneukus was likely typical for a sauropod, with a huge body, long neck, and stout legs. But its many unusual spinal features puts it in a new family of dinosaurs, the study says.

"Shockingly Strange"

The study was co-authored by University of Portsmouth paleontologist Darren Naish, who Taylor turned to for assistance in identifying his museum find.

"The fossil is not just a little bit different from the vertebrae of other types of sauropod—it's shockingly strange," Naish said.

"Based on this one bone, Xenoposeidon has more unique features than do other sauropods that are known from almost complete skeletons," he added. "That's how strange it is."

Features of the fossil link the plant-eater to well-known giant sauropods such as Diplodocus from North America and Brachiosaurus from Africa. (Related pictures: Dino With "Vacuum Mouth" Revealed [November 15, 2007].)

"But you should imagine it as representing some other additional lineage in this major group, which we didn't know about at all," Naish said.

Getting an accurate picture of what Xenoposeidon looked like from a single piece of backbone is impossible, the researcher admitted.

"You can't tell from the shape of the vertebra whether it was a long, low animal like Diplodocus, or whether it was an altogether shorter, stockier animal like Brachiosaurus," Naish said.

If built like a brachiosaur, the dinosaur would have measured some 15 meters (50 feet) long and weighed 7.6 tons, the researchers estimated.

If instead it resembled more lightly framed diplodocoids, Xenoposeidon would have stretched 20 meters (66 feet) nose to tail and weighed about 2.8 tons, the study said.

More Finds to Come?

Fossil collector Philip James Rufford originally discovered the odd vertebra in the early 1890s near Hastings in southeast England.

The fossil was briefly reviewed by paleontologists, then hidden away for 113 years at the Natural History Museum.

Researchers don't know whether other remains of the fossil creature survived, since the museum didn't keep a record of the exact location of the find.

That's not uncommon, Naish said. Hundreds of dinosaurs and other long-extinct animals are known from a single fossil specimen. But attaching a name to the newly described sauropod bone should increase the chances of future Xenoposeidon discoveries.

"Hopefully this will mean that other sauropod experts will know what to look for, and they will have this [fossil] in mind when they look at other unusual vertebrae," Naish said.

As many new dinosaur species are described from museum fossil collections as from freshly unearthed specimens, he pointed out.

"There are paleontologists who say, If you want to find new species, don't go out in the field, just go and look at old collections," Naish added.

Natural History Museum dinosaur researcher Paul Barrett said in a statement that the museum's fossil collection contains thousands of dinosaur specimens, which are studied by researchers from all over the world.

"Because of their work," he added, "dinosaur bones are being constantly reassessed, and our collections still offer us lots of surprises."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071121-new-dinosaur.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 24, 2007, 10:23am


Revealed: the 3,000-year-old mug of cocoa

o Alok Jha
o The Guardian
o Tuesday November 13 2007

Few can dispute chocolate's global popularity. But the discovery of ancient pottery in Honduras has revealed there has been a penchant for the rich aroma of cocoa beans for far longer than previously thought.

Archaeologists have dated fragments of pottery used to hold a chocolate-based drink to 1150BC, pushing back the earliest known use of chocolate 500 years.

John Henderson, of Cornell University in New York, led a team that analysed pieces of pottery dug out of a site in what is now Puerto Escondido, Honduras. They found the residue of a chemical called theobromine, which only occurs in the cacao plant, on the pots. The cacao beverages consumed at Puerto Escondido were likely to have been produced by fermenting the sweet pulp surrounding the seeds to make an alcoholic drink much like the South American drink chicha.

The scientists found 10 small serving vessels at Puerto Escondido. "These vessels were designed for pouring and drinking liquids; they are comparable to vessels in which cacao was served and consumed in later Mesoamerica," Henderson wrote in yesterday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers concluded that the vessels reflected the early history of cacao-serving - during ceremonies celebrating marriages, births, and other important occasions.

"The frothed chocolate drink ... came to be central to social and ritual life throughout Mesoamerica, ultimately becoming the standard of economic value for the Aztec empire ... The results of this project trace a previously unsuspected time depth and complexity in the history of one of the major luxury commodities in the world today."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/13/archaeology.sciencenews

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 26, 2007, 12:33am

Remains Of Ancient Synagogue With Unique Mosaic Floor Found In Galilee


Mosaic floor found at site of newly discovered Galilee synagogue shows workman with woodworking tool. (Credit: Gabi Laron, Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2007) — Remains of an ancient synagogue from the Roman-Byzantine era have been revealed in excavations carried out in the Arbel National Park in the Galilee under the auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The excavations, in the Khirbet Wadi Hamam, were led by Dr. Uzi Leibner of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology and Scholion -- Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies.

Dr. Leibner said that the synagogue's design is a good example of the eastern Roman architectural tradition. A unique feature of the synagogue is the design of its mosaic floor, he said.

The synagogue ruins are located at the foot of the Mt. Nitai cliffs overlooking the Sea of Galilee, amidst the remains of a large Jewish village from the Roman-Byzantine period. The first season of excavations there have revealed the northern part of the synagogue, with two rows of benches along the walls. The building is constructed of basalt and chalk stone and made use of elements from an earlier structure on the site.

Archaeologists differ among themselves as to which period the ancient Galilean synagogues belong. The generally accepted view is that they can be attributed to the later Roman period (second to fourth centuries C.E.), a time of cultural and political flowering of the Jews of the Galilee. Recently, some researchers have come to believe that these synagogues were built mainly during the Byzantine period (fifth and sixth centuries C.E.), a time in which Christianity rose to power and, it was thought, the Jews suffered from persecution. Dr. Leibner noted that this difference of scholarly opinion has great significance in perhaps redrawing the historical picture of Jews in those ancient times.

The excavators were surprised to find in the eastern aisle of the synagogue a mosaic decoration which to date has no parallels -- not in other synagogues, nor in art in Israel in general from the Roman-Byzantine period. The mosaic is made of tiny stones (four mm. in size) in a variety of colors. The scene depicted is that of a series of woodworkers who are holding various tools of their trade.

Near these workers is seen a monumental structure which they are apparently building. According to Dr. Leibner, since Biblical scenes are commonly found in synagogue art, it is possible that what we see in this case is the building of the Temple, or Noah's ark, or the tower of Babel. The mosaic floor has been removed from the excavation site and its now in the process of restoration.

The archaeologists at the site are also attempting, though their excavations, to gain a clearer picture of rural Jewish village life in Roman-era Galilee. In addition to excavating the synagogue, they also are involved in uncovering residential dwellings and other facilities at the site, such as a sophisticated olive oil press and solidly-built two-story homes.

"There are those who tend to believe that the rural Jewish villagers of that era lived in impoverished houses or in huts and that the magnificent synagogues existed in contrast to the homes that surrounded them," said Dr. Leibner. 'While it is true that the synagogues were built of a quality that exceeded the other structures of the village, the superior quality private dwellings here testify to the impressive economic level of the residents."

Participating in the excavations were students from the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Jewish youth groups from abroad and many other volunteers.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071121100831.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 26, 2007, 6:05pm

Ancient Roman road map unveiled
By Bethany Bell
BBC News, Vienna



The Tabula Peutingeriana is one of the Austrian National Library's greatest treasures.

The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire.

The document, which is almost seven metres long, shows the network of main Roman roads from Spain to India.

It is normally never shown to the public. The parchment is extremely fragile, and reacts badly to daylight.

But it has been on display for one day to celebrate its inclusion in Unesco's Memory of the World Register.

Practical guide

At first sight, it looks very unlike a modern map.

Every so often there is a pictogram of a building to show you that there was a hotel or a spa where you could stay
Andreas Fingernagel
Austrian National Library

Both the landmass and the seas have been stretched and flattened. The Mediterranean has been reduced to a thin strip of water, more like a river than a sea.

Instead of being oriented from north to south, the map, which is only 34 centimetres wide, works from west to east.

But despite its unfamiliar appearance, the director of the Department of Manuscripts, Autographs and Closed Collections at the Austrian National Library, Andreas Fingernagel, says it is an intensely practical document, more like a plan of the London Underground than a map.

"The red lines are the main roads. Every so often there is a little hook along the red lines which represents a rest stop - and the distance between hooks was one day's travel."

"Every so often there is a pictogram of a building to show you that there was a hotel or a spa where you could stay," he said.

"It was meant for the civil servants of the late Roman Empire, for couriers and travellers," he added.

Some of the buildings have large courtyards - a sign of more luxurious accommodation.

Clue to ancient world

At the centre of the Tabula Peutingeriana is Rome. The city, represented by a crowned figure on a throne, has numerous roads leading to and from the metropolis. Some, such as the Via Appia and the Via Aurelia, still exist today.

The Tabula Peutingeriana scroll dates from the late 12th or the early 13th century and was made in Southern Germany or Austria.

But Mr Fingernagel says it is very different from other medieval maps and is clearly a copy of a much earlier document, dating back to the 5th century.

"In maps from the 12th or 13th century, Jerusalem, not Rome, was in the centre," he said.

"The interests of map makers in the Middle Ages were quite different. They don't show roads or rest stations, instead they show the holy places of Christianity."

And the map contains other details which indicate the original probably dates back to the 5th century, including the city of Aquileia, which was destroyed in 452 by the Huns.

The scroll was named after one of its earlier owners, the Renaissance German humanist Konrad Peutinger.

Later it was obtained by the Imperial Library in Vienna - now the Austrian National Library.

"It's unique," said Mr Fingernagel. "It's the only map of the ancient world - although it's a copy - that gives us an impression of how things used to be."

The Tabula Peutingeriana was included in the Unesco Memory of the World Register this year, and was on limited view in Vienna on 26 November 2007.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7113810.stm

Published: 2007/11/26 19:23:47 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 8:06pm

New Ideas About Human Migration From Asia To Americas


Map showing migration of humans from Asia to the Americas. (Credit: Image courtesy Ripan Mahlir)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2007) — Questions about human migration from Asia to the Americas have perplexed anthropologists for decades, but as scenarios about the peopling of the New World come and go, the big questions have remained. Do the ancestors of Native Americans derive from only a small number of “founders” who trekked to the Americas via the Bering land bridge? How did their migration to the New World proceed? What, if anything, did the climate have to do with their migration? And what took them so long?

A team of 21 researchers, led by Ripan Malhi, a geneticist in the department of anthropology at the University of Illinois, has a new set of ideas. One is a striking hypothesis that seems to map the peopling process during the pioneering phase and well beyond, and at the same time show that there was much more genetic diversity in the founder population than was previously thought.

“Our phylogeographic analysis of a new mitochondrial genome dataset allows us to draw several conclusions,” the authors wrote.

“First, before spreading across the Americas, the ancestral population paused in Beringia long enough for specific mutations to accumulate that separate the New World founder lineages from their Asian sister-clades.” (A clade is a group of mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs ) that share a recent common ancestor, Malhi said. Sister-clades would include two groups of mtDNAs that each share a recent common ancestor and the common ancestor for each clade is closely related.)

Or, to express this first conclusion another way, the ancestors of Native Americans who first left Siberia for greener pastures perhaps as much as 30,000 years ago, came to a standstill on Beringia – a landmass that existed during the last glacial maximum that extended from Northeastern Siberia to Western Alaska, including the Bering land bridge – and they were isolated there long enough – as much as 15,000 years – to maturate and differentiate themselves genetically from their Asian sisters.

“Second, founding haplotypes or lineages are uniformly distributed across North and South America instead of exhibiting a nested structure from north to south. Thus, after the Beringian standstill, the initial North to South migration was likely a swift pioneering process, not a gradual diffusion.”

The DNA data also suggest a lot more to-ing and fro-ing than has been suspected of populations during the past 30,000 years in Northeast Asia and North America. The analysis of the dataset shows that after the initial peopling of Beringia, there were a series of back migrations to Northeast Asia as well as forward migrations to the Americas from Beringia, thus “more recent bi-directional gene flow between Siberia and the North American Arctic.”

To investigate the pioneering phase in the Americas, Malhi and his team, a group of geneticists from around the world, pooled their genomic datasets and then analyzed 623 complete mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) from the Americas and Asia, including 20 new complete mtDNAs from the Americas and seven from Asia. The sequence data was used to direct high-resolution genotyping from 20 American and 26 Asian populations. Mitochondrial DNA, that is, DNA found in organelles, rather than in the cell nucleus, is considered to be of separate evolutionary origin, and is inherited from only one parent – the female.

The team identified three new sub-clades that incorporate nearly all of Native American haplogroup C mtDNAs – all of them widely distributed in the New World, but absent in Asia; and they defined two additional founder groups, “which differ by several mutations from the Asian-derived ancestral clades.”

What puzzled them originally was the disconnect between recent archaeological datings. New evidence places Homo sapiens at the Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site in Siberia – as likely a departure point for the migrants as any in the region – as early as 30,000 years before the present, but the earliest archaeological site at the southern end of South America is dated to only 15,000 years ago.

“These archaeological dates suggested two likely scenarios,” the authors wrote: Either the ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated – likely because of ecological barriers – until entering the Americas 15,000 years before the present (the Beringian incubation model, BIM); or the ancestors of Native Americans did not reach Beringia until just before 15,000 years before the present, and then moved continuously on into the Americas, being recently derived from a larger parent Asian population (direct colonization model, DCM).

Thus, for this study the team set out to test the two hypotheses: one, that Native Americans’ ancestors moved directly from Northeast Asia to the Americas; the other, that Native American ancestors were isolated from other Northeast Asian populations for a significant period of time before moving rapidly into the Americas all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.

“Our data supports the second hypothesis: The ancestors of Native Americans peopled Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum, but remained locally isolated until entering the Americas at 15,000 years before the present.”

The team’s findings appear in a recent issue of the Public Library of Science in an article titled, “Beringian Standstill and Spread of Native American Founders.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025160653.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 8:08pm

Gene Study Supports Single Main Migration Across Bering Strait


The U-M study, which analyzed genetic data from 29 Native American populations, suggests a Siberian origin is much more likely than a South Asian or Polynesian origin. (Credit: University of Michigan)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2007) — Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?

Or did the ancestors of today's native peoples come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia, arriving multiple times at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?

The questions -- featured on magazine covers and TV specials -- have agitated anthropologists, archaeologists and others for decades.

University of Michigan scientists, working with an international team of geneticists and anthropologists, have produced new genetic evidence that's likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory. The study, published online in PLoS Genetics, is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.

The researchers examined genetic variation at 678 key locations or markers in the DNA of present-day members of 29 Native American populations across North, Central and South America. They also analyzed data from two Siberian groups. The analysis shows:

o genetic diversity, as well as genetic similarity to the Siberian groups, decreases the farther a native population is from the Bering Strait -- adding to existing archaeological and genetic evidence that the ancestors of native North and South Americans came by the northwest route.

o a unique genetic variant is widespread in Native Americans across both American continents -- suggesting that the first humans in the Americas came in a single migration or multiple waves from a single source, not in waves of migrations from different sources. The variant, which is not part of a gene and has no biological function, has not been found in genetic studies of people elsewhere in the world except eastern Siberia.

The researchers say the variant likely occurred shortly prior to migration to the Americas, or immediately afterwards.

"We have reasonably clear genetic evidence that the most likely candidate for the source of Native American populations is somewhere in east Asia," says Noah A. Rosenberg, Ph.D., assistant professor of human genetics and assistant research professor of bioinformatics at the Center for Computational Medicine and Biology at the U-M Medical School and assistant research professor at the U-M Life Sciences Institute.

"If there were a large number of migrations, and most of the source groups didn't have the variant, then we would not see the widespread presence of the mutation in the Americas," he says.

Rosenberg has previously studied the same set of 678 genetic markers used in the new study in 50 populations around the world, to learn which populations are genetically similar and what migration patterns might explain the similarities. For North and South America, the current research breaks new ground by looking at a large number of native populations using a large number of markers.

The pattern the research uncovered -- that as the founding populations moved south from the Bering Strait, genetic diversity declined -- is what one would expect when migration is relatively recent, says Mattias Jakobsson, Ph.D., co-first author of the paper and a post-doctoral fellow in human genetics at the U-M Medical School and the U-M Center for Computational Medicine and Biology. There has not been time yet for mutations that typically occur over longer periods to diversify the gene pool.

In addition, the study's findings hint at supporting evidence for scholars who believe early inhabitants followed the coasts to spread south into South America, rather than moving in waves across the interior.

"Assuming a migration route along the coast provides a slightly better fit with the pattern we see in genetic diversity," Rosenberg says.

The study also found that:

* Populations in the Andes and Central America showed genetic similarities.
* Populations from western South America showed more genetic variation than populations from eastern South America.
* Among closely related populations, the ones more similar linguistically were also more similar genetically.

Citation: PLoS Genet 3(11): e185. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030185

In addition to Rosenberg and Jakobsson, study authors include Cecil M. Lewis, Jr., former post-doctoral fellow in the U-M Department of Human Genetics, and 24 researchers at U.S., Canadian, British, Central and South American universities.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071126170543.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 8:31pm

Dunes, Climate Models Don't Match Up With Paleomagnetic Records


Sandstone cliff in Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Ariz., composed of the deposits of three large, Jurassic sand dunes (person for scale in lower center). Each dune migrated toward the present southeast (toward the right in this photo). The dune sand accumulated about 200 million years ago, just above sea level in a slowly subsiding sedimentary basin. Circulating groundwater cemented the sand into sandstone. Uplift of the region in the last 10 million years led to erosion of the rocks, forming canyons and cliffs. Climate models constructed for the supercontinent Pangaea suggest that the sands accumulated near the equator, and were swept by strong monsoonal winds that reversed direction every six months. Evidence based on the magnetic properties of rocks; however, indicate that the sand accumulated much farther north -- about 20 degrees north of the equator. (Credit: Image copyright Science, courtesy of University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2007) — For a quarter-century or more, the prevailing view among geoscientists has been that the portion of the ancient supercontinent of Pangea that is now the Colorado Plateau in southern Utah shifted more than 1,300 miles north during a 100-million year span that ended about 200 million years ago in the early Jurassic Period, when Pangea began to break up.

Paleomagnetic records are found in igneous rocks that permanently record the direction of the Earth's magnetic field at the time they solidified from the molten state. Paleomagnetism is an important tool for geoscientists in tracking the movement of Earth's tectonic plates over time and records in North America indicate that the Colorado Plateau moved from the equator to about 20 degrees north latitude from 300 million years ago to 200 million years ago.

But new research by geoscientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Michigan challenges that theory, based on extensive climate modeling studies and sedimentary records found from Wyoming into Utah and Arizona.

In the Nov. 23 issue of the journal Science, UNL geoscientists Clinton Rowe, David Loope and Robert Oglesby, former UNL graduate student Charles Broadwater, and Rob Van der Voo of the University of Michigan, report findings that indicate the area must have remained at the equator during the time in question.

"It's a puzzle, a 'conundrum' is the word we like to use," Oglesby said. "And in the Science paper, we're not solving the conundrum, we're raising the conundrum."

The root of the conundrum is Loope's ongoing research in the Colorado Plateau that began when he was working on his doctorate at the University of Wyoming in the early 1980s. A sedimentologist and an expert on dune formation, he eventually saw that from central Wyoming into central Utah, ancient dunes preserved in the region's 200 million- to 300-hundred-million-year-old sandstone formations all faced southwest, meaning that the winds over that extensive area were almost constantly from the northeast. As his study progressed, he discovered that the direction of the dunes shifted to the southeast in what is now southern Utah, meaning the wind direction shifted to the northwest. What's more, those prevailing winds were consistent over the entire 100 million years in question and the shift in wind direction could only have occurred at the equator.

"I thought that was very curious," Loope said. "It didn't seem to fit with what we think we know about where the continents were."

Loope is also a paleoclimatologist (who studies ancient climates), as are Rowe and Oglesby, who also have expertise in climate modeling. The three geoscientists began working together, trying to find a computerized climate model that would explain the discrepancy, but they couldn't find any that worked.

"We ran the model in any different number of configurations just to see if we could make it do something different," Rowe said. "It didn't matter what we did to it, as long as you had some land, and it was distributed north and south of the equator, you would end up with this monsoonal flow that matched these records from the dunes.

"The equator is the only place you could get this large-scale arc of winds that turn from the northeast to the northwest as they moved south. Nowhere else would you get that as part of the general circulation unless the physics of the world 200 million years ago was very different from what it is today. And we just don't think that's the case."

Puzzled by the discrepancy between their research and the paleomagnetic records, they turned to Van der Voo, an expert on paleomagnetism.

"We brought Rob in to try to see if he could help us sort it out, and he's like, 'Gosh, guys, I don't know. This is a conundrum,'" Oglesby said. "It's important to note that we have not just a paleomag person as a co-author, but arguably the best-known paleomag person in the world -- and he's as confused as we are."

Van der Voo agreed that, for now, there's no clear answer to the conundrum.

"The nicest thing would have been if we had a solution, but we don't," Van der Voo said. "All we can say is that we have this enigma, so perhaps our model of Pangea for the period in question is wrong or the wind direction didn't follow the common patterns that we recognize in the modern world. Neither seems likely, but we're bringing this inconsistency to the attention of the scientific community in hopes of stimulating further research."

And further research is exactly what's on the agenda, Oglesby said.

"We'll come up with everything we can possibly think of," he said. "From the point of view of the climate model, the paleogeography, the vegetation, the topography, local-scale vs. large-scale, paleomag, going back and rethinking everything that the dunes tell us. We'll go back to square one in everything, trying to figure it out."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071126105432.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 8:38pm

They may even find the missing Nazis:

High Resolution Antarctica Map Lays Ground For New Discoveries


As can be seen in this sample Landsat image of the area around McMurdo Station, the new mosaic reveals in unprecedented detail the ice shelves, mountains, glaciers make Antarctica a fascinating and important place to study. (Credit: USGS)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2007) — A team of researchers from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey unveiled a newly completed map of Antarctica November 27 that is expected to revolutionize research of the continent's frozen landscape.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is a result of NASA's state-of-the-art satellite technologies and an example of the prominent role NASA continues to play as a world leader in the development and flight of Earth-observing satellites.

The map is a realistic, nearly cloudless satellite view of the continent at a resolution 10 times greater than ever before with images captured by the NASA-built Landsat 7 satellite. With the unprecedented ability to see features half the size of a basketball court, the mosaic offers the most geographically accurate, true-color, high-resolution views of Antarctica possible.

"This mosaic of images opens up a window to the Antarctic that we just haven't had before," said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It will open new windows of opportunity for scientific research as well as enable the public to become much more familiar with Antarctica and how scientists use imagery in their research. This innovation is like watching high-definition TV in living color versus watching the picture on a grainy black-and-white television. These scenes don't just give us a snapshot, they provide a time-lapse historical record of how Antarctica has changed and will enable us to continue to watch changes unfold."

Researchers can use the detailed map to better plan scientific expeditions. The mosaic's higher resolution gives researchers a clearer view over most of the continent to help interpret changes in land elevation in hard-to-access areas. Scientists also think the true-color mosaic will help geologists better map various rock formations and types.

To construct the new Antarctic map, researchers pieced together more than a thousand images from three years of Landsat satellite observations. The resulting mosaic gives researchers and the public a new way to explore Antarctica through a free, public-access web portal. Eight different versions of the full mosaic are available to download.

In 1972, the first satellite images of the Antarctic became available with the launch of NASA's Earth Resources Technology Satellite (later renamed Landsat). The series of Landsat satellites have provided the longest, continuous global record of land surface and its historical changes in existence. Prior to these satellite views, researchers had to rely on airplanes and survey ships to map Antarctica's ice-covered terrain.

Images from the Landsat program, now managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, led to more precise and efficient research results as the resolution of digital images improved over the years with upgraded instruments on each new Earth-observing satellite.

"We have significantly improved our ability to extract useful information from satellites as embodied in this Antarctic mosaic project," said Ray Byrnes, liaison for satellite missions at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va. "As technology progressed, so have the satellites and their image resolution capability. The first three in the Landsat series were limited in comparison to Landsats 4, 5, and 7."

Bindschadler, who conceived the project, initiated NASA's collection of images of Antarctica for the mosaic project in 1999. He and NASA colleagues selected the images that make up the mosaic and developed new techniques to interpret the image data tailored to the project. The mosaic is made up of about 1,100 images from Landsat 7, nearly all of which were captured between 1999 and 2001. The collage contains almost no gaps in the landscape, other than a doughnut hole-shaped area at the South Pole, and shows virtually no seams.

"The mosaic represents an important U.S.-U.K. collaboration and is a major contribution to the International Polar Year," said Andrew Fleming of British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England. "Over 60,000 scientists are involved in the global International Polar Year initiative to understand our world. I have no doubt that polar researchers will find this mosaic, one of the first outcomes of that initiative, invaluable for planning science campaigns."

NASA has 14 Earth-observing satellites in orbit with activities that have direct benefit to humankind. After NASA develops and tests new technologies, the agency transfers activities to other federal agencies. The satellites have helped revolutionize the information that emergency officials have to respond to natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is now available on the Web at: http://lima.usgs.gov

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071127111140.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 9:08pm



Fossil bones scattered across the Horseshoe Canyon, Canada, have been pieced back together again. Scientists believe the dinosaur was an earlier and bigger version of a triceratops. They have named the ancient animal Eotriceratops xerinsularis .

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 28, 2007, 9:45pm

A Maritime Pompeii

Pisa is famous for its leaning tower, but archeologists there are now uncovering an amazing fleet of ancient ships, some complete with crew and cargo.



By Barbie Nadeau
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 1:06 PM ET Nov 1, 2007

The San Rossore train station on the edge of Pisa, Italy, is a lonely stop. Tourists who visit this city to see its famous leaning tower generally use the central station across town. But San Rossore is about to be recognized as one of the country's most significant archeological digs. For nearly a decade archeologists have been working near and under the tracks to unearth what is nothing short of a maritime Pompeii.

So far the excavation has turned up 39 ancient shipwrecks buried under nine centuries of silt, which preserved extraordinary artifacts. The copper nails and ancient wood are still intact, and in many cases cargo is still sealed in the original terra cotta amphorae, the jars used for shipment in the ancient world. They have also found a cask of the ancient Roman fish condiment known as garum and many mariners' skeletons—one crushed under the weight of a capsized ship. One ship carried scores of pork shoulder hams; another carried a live lion, likely en route from Africa to the gladiator fights in Rome.

What's most dramatic about the discovery of this maritime graveyard is that the ships date from different centuries both before and after the advent of the Christian era, meaning the shipwrecks did not happen simultaneously but over time in the same area. Researchers say that starting around the 6th century B.C. the cargo docks of the port of Pisa were accessed by a canal that made a loop connecting the harbor to the open sea. Every hundred years or so over the course of nearly a thousand years, tsunamilike waves violently flooded the waterway and capsized and buried ships, their cargo and their passengers and crew, alongside uprooted trees and even tiny birds and animals. The 39 shipwrecks, of which 16 have been age-dated and partially or fully excavated so far, date from around the fifth century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. Random artifacts, for which the archeologists have not yet found ships, date back even further. "The ships represent life in motion," says Elena Rossi, an archeologist who has worked on the site since it was first discovered. "Some may have foundered, others sunk in storms, and others went to the bottom in a flood."

The shipwrecks represent a significant piece of a puzzle that archeologists and anthropologists have struggled to understand for centuries. Studying the oldest boats' contents and the way those ships were built, archeologists now better understand just who the Romans and Etruscans traded with and how they lived and utilized the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the oldest ships belonged to the Greeks and the Phoenicians, which implies that the mysterious and little-understood Etruscans were in fact active traders. One ship carried amphorae sealed with sand from both Spain and from the volcanic regions of Campania in Italy, giving scientists vital clues to where these ships traveled.

Other ships carried various types of cutlery and crockery, from utilitarian ware used by the seamen to more expensive, signed pieces. None of the vessels examined so far were warships, and back then passenger boats did not exist. Researchers have concluded that it was common practice for wealthy citizens to effectively rent space on cargo ships, which explains why some of the vessels had expensive personal effects obviously not belonging to the crews. One boat thought to be a 15-yard riverboat was found still moored to a sunken pile with perfectly preserved rope. It contained a wide range of personal belongings, from fine jewelry and hand-carved pottery to simple tools. One of the rowing benches on this ship still bears the faint inscription, in the Greek alphabet, of the word akedo, the Latin word for seagull, which is believed to have been the name of the ship. Another ship, known as the Chiatta, was capsized in a storm and lies upside down, perfectly preserving the mast and upper reaches of the boat.

The first nine ships were discovered in 1998, when Trenitalia, Italy's national train company, broke ground at San Rossore to build a new control center for the Rome-Genoa line. Within a few months remnants of more than a dozen shipwrecks were identified. Even a year later, when archeologists finally made the site an official state-funded excavation, they understood so little about Pisa's marine history that they accidentally bisected an ancient ship with metal bulkheads put in place to cordon off the dig. Half of the ship still lies undiscovered outside the work area, the steel barrier left in place across the ancient vessel. Part of another ship has been located under the train tracks, which will mean significant disruption to regional train service if they choose to excavate it. Archeologists on the project say that even more ancient ships lie buried under this part of modern-day Pisa.

An aggressive plan to recover and restore these ships is daunting and time-consuming. The land between modern-day Pisa and the sea has a high water table, in places more than three feet above sea level, which keeps the ground spongy. This porous soil helped preserve the boats in their watery clay graves—and the same soft soil contributed to the slant of the city's famous tower. But excavating the boats is a juggling act. Exposure to oxygen is detrimental to the ancient wood, but since some of the ships are 20 feet or more underground, the ground water has to be pumped away to allow the excavation to progress. The ships that have been identified but not excavated have been covered with removable asphalt on which the outline of the boats is painted in bright yellow, blue or white, depending on the age of the ship.

So far, only a few ships have actually been removed from the ground. Their ancient wood fragments are cleaned and then soaked in a bath of water and a fungicidal solution to stop the effects of exposure to oxygen from dehydrating the perishable organic materials. The boats are extracted and treated in small sections to keep exposure to the elements minimal. Ancient wood restorers then consolidate the fragments with the larger pieces of the original boats and wrap the reconstructed vessels in a plastic film, and finally in a fiberglass material called vitroresin. Humidity and exposure to light are carefully controlled, and the ships are hung from vinyl straps to allow circulation and drainage during the preservation stages. Three major ships are now wrapped and hanging in a laboratory in Pisa and will have to soak for several years before they are stable enough to display to the public outside their fiberglass shells. Workers have shared technology with researchers in Stockholm, Sweden, who recently unveiled a multimillion-dollar museum for the only other ship of similar origin ever found.

Optimistic workers on the Pisa project hope they will also have a museum dedicated to their 39 ships by 2015, inside Pisa's nearby Arsenal museum. They hope to showcase the ships' contents and display many of the preserved ships—even if they are still hanging in fiberglass casings or soaking in glass-sided liquid basins, if that's required to preserve the artifacts. But many of the ships may never be recovered from their graves due to lack of funds and other resources it takes to preserve these ancient relics.

For now visitors can gaze down at the dig site from above for about $9, and those who pass through the sleepy San Rossore train station can always just look down from the tracks to see what is easily one of the most exciting ancient discoveries in recent history.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/67475

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 7:07am

Rodent Fossils Provide Data On Climate 6 Million Years Ago

ScienceDaily (Nov. 29, 2007) — How did the rodents which inhabited the south of the Iberian Peninsula live six million years ago? The researcher of the UGR Raef Minwer-Barakat has attempted to answer this question through his doctoral thesis "Rodents and insectivorous of Upper Turoliense and the Pliocene of the central section of the Guadix basin", supervised by doctors Elvira Martín and César Viseras, of the Department of Stratigraphy y Palaeontology of the Universidad de Granada. His studied has concluded with the discovering of three new species of rodents and insectivores (Micromys caesaris, Blarinoides aliciae and Archaeodesmana elvirae) and the finding, for the first time in the region, of nine more species.

Minwer-Barakat chose the Guadix basin to develop his study due to the excellent conditions of the area and its abundance of fossils of small mammals. Although there were previous studied on rodents in this region, no-one had had carried out such a complete study were on the fauna of fossil insectivores.

This research work is based on the analysis of the dental structures of rodents, key elements in Palaeontology to differentiate between two species as they become fossilized very easily.

The research work, backed by the UGR, has also managed to determine that the Myocricetodon jaegeri, a species of gerbil whose presence has been documented at the end of the Miocene from Africa, a theory which had not been confirmed yet.

The climate

Raef Minwer-Barakat´s thesis has allowed to carry out a radiography of the climate evolution in the south of the Iberian Peninsula in the analyzed periods. In the Upper Turoliense (from 6 to 5.3 million years ago) the climate was almost desert-like, with scarce vegetation, and during the Rusciniense and at the beginning of the Villafranquiense (from 5.3 to 3 million years ago) the conditions became warmer and damper. At the end of the lower Villafranquiense and during the middle Villafranquiense Granada’s climate became much colder and drier, with a predominance of open herbaceous environments.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071129085638.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 4, 2007, 5:28am

Amazing find of dinosaur 'mummy'

Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of a dinosaur that has much of its soft tissue still intact.

Skin, muscle, tendons and other tissue that rarely survive fossilisation have all been preserved in the specimen unearthed in North Dakota, US.



The 67 million-year-old dinosaur is one of the duck-billed hadrosaur group.

The preservation allowed scientists to estimate that it was more muscular than thought, perhaps giving it the ability to outrun predators like T. rex .

The researchers propose that the dinosaur's rump was 25% larger than had previously been thought. This probably meant more muscle mass and therefore greater acceleration, giving it a greater chance of evading meat-eating dinosaurs in hot pursuit.

Depth and structure

While it has been dubbed a dinosaur "mummy", the dinosaur is actually fossilised into stone.



But unlike the collections of bones found in many museums, this hadrosaur came complete with fossilised skin, ligaments, tendons and possibly some internal organs, according to researchers.

"It's unbelievable when you look at it for the first time," said palaeontologist Phillip Manning from the University of Manchester, UK.

"There is depth and structure to the skin. The level of detail expressed in the skin is just breathtaking."

Dr Manning said there was a pattern of banding to the larger and smaller scales on the skin.

Because it has been fossilised researchers do not know the colour of the skin. But looking at it in monochrome shows a striped pattern. He noted that in modern reptiles, such a pattern is often associated with transitions between different skin colours.

The fossil was found in 1999 and is now nicknamed Dakota. It is being analysed in the world's largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing corporation.

The machine usually is used for space shuttle engines and other large objects. Researchers hope the technology will help them learn more about the fossilised insides of the creature.

The reptile had no chest cavity, suggesting it had been partially eaten by predators before being "mummified" in unusual conditions: acidic, waterlogged sediments collected around the dinosaur, triggering the rapid deposit of minerals and trapping organic molecules before they decayed.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7124969.stm

Published: 2007/12/03 13:15:08 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 5, 2007, 7:22am

Fossils Excavated From Bahamian Blue Hole May Give Clues Of Early Life


Richard Franz (left), a University of Florida herpetologist, and David Steadman, a UF ornithologist, view a crocodile skull and tortoise shell at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus on Nov. 27, 2007. The first entire fossilized skeletons of a tortoise and a crocodile found anywhere in the West Indies were uncovered in a kind of sinkhole called a blue hole on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, along with bones of a lizard, snakes, bats and 25 species of birds, as well as abundant fossils of plants, Steadman says. Radiocarbon analyses date the bones at between 1,000 and 4,200 years old, with the youngest fossil being that of a human tibia, he says. (Credit: University of Florida/Ray Carson)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 4, 2007) — Long before tourists arrived in the Bahamas, ancient visitors took up residence in this archipelago off Florida's coast and left remains offering stark evidence that the arrival of humans can permanently change -- and eliminate -- life on what had been isolated islands, says a University of Florida researcher.

The unusual discovery of well-preserved fossils in a water-filled sinkhole called a blue hole revealed the bones of landlubbing crocodiles and tortoises that did not survive human encroachment, said David Steadman, a UF ornithologist and the lead author of a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The climate and environmental conditions back then weren't much different from those of today," said Steadman, who works at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus. "The big difference is us. When people got to the island, there was probably nothing easier to hunt than tortoises so they cooked and ate them. And they got rid of the crocodiles because it's tough to have kids playing at the edge of the village where there are terrestrial crocodiles running around."

The first entire fossilized skeletons of a tortoise and a crocodile found anywhere in the West Indies were uncovered from Sawmill Sink on Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas, along with bones of a lizard, snakes, bats and 25 species of birds, as well as abundant plant fossils.

Radiocarbon analyses date the bones at between 1,000 and 4,200 years old with the youngest fossil being that of a human tibia, he said. The fossils are the best preserved of any ever found in the Bahamas because of their unusual location in the deep saltwater layer of the sinkhole that contains no oxygen, which normally would feed the bacteria and fungi that cause bones to decay, Steadman said. Expert diver Brian Kakuk and other skilled scuba divers retrieved the fossils from various places along the floor and walls of the blue hole, which contains salt water covered by a layer of freshwater.

"The fossils from Sawmill Sink open up unparalleled opportunities for doing much more sophisticated work than ever before in reconstructing the ancient plant and animal communities of the Bahamas," Steadman said. "It helps us to understand not only how individual species evolve on islands, but how these communities changed with the arrival of people because we know that changes in the ecosystem are much more dramatic on islands than they are on continents."

There are many blue holes on Abaco and other Bahamian islands, but this is the first to be the site of a sophisticated fossil excavation, Steadman said. Although the Bahamian government has gone to great lengths to protect its coastline, blue holes with their submerged cave passages have received little attention as a marine resource, he said.

The fossil site is especially valuable because of the presence of fossilized plants -- leaves, twigs, flowers, fruits and seeds -- pollen and spores, and vertebrates, giving evidence of both the island's flora and fauna, Steadman said.

"In a typical vertebrate fossil site, you identify the species of vertebrates -- reptiles, birds or mammals -- and based on that identification you speculate what the habitat might have been," he said. "For the first time here in the West Indies, we have here on Abaco plant fossils right in with the vertebrates, so we can reconstruct the habitats in a much more sophisticated way."

For instance, because bracken ferns are one of the first plants to recolonize after a fire, the presence of their spores would indicate regular burning in prehistoric times and indicate that an area was grassland. Evidence for this also comes from the numerous fossils of burrowing owls or meadow larks, which prefer open habitats, he said.

Among the excavation's findings are that the land-roaming Cuban crocodile lived in the Bahamas until humans arrived, Steadman said. "People tend to think of crocodiles as aquatic and certainly most of them are, but in the Bahamas where there is no fresh water, the crocodile became a terrestrial predator," he said.

The collaborative project includes Bahamian scientists Nancy Albury, Keith Tinker and Michael Pateman, as well as paleontologist Gary Morgan of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203173039.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 5, 2007, 8:25am

Remains of New Prehistoric Reptile Species Found
By Alexis Madrigal December 04, 2007 | 12:55:21 PM


[Image: Tore Sponga / BT, The University of Oslo, Natural History Museum]

Scientists in Norway have unearthed the remains of a prehistoric sea reptile previously unidentified by researchers.

University of Oslo researchers found new teeth, skull fragments, and vertebrae on the Svalbard islands, which have yielded dozens of sea reptile skeletons of the pliosaurus (pictured right). The new remains, however, appear to belong to a new species of prehistoric reptile.

Or not. The AP story filed out of Oslo is unclear. Behold self-contradiction:

"It seems the monster is a new species," (Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo) told The Associated Press.

The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year.

If you can parse what the AP meant, you are a better grammarian than I. Is the monster a new species or is it the same species? Or is it that all the Svalbard fossils, which made waves last year, were not pliosaurus after all?

We'll be checking into this story and providing updates as the day goes on.

What we do know is that increased research in more pristine environments, like the Arctic, have yielded remarkable new fossil discoveries, especially in sea reptile (aka plesiosaur) research. As Mark Evans, a plesiosaur expert at the Leicester City Museums in Britain, told the AP, "In the past 10 or 15 years, there has been what we call a renaissance in plesiosaur research."


http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/prehistoric-rep.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 6, 2007, 7:35pm

Age-old Mystery Of Missing Chemicals From Earth's Mantle May Be Solved


Over its 4.5 billion history, Earth's layers of molten rock evolved and crystallized, cooling from a magma ocean (yellow) to the mantle (grey) around the planet's core (orange). (Credit: Image courtesy of University of British Columbia)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) — Observations about the early formation of Earth may answer an age-old question about why the planet's mantle is missing some of the matter that should be present, according to UBC geophysicist John Hernlund.

Earth is made from chondrite, very primitive rocks of meteorites that date from the earliest time of the solar system before the Earth was formed. However, scientists have been puzzled why the composition of Earth's mantle and core differed from that of chondrite.

Hernlund's findings suggest that an ancient magma ocean swirled beneath the Earth's surface and would account for the discrepancy.

"As the thick melted rock cooled and crystallized, the solids that resulted had a different composition than the melt," explains Hernlund, a post-doctoral fellow at UBC Earth and Ocean Sciences.

"The melt held onto some of the elements. This would be where the missing elements of chondrite are stored."

He says this layer of molten rock would have been around 1,000 km thick and 2,900 km beneath the surface."

Published in the journal Nature, Hernlund's study explores the melting and crystallization processes that have controlled the composition of the Earth's interior over geological time. Co-authors are Stéphane Labrosse, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and Nicolas Coltice, Université de Lyon.

The centre of Earth is a fiery core of melted heavy metals, mostly iron. This represents 30 per cent while the remaining 70 per cent is the outer mantle of solid rock.

Traditional views hold that a shallow ocean of melted rock (magma) existed 1,000 km below the Earth's surface, but it was short lived and gone by 10 million years after the formation of Earth.

In contrast, Hernlund's evolutionary model predicts that during Earth's hotter past shortly after its formation 4.5 billion years ago, at least one-third of the mantle closest to the core was also melted.

The partially molten patches now observed at the base of the Earth's mantle could be the remnants of such a deep magma ocean, says Hernlund.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071205131152.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 6, 2007, 11:01pm

Neanderthal Children Grew Up Fast


Growth lines inside a Neanderthal tooth (left - diagonally running lines) and on the outside (right- horizontal curved lines). Counts and measurements of these lines helped to determine that the child was approximately 8 years old when it died. (Credit: Tanya Smith, MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) — An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old Belgian Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis).

A new report details how the team used growth lines both inside and on the surfaces of the child’s teeth to reconstruct tooth formation time and its’ age at death.

Scientists found differences in the duration of tooth growth in the Neanderthal when compared to modern humans, with the former showing shorter times in most cases. This faster growth resulted in a more advanced pattern of dental development than in fossil and living members of our own species (Homo sapiens).

The Scladina juvenile, which appears to be developmentally similar to a 10-12 year old human, was estimated to be in fact about 8 years old at death. This pattern of development appears to be intermediate between early members of our genus (e.g., Homo erectus) and living people, suggesting that the characteristically slow development and long childhood is a recent condition unique to our own species.

Neanderthal life history, or the timing of developmental and reproductive events, has been under great debate during the past few decades. Across primates, tooth development, specifically the age of molar eruption, is related to other developmental landmarks such as weaning and first reproduction.

Scientists have previously found evidence to both support and refute the idea that Neanderthals grew up differently than our own species. In this new study, researchers used information from the inside of a molar tooth, coupled with data from micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), as well as evidence of developmental stress on the outsides of tooth crowns and roots.

This yields the first chronology, or time sequence, for Neanderthal tooth growth, which differs from living humans. The Scladina Neanderthal grew teeth over a shorter period of time, and has more teeth erupted (present in the mouth), than similarly-aged fossil or living humans (Homo sapiens).

This suggests that other aspects of physical development were likely more rapidly achieved as well, implying significant differences in the behaviour or social organization of these ancient humans.

Journal reference: Tanya M. Smith, Michel Toussaint, Donald J. Reid, Anthony J. Olejniczak, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Rapid Dental Development in a Middle Paleolithic Belgian Neanderthal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA December 2007

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071204100409.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 6, 2007, 11:03pm

Did Early Southwestern Indians Ferment Corn And Make Beer?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2007) — The belief among some archeologists that Europeans introduced alcohol to the Indians of the American Southwest may be faulty.

Ancient and modern pot shards collected by New Mexico state archeologist Glenna Dean, in conjunction with analyses by Sandia National Laboratories researcher Ted Borek, open the possibility that food or beverages made from fermenting corn were consumed by native inhabitants centuries before the Spanish arrived.

Dean, researching through her small business Archeobotanical Services, says, “There’s been an artificial construct among archeologists working in New Mexico that no one had alcohol here until the Spanish brought grapes and wine. That’s so counter-intuitive. It doesn’t make sense to me as a social scientist that New Mexico would have been an island in pre-Columbian times. By this reasoning, ancestral puebloans would have been the only ones in the Southwest not to know about fermentation.”

Not only does historical evidence for fermented beverages exist for surrounding native groups, but people around the world have found ways to alter their consciousness, she says: “Wild yeast blows everywhere.” In the Middle Ages in Europe, “Everyone drank ale because the fermentation purified water.” Egyptian tombs contained loaves of bread “that we used to assume were to eat, but they’re actually dry beer: put bread in water, you get beer.”

Closer to home, the Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico to this day drink a weak beer called tiswin, made by fermenting corn kernels.

Could ancestral puebloan farmers — whose ancient mud and rock homes have been found in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado — have done the same?

To check her hypothesis, Dean presented Borek with three types of samples: pots in which she herself brewed tiswin, brewing pots used by Tarahumara Indians, and pot sherds from 800-year-old settlements in west-central New Mexico. The question: would analysis support the idea that ancient farmers enhanced their nutrition — and perhaps enjoyment of foods — by manipulating wild yeast and corn mixtures centuries before Columbus?

Borek, working under a Sandia program that permits limited use of Sandia tools to aid local small businesses, used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (rather than destructive solvents) to analyze vapors produced by mild heating of the pot samples.

From Dean’s pots, Borek developed a profile of gasses emitted from a known tiswin source. Then he examined Tarahumaran pots to see whether the gaseous profiles corresponded. Finally he examined pot sherds that had been buried for centuries to see if the obviously weakened fumes would match, in kind if not in volume, his previous two samples.

Comparing peaks across the three data sets showed the presence of similar organic species, Borek says, though more work must be done before positive conclusions can be drawn.

“We see similarities. We have not found that ‘smoking gun’ that definitely provides evidence of intentional fermentation. It’s always possible that corn fermented in a pot without the intent of the owner,” he says, “and that it wasn’t meant to be drunk.”

Analysis is now underway to highlight patterns of organic species that might provide a more definite, intentional result.

“There appear to be consistencies across the modern home brew and Tarahumaran pots,” Borek says. “We are currently examining all data to look for markers that would indicate intentional fermentation occurred on archeological articles.”

The work opens new, unexpected doors, he says, for understanding the human past by means of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry.

Sandia researcher Curt Mowry is examining data and comparing all sets across the provided references, Tarahumaran pots, and ancient samples.

The results were presented by Borek in a talk at the Materials Research Society fall meeting in Boston in the end of November.

The equipment used in this study is commercially available hardware, modified by Sandia to investigate traces of organic materials in the ambient air of the Washington DC Metro system and on weapon components and materials.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071205140118.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 2:49am

Ancient Maya Marketplace Located, Challenges Views On Goods Distribution

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2007) — Coaxing answers from 1500-year-old clues hidden in soil clumps, a team of archaeologists and environmental scientists identified a marketplace in an ancient Maya city, calling into question archaeologists’ widely held belief that people of the era relied on rulers to tax and re-distribute goods, rather than trading them with one another.

Brigham Young University professor of environmental science Richard Terry and his student team helped confirm the location of a suspected marketplace on the Yucatan peninsula, giving Maya studies powerful new evidence for understanding the advanced civilization’s economy.

Terry’s specialty is analyzing soil from archaeological sites to find chemical traces that indicate what took place there. Such creative detective work is particularly useful in tropical areas, where 90 percent of inhabitants’ possessions were made from organic material that has since decomposed.

“Looking at soil residues promises to open up the investigation of ancient Maya economic systems for the first time,” said Bruce Dahlin, lead author on the new study and archaeologist with Shepherd University. “It’s the first way of confirming that an area that looks like a marketplace, is a marketplace.”

In trying to determine if the Maya of the Classic era (about A.D. 300 to 900) had a market economy, scientists had found large, open areas within settlements of the period, but no indications of the areas’ purposes. Terry’s soil analysis revealed outlines of use clearly consistent with a modern-day open-air market in the region.

"These methods reveal intricate patterns of human behavior in what would ordinarily be invisible - the chemical residues left by trading, marketing, farming, and habitation,” said Stephen Houston, a Maya scholar at Brown University not associated with the study. “[Terry] is at the forefront of developing and applying these methods in the New World."

Dahlin explained that he and other Maya archaeologists had recognized that many Maya cities appeared to have held more people than the regions’ agricultural capacities could have supported. For years, researchers sought evidence of sophisticated farming or irrigation techniques to explain this. The idea of a market economy that facilitated the importing of food and other goods wasn’t taken seriously, in part because it would be difficult to distinguish from most archaeologists’ belief that the Maya elite had a tax and tribute system and effectively paid their underlings for loyalty by passing goods down the social ladder. But proof of the existence of a market would certainly prove a market economy.

After hearing a proposal from Terry’s then-graduate student Chris Jensen, a coauthor on the new paper, Dahlin invited the BYU team to his dig in Chunchucmil on the western Yucatan. They sampled surface soil from a large, open area bordered by ancient thoroughfares, hunting for phosphorus.

“All food materials contain phosphorus, and a common denominator of all humans is that they bring food to places where they live,” Terry said. “Over time, the organic matter is ground into the soil and rots, but the phosphorus holds to the soil particles even in a tropical rain forest that gets a meter or two of rain every year.”

The soil chemists mixed two-gram samples of soil with chemicals and filtered the resulting solution. A handheld device shined light through the solution to determine the concentration of phosphorus.

“Our innovation was to develop a field laboratory so that we could report soil phosphorus results quickly to the archaeologists without having to wait for results from the Provo lab,” Terry said.

The results from the plaza at Chunchucmil showed concentrations of phosphorus up to 40 times higher than in ancient patios and streets. The pattern of phosphorus residue indicated that a footpath ran through the marketplace parallel to the bordering street, and that food was vended on either side.

This layout proved to be consistent with the last remaining modern market in the region that runs atop soil (all the others have been paved). Another of Terry’s students and coauthors, David Wright, sampled soil from that one, in Antigua, Guatemala, that yielded the similar pattern.

The researchers believe further geochemical studies at other sites, such as the large settlements of Tikal and Chichen Itza, will reveal how far the market economy may have spread. Terry and his students are also analyzing other chemicals left in soil to pinpoint ancient workshops and religious sites and are studying carbon isotopes in the soil to locate the ancient corn fields.

This research was reported in the December issue of Latin American Antiquity. Timothy Beach of Georgetown University is also a coauthor on the paper. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, Howard University and BYU. The Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia de Mexico allowed the work at Chunchucmil.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203134409.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 3:58am

Ancient Blood Found On Sculptures From Kingdom Of Mali


A new, highly-sensitive analytical test was used to confirm the presence of blood in the coating of this animal-like artifact used in ancient Mali rituals. (Credit: Pascale Richardin, Center for Research and Restoration for the Museums of France)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2007) — Scientists in France are reporting for the first time that sculptors from the fantastically wealthy ancient Empire of Mali -- once the source of almost half the world's gold -- used blood to form the beautiful patina, or coating, on their works of art. Pascale Richardin and colleagues describe development of a new, noninvasive test that accurately identifies traces of blood apparently left on ancient African artifacts used in ceremonies involving animal sacrifices.

Archaeologists often had reported or suspected the presence of blood on many African artifacts, the study points out. However, accurately identifying the presence of blood was difficult because of the tiny amounts of blood remaining over the ages.

The researchers describe use of three highly sensitive tests -- time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, infrared microscopy, and X-ray microfluoresence -- to identify iron-bound (the chemical fingerprint of blood) on the patina from seven Dogon and Bamana sculptures from Mali. The technique, which caused virtually no damage to priceless artworks, also is suitable for identification of blood on other ancient artifacts, the study states.

The article "Identification of Ritual Blood in African Artifacts using TOF-SIMS and Synchrotron Radiation Microspectroscopies" is scheduled for the Dec. 15 issue of ACS' Analytical Chemistry.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203091232.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 6:54am

500,000-year-old TB case 'found'



Scientists say they have discovered in Turkey the most ancient evidence of tuberculosis in a 500,000-year-old human fossil.

Experts had thought TB emerged several thousand years ago - based on the remains of mummies from Egypt and Peru.

The skeleton is of a young man believed to belong to the first human species to migrate out of Africa - Homo erectus.

The American Journal of Physical Anthropology details the find by a team from the US, Germany and Turkey.

Paleontologists spent decades prospecting in Turkey for the remains.

By looking at the skull, John Kappelman, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, and his international team saw tell-tale signs of the disease.

Small lesions

They found a series of small lesions etched into the bone of the cranium whose shape and location they claim are characteristic of the Leptomeningitis tuberculosa, a form of TB that attacks the meninges lining of the brain.

The researchers believe the man's circumstances may have made him susceptible to the infection.

We would need very firm proof that the skull lesions described are indeed from TB
Dr Simon Mays, expert in human skeletal remains at English Heritage

The dark-skinned Homo erectus, who migrated northward from low, tropical latitudes would have produced less vitamin D, which can weaken the immune system.

The body produces vitamin D when sunlight hits the skin. The skin pigment melanin - more abundant in darker skin - shields the body from the sun's rays, reducing damage from ultraviolet light, but also reducing vitamin D production.

Professor Kappelman said: "The production of vitamin D in the skin serves as one of the body's first lines of defences against a whole host of infections and diseases."

Dr Simon Mays, expert in human skeletal remains at English Heritage, said, until now, the most ancient case of TB recorded was from remains found in Italy dating back 5,000 years.

"This report suggests there was a case 450,000 years earlier than that. We would need very firm proof that the skull lesions described are indeed from TB and not something else."

TB is a disease of the respiratory system that is spread through the air after infected people cough or sneeze.

It usually attacks the lungs, but it can affect almost any part of the body.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7130760.stm

Published: 2007/12/07 05:25:50 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 12, 2007, 6:58am

Ancient polar bear jawbone found
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

What may be the oldest known remains of a polar bear have been uncovered on the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.



The jawbone was pulled from sediments that suggest the specimen is perhaps 110,000 or 130,000 years old.

Professor Olafur Ingolfsson from the University of Iceland says tests show it was an adult, possibly a female.

The find is a surprise because polar bears are a relatively new species, with one study claiming they evolved less than 100,000 years ago.

If the Svalbard jawbone's status is confirmed, and further discoveries can show the iconic Arctic beasts have a deeper evolutionary heritage, then the outlook for the animals may be more positive than some believe.

Age 'confidence'

"We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period," explained Professor Ingolfsson.


POLAR BEAR (URSUS MARITIMUS)

Largest of five living bear species of Ursus genus
Brown bear ( U. arctos ) is nearest evolutionary cousin
Two species able to produce fertile hybrid offspring
Highly specialised predator of seals - but will take other prey
Global population of polar bears may number 20-25,000
Most recent IUCN Red List status: Vulnerable
Previous oldest recovered remains are about 70,000 years old

"And what's interesting about that is that the Eeemian - the last interglacial - was much warmer than the Holocene (the present).

"This is telling us that despite the ongoing warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don't have to be quite so worried about the polar bear. That would be very encouraging."

The jawbone's discovery is being presented here in San Francisco at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

The specimen was found at Poolepynten on Prins Karls Forland, a narrow strip of land on the far west of the archipelago.

The sediments there are well-described, and record at least two glaciations sandwiched with marine sequences. In other words, they record periods when Poolepynten was alternately covered by ice and water.

These periods are understood in good detail by Professor Ingolfsson's team, so although direct dating at the dig site gives an age range for the bone of 80-140,000 years ago, the group is confident the specimen can be placed at the upper end of this scale.

London detour

The 23cm-long bone itself retains some critical details that have helped identify it.

"It is very well-preserved," Professor Ingolfsson told BBC News.

"We can measure various parameters, such as the cheek-teeth row-length, and the size of the hole made by the third molar - which is very characteristic of polar bears. We've compared all this, both to fossil and recent materials, and there's no question it's a polar bear." They speculate it was a female bear.



Researchers have studied the DNA of modern polar bears to try to gauge when the Arctic animals separated from brown bears, their nearest evolutionary cousins.

Different models have variously put the radiation as near as 70,000 years ago and as distant as 1-1.5 million years ago. One of the problems has been in finding the ancient specimens to put alongside, and constrain, these genetic estimates.

Until recently, one of the oldest polar bear specimens was thought to be British - a 70,000-year-old animal found at Kew Bridge in London.

The presumption was that the creature lived at a lower latitude during a period when ice sheets were more extensive.

But scientists are now confident the Kew animal was in fact a brown bear.

"It's a huge bear; it's a runner - a hunting bear," said Andy Currant, a palaeontologist from London's Natural History Museum. "It's got some of the features of a polar bear, but it's undoubtedly a brown bear.

"With something like polar bears, to make an identification you've got to have a skull or a lower jaw - they've got very reduced teeth, rather surprisingly, and you've got to see that. So I was interested to learn that [Ingolfsson's group] has that."

Hidden Arctic

Building up a more detailed picture of the ancient history of polar bears will be challenging, though. The animals spend much of their lives out on the ice, and when they die their remains are likely to be scavenged by other creatures or fall to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Finds will continue to be extremely rare.

Concern over the bears' future status centres on the observations of shrinking ice in what is a rapidly warming Arctic. The ice provides a platform from which to hunt ringed, and other, seals. If the ice is diminished and the bears cannot adapt quickly, many of them may be squeezed out of their ecological niche.

Professor Ingolfsson is hopeful the bears will cope - and believes the palaeo-record will offer some reassurance.

"The polar bear is basically a brown bear that decided some time ago that it would be easier to feed on seals on the ice. So long as there are seals, there are going to be polar bears. I think the threat to the polar bears is much more to do with pollution, the build up of heavy metals in the Arctic.

"This is just how I interpret it. But this is science - when you have little data, you have lots of freedom."

The team, which includes Professor Oystein Wiig from the University of Oslo, Norway, will develop its research on the Svalbard specimen by trying to extract DNA.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7132220.stm

Published: 2007/12/10 17:19:21 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 12, 2007, 7:03am

New meat-eating dinosaur unveiled
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News



Fossils of a massive dinosaur unearthed a decade ago in the Republic of Niger, Africa, have been recognised as belonging to a new species.

Scientists say Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis was one of the largest meat-eaters that ever lived, rivalling T. rex in size and ferocity.

The 95-million-year-old fossils have been kept in a Chicago laboratory for several years, awaiting classification.

A student stumbled on the remains and realised they were important.

"It really is a fascinating animal - it was one of the largest meat eaters that lived on the planet," said Steve Brusatte, now an MSc student at the University of Bristol. "It's a new species - it is something totally different."

Strange and scary

The dinosaur had a skull about 1.75m long housing huge jaws armed with teeth the size of bananas.

The first remains of Carcharodontosaurus were found in the 1920s, but they only consisted of two teeth which have since been lost
Steve Brusatte, University of Bristol

It was part of a "very weird ecosystem" of huge bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs that inhabited the Saharan Cretaceous landscape.

"It was a 13m long predator that still had to watch its own back because something bigger was out there - an animal called Spinosaurus," Brusatte told BBC News.

Also known as the spine lizard because of its distinctive fin-like spines, Spinosaurus grew to 18m long, and lived alongside a third mighty carnivore - the 9m high Abelisaurid theropod.

"It was a very strange, very scary community at that time," he added.

Serendipity


The jawbone of a closely related species has been found

The fossils were discovered in Niger in 1997 on an expedition led by the prominent fossil hunter Paul Serono from the University of Chicago.

Brusatte - who was 13 at the time - did not take part in the expedition but came across the remains while studying in Chicago.

While cataloguing the skull and neck fossils, he noticed that they showed a number of differences from similar Carcharodontosaurus specimens found in Morocco.

This placed them in a species of their own - named iguidensis after the region of central Niger from where they came.

Remains of similar members of the family have been described before but were lost to science in the early 20th Century.

"The first remains of Carcharodontosaurus were found in the 1920s, but they only consisted of two teeth which have since been lost," said Brusatte.

"Other bits of Carcharodontosaurus were found in Egypt and described in the 1930s, but these were destroyed when Munich was bombed in 1944.

"Since then a skull of Carcharodontosaurus saharicus turned up in the Moroccan Sahara, and was described a decade ago. So as you can see, evidence for this dinosaur is very rare."

Warmer, wetter

The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, sheds light on a peculiar time in history when the world was warm and wet, covered in shallow seas.

"The dinosaur seems to have evolved because these shallow seas divided up the land so it led to different groups of dinosaurs in different places - that has implications for how life reacts to high temperatures and high sea levels," explained Brusatte.

Dr Angela Milner, Deputy Keeper of Palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum, said the new find demonstrated that very large carnivorous dinosaurs were more widely distributed in Africa than previously suspected.

"It may be that these giants arose by allopatric speciation, whereby biological populations are physically isolated by a barrier, in this case a seaway, and evolve in reproductive isolation," she said.

"If the barrier breaks down later, individuals of the populations can no longer interbreed. This is a well recognised phenomenon in living animals but the same 'rules' almost certainly applied in the remote past as well. However, that hypothesis can't be tested with ancient fossils!"

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7138782.stm

Published: 2007/12/12 04:17:30 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 12, 2007, 7:27am

Great beasts peppered from space
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

Startling evidence has been found which shows mammoth and other great beasts from the last ice age were blasted with material that came from space.



Eight tusks dating to some 35,000 years ago all show signs of having being peppered with meteorite fragments.

The ancient remains come from Alaska, but researchers also have a Siberian bison skull with the same pockmarks.

The scientists released details of the discovery at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, US.

They painted a picture of a calamitous event over North America that may have severely knocked back the populations of some species.

Blast direction

"We think that there was probably an impact which exploded in the air that sent these particles flying into the animals," said Richard Firestone from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"In the case of the bison, we know that it survived the impact because there's new bone growth around these marks."

And geoscience consultant Allen West added: "If the particles had gone through the skin, they may not have made it through to vital organs; but this material could certainly have blinded the animals and severely injured them."



The mammoth and bison remains all display small (about 2-3mm in size) perforations.

Raised, burnt surface rings trace the point of entry of high-velocity projectiles; and the punctures are on only one side, consistent with a blast coming from a single direction.

Viewed under an electron microscope, the embedded fragments appear to have exploded inside the tusk and bone, say the researchers. Shards have cut little channels.

The sunken pieces are also magnetic, and tests show them to have a high iron-nickel content, but to be depleted in titanium.

The ratios of different types of atoms in the fragments meant it was most unlikely they had originated on Earth, the team told the AGU meeting.

Magnetic hunt

The discovery follows on from the group's previous research which claimed a more recent space collision - some 13,000 years ago.

The researchers reported the discovery of sediment at more than 20 sites across North America that contained exotic materials: tiny spheres of glass and carbon, ultra-small specks of diamond and amounts of the rare element iridium that were too high to be terrestrial.

The scientists also found a black layer which, they argued, was the charcoal deposited by wildfires that swept the continent after the space object smashed into the Earth's atmosphere.

It was just a tiny magnet on a string, but very strong. It would swing over and stick firmly to these little dots
Allen West

"We had found evidence of particle impacts in chert, or flint, at a Clovis Indian site in Michigan," Dr Firestone said.

"So, we got the idea that if these impacts were in the chert, then they might likely also have occurred in large surfaces such as tusks; and we decided it was worth a shot to go look for them."

Allen West began the hunt at a mammoth tusk sale in his home state of Arizona.

He immediately found one tusk with the tell-tale pockmarks and asked the trading company if he could look through its entire collection. He sorted literally thousands of items.

"There are many things that can cause spots, such as algae, and there were a few of those; but I was only interested in the ones that were magnetic," he recalled. "It was just a tiny magnet on a string, but very strong. It would swing over and stick firmly to these little dots."

The search turned up a further seven ivory specimens of interest, together with the bison skull.

Further clues

But having gone out and tested the hypothesis of tusk impacts, and having apparently uncovered such items - the team was then astonished to find the animal remains were about 20,000 years older than had been anticipated.

The researchers are now considering a number of possibilities - one that could even tie the older remains to the younger event.


The embedded particles have a high iron-nickel content

"People who collect these items today in Siberia and Alaska frequently find the tusks sticking out of the permafrost or eroding out of a riverbank," explained Mr West.

"Maybe, these were tusks from dead animals that were just exposed on the surface, so when this thing blew up in the atmosphere, it would have peppered them. The date could really be anywhere from 13,000 to 35-40,000 years ago."

The team believes there must still be peppered tusks out there that can be dated to 13,000 years ago, and the hope is that the AGU presentation will prompt museums and collectors to look through their archives.

"There should also be a layer of this same meteoritic material in the sedimentary record. It's probably very thin. If we can locate the right place and it hasn't been turbated, we should be able to find this layer; and it shouldn't be too different from the impact layer we found for the 13,000-year event," said Dr Firestone.

Neither proposed impact can yet be tied definitively to any craters - if there ever were any. The team also needs to explain how the bison and mammoth remains can show similar damage when they were widely separated geographically.

Past puzzle

The intriguing question is how space impacts might fit into the extinction story of the ice age beasts. The mammoth, their elephant cousins the mastodon, sabre-toothed tigers, some bears, and many other creatures all disappeared rapidly from the palaeo-record about 10,000 years ago.

Their loss has traditionally been put down to either climate change and/or the efficient hunting technologies adopted by migrating humans.

Could impacts have also weakened these populations?

ICE AGE PUZZLE

Large beast populations crashed 10,000 years ago
Includes mammoth, mastodon, sabre-toothed tigers, giant sloth
Scientists have several theories to explain the extinctions
Human hunters had adopted a deadly spear-point technology
Climate changes may have hastened animals' demise
Do space impacts also now need to be considered?

It might be just one more element to factor into what is a really complex picture, commented Dr Ian Barnes from Royal Holloway University of London, UK.

The British researcher studies the DNA of ancient animals to try to glean details of how their populations changed over time.

He said there were some interesting markers in the genetics of different creatures some 30,000 to 45,000 years ago - but it was extremely hard to draw firm conclusions.

"For us the difficulty is that we see patterns but we don't understand what the underlying process is; so it becomes difficult to ascribe causation," he explained.

"Just as in a modern crime scene, it's very difficult to piece all the evidence together and say precisely what was going on; which event led to any particular outcome."

But he added: "Certainly, you can't imagine it helped the animals having a large meteorite hit the Earth's atmosphere and pellet them with shot."

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7130014.stm

Published: 2007/12/11 21:06:23 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 12, 2007, 7:40am



The fossilised remains of an extinct, tank-like mammal that scientists believe was an early relative of the armadillo. The 91 kg (200 lb) animal was covered with a massive shell of immovable armoured plates. The new species lived at a time when the Andes were one-fourth their present height.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/po....0969/html/1.stm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 12, 2007, 10:03am

Massive Dinosaur Discovered In Antarctica Sheds Light On Life, Distribution Of Sauropodomorphs


Artist's reconstruction of Glacialisaurus hammeri and Antarctica during the Early Jurassic, with several pterosaurs in the background and a small mammal-like reptile in the foreground. The new dinosaur genus and species was described by Nathan Smith, a graduate student at The Field Museum, and Diego Pol, a paleontologist at the Museo Paleontológico in Chubut, Argentina. (Credit: Copyright 2007 William Stout)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — A new genus and species of dinosaur from the Early Jurassic has been discovered in Antarctica. The massive plant-eating primitive sauropodomorph is called Glacialisaurus hammeri and lived about 190 million years ago.

The recently published description of the new dinosaur is based on partial foot, leg and ankle bones found on Mt. Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica at an elevation of more than 13,000 feet.

"The fossils were painstakingly removed from the ice and rock using jackhammers, rock saws and chisels under extremely difficult conditions over the course of two field seasons," said Nathan Smith, a graduate student at The Field Museum. "They are important because they help to establish that primitive sauropodomorph dinosaurs were more broadly distributed than previously thought, and that they coexisted with their cousins, the true sauropods."

The findings were published online Dec. 5 in the Acta Palaeontologica Poloncica. Diego Pol, a paleontologist at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Chubut, Argentina, is the other co-author of the research.

Sauropodomorph dinosaurs were the largest animals to ever walk the earth. They were long-necked herbivores and include Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. Their sister group is the theropods, which include Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, and modern birds.

Glacialisaurus hammeri was about 20-25 feet long and weighed about 4-6 tons . It was named after Dr. William Hammer, a professor at Augustana College who led the two field trips to Antarctica that uncovered the fossils. Glacialisaurus belongs to the sauropodomorph family Massopsondylidae, which may represent a secondary radiation of basal sauropodomorphs during the Early Jurassic.

Currently, the development and evolutionary relationships of the sauropodomorph dinosaurs are hotly debated by paleontologists. This discovery, however, helps to resolve some of this debate by establishing two things. First, it shows that sauropodomorphs were widely distributed in the Early Jurassic--not only in China, South Africa, South America and North America, but also in Antarctica.

"This was probably due to the fact that major connections between the continents still existed at that time, and because climates were more equitable across latitudes than they are today," Smith said.

Second, the discovery of Glacialisaurus hammeri shows that primitive sauropodomorphs probably coexisted with true sauropods for an extended period of time. The recent discovery of a possible sauropod at roughly the same location in Antarctica lends additional evidence to the theory that the earliest sauropods coexisted with their basal sauropodomorph cousins, including Glacialisaurus hammeri, during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, Smith and Pol conclude in their research findings.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071210214308.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 13, 2007, 5:40am

Arctic Expeditions Find Giant Mud Waves, Glacier Tracks Underwater


Sonar image of the Arctic Ocean Floor, showing a wavy surface caused by water currents. (Credit: Image Courtesy of Ohio State University.)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2007) — Scientists gathering evidence of ancient ice sheets uncovered a new mystery about what's happening on the Arctic sea floor today.

Sonar images revealed that, in some places, ocean currents have driven the mud along the Arctic Ocean bottom into piles, with some “mud waves” nearly 100 feet across.

Around the world, strong currents often create a wavy surface on the ocean bottom. But scientists previously thought the Arctic Ocean was too calm to do so.

Leonid Polyak, a research scientist at Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, said that it's too early to know how the waves formed.

“The mud waves could be caused by tidal fluctuations,” he said. “But that's really just speculation at this point.”

Polyak was one of the leaders of an international scientific expedition that crossed the Arctic Ocean in 2005, and he was part of a recent icebreaker expedition in 2007. Both missions took images of the ocean bottom with sonar and drew sediment cores from the ocean bottom.

Now that the sediment cores -- more than 1,000 feet in total -- are stored in a refrigerated facility of the Byrd Polar Research Center on the Ohio State campus, Polyak and his colleagues have begun their analysis.

Martin Jakobsson of Stockholm University in Sweden -- a team member and leader of the geology party in the 2007 expedition -- summarized the early findings of both sonar surveys Thursday, December 13, 2007, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco . The presentation was part of a session on Arctic Ocean environmental history, and a related poster session was scheduled for Friday morning.

The 2005 Healy-Oden Trans-Arctic Expedition (HOTRAX) -- a cooperative effort between the United States Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the Swedish icebreaker Oden -- was the first scientific expedition to transit the entire Arctic Ocean in the direction from Alaska to Scandinavia . The scientists took sediment cores from 29 sites along the way.

For the 2007 Lomonosov Ridge off Greenland (LOMROG) expedition, the Oden joined with a Russian nuclear icebreaker called 50 let Pobedy (“50 Years of Victory”) to explore a smaller, difficult to access region of the Arctic Ocean near Greenland.

Both expeditions took images of the ocean bottom with a sonar system that also allowed them to view layers of sediment up to 1000 feet below ground.

The purpose of HOTRAX and LOMROG was to gather a sediment record of how the Arctic has changed over time, and also to find evidence of the ancient ice sheets that helped shape the Arctic Ocean seafloor. Scientists hope to use what they learned to better understand how water is exchanged between the basins, and how the Arctic affects (and is affected by) global climate systems.

This is a critical time for the Arctic, Polyak said. In the summer of 2007, much less ice covered the region than during any other time in the last century.

“Even a couple of years ago, we wouldn't have predicted that so little ice would cover the Arctic Ocean ,” he said. “It really looks like we may be living in a completely different world 20 to 30 years from now, with no ice in the Arctic in summer at all.”

The expeditions proved that giant ice masses once covered the arctic -- ice flows massive enough to scrape the ocean bottom half a mile deep. Sonar clearly showed the parallel grooves that ice flows carved in the sea floor, and boulders and other debris that the ice left behind.

As the scientists study the sediments and images in detail, they will focus on more recent Earth history -- specifically the last 150,000 years -- to find out how conditions during warm periods in the recent past resemble what we will likely have in the near future.

The mud waves that they spied on the ocean floor are another mystery, one that the scientists haven't begun to probe.

“Frankly, we have so much material to go through, and we've only just started,” Polyak said. “The goal is to establish a climate record in the sediments. To figure it out, we'll go through the cores centimeter by centimeter.”

The 2005 expedition was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, and the Swedish Science Council.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071212201343.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 14, 2007, 8:58am

Andean Highlands In Chile Yield Ancient South American Armored Mammal Fossil


Artist’s reconstruction of Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis, which likely weighed 200 pounds. (Credit: Art by Velizar Simeonovski)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2007) — A paleontological dig in Chile at an altitude of more than 14,000 feet in the Andes has yielded fossils of an 18-million-year-old armored mammal. It appears to be one of the most primitive members of a family of extinct mammals known as "glyptodonts," a group closely related to the modern-day armadillo.

Darin Croft from Case Western Reserve University, John Flynn from the American Museum of Natural History and Andre R. Wyss from the University of California Santa Barbara report the discovery and describe the mammal in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Researchers have named the animal, Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis. They derived the first part of the name from the new mammal's resemblance to a slightly younger animal from Argentina (Propalaehoplophorus). Septentrionalis means northern in Latin.

The newly discovered animal lived in the early Miocene epoch about 18 million years ago and its family went extinct about the time humans arrived in the New World.

P. septentrionalis is a member of the glyptodonts, a large group of extinct animals that lived almost exclusively in South America. (A few species reached North America several million years ago when the two continents were reconnected by the Panamanian land bridge.) They are recognized for their thick shells of hardened and immovable bony plates and their large, grooved teeth. But unlike their modern day armadillo relatives (who have thinner shells with movable plates and smaller, simple teeth), these animals could grow to the size of a small car and weigh as much at two tons.

According to Croft, the new species was relatively small for a glyptodont and is the first one found in Chile. "It would have looked like a cross between a tortoise and an armadillo, but of course is much more closely related to armadillos," he said. He described P. septentrionalis as roughly the size of an African spurred tortoise, which is less than three feet long and weighs about 200 pounds.

The glyptodont was reconstructed from fossils of the jaw, shell, leg and backbone. These were compared with other known glyptodonts and with close glyptodont relatives. "These different skeletal parts all gave the same answer -- this was a new species of glyptodont that had a greater number of primitive features than any other species," said Croft.

"When we collected the fossil, we had no idea that it would turn out to be a new species. We knew that it would be an important specimen, given its completeness, but it was only after cleaning it and carefully studying it that we realized how unusual it was," Croft said.

The P. septentrionalis fossil was found during a field expedition in 2004 to the Salar de Surire region. This area has yielded the Chucal fauna, the collective name given to the 18 fossil animal species from the region. This fauna includes armored mammals (armadillos and their relatives), marsupials (relatives of the opossum), rodents, frogs and many ungulates (hoofed animals).

Finding the new species was no easy task as the researchers encountered the thin air at the high altitude, scarce water and temperatures that plummeted as night fell. But these are not the conditions under which the glyptodont lived. According to Flynn from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, "Our studies and plant work elsewhere on the Altiplano suggest that the region was at much lower elevation when these fossils lived, giving us new insights into the timing and rate of uplift of the high Andes."

Flynn added that Chucal, at more than 14,000 feet above sea level, is the highest elevation vertebrate fossil site in the Western Hemisphere. The highest site in the world is much younger and is found in the Tibetan Plateau at an altitude of more than 15,000 feet.

Like other glyptodonts, P. septentrionalis probably spent a lot of its time grazing on ground vegetation in open areas, much like cows do today. This interpretation is supported by the presence of many other open habitat mammals at Chucal and the presence of plant fossils typical of such environments.

A detailed description of the new mammal is found in the article, "A New Basal Glyptodontid and other Xenarthra of the Early Miocene Chucal Fauna, Northern Chile." The research was undertaken in collaboration with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural and the Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales in Santiago, Chile. Research support came from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, and FONDECYT Chile.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071214002808.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 14, 2007, 9:08am

Captain Kidd's Shipwreck Of 1699 Discovered


Captain William Kidd

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2007) — Resting in less than 10 feet of Caribbean seawater, the wreckage of Quedagh Merchant, the ship abandoned by the scandalous 17th century pirate Captain William Kidd as he raced to New York in an ill-fated attempt to clear his name, has escaped discovery -- until now.

An underwater archaeology team from Indiana University announced Dec. 13 the discovery of the remnants. IU marine protection authority Charles Beeker said his team has been licensed to study the wreckage and to convert the site into an underwater preserve, where it will be accessible to the public.

Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs in IU Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, said it is remarkable that the wreck has remained undiscovered all these years given its location, just 70 feet off the coast of Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic, and because it has been sought actively by treasure hunters.

"I've been on literally thousands of shipwrecks in my career," Beeker said. "This is one of the first sites I've been on where I haven't seen any looting. We've got a shipwreck in crystal clear, pristine water that's amazingly untouched. We want to keep it that way, so we made the announcement now to ensure the site's protection from looters."

The find is valuable because of the potential to reveal important information about piracy in the Caribbean and about the legendary Capt. Kidd, said John Foster, California's state underwater archaeologist, who is participating in the research.

"I look forward to a meticulous study of the ship, its age, its armament, its construction, its use, its contents and the reconstructed wrecking process that resulted in the site we see today," Foster said. "Because there is extensive, written documentation, this is an opportunity we rarely have to test historic information against the archaeological record."

Historians differ on whether Kidd was actually a pirate or a privateer -- someone who captured pirates. After his conviction of piracy and murder charges in a sensational London trial, he was left to hang over the River Thames for two years.

Historians write that Kidd captured the Quedagh Merchant, loaded with valuable satins and silks, gold, silver and other East Indian merchandise, but left the ship in the Caribbean as he sailed to New York on a less conspicuous sloop to clear his name of the criminal charges.

Anthropologist Geoffrey Conrad, director of IU Bloomington's Mathers Museum of World Cultures, said the men Kidd entrusted with his ship reportedly looted it, and then set it ablaze and adrift down the Rio Dulce. Conrad said the location of the wreckage and the formation and size of the canons, which had been used as ballast, are consistent with historical records of the ship. They also found pieces of several anchors under the cannons.

"All the evidence that we find underwater is consistent with what we know from historical documentation, which is extensive," Conrad said. "Through rigorous archeological investigations, we will conclusively prove that this is the Capt. Kidd shipwreck."

The IU team examined the shipwreck at the request of the Dominican Republic's Oficina Nacional De Patrimonio Cultural Subacuático.

"The site was initially discovered by a local prominent resident of Casa De Campo, who recognized the significance of the numerous cannons and requested the site be properly investigated," said ONPCS Technical Director Francis Soto. "So, I contacted IU."

Beeker and Conrad have worked closely with ONPCS for 11 years since they began conducting underwater and land-based archaeological research related to the era when the Old World and New World first met.

"It continues our work down there from the age of discovery to the golden age of piracy, the transformation of both the native and introduced cultures of the Caribbean," Conrad said.

Much of their work is focused in the area of La Isabela Bay, the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement established by Christopher Columbus. The Taino were the first indigenous people to interact with Europeans. Beeker said much of the history of this period is based on speculation, something he and Conrad are trying to change.

The IU research in the Dominican Republic typically involves professors and graduate students from various IU Bloomington schools and departments, including the School of HPER, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the departments of anthropology, biology, geology and mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Anthropology doctorate student Fritz Hanselmann, who teaches underwater archaeology techniques in HPER, said there have only been a few pirate ships ever discovered in the Americas, and that IU's multi-disciplinary research will make a significant contribution to the field.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213162036.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 18, 2007, 7:43pm

The ultimate mystery - maybe:

Quantum genesis: How life was born on Earth

Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 14/12/2007

An Atomic Adam could have lurked at the dawn of creation, according to Roger Highfield

The birth of the first life on Earth took place in a "quantum cradle" on the bed of an ocean, according to a provocative new theory of creation.

New research on the mother of all birthdays suggests that the genesis of life could be explained in part by quantum theory, the framework that governs the subatomic world which is deeply counterintuitive, mathematical and highly baffling, even to most physicists.


Magnified image of grains from a rock believed to be the oldest sedimentary rock sample on Earth

The quantum pioneer Niels Bohr joked that anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

Einstein, after helping to erect the theory, battled against it.

Now, despite the fact that no-one can quite agree on what we mean by life, scientists are pondering whether quantum theory provided the mysterious spark that turned non living matter into something that can live, thrive and breed.

While all agree that chemicals somehow crossed a threshold four billion years ago to turn into something that could replicate, progress has been frustratingly slow and the origin of life remains one of the great outstanding mysteries of science.

A few days ago, experts from around the world gathered in Arizona at a meeting, "Quantum Effects in Biological Nanostructures", to air new ideas about how this theory could illuminate the ultimate birthday, which took place only half a billion years after Earth itself was born.

Although there is scepticism that quantum mechanics is midwife of life, the British physicist Dr Paul Davies, director of Beyond: Centre for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, believes that important progress was made at the workshop, though he admits it is "tantalising and less than totally convincing."

He points out that the idea that quantum mechanics is key to explaining the riddle of the origin of life was first raised as far back as 1944 by the Austrian quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger's in his book What is life?

Dr Davies said that quantum theory fills a missing link in existing models of the origins of life, of which there are many. While all traditional theories suggest chemistry provides the hardware of life, quantum mechanics could provide the software, he said. "Today the cell is regarded not as magic matter but as a computer - an information processing and replicating system of astonishing precision."

In the beginning, Dr Davies speculates that once "Q life", in the form of self replicating information at the atomic level, got going on Earth, this paved the way for replicating chemicals, the best known of which is DNA.

"What we don't know is whether life has evolved over billions of years to the "quantum edge" to exploit those tricks, or whether it's the other way: quantum mechanics was the midwife of life and a few quantum tricks are left as a hangover," he says.

Another advantage of quantum theory was put forward to the meeting by Johnjoe McFadden at the University of Surrey. Even with all the chemical ingredients needed to build life, the odds of them combining in the right sequence to create a primitive self-replicating structure are slim, with one favoured scenario involving the genetic material RNA enzyme requiring more shuffling of ingredients than the number of electrons in the universe to achieve a highly improbably combination that is capable of life.

But work on the theoretical properties of quantum computers, which exploit the exotic properties of the theory, process information orders of magnitude more rapidly than it can with a traditional computer.

A classical computer shuffles information in the form of binary numbers, those containing only the digits 1 and 0, which it remembers as the "on" and "off" positions of tiny switches, or "bits".

By contrast, the switches in a quantum computer can be both "on" and "off" at the same time. A so-called "qubit" could do two calculations at once, two qubits would do four and so on. This process of superposition could speed up the process of sorting through and discarding unwanted chemical structures to settle on one able to spawn life.

The one problem, said Dr Davies, in this is that, to tap their special properties, quantum computers must be protected, because any disturbance upsets them. Its qubits are said to "decohere": to fall completely into one or another of their possible simultaneous states, to the exclusion of the others, and stop exploring all possibilities.

Dr Davies said there is already evidence that this may be possible to overcome in nature, in the process of photosynthesis.

Through the process, green plants and cyanobacteria are able to transfer sunlight energy to chemical energy with nearly 100 per cent efficiency. Speed is the key - the transfer of the solar energy takes place almost instantaneously so little energy is wasted as heat.

How photosynthesis achieves this near instantaneous energy transfer is a long-standing mystery and recent experiments at The University of California, Berkeley, suggests the answer lies in quantum mechanical effects. This can explain the extreme efficiency of the energy transfer because it enables the system to simultaneously sample all the potential energy pathways and choose the most efficient one.

Dr Davies said another study could shed new light on how life was forged in a kind of quantum crucible. Prof Asoke Nath Mitra, at the University of Delhi in India, and independent researcher Gargi Mitra-Delmotte, were struck by how such an environment could be created near undersea volcanoes, where chambers of iron sulphide could allow quantum effects to occur without disruption, harnessing the magnetic properties of the iron sulphide mineral (Greigite) to control the quantum property of entanglement in qubits.

The magnetic field helps offset the way heat accelerates the rate of decoherence, says Prof Mitra. "Gargi who picked up this general idea and she very cleverly grafted this vital ingredient into this huge canvas where it seems to fit best," he adds.

Dr Davies believes that this idea, inspired by an idea proposed by Prof Michael Russell at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow, could provide a niche where quantum magic really could be at work, though emphasises that it remains conjecture at this stage.

Even if we can't reconstruct the precise details of life's emergence, quantum mechanics could help define what life could do, said Dr Davies.

Proving a quantum mechanical theorem that puts a bound on the probability that such-and-such a system can replicate to a certain accuracy, and evolve to a particular level of complexity, might answer one of the biggest issues of all, says Dr Davies: Was the origin of known life a freak accident, or the expected outcome of intrinsically bio-friendly laws of physics? Is life a cosmic phenomenon, or are we alone in the vastness of the universe?"

Meanwhile, chemists are still trying to find what lit the blue touchpaper of life. Earlier this month, the American Society for Cell Biology was told by Helen Hansma of the University of California, Santa Barbara that the narrow, confined spaces between nonliving mica layers could have provided the right conditions for the rise of the first biomolecules.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jh....ciatomic114.xml

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 21, 2007, 3:53am

Geologists Say 'Wall Of Africa' Allowed Humanity To Emerge

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2007) — Scientists long have focused on how climate and vegetation allowed human ancestors to evolve in Africa. Now, University of Utah geologists are calling renewed attention to the idea that ground movements formed mountains and valleys, creating environments that favored the emergence of humanity.

"Tectonics [movement of Earth's crust] was ultimately responsible for the evolution of humankind," Royhan and Nahid Gani of the university's Energy and Geoscience Institute write in the January, 2008, issue of Geotimes, published by the American Geological Institute.

They argue that the accelerated uplift of mountains and highlands stretching from Ethiopia to South Africa blocked much ocean moisture, converting lush tropical forests into an arid patchwork of woodlands and savannah grasslands that gradually favored human ancestors who came down from the trees and started walking on two feet -- an energy-efficient way to search larger areas for food in an arid environment.

In their Geotimes article, the Ganis -- a husband-and-wife research team who met in college in their native Bangladesh -- describe this 3,700-mile-long stretch of highlands and mountains as "the Wall of Africa." It parallels the famed East African Rift valley, where many fossils of human ancestors were found.

"Because of the crustal movement or tectonism in East Africa, the landscape drastically changed over the last 7 million years," says Royhan Gani (pronounced rye-hawn Go-knee), a research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. "That landscape controlled climate on a local to regional scale. That climate change spurred human ancestors to evolve from apes."

Hominins -- the new scientific word for humans (Homo) and their ancestors (including Ardipithecus, Paranthropus and Australopithecus) -- split from apes on the evolutionary tree roughly 7 million to 4 million years ago. Royhan Gani says the earliest undisputed hominin was Ardipithecus ramidus 4.4 million years ago. The earliest Homo arose 2.5 million years ago, and our species, Homo sapiens, almost 200,000 years ago.

Tectonics -- movements of Earth's crust, including its ever-shifting tectonic plates and the creation of mountains, valleys and ocean basins -- has been discussed since at least 1983 as an influence on human evolution.

But Royhan Gani says much previous discussion of how climate affected human evolution involves global climate changes, such as those caused by cyclic changes in Earth's orbit around the sun, and not local and regional climate changes caused by East Africa's rising landscape.

A Force from within the Earth

The geological or tectonic forces shaping Africa begin deep in the Earth, where a "superplume" of hot and molten rock has swelled upward for at least the past 45 million years. This superplume and its branching smaller plumes help push apart the African and Arabian tectonic plates of Earth's crust, forming the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Great Rift Valley that stretches from Syria to southern Africa.

As part of this process, Africa is being split apart along the East African Rift, a valley bounded by elevated "shoulders" a few tens of miles wide and sitting atop "domes" a few hundreds of miles wide and caused by upward bulging of the plume.

The East African Rift runs about 3,700 miles from the Ethiopian Plateau south-southwest to South Africa's Karoo Plateau. It is up to 370 miles wide and includes mountains reaching a maximum elevation of about 19,340 feet at Mount Kilimanjaro.

The rift "is characterized by volcanic peaks, plateaus, valleys and large basins and freshwater lakes," including sites where many fossils of early humans and their ancestors have been found, says Nahid Gani (pronounced nah-heed go-knee), a research scientist. There was some uplift in East Africa as early as 40 million years ago, but "most of these topographic features developed between 7 million and 2 million years ago."

A Wall Rises and New Species Evolve

"Although the Wall of Africa started to form around 30 million years ago, recent studies show most of the uplift occurred between 7 million and 2 million years ago, just about when hominins split off from African apes, developed bipedalism and evolved bigger brains," the Ganis write.

"Nature built this wall, and then humans could evolve, walk tall and think big," says Royhan Gani. "Is there any characteristic feature of the wall that drove human evolution?"

The answer, he believes, is the variable landscape and vegetation resulting from uplift of the Wall of Africa, which created "a topographic barrier to moisture, mostly from the Indian Ocean" and dried the climate. He says that contrary to those who cite global climate cycles, the climate changes in East Africa were local and resulted from the uplift of different parts of the wall at different times.

Royhan Gani says the change from forests to a patchwork of woodland and open savannah did not happen everywhere in East Africa at the same time, and the changes also happened in East Africa later than elsewhere in the world.

The Ganis studied the roughly 300-mile-by-300-mile Ethiopian Plateau -- the most prominent part of the Wall of Africa. Previous research indicated the plateau reached its present average elevation of 8,200 feet 25 million years ago. The Ganis analyzed rates at which the Blue Nile River cut down into the Ethiopian Plateau, creating a canyon that rivals North America's Grand Canyon. They released those findings in the September 2007 issue of GSA Today, published by the Geological Society of America.

The conclusion: There were periods of low-to-moderate incision and uplift between 29 million and 10 million years ago, and again between 10 million and 6 million years ago, but the most rapid uplift of the Ethiopian Plateau (by some 3,200 vertical feet) happened 6 million to 3 million years ago.

The Geotimes paper says other research has shown the Kenyan part of the wall rose mostly between 7 million and 2 million years ago, mountains in Tanganyika and Malawi were uplifted mainly between 5 million and 2 million years ago, and the wall's southernmost end gained most of its elevation during the past 5 million years.

"Clearly, the Wall of Africa grew to be a prominent elevated feature over the last 7 million years, thereby playing a prominent role in East African aridification by wringing moisture out of monsoonal air moving across the region," the Ganis write. That period coincides with evolution of human ancestors in the area.

Royhan Gani says the earliest undisputed evidence of true bipedalism (as opposed to knuckle-dragging by apes) is 4.1 million years ago in Australopithecus anamensis, but some believe the trait existed as early as 6 million to 7 million years ago.

The Ganis speculate that the shaping of varied landscapes by tectonic forces -- lake basins, valleys, mountains, grasslands, woodlands -- "could also be responsible, at a later stage, for hominins developing a bigger brain as a way to cope with these extremely variable and changing landscapes" in which they had to find food and survive predators.

For now, Royhan Gani acknowledges the lack of more precise timeframes makes it difficult to link specific tectonic events to the development of upright walking, bigger brains and other key steps in human evolution.

"But it all happened within the right time period," he says. "Now we need to nail it down."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219082604.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 21, 2007, 3:56am

Stunning Survey Unveils New Secrets Of Caistor Roman Town


New investigations at Caistor Roman town using the latest technology have revealed the plan of the buried town at an extraordinary level of detail which has never been seen before. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Nottingham)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2007) — On the morning of Friday July 20, 1928, the crew of an RAF aircraft took photographs over the site of the Roman town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St Edmund in Norfolk, a site which now lies in open fields to the south of Norwich.

The exceptionally dry summer meant that details of the Roman town were clearly revealed as parched lines in the barley. The pictures appeared on the front page of The Times on March 4, 1929 and caused a sensation.

Now, new investigations at Caistor Roman town using the latest technology have revealed the plan of the buried town at an extraordinary level of detail which has never been seen before. The high-resolution geophysical survey used a Caesium Vapour magnetometer to map buried remains across the entire walled area of the Roman town.

The research at Caistor is being directed by Dr Will Bowden of The University of Nottingham, who worked with Dr David Bescoby and Dr Neil Chroston of the University of East Anglia on the new survey, sponsored by the British Academy. Around 30 local volunteer members of the Caistor Roman Town Project also assisted.

The survey has produced the clearest plan of the town yet seen confirming the street plan (shown by previous aerial photographs), the town's water supply system (detecting the iron collars connecting wooden water pipes), and the series of public buildings including the baths, temples and forum, known from earlier excavations.

However, the survey also showed that earlier interpretations of the town as a densely occupied urban area — given by reconstruction paintings — may be totally wrong. Buildings were clustered along the main streets of the town, but other areas within the street grid seem to have been empty and were perhaps used for grazing or cultivation.

Dr Bowden, a lecturer in Roman Archaeology, said: "The results of the survey have far exceeded our expectations. It's not an exaggeration to say that the survey has advanced our knowledge of Caistor to the same extent that the first aerial photograph did 80 years ago.

“The presence of possible Iron Age and Saxon features suggests that the town had a much longer life than we previously thought and the fact that it's just sitting there in open fields instead of being under a modern town means we can ask the questions we want to.

“For an archaeologist it's a dream opportunity to really examine how European towns developed."

A new Roman theatre?

One of the most exciting new discoveries from the survey is what looks like a Roman theatre. Clear traces of a large semi-circular building have been found next to the town's temples — the typical location for a theatre in Roman Britain.

David Gurney, Principal Archaeologist of Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, said: “This is a fantastic discovery, and it goes to show that Caistor Roman town still has a great number of secrets to be disclosed in the years ahead through surveys or excavations.

“The town is already well-established as the most important Roman site in northern East Anglia, but the presence of a theatre is a significant indicator of the town's status, and of the cultural facilities available to its inhabitants.

“It is brilliant that the project has located such an important feature so early on, and this is probably just the first of many discoveries that will completely change our understanding of the town as a result of the Caistor Project.”

Matthew Martin, Chairman of the Norfolk Archaeological Trust, which owns the Roman town, said: "We are delighted with all the work which Dr Bowden and his team are carrying out at Caistor. We are very excited not only by what has been discovered so far by the use of this new technology but by the possibilities for more discoveries as further work is done.

“I think that all this is of immense interest to not only archaeologists but to a much wider public.”

Discoveries from the age of Boudica?

Caistor lies in the territory of the Iceni, the tribe of Boudica who famously rebelled against Roman rule in AD 60/61. The survey revealed numerous circular features that apparently predate the Roman town.

These are probably of prehistoric date, and suggest that Caistor was the site of a large settlement before the Roman town was built. This has always been suspected because of numerous chance finds of late Iron Age coins and metalwork, but there has never been any evidence of buildings until now.

Now the burning questions are: was Caistor built on the site of an Iceni stronghold as retribution after Boudica's rebellion, or was it built to favour a faction of the Iceni who had not taken part in the revolt?

The end of a Roman town?

Life at Roman Caistor was thought to have ended in the 5th century AD, when Britain was abandoned by the emperor of the struggling Western Roman Empire.

However, the new survey clearly shows a large ditched enclosure that cuts the surface of the Roman street in the north-west corner of the site. Possible structures are visible within this enclosure.

The earlier discovery of middle Saxon coins and metalwork outside the west wall of the site, combined with the presence of two early Saxon cemeteries in the vicinity suggests that these enclosures may be associated with continued life in the town after the Roman period.

The new research has demonstrated that Caistor is a site of international importance.

Rather than simply being a provincial Roman town, Caistor may represent the development of a major settlement from the Iron Age until the 9th century AD. Crucially, however, the site was ultimately superseded by medieval Norwich and reverted to green fields.

This is quite unlike other Roman towns that have the same long occupation sequence which now lie buried beneath the modern towns of Britain and Europe.

This fortunate change of settlement location means that these same green fields at Caistor are a unique time-capsule that could give us vital clues to the complex processes through which our towns and cities developed. Funding is now being sought to test the results of the survey through excavation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101359.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 21, 2007, 4:30am

Whales Descended From Tiny Deer-like Ancestors


The 48 million year old ungulate Indohyus from India. Indohyus is a close relative of whales, and the structure of its bones and chemistry of its teeth indicate that it spent much time in water. In this reconstruction, it is seen diving in a stream, much like the modern African Mousedeer does when in danger. Reconstruction by Carl Buell. (Credit: Image courtesy of Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2007) — Hans Thewissen, Ph.D., Professor of the Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), has announced the discovery of the missing link between whales and their four-footed ancestors.

Scientists since Darwin have known that whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land, and in the past 15 years, researchers led by Dr. Thewissen have identified a series of intermediate fossils documenting whale’s dramatic evolutionary transition from land to sea. But one step was missing: The identity of the land ancestors of whales.

Now Dr. Thewissen and colleagues discovered of the skeleton of Indohyus, an approximately 48-million-year-old even-toed ungulate from the Kashmir region of India, as the closest known fossil relative of whales. Dr. Thewissen’s team studied a layer of mudstone with hundreds of bones of Indohyus, a fox-sized mammal that looked something like a miniature deer.

Dr. Thewissen and colleagues report key similarities between whales and Indohyus in the skull and ear that show their close family relationship.

Thewissen and colleagues also explored how Indohyus lived, and came up with some surprising results. They determined that the bones of the skeleton of Indohyus had a thick outside layer, much thicker than in other mammals of this size. This characteristic is often seen in mammals that are slow aquatic waders, such as the hippopotamus today. Indohyus’ aquatic habits are further confirmed by the chemical composition of their teeth, which revealed oxygen isotope ratios similar to those of aquatic animals. All this implies that Indohyus spent much of its time in water.

Dr. Walt Horton, Vice-President for Research at NEOUCOM commented: “This remarkable research demonstrates that the study of the structure and composition of fossil bones can tell us about how the skeleton of whales and, by extension, other mammals like humans, interacts with the environment and changes over time.”

Before, it was often assumed that whales descended from carnivorous terrestrial ancestors, and some researchers speculated that whales became aquatic to feed on ocean-dwelling fish. According to Dr. Thewissen, “Clearly, this is not the case, Indohyus is a plant-eater, and already is aquatic. Apparently the dietary shift to hunting animals (as modern whales do) came later than the habitat shift to the water.”

Although it may seem strange to think of a tiny, deer-like animal living in water, one modern mousedeer offers something of an analogue to the ancient Indohyus, even though it is not closely related to whales: The African Mousedeer (also called Chevrotain) is known to jump in water when in danger, and move around at the bottom (for a movie showing this go to YouTube and watch ‘Eagle vs. Water Chevrotain’).

Whale evolution is one of the best documented examples of mammal evolution, and Dr. Thewissen’s discovery adds a significant new piece to the puzzle.

“Not much was known about the earliest whales, until the early nineties,” Dr. Thewissen said. “But then, a number of discoveries came in quick succession.”

The article documenting Dr. Thewissen’s new discovery, titled Whales originated from Aquatic Artiodactyls in the Eocene of India, was published in the November issue of Nature. It’s authors (in order of appearance on the paper) include: J. G. M. “Hans” Thewissen, Ph.D., Professor of the Department of Anatomy, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM); Lisa Noelle Cooper, Doctoral Student, Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences, Kent State University and NEOUCOM; Mark T. Clementz, Ph.D., Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wyoming, Laramie WY; Sunil Bajpai, Ph.D., from the Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, Uttarkhand in India; and B. N. Tiwari, Ph.D., from the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun, Uttarkhand, India.

The research by Dr. Thewissen and his team was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071220220241.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 21, 2007, 9:18am

Will Beetles Inherit The Earth? Evolutionary Study Reveals Their Long-term Success


A small sample of the approximately 350,000 species of beetles on Earth. (Credit: iStockphoto/Hernan Pardo)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2007) — Most modern-day groups of beetles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs and have been diversifying ever since, says new research.

There are approximately 350,000 species of beetles on Earth, and probably millions more yet to be discovered, accounting for about 25% of all known life forms on the planet. The reason for this large number of beetle species has been debated by scientists for many years, but never resolved.

Now a team of scientists has shown that large numbers of modern-day beetle lineages evolved very soon after the first beetles originated, and have persisted ever since. Many modern-day lineages first appeared during the Jurassic period, when the major groups of dinosaurs appeared too.

Lead scientist on the study, Professor Alfried Vogler from Imperial College London's Department of Life Sciences and the Natural History Museum's Department of Entomology, explains: "The large number of beetle species existing today could very well be a direct result of this early evolution and the fact that there has been a very high rate of survival and continuous diversification of many lineages since then."

The team behind this new study -- the most extensive of its kind to date - used DNA sequencing and fossil records to compile a comprehensive evolutionary 'family tree' for beetles. By comparing DNA sequences from 1,880 beetle species, the scientists were able to group beetle species that are descended from a common ancestor, enabling them to build an evolutionary tree for all the species included. Fossils of known ages were then used to date key moments of evolution and diversification on the tree.

Prior to this study the survival success of beetles had been attributed to herbivory - feeding on plants - and the rise of flowering plants in the Cretaceous era, which started some 140 million years ago. However, mapping species numbers onto the evolutionary tree shows that many modern beetle lineages significantly pre-date the appearance of the first flowering plants.

Beetles have displayed an exceptional ability to seize new ecological opportunities and develop a great range of life styles and feeding types, explains Professor Vogler. "Unlike the dinosaurs which dwindled to extinction, beetles survived because of their ecological diversity and adaptability," he says.

The scientific team says that understanding the evolution of beetles is an important part of understanding the natural world: "With beetles forming such a large proportion of all known species, learning about their relationships and evolution gives us important new insights into the origin of biodiversity and how beetles have triumphed over the course of nearly 300 million years," said Professor Vogler.

This research is published in the journal Science December 21 2007.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071220140810.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 22, 2007, 5:30am

Unknown Monumental Building Of Herod The Great (73-4 BC) Unearthed

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2007) — This year Thomas Pola, professor for theology at TU Dortmund, and his team have continued the excavations in the East Jordan Land. With their findings on the mountain Tall adh-Dhahab (West) in the Jabbok Valley the archeologists could substantiate one assumption: everything points to the fact that the building remains from the Hellenistic and Roman era, found in 2006, were part of a yet unknown monumental building of Herod the Great (73-4 BC).

This assumption is based on the floors of one of the discovered peristyle yards (yards enclosed by continuous columns) which the archeologists were able to excavate. Prof. Pola sees the parallels with the architecture of Herod’s West Jordan Alexandreion as prove that there also was a monumental building of Herod the Great on the plateau of the mountain Tall adh-Dhahab. That would mean that in addition to his reign over the West Jordan Land, the Jewish king had a security system with which he could have controlled the ancient long-distance traffic in the middle Jordan Valley and the access ways to the plateau of the East Jordan Land.

Above that, the team of Prof. Pola for the first time discovered a layer from the late Bronze Age or the Early Iron Age on a natural terrace directly underneath the plateau. The ruins of a tower from the city wall at least show three building phases. “On the level of the oldest building phase we took samples from a burnt layer. A C14-analysis carried out by Prof. Manfred Bayer (Physics at TU Dortmund) showed that the charcoal originates from the time 1300 to 1000 BC. At this location we will continue to work in 2008.”

Finally Prof. Pola’s team discovered the purpose of the monumental military facility half way up the mountain: it is a casemate wall. It is supposed to have been finished in Roman times. This is yet another argument for the identification of the mountain with the stronghold Amathous mentioned in the ancient world. The historian Josephus (37 to 100 AD) described Amathous as the biggest stronghold in the East Jordan Land.

Even reworking the campaign 2006 revealed a sensation: the carve-drawings which had been discovered by Dr. Batereau-Neumann, a sponsor of the project, at that time, were dated to the ninth or tenth century by the internationally renowned specialist for Middle East iconography, Prof. Othmar Keel (Universität Freiburg). According to him the two pictures, the head of a lioness and the fragment of a cultural scene, belong together. The sensation: they point to the existence of a temple on the mountain plateau in the New-Assyrian time.

The project is sponsored by Technische Universität Dortmund and the Gesellschaft der Freunde der TU Dortmund. For the time from the end of July until the end of August Prof. Pola is again looking for sponsors of the project as fellow travelers. “They can join the team or just enjoy the beautiful landscape”, says Prof. Pola. The requested 3,000€ include flight, transport, food and simple accommodation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071221232712.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 25, 2007, 1:45am

5000 Year Old Tomb Of Imhotep Found?
By Euan Duguid
The Sunday Post
12-24-7

A SCOTTISH archaeologist has discovered what he believes is the final resting place of a 5000-year-old lost mummy - widely regarded as the holy grail of Egypt.

Egyptologist Ian Mathieson, from Lauder in Berwickshire, has found two vast tombs under the desert sands that could hold the remains of Imhotep, the architect of the Step Pyramid and one of the most important figures in ancient history.

Imhotep, who became revered as a god after his death, was the builder, sculptor and architect of King Djoser of the Third Dynasty (2649-2575 BC). Archaeologists have long searched in vain for his tomb in the Saqqara burial ground.

This highly sensitive area, now engulfed in desert sand, was once the great necropolis of Memphis -Egypt's main city for 2500 years -and is believed to hold untold riches, which prompted Napoleon to send an expedition in 1798.

Scanning technology

Ian, director of The Saqqara Geophysical Survey Project, has led surveys in the region since 1990 using unobtrusive scanning technology and now believes he's within touching distance of the most coveted treasure of all.

He revealed, "Most of the archaeologists working in Saqqara have been looking for Imhotep.

"We've now found two large tombs that fall right within the area where we think he could be. The largest tomb is immense - around 90 metres long by 50 wide, with walls more than five metres thick.

"Right next door is a second tomb, around 70 by 50 metres with very thick walls and a complicated internal structure which could point to a courtyard or temple.

"They dwarf everything in the area - Imhotep may have designed his own tomb to compare with the Step Pyramid he built. A person of his standing could command the artisans and labour needed to build such imposing structures.

"All the information points to this being the most probable place he could be."

Although Ian's find was made last year he hasn't released the information until now because he's had to publish his findings and present them to the Supreme Council of Antiquities - the regulatory body for any archaeological work in Egypt.

Mesmerising

Since 1990 Ian (80) has uncovered a host of mesmerising discoveries in the Saqqara area.

The work of the project, now sponsored by Glasgow Museums, has revealed a large number of previously unidentified structures under the sand. Two years ago Ian used scanning equipment to locate a two-kilometre section of the main ancient Egyptian ceremonial route know as the Serapeum Way that was lost beneath the sands.
But this latest discovery could be the jewel in the crown of an illustrious career.

Imhotep is the next best thing to the great discovery of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter in 1922, which sparked a worldwide media frenzy and ignited interest in ancient Egypt. Ian says the next step should be an excavation to look for the lost mummy but that could take some time.

"The official line is that there's an excavation ban in the area for the next five years, primarily because it is so sensitive. Also, as soon as work begins on a major discovery like this treasure hunters pour into the area to pillage the sites.

"At the moment the Egyptian authorities say they simply don't have enough guards to look after these sites. But who knows? These revelations could change their minds."

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 28, 2007, 5:07am


Ancient Aztec pyramid found in heart of Mexico City

By Miguel Angel Gutierrez in Mexico

December 28, 2007 01:46pm


Discovery ... the "Plaza de las Tres Culturas" in the central Tlatelolco area of Mexico City, where ruins of an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid have been found / Reuters

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered the ruins of an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid in the heart of the Mexican capital that could show the ancient city is at least a century older than previously thought.

Mexican archaeologists found the ruins, which are about 11 metres high, in the central Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political centre for the Aztec elite.

Since the discovery of another pyramid 15 years ago, historians have thought Tlatelolco was founded by the Aztecs in 1325, the same year as the nearby twin city of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire. The Spanish razed Tenochtitlan in 1521 to found Mexico City, conquering the Aztecs.

The pyramid newly discovered last month as part of an investigation begun in August, could have been built in 1100 or 1200, indicating the Aztecs began to develop their civilisation in the mountains of central Mexico earlier than believed.

"We have found the stairs of this, much older, pyramid. The (Aztec) timeline is going to need to be revised," archaeologist Patricia Ledesma said at the site on today.

Tlatelolco, visited by thousands of tourists for its pre-Hispanic ruins and colonial-era Spanish church and convent, is also infamous for the 1968 massacre of leftist students by state security forces there, days before Mexico hosted the Olympic Games.

Ms Ledesma and the archaeological group's coordinator, Salvador Guilliem, said they will continue to dig and study the area next year to get a better idea of the pyramid's size and age.

The archaeologists also have detected a sculpture that could be of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, or of the god of the sky and earth Tezcatlipoca.

In addition, the dig has turned up five skulls and a series of rooms near the pyramid that could date from 1431.

"What we hope to find soon should tell us much more about the society of Tlatelolco," said Ms Ledesma.

Mexico City is littered with pre-Hispanic ruins. In August, archaeologists in the city's crime-ridden Iztapalapa district unearthed what they believe may be the main pyramid of Tenochtitlan.

The Aztecs, a warlike and religious people who built monumental works and are credited with inventing chocolate, ruled an empire stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and encompassing much of modern-day central Mexico.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22980389-401,00.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 28, 2007, 8:36am

Surprise Finds at Egypt Temple "Change Everything"
Steven Stanek in Luxor, Egypt
for National Geographic News
December 17, 2007

A series of surprising discoveries has been made at the foot of Egypt's famous Temple of Amun at Karnak, archaeologists say.



The new finds include ancient ceremonial baths, a pharaoh's private entry ramp, and the remains of a massive wall built some 3,000 years ago to reinforce what was then the bank of the Nile River.

A host of other artifacts, including hundreds of bronze coins, has also been found. Together the discoveries are causing experts to reconsider the history of the largest religious complex from ancient Egyptian times.

Archaeologists are particularly intrigued by the discovery of the embankment wall, which they say is the first evidence that the Nile once ran alongside the temple.

The elaborate shrine to the god Amun-Re covers about 200 acres (81 hectares) near the present-day city of Luxor and sits 650 feet (200 meters) from where the river runs today (see map).

Archaeologists discovered portions of the embankment accidentally while building a new plaza and performing routine maintenance near the temple's facade. The other artifacts and features were unearthed in the process of excavating the wall.

"[The discovery of the wall] changes the landscape [of Luxor]," said Mansour Boraik, general supervisor of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Luxor.

"It changes also our theory about the settlement of Luxor, and it changes our theory about the construction of the temple itself."

Changing History

The sandstone wall measures roughly 23 feet (7 meters) tall and 8 feet (2.5 meters) wide, but it may have been even higher in antiquity, said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.

"This is the largest embankment ever built in any place in ancient Egypt," Hawass said.

"This embankment is very important because it protected the Temple [at] Karnak from the [annual] Nile flood."

The discovery of the wall also challenges conventional thinking about the temple's ancient facade, Boraik said.

Previous theories about the facade and courtyard in front of temple were based on depictions found in private tombs dating back to the 18th dynasty (1550-1295 B.C.).

One depiction from the tomb of Neferhotep, an official from that period, depicted a large rectangular pool in front of the temple that was linked to the Nile by a canal.

Archaeologists had first uncovered small parts of this wall in the 1970s but assumed it was the back wall of the pool, Boraik said.

That theory held until January, when Egyptian archaeologists found a piece of the same wall several meters away, too far off to be part of the enclosed basin.

Now experts believe that the pool depicted in ancient drawings was backfilled in antiquity and that the temple was expanded on top of it, built to the edge of where the Nile flowed 3,000 years ago.

"It means that the Nile was reaching the foot of Karnak in the time of the pharaohs," said Boraik. "It changes everything."

"Completely Reevaluating" Karnak

This new theory has been backed by tests of the sediment at the base of the embankment wall, which show alternating levels of silt and sand that suggest running water once flowed there.

Based on cartouches and other writings found on the wall, experts believe construction started in the 22nd dynasty (945-715 B.C.) and was completed by the middle of the fourth century B.C.

W. Raymond Johnson, an Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago who has visited the site, said the discovery shows the expertise of ancient Egyptian builders.

"Being good engineers and practical, [ancient Egyptians knew] that to build something so big so close to the Nile, you have to have reinforcement in front of it. … It stopped any erosion of the Nile River bank."

The find sheds new light on the ancient city of Thebes, of which Karnak was the religious center, he added.

"We've assumed the ancient landscape in Thebes is relatively unchanged, and we have to completely reevaluate that now," Johnson said.

"It really gives us pause when we make certain assumptions and then find out they are completely wrong."

New Discoveries

While excavating the embankment, archaeologists also discovered two public baths and a jar holding more than 300 coins dating to the era of Macedonian rule of Egypt, from the first to the fourth centuries B.C.

One of the giant circular baths has been completely excavated, revealing an intricate mosaic tile floor and seating for 16 people.

The other partially excavated bath has been found to have seats flanked by statuettes of dolphins.

The baths were found just outside the wall, and experts believe they were built on the plateau of silt left behind after the Nile moved to the west.

The jar of bronze coins, featuring the likenesses of Macedonian rulers Ptolemy I, II, and III, were discovered near the baths and are currently being cleaned to reveal their inscriptions.

The baths may have served as purification sites where visitors could wash before entering the temple complex.

Other experts suspect they may be the first signs of a much larger residential area that has yet to be explored.

Archaeologists have also excavated a giant ramp leading up to the temple complex that is inscribed with the name of the pharaoh Taharka (or Taharqa), who ruled in the late seventh century B.C.

The ramp probably served as the ruler's personal landing area, extending directly into the Nile to allow the pharaoh to transfer directly from his boat to the temple.

This raises the prospect that parts of ancient boats may also be buried in the former riverbed, including pieces of the gigantic ceremonial barges known to have carried images of the gods during religious processions, the archaeologists said.

"Now that we know the Nile has moved to the west, it means something is waiting for future generations of archaeologists and Egyptologists to possibly recover," Johnson of the University of Chicago said.

"It's a wonderful gift now that you realize there is something down there."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071217-egypt-temple.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 29, 2007, 11:44am

Mummy hair tells gruesome story


15-year-old mummy girl

With funding from the Wellcome Trust, researchers analyzed hair from mummies, including the 15-year-old girl pictured here who is now on display in Argentina’s High Mountain Archaeological Museum, to learn more about the lives of Inca children who were ritually sacrificed.

Few people ever witnessed the human sacrifice rituals performed by the Inca high on the snow-covered peaks of the Andes. Today, archaeologists have little direct evidence of these rituals, instead relying heavily on Spanish historical documents for clues. But now, researchers have turned to chemistry for another perspective. By studying stable isotopes in hair from mummies of sacrificed children, researchers have gained new insight into the final months of these children’s lives.

Before the arrival of the Spanish, the vast Inca Empire sprawled along the Andes from modern-day Ecuador to Chile. Over the past decade, archaeologists have discovered several mummies of sacrificed children in these mountains. The perfectly preserved tissues of these frozen bodies reveal details of their former lives such as their diet, says archaeological scientist Andrew Wilson of the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, who led the new research. This information can help researchers learn more about who these children were and how they were prepared for sacrifice.

To retrieve these details, Wilson and colleagues studied stable isotopes that are recorded in the body’s tissues. For example, different ratios of carbon isotopes can reveal the type of plants one ate, while ratios of nitrogen isotopes indicate if protein in the diet came from plants or animals. Typically, researchers have measured these isotopes using bones or teeth, but studying hair was more advantageous in this case, Wilson says. Bone is constantly being reformed, he says, so its isotopic signature represents a lifetime average, and isotopes in teeth characterize early childhood. Hair, on the other hand, grows about one centimeter per month, thus keeping a running tally of changes in isotopes over time.

The team examined hair from four mummies, including hair from a 15-year-old girl known as the Llullaillaco Maiden, whose long hair documents the last two and a half years of her life. Her fate was sealed at least one year prior to death, Wilson says. At that point, her carbon and nitrogen isotopes demonstrate a major shift in diet, from one dominated by C3 plants such as potatoes, to one rich in maize and meat. This probably represents a change in social status, says study co-author Johan Reinhard, an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, who discovered the Maiden. A diet rich in tubers is indicative of a peasant, while maize and meat were foods of the elite. The change suggests the Maiden’s social standing improved, perhaps as a way to make her an appropriate sacrifice, the researchers wrote Oct. 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. At four and a half months prior to death, her isotopes undergo another change, suggesting she had begun her pilgrimage to northwestern Argentina’s 6,739-meter-tall Llullaillaco volcano. Coca metabolites in her hair suggest that she was drugged before reaching her final resting place in a shrine 25 meters from the mountain’s summit.

But the mummies don’t all tell the same story. “It’s not all black and white,” Reinhard says. “They don’t all fit one mold.” For example, the dietary changes recorded in the hair of a mummified girl discovered atop Peru’s Sara Sara volcano correlate with seasonal changes, suggesting that not all children necessarily received the same treatment in preparation for sacrifice.

This is a “very informative study,” says Niels Lynnerup of the University of Copenhagen. “The whole concept of reconstructing the last days, in terms of diet, for any archaeological find — sacrifice or not — has tremendous possibilities.”

Erin Wayman

http://www.geotimes.org/dec07/article.html?id=nn_mummy.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 30, 2007, 5:50am

Dino Black Market Fuels Peasant-Police Combat in China
Kevin Holden Platt in Beijing
for National Geographic News
November 27, 2007


Parts of this hundred-million-year-old dinosaur, photographed on July 3, 2007, were crushed into powder by villagers in China's central Shaping village for use in an elixir.

Chinese peasants are increasingly digging up valuable dinosaur fossils in a bid to escape poverty, experts say.

Photograph by Donald Chan/Reuters

Armed with only tractors and farm tools, Chinese peasants recently attacked police who had come to seize dinosaur bones the farmers had found.

The clash called attention to the rise of a new type of dinosaur hunter in China's fossil-rich countryside: the "peasant paleontologist."

The rebellion also set in motion the first court test of a 2006 Chinese law banning "unauthorized" excavation, possession, sale, and export of dinosaur fossils. Offenders are subject to lengthy prison terms or, in serious cases, the death penalty.

The seven defendants—peasants from Shaping village in central Henan Province—are accused of forcibly resisting government orders to hand over a cache of hundred-million-year-old dinosaur bones they discovered.

Dinosaur Protection Squad

Some Shaping villagers have donated their fossil finds to scientists. But others have resisted, even though officials have pasted posters throughout Shaping announcing the ban on the possession and sale of dinosaur relics.

Officials eventually tried to seize all dinosaur fossils from the villagers, without offering any compensation.

According to court documents made public on China's government-run judicial news portal, www.chinacourt.org, the seven defendants helped organize a "Dinosaur Protection Squad" to safeguard Shaping's fossils against seizure.

Civilian sentinels patrolled the perimeter of the village around the clock. When sentries spotted police or local officials who aimed to seize the fossils, they set off fireworks to alert the community, China Court reported.

When a contingent of government and security officials attempted to enter Shaping in March, the protection squad deployed villagers as a human barricade and even seized some of the police cars.

When more officials arrived a week later, the villagers fought back with their farm equipment.

After a drawn-out skirmish, police finally took the seven "ringleaders" by force.

The authorities have recovered most of the dinosaur fossils that were at the center of the case, according to an official for the People's Court who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of getting in trouble with the government.

He added the "Dino Seven" face imminent trial on the relatively minor criminal charge of obstructing justice, which is punishable by up to three years imprisonment.

Official reports on the case provided no coverage of the detainees' version of events or of any defense to the charges.

It's not the first time Shaping's dinosaur hunters have made headlines.

Last July, Shaping residents gained fame for making a mystical "dragon bone" elixir, which scientists determined included the crushed remnants of a massive herbivore that measured more than 60 feet (20 meters) from head to tail.

Escape From Poverty?

Xu Xing, one of China's top dinosaur hunters, said it's unclear if the villagers knew that independent fossil excavations had recently been criminalized.

There are no statistics on how many fossils have been taken by peasants, said Xu, of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.

In northeastern Liaoning province, where Xu discovered the miniature four-winged dinosaur Microraptor gui, "a high percentage of the farmers in the area have taken part in amateur dinosaur digs," he said.

"If all of the peasants who have engaged in unapproved dinosaur excavations were caught, tried and jailed, China would not have enough prisons to hold them all," Xu said.

Many of these peasant paleontologists hope to sell dinosaur fossils to escape a life of subsistence farming, he said.

David Eberth, a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, has participated in dinosaur digs in China for nearly two decades.

"The skyrocketing financial value of high-quality dinosaur fossils worldwide" might be inadvertently providing incentives for a burgeoning black market trade in fossils, Eberth said.

Chinese legislators are now holding discussions with paleontologists about rewriting the law surrounding dinosaur digs.

Xu said legislators would be wise to include a system of rewards for amateur fossil finders, rather than relying solely on punishments for failing to relinquish finds.

Social Unrest

The Shaping villagers who staged high-risk protests to protect their horde of dinosaur fossils are likely part of a trend toward increased resistance to state laws perceived as unjust, experts say.

Most Chinese who protest don't believe they stand a fair chance in conflicts with the state, said Thomas Lum, Asian-affairs specialist with the Congressional Research Service in Washington, D.C.

In an effort to reduce tensions that periodically erupt across the Chinese countryside, the government has pushed new policies to ease rural poverty, Lum said.

But it's unclear whether the 80,000 protests officially reported in 2005 have ebbed since then.

Lum also said there should be little suspense over the verdict in the trial of the seven Shaping villagers. In 2004 the conviction rate in China's criminal trials was 98 percent.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/071127-peasants-dinosaurs.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 30, 2007, 10:05am

Ancient Roman Glue Sticks Around
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News


Glued With Care
The silver laurel leaves on this ancient Roman helmet were glued to the piece of armor with a fixative that has survived for thousands of years. Scientists studying the glue have found it was made of a mixture of bark and animal grease.

Dec. 14, 2007 -- Roman warriors repaired their battle accessories with a superglue that is still sticking around after 2,000 years, according to new findings on display at the Rheinischen Landes Museum in Bonn, Germany.

Running until Feb. 16, 2008, the exhibition "Behind the Silver Mask" presents evidence that the ancient adhesive was used to mount silver laurel leaves on legionnaires' battle helmets.

"It's a sensational find and a complete stroke of luck that we were still able to find traces of the substance after 2000 years," Frank Willer, the museum's chief restorer, told Discovery News.

Willer found traces of the superglue while examining a helmet unearthed in 1986 near the German town of Xanten, on what was once the bed of the Rhine.

"The helmet, which dates from the 1st century B.C., was given to the museum for restoration. I discovered the glue accidentally, while removing a tiny sample of metal from the helmet with a fine saw. The heat from the tool caused the silver laurel leaves on the helmet to peel off, leaving thread-like traces of the glue behind," Willer said.

Willer was amazed to discover that despite such a long exposure to water, time and air, the superglue did not lose its bonding properties.

He said that other Roman battle accessories kept by the museum have traces of silver decorations which most likely had been glued to the iron with the same adhesive and technique. Unfortunately, the objects are too deteriorated to find traces of the superglue.

However, the helmet unearthed at Xanten featured enough material to determine how the adhesive was made.

"Analysis shows that the Roman glue was made of bitumen, bark pitch and animal grease," Willer said.

The finding confirms studies done by researchers at the University of Bradford and Liverpool, U.K., in the 1990s.

Analysis carried at that time on an ancient Roman jar showed that when Roman people broke their pots, they glued them back together with a compund "derived largely from birch bark."

So far, the German researchers have failed to recreate the Roman superglue.

"We think that some inorganic material such as soot, sand and quartz, might have been added to make the mixture stickier," Willer said.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/14/romans-glue-helmet.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 30, 2007, 10:09am

Ancient Toolkit Gives Glimpse of Prehistoric Life
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News


Toolkit Contents
The owner of a 14,000-year-old bag was well equipped for hunting and gathering. The contents, pictured, here, include a sickle for harvesting wild plants, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, a cluster of gazelle toe bones, and part of a second bone tool.

Dec. 13, 2007 -- Before the end of the last ice age, a hunter-gatherer left a bag of tools near the wall of a roundhouse residence, where archaeologists have now found the collection 14,000 years later.

The tool set -- one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind -- provides an intriguing glimpse of the daily life of a prehistoric hunter-gatherer.

The contents, as described to Discovery News by Phillip Edwards, a senior lecturer in the Archaeology Program at Melbourne's La Trobe University, show the owner of the bag was well equipped for obtaining meat and edible plants in the wild.

"There was a sickle for harvesting wild wheat or barley, a cluster of flint spearheads, a flint core for making more spearheads, some smooth stones (maybe slingshots), a large stone (maybe for striking flint pieces off the flint core), a cluster of gazelle toe bones which were used to make beads, and part of a second bone tool," he said.

Edwards outlines the finds, attributed to the Natufian culture from a site called Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan, in the latest issue of Antiquity.

He believes the tools were enclosed in a hide or wickerwork bag with a strap that would have been worn over the shoulder. Such bags rarely had compartments, so the owner probably protected valuable items by wrapping them in rolls of bark or leather before placing them at the bottom of the bag.

The sickle, constructed out of two carefully grooved horn pieces, was fitted with color-matched tan and grey bladelets. It would have been a marvel of form and function for its day and is the only tool of its kind ever linked to the Natufian people.

The rest of the items were designed to immobilize and then kill game such as aurochs, red deer, hares, storks, partridges, owls, tortoises and the major source of meat -- gazelles.

"A lone hunter or a group of hunters might wait for gazelles to cross their path while waiting behind a low 'hide' made of twigs and brush," Edwards explained.

"They might have worked on making bone beads to wile away the time. Then a hunter could get off a shot while the animals were off their guard. A first shot might wound, but not kill, and then a hunter or a group of them will track the wounded animal."

He added, "We don't know if Natufian hunters had the bow and arrow, or just spears."

The mountain gazelles targeted by the Near Eastern hunters probably weighed between 39 and 55 pounds, so a strong adult "could carry an entire carcass over his shoulders without much trouble."

But the bag's owner wasn't necessarily a man; women are thought to have been in charge of plant gathering. The tools, therefore, either belonged to a woman hunter-gatherer, or work activities were more gender-blind than thought during prehistoric times, Edwards theorized.

Francois Valla, director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem and a noted archaeologist, told Discovery News that similar ancient clusters of tools have been excavated, but this latest one is "the most spectacular of them all."

"The clustering of these items is due to a decision made by some Natufian individual," Valla said. "As such, it is a rare testimony of the behavior of a person 14,000 years ago."

The toolkit's showpiece item, its double-bladed sickle, is now on display in the museum of the Faculty of Archaeology & Anthropology at Jordan's Yarmouk University.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/13/ancient-toolkit.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 30, 2007, 10:18am

Dwarf Hippo Fossils Found in Cyprus
Menelaos Hadjicostis, Associated Press


Hippo Home
The fossilized remains of dozens of dwarf hippopotamuses, pictured here, are believed to have swum to the east Mediterranean island of Cyprus as many as 250,000 years ago. The fossils date to 9,000-11,500 BC and could provide clues as to when the island was actually inhabited by humans.

Dec. 6, 2007 -- An abattoir used by early Cypriots, a place where animals went to die, or a shelter that ultimately proved a death trap?

Cypriot and Greek scientists are studying a collapsed cave filled with the fossilized remains of extinct dwarf hippopotamuses -- descendants of hippos believed to have reached the island a quarter-million years ago.

Paleontologists have unearthed an estimated 80 dwarf hippos in recent digs at the site just outside the resort of Ayia Napa on the island's southeastern coast. Hundreds more may lie beneath an exposed layer of jumbled fossils.

Scientists hope the fossil haul, tentatively dated to 9,000-11,500 B.C., could offer clues to when humans first set foot on this Mediterranean island.

"It's about our origins," said Ioannis Panayides, the Cyprus Geological Survey Department official in charge of the excavations in conjunction with the University of Athens. "Knowledge of our geological history makes us more knowledgeable about ourselves."

Until the Ayia Napa discovery, the earliest trace of humans on Cyprus dated to 8,000 B.C. But signs of human activity at the new dig could turn back the clock on the first Cypriots by as much as 3,500 years.

"That's very significant, but we can't be certain yet. The task of examining is laborious and time consuming," said University of Athens Professor George Theodorou, who is tasked with examining some 1.5 tons of fossils.

The dwarf hippopotamuses were herbivores, like their modern cousins, but were only about 2 1/2 feet tall and 4 feet long. Unlike modern hippos, whose upturned nostrils seem designed for swimming, Cypriot hippos had low-slung nostrils better suited to foraging on land.

Panayides said the fossils show the Cypriot hippos had legs and feet adapted to land, enabling them to stand on their hind legs to reach tree branches.

Experts believe hippos arrived on Cyprus between 100,000 to 250,000 ago, and likely got smaller to adapt to the hilly island landscape. But scientists do not know how the animals reached Cyprus, which has never been physically linked to another land mass.

Panayides said paleontologists theorize hippos may have swum or floated here during a Pleistocene ice age from land that is now Turkey or Syria. They may have clung to tree trunks and other debris during the crossing.

Lower sea levels at the time made Cyprus much larger than its present 3,570 square miles, meaning it was much closer to other lands. By some estimates, what is now Syria was a mere 18 miles away.

Digs over the last century uncovered smaller numbers of dwarf hippo fossils at 40 locations across Cyprus. One cave found 20 years ago had evidence of fire, stone tools and scorched bones indicating dwarf hippos were hunted by humans.

Carbon dating on those hippo fossils showed the site dated to 8,000 B.C. Evidence of human activity at Ayia Napa means the island may have been settled by humans as much as 3,500 years earlier.

A human footprint at the Ayia Napa site could bolster the theory that the island's earliest inhabitants could have driven the dwarf hippos to extinction through hunting, said Panayides.

"If these new bones are found to be older than bones previously discovered and scientists can find an association with humans, then the discovery has the potential to tell us more about the island's first human inhabitants," said Eleanor Weston, a paleontologist at London's Natural History Museum who was not connected with the Ayia Napa discovery.

Panayides said indications that hippo bones at Ayia Napa had been crushed as if trampled by other hippos, suggesting successive generations came to the cave. Shelter is the most likely explanation, but Panayides didn't rule out the possibility the hippos returned to an ancient burial ground to die.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/12/06/pygmy-hippo-fossil.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Dec 30, 2007, 9:41pm


Bad weather helped evolution, says study

By Mira Oberman in Chicago

December 31, 2007 12:30pm
Article from: Agence France-Presse

FOR more than 150 years, a debate has raged over the origins of modern humans.

The main body of scientific thought says modern humans migrated from Africa and then overwhelmed their more primitive European counterparts, the heavy-browed Neanderthals, or inter-bred with them.

But growing credence is being given to the theory that homo sapiens evolved from the Neanderthals, who mysteriously died out some 28,000 years ago.

A new study to be published on Wednesday in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says evidence of huge climate change supports that theory.

Eugene Morin, an anthropology professor at Laval University in Quebec, argues that an extended period of harsh weather would have made Western Europe unwelcoming to new migrants at the time when the tools and cave drawings of modern humans began to appear.

He says it is much more likely that Neanderthals evolved as a result of these climate changes which drastically reduced the diversity and availability of animals to hunt.

"If the Neanderthals were already having trouble how would it have been possible for another population to survive?" he says.

"Even if they had a selective advantage they would still be facing the climatic conditions ... and would be competing with Neanderthals which would have been locally adapted."

Prof Morin examined the animal bones discovered at a rich archeological site in Saint-Cesaire, France and determined that the consumption of reindeer increased from 30 per cent to 87 per cent of the cave-dwellers' diet from about 40,000 to about 35,000 years ago.

And since a similar pattern was found in the bones of smaller mammals such as mice and voles, Prof Morin was able to conclude that a "relatively rapid" climatic change resulted in a drop-off in the region's bison and horse herds.

This climate change was as dramatic as the difference between the temperate forests near Montreal and the sparse Arctic region to the north, he explained.

With their survival tied to unstable reindeer herds subject to frequent crashes, the population density of Neanderthals in the region dropped dramatically, Prof Morin surmised.

This created a "population bottleneck" in which the genetic diversity of Neanderthals was dramatically reduced, allowing rare mutations to become fixed, Prof Morin concluded.

It's also possible that the harsh conditions forced the hunter-gathering Neanderthals to roam farther afield in search of food and to expand their social networks in order to protect themselves from hard times.

This may also have helped spread the genetic traits found in Cro-Magnons and the use of more complex tools and cave paintings.

"It still remains a mystery why all these changes occurred together, but I don't think they occurred as a result of a modern human migration," Prof Morin said.

"A lot of people have argued for a population increase (as modern humans expanded both numerically and spatially) and this study has shown that is not possible."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22989973-23109,00.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 1, 2008, 1:51am

Numerous evidence of Pre-Historic Nuclear War exists: Columns of Smoke Rose as if from a Mighty Furnace

by Brad Steiger


Ancient Indian Epics, especially the Mahabharata, document apparent pre-historic nuclear devastation and destruction, that is being verified by diverse scholars.

“Then the Lord rained down fire and tar from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and utterly destroyed them….” Genesis 19:24.

My previous article in The Canadian , in which I reflected upon my book Worlds Before Our Own, provoked dozens of inquiries from readers. LINK Some stated that one of the cable channels -- some thought it was the History Channel; others, Discovery; still others, National Geographic -- had presented “proof” that the “fused green glass” to be found in various areas had been created by meteoric air blasts rather than prehistoric nuclear wars.

I remain open to many theories of Earth‘s prehistory. One of those individuals prompted to write to me, who had the advantage of having actually read Worlds Before Our Own, stated that I present “in a clear and lucid style, information concerning anomalous archeological finds without the hyperbole usually associated with this type of material.”

While patches of “fused green glass” may in certain instances have been caused by air blasts from meteors, I wonder if such a natural phenomenon could have created all twenty-eight fields of blackened and shattered stones that cover as many as 7000 miles each in western Arabia. The stones are densely grouped, as if they might be the remains of cities, sharp-edged, and burned black. Experts have decreed that they are not volcanic in origin, but appear to date from the period when Arabia was thought to be a lush and fruitful land that suddenly became scorched into an instant desert.

What we know today as the Sahara Desert was once a tropical region of heavy vegetation, abundant rainfall, and several large rivers. Scientists have discovered areas of the desert in which soils which once knew the cultivated influence of plow and farmer are now covered by a thin layer of sand. Researchers have also found an enormous reservoir of water below the parched desert area. The source of such a large deposit of water could only have been the heavy rains from the period of time before a fiery devastation consumed the lush vegetation of the area.

On December 25, 2007, it was confirmed by a French scientist that excavations at the area of Khamis Bani Sa’ad in Tehema district of Hodeidah province have yielded over a thousand rare archaeological pieces dating back to 300,000 B.C.E. Before a dramatic climate change, the inhabitants at that time had been fishermen and had domesticated a number of animals no longer to be found in the region, including a species of horse currently found only in Middle Asia.

The Red Chinese have conducted atomic tests near Lob Nor Lake in the Gobi Desert, which have left large patches of the area covered with vitreous sand. But the Gobi has a number of other areas of glassy sand which have been known for thousands of years.

Albion W. Hart, one of the first engineers to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was assigned a project in the interior of Africa. While he and his men were traveling to an almost inaccessible region, they had first to cross a great expanse of desert. At the time, he was puzzled and quite unable to explain a large area of greenish glass which covered the sands as far as he could see.

"Later on during his life," wrote Margarethe Casson in Rocks and Minerals (No. 396, 1972), "he passed by the White Sands area after the first atomic explosion there, and he recognized the same type of silica fusion which he had seen fifty years earlier in the African desert."

In 1947, in the Euphrates valley of southern Iraq, where certain traditions place the Garden of Eden and where the ancient inhabitants of Sumer encountered the man-god Ea, exploratory digging unearthed a layer of fused, green glass. Archaeologists could not restrain themselves from noting the resemblance that the several-thousand-year-old fused glass bore to the desert floor at White Sands, New Mexico, after the first nuclear blasts in modem times had melted sand and rock.

In the United States, the Mohave Desert has large circular or polygonal areas that are coated with a hard substance very much like opaque glass.

While exploring Death Valley in 1850, William Walker claimed to have come upon the ruins of an ancient city. An end of the large building within the rubble had had its stones melted and vitrified.

Walker went on to state that the entire region between the Gila and St. John rivers was spotted with ruins. In each of the ancient settlements he had found evidence that they had been burned out by fire intense enough to have liquefied rock. Paving blocks and stone houses had been split with huge cracks, as if seared by some gigantic cleaver of fire.

Perhaps even more than the large areas of fused green glass, I am intrigued by the evidence of vitrified cities and forts, such as those discovered by Walker.

There are ancient hill forts and towers in Scotland, Ireland, and England in which the stoneworks have become calcined because of the great heat that had been applied. There is no way that lightning could have caused such effects.

Other hill forts from the Lofoten Islands off northern Norway to the Canary Islands off northwest Africa have become “fused forts.” Erich A. von Fange comments that the “piled boulders of their circular walls have been turned to glass… by some intense heat.”

Catal Huyukin in north-central Turkey, thought to be one of the oldest cities in the world, appears, according to archaeological evidence, to have been fully civilized and then, suddenly, to have died out. Archaeologists were astonished to find thick layers of burned brick at one of the levels, called VIa. The blocks had been fused together by such intense heat that the effects had penetrated to a depth more than a meter below the level of the floors, where it carbonized the earth, the skeletal remains of the dead, and the burial gifts that had been interred with them. All bacterial decay had been halted by the tremendous heat.

When a large ziggurat in Babylonia was excavated, it presented the appearance of having been struck by a terrible fire that had split it down to its foundation. In other parts of the ruins, large sections of brickwork had been scorched into a vitrified state. Several masses of brickwork had been rendered into a completely molten state. Even large boulders found near the ruins had been vitrified.

The royal buildings at the north Syrian site known as Alalakh or Atchana had been so completely burned that the very core of the thick walls were filled with bright red, crumbling mud-bricks. The mud and lime wall plaster had been vitrified, and basalt wall slabs had, in some areas, actually melted.

Between India's Ganges River and the Rajmahal Hills are scorched ruins which contain large masses of stone that have been fused and hollowed. Certain travelers who have ventured to the heart of the Indian forests have reported ruins of cities in which the walls have become huge slabs of crystal, due to some intense heat.

The ruins of the Seven Cities, located near the equator in the Province of Piaui, Brazil, appear to be the scene of a monstrous chaos. Since no geological explanation has yet been construed to fit the evidence before the archaeologists, certain of those who have investigated the site have said that the manner in which the stones have been dried out, destroyed, and melted provokes images of Sodom and Gomorrah.

French researchers discovered the evidence of prehistoric spontaneous nuclear reaction at the Oklo mine, Pierrelatte, in Gabon, Africa. Scientists found that the ore of this mine contained abnormally low proportions of U235 such as found only in depleted uranium fuel taken from atomic reactors. According to those who examined the mine, the ore also contained four rare elements in forms similar to those found in depleted uranium.

Although the modern world did not experience atomic power until the 1940s, there is an astonishing amount of evidence that nuclear effects may have occurred in prehistoric times leaving behind sand melted into glass in certain desert areas, hill forts with vitrified portions of stone walls, of the remains of ancient cities that had been destroyed by what appeared to have been extreme heat-far beyond that which could have been scorched by the torches of primitive armies. In each instance, the trained and experienced archaeologists who encountered such anomalous finds have stressed the point that none of these catastrophes had been caused by volcanoes, by lightning, by crashing comets, or by conflagrations set by humankind.


Sinai peninsular area of apparent nuclear war activity.

Zecharia Sitchin (1985) devotes an entire chapter to a discussion of nuclear warfare in ancient times in Mesopotamia and the Sinai peninsula. In this book he also suggests the destruction of the Sinai “space facilities” by nuclear weapons. He offers as evidence:

“…the immense cavity in the center of the Sinai and the resulting fracture lines (see figure), the vast surrounding flat area covered with blackened stones, traces of radiation south of the Dead Sea, the new extent and shape of the Dead Sea – is still there, four thousand years later”.

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/12/31/02061.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 3, 2008, 2:11am

Riddle Of The Jade Jewels Reveals Vast Trade Arena


Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewelery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia – possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date. (Credit: Image courtesy of Australian National University)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 2, 2008) — Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewellery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia – possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date.

An international research team led by archaeologists from The Australian National University used electron probe microanalysis to examine jade earrings excavated from sites all over Southeast Asia, and were able to pinpoint the origin of the precious stone to a source in Taiwan.

“People have noted the widespread use of jade in Southeast Asia since the early 20th century, so one of the big questions has been about where the stone was sourced and how it was distributed,” explained research leader Hsiao-Chun Hung, a PhD student in archaeology at ANU.

Archaeologists have long thought that the earrings were made from local jade by Austronesian peoples as they migrated and traded across Southeast Asia – but the researchers have now shown that much of the stone was sourced from Taiwan and then transported in raw form to places like the Philippines, Borneo, central Vietnam and southern Thailand – up to thousands of kilometres by sea from its source.

Team member Dr Yoshiyuki Iizuka from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan used electron probe microanalysis to study the variable chemical composition of raw jade samples from all over Southeast Asia, building up a geographic database of the precious stone. By applying the same technique to the 144 jade artefacts, they found that 116 specimens could be traced back to Eastern Taiwan.

“We know that ancient people elsewhere in the world traded over great distances,” team member Professor Peter Bellwood said. “But this is the first time that such a large trading network has been established in Southeast Asia.”

Ms Hung is studying the migration of Austronesian people throughout the region to Australia’s north between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago. The researchers say their work suggests that Austronesian people, who shared a common language and resembled contemporary Southeast Asians, had a vast, complex system of trade and transportation.

The work was supported by a Discovery Grant from the Australian Research Council, and also by the National Geographic Society, and is written up in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080101193937.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 4, 2008, 8:49pm

Two Explosive Evolutionary Events Shaped Early History Of Multicellular Life


The Ediacara fossil Fractofusus andersoni from the ~565 million year old Mistaken Point Formation in Newfoundland, Canada, represents the earliest Ediacara assemblage, known as the Avalon assemblage. (Credit: Bing Shen)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) — Scientists have known for some time that most major groups of complex animals appeared in the fossils record during the Cambrian Explosion, a seemingly rapid evolutionary event that occurred 542 million years ago. Now Virginia Tech paleontologists, using rigorous analytical methods, have identified another explosive evolutionary event that occurred about 33 million years earlier among macroscopic life forms unrelated to the Cambrian animals. They dubbed this earlier event the "Avalon Explosion."

The discovery suggests that more than one explosive evolutionary event may have taken place during the early evolution of animals.

The Cambrian explosion event refers to the sudden appearance of most animal groups in a geologically short time period between 542 and 520 million years ago, in the early Cambrian Period. Although there were not as many animal species as in modern oceans, most (if not all) living animal groups were represented in the Cambrian oceans.

"The explosive evolutionary pattern was a concern to Charles Darwin, because he expected that evolution happens at a slow and constant pace," said Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech. "Darwin's perception could be represented by an inverted cone with ever expanding morphological range, but the fossil record of the Cambrian Explosion and since is better represented by a cylinder with a morphological radiation at the base and morphological constraint afterwards."

Darwin reckoned that there should be long and hidden periods of animal evolution before the Cambrian Explosion, Xiao said.

But paleontologists have not found such evidence, and recently scientists have learned that biological evolution has not been moving on a smooth road. "Accelerated rates may characterize the early evolution of many groups of organisms," said Michal Kowalewski, professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech.

To test whether other major branches of life also evolved in an abrupt and explosive manner, Virginia Tech graduate students Bing Shen and Lin Dong, along with Xiao and Kowalewski, analyzed the Ediacara fossils: the oldest complex, multicellular organisms that had lived in oceans from 575 to 542 million years ago; that is, before the Cambrian Explosion of animals. "These Ediacara organisms do not have an ancestor-descendant relationship with the Cambrian animals, and most of them went extinct before the Cambrian Explosion," said Shen. "And this group of organisms -- most species -- seems to be distinct from the Cambrian animals."

But how did those Ediacara organisms first evolve, Shen asked. Did they also appear in an explosive evolutionary event, or is the Cambrian Explosion a truly unparalleled event"

"We identified 50 characters and mapped the distribution of these characters in more than 200 Ediacara species. These species cover three evolutionary stages of the entire Ediacara history across 33 million years," said Shen.

The three successive evolutionary stages are represented by the Avalon, White Sea, and Nama assemblages (all named after localities where representative fossils of each stage can be found). The earliest Avalon stage was represented by relatively few species.

Surprisingly, however, as shown by Shen and colleagues, these earliest Ediacara life forms already occupied a full morphological range of body plans that would ever be realized through the entire history of Ediacara organisms. "In other words, major types of Ediacara organisms appeared at the dawn of their history, during the Avalon Explosion," Dong said. "Subsequently, Ediacara organisms diversified in White Sea time and then declined in Nama time. But, despite this notable waxing and waning in the number of species, the morphological range of the Avalon organisms were never exceeded through the subsequent history of Ediacara."

Kowalewski said their research team had not anticipated the discovery. "Using the scientific literature, we were trying to create a more rigorous reconstruction of the morphological history of Ediacara organisms," he said.

The process involved adapting quantitative methods that had been used previously for studying morphological evolution of animals, but never applied to the enigmatic Ediacara organisms. "We think of diversity in terms of individual species. But species may be very similar in their overall body plan. For example, 50 species of fly may not differ much from one another in terms of their overall shape -- they all represent the same body plan. On the other hand, a set of just three species that include a fly, a frog and an earthworm represent much more morphological variation. We can thus think of biodiversity not only in terms of how many different species there are but also how many fundamentally distinct body plans are being represented. Our approach combined both those approaches," said Kowalewski.

"In addition, the method relies on converting different morphologies into numerical (binary) data. This strategy allows us to describe, more objectively and more consistently, enigmatic fossil life forms, which are preserved mostly as two-dimensional impressions and are not understood well in terms of function, ecology, or physiology," Kowalewski said.

Scientists are still unsure what were the driving forces behind the rapid morphological expansion during the Avalon explosion, and why the morphological range did not expand, shrink, or shift during the subsequent White Sea and Nama stages.

"But, one thing seems certain -- the evolution of earliest macroscopic and complex life also went through an explosive event before to the Cambrian Explosion," Xiao said. "It now appears that at the dawn of the macroscopic life, between 575 and 520 million years ago, there was not one, but at least two major episodes of abrupt morphological expansion."

The article, "The Avalon Explosion: Evolution of Ediacara Morphospace," by Shen, Dong, Xiao, and Kowalewski, appears in the Jan. 4 issue of Science. Shen and Dong have graduated. Dong is at British Petroleum and Shen at Rice University, both in Houston.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103144451.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 4, 2008, 8:51pm

Insect Attack May Have Finished Off Dinosaurs


Tick found in Burmese amber. (Credit: Image courtesy of Oregon State University)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2008) — Asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct, but a new arguemet is that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force -- biting, disease-carrying insects.

An important contributor to the demise of the dinosaurs, experts say, could have been the rise and evolution of insects, especially the slow-but-overwhelming threat posed by new disease carriers. And the evidence for this emerging threat has been captured in almost lifelike-detail -- many types of insects preserved in amber that date to the time when dinosaurs disappeared.

"There are serious problems with the sudden impact theories of dinosaur extinction, not the least of which is that dinosaurs declined and disappeared over a period of hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years," said George Poinar Jr., a courtesy professor of zoology at Oregon State University. "That time frame is just not consistent with the effects of an asteroid impact. But competition with insects, emerging new diseases and the spread of flowering plants over very long periods of time is perfectly compatible with everything we know about dinosaur extinction."

This concept is outlined in detail in "What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous," a book by George and Roberta Poinar, just published by Princeton University Press.

In it, the authors argue that insects provide a plausible and effective explanation for the slow, inexorable decline and eventual extinction of dinosaurs over many thousands of years. This period is known as the famous "K-T Boundary," or the line between the Cretaceous and Tertiary Period about 65 million years ago. There is evidence that some catastrophic events, such as a major asteroid or lava flows, also occurred at this time -- but these provide no complete explanation for the gradual decline of dinosaur populations, and even how some dinosaurs survived for thousands of years after the K-T Boundary.

Insects and disease, on the other hand, may have been a lot slower, but ultimately finished the job.

"We don't suggest that the appearance of biting insects and the spread of disease are the only things that relate to dinosaur extinction," Poinar said. "Other geologic and catastrophic events certainly played a role. But by themselves, such events do not explain a process that in reality took a very, very long time, perhaps millions of years. Insects and diseases do provide that explanation."

Poinar and his wife, Roberta, have spent much of their careers studying the plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber, using them to re-create the biological ecosystems that were in place millions of years ago. They are also authors of "The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World."

As a semi-precious gem that first begins to form as sap oozing from a tree, amber has the unique ability to trap very small animals or other materials and -- as a natural embalming agent -- display them in nearly perfect, three-dimensional form millions of years later. This phenomenon has been invaluable in scientific and ecological research, and among other things, formed the scientific premise for the movie Jurassic Park, for the "dinosaur DNA" found in mosquitoes.

"During the late Cretaceous Period, the associations between insects, microbes and disease transmission were just emerging," Poinar said. "We found in the gut of one biting insect, preserved in amber from that era, the pathogen that causes leishmania -- a serious disease still today, one that can infect both reptiles and humans. In another biting insect, we discovered organisms that cause malaria, a type that infects birds and lizards today.

"In dinosaur feces, we found nematodes, trematodes and even protozoa that could have caused dysentery and other abdominal disturbances. The infective stages of these intestinal parasites are carried by filth-visiting insects."

In the Late Cretaceous, Poinar said, the world was covered with warm-temperate to tropical areas that swarmed with blood-sucking insects carrying leishmania, malaria, intestinal parasites, arboviruses and other pathogens, and caused repeated epidemics that slowly-but-surely wore down dinosaur populations. Ticks, mites, lice and biting flies would have tormented and weakened them.

"Smaller and separated populations of dinosaurs could have been repeatedly wiped out, just like when bird malaria was introduced into Hawaii, it killed off many of the honeycreepers," Poinar said. "After many millions of years of evolution, mammals, birds and reptiles have evolved some resistance to these diseases. But back in the Cretaceous, these diseases were new and invasive, and vertebrates had little or no natural or acquired immunity to them. Massive outbreaks causing death and localized extinctions would have occurred."

In similar fashion, the researchers suggest, insects would have played a major role in changing the nature of plant life on Earth -- the fundamental basis for all dinosaur life, whether herbivore, omnivore or carnivore. As the dinosaurs were declining, their traditional food items such as seed ferns, cycads, gingkoes and other gymnosperms were largely being displaced by flowering plants, which insects helped spread by their pollination activities. These plants would have spread to dominate the landscape. Also, insects could have spread plant diseases that destroyed large tracts of vegetation, and the insects could have been major competitors for the available plant food supply.

"Insects have exerted a tremendous impact on the entire ecology of the Earth, certainly shaping the evolution and causing the extinction of terrestrial organisms," the authors wrote in their book. "The largest of the land animals, the dinosaurs, would have been locked in a life-or-death struggle with them for survival."

The confluence of new insect-spread diseases, loss of traditional food sources, and competition for plants by insect pests could all have provided a lingering, debilitating condition that dinosaurs were ultimately unable to overcome, the researchers say. And these concerns -- which might have pressured the dinosaurs for thousands of years -- may have finished the job, along with the changing environment, meteor impacts and massive lava flows.

"We can't say for certain that insects are the smoking gun, but we believe they were an extremely significant force in the decline of the dinosaurs," Poinar said. "Our research with amber shows that there were evolving, disease-carrying vectors in the Cretaceous, and that at least some of the pathogens they carried infected reptiles. This clearly fills in some gaps regarding dinosaur extinctions."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103090702.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 7, 2008, 11:36pm


Fungus attacks Ice Age cave art

Dalya Alberge, London | January 03, 2008

THE survival of the most important cave paintings in the world is in doubt because of a severe fungal infection that spread after an air-circulation system was installed to protect them.

Sistine Chapel of pre-history



The 17,000-year-old paintings in the Lascaux cave in southwest France are being damaged by black spots

The 17,000-year-old paintings known as "the Sistine Chapel of pre-history" - in the Lascaux cave in the Dordogne region of southwest France - are being damaged by black spots that are spreading at an alarming rate, according to archeologists.

Fragments of the cave walls have broken off and some colour tones are fading. In response, the UN's cultural arm, UNESCO, has decided to send a delegation of specialists to the cave to determine whether it should be placed on the World Heritage in Danger list.

The paintings were discovered in 1940 by four teenagers who followed their dog into a large hole that had opened under the roots of a fallen pine tree.

The extraordinary images of bulls, deer and horses had survived since the last Ice Age but are now being damaged by bacterial and fungal infection. The deterioration is blamed on what archeologists call an "ill-conceived and disastrous" air-circulation system that was installed seven years ago.

Paul Bahn, Britain's foremost specialist in Ice Age art, said water could be seen running down the paintings, while black spots - some as large as a hand - were spreading across the walls and some of the paintings.

He said the cave had no means of circulating its natural currents of air and that, as biologists had yet to identify the exact nature of the spots, they had been unable to prescribe a proper treatment.

Lascaux contains a large entrance chamber and two main "galleries" - the Great Hall of the Bulls and the Painted Gallery - with about 1500 engravings and 600 drawings in yellow, red and black mineral pigments.

Dr Bahn called on the French Government to take action. "The scandal of Lascaux cave is growing every day," he said.

About 660 locations worldwide are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Governments recognise an obligation, under the 1972 World Heritage Convention, to care for their heritage. Only 30 of the sites are considered at risk. It usually takes something as dramatic as a war, earthquake or other natural disaster for a site to be added, as in the case of the Buddhas of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan.

In a letter to UNESCO director Francesco Bandarin, Dr Bahn wrote of his "profound dismay and anxiety concerning the state of the cave". He condemned the "fateful decision" to renew and update the cave's electrical installations.

"The results of this bungled work have been catastrophic for the wellbeing and stability of the cave and its art. And despite the constant reassurances from the French Establishment, it is well known among specialists - who are receiving information from better informed or more objective sources - that the situation in the cave remains appallingly bad, and indeed is getting worse," he wrote.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22999518-30417,00.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 10, 2008, 1:45am

Flesh wound reveals dino secrets
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News


Some scientists believe a number of dinosaurs had feathers

A fossil unearthed in China has given scientists a rare glimpse of what dinosaurs were like in the flesh.

The plant-eating Psittacosaurus had a thick layer of shark-like skin hidden under scales or feathers.

Palaeontologists believe this tough outer coating supported the dinosaur's organs and protected it from predators.

Tooth marks suggest the dinosaur was torn open by a scavenger, giving a unique insight into their biology, 100 million years after this one's death.

The research is published in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings B.

'Unprecedented understanding'

Soft tissues such as skin are rarely preserved in the fossil record, leading to heated debate over what dinosaurs looked like, and whether they were covered in primitive feathers or scales.

The Psittacosaurus , or parrot lizard, specimen gives the first detailed picture of what dinosaurs were like deep under the skin.

To have the skin folded on the fossil so that you can see the cross section through it is remarkable
Mark Witton, University of Portsmouth

The bipedal herbivore, which grew to about the size of a gazelle, had tough, scaly skin with more than 25 layers of collagen - similar to that of today's sharks, reptiles and dolphins.

"As noted from the studies on modern-day animals, this fibre structure plays a critical part in the stresses and strains the skin may be subjected to and is ideally suited to providing support and protection," explained Professor Theagarten Lingham-Soliar of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

" Psittacosaurus gives a remarkable, unprecedented understanding of the dinosaur skin."

'Prehistoric pig'

The specimen comes from an area of China that has yielded a treasure trove of uniquely-preserved fossils.

"Discoveries like this from China are certainly churning out new surprises," commented Mark Witton of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

"To have the skin folded on the fossil so that you can see the cross section through it is remarkable."

He said the skin of the dinosaur would have been "incredibly tough" and probably served to protect the animal from attack by predators.

"We imagine this Psittacosaurus as a tubby little animal walking around on its back legs," he added.

" Psittacosaurus may have been a bit like a prehistoric pig, wandering around woodlands and forests and eating all manner of plants, scavenging the odd carcass and maybe eating the odd little animal here and there."

The Chinese specimen appears to have met its match during the life and death struggles of the Lower Cretaceous.

Tooth marks and fractures in the skin suggest it was attacked by another dinosaur, and then covered by sediment rapidly after its demise, allowing soft tissue to be preserved in remarkable detail.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7177181.stm

Published: 2008/01/09 11:24:12 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 11, 2008, 12:49pm

Digging Up A Serial Killer's Century-old Secrets


In the University of Indianapolis Archeology and Forensics Laboratory, graduate student Andrea Simmons examines x-rays of a skull found on the property of Belle Gunness, a notorious serial killer of the 1900s. (Credit: Scott Hall, University of Indianapolis)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — Growing up in La Porte, Ind., Andrea Simmons couldn’t help hearing tales of the city’s most notorious former resident, a so-called “black widow” and “Lady Bluebeard” who amassed a fortune during a devious campaign of arson and murder at the turn of the 20th century.

Now, Simmons is a graduate student at the University of Indianapolis, where her master’s thesis in human biology might answer a question that has intrigued true-crime aficionados for a century: Did Belle Gunness – perhaps the world’s most prolific female serial killer – actually die in a 1908 house fire, or did she fake her death to evade the law and kill again?

With guidance from Professor Stephen Nawrocki, a forensic anthropologist known for his work on high-profile criminal cases, Simmons led a team of UIndy students in November to the Illinois cemetery where the body identified as Gunness was buried. With permission from descendants, they exhumed the remains, which they are now analyzing and hope to compare with DNA samples from Gunness’ letters.

“We’re the first ones to actually reopen the grave and gather forensic evidence,” said Simmons, 47, an attorney of 20-plus years who returned to college with an eye toward working on international genocide investigations. “We have family members still alive who want answers.”

Working with DNA is a complicated and expensive process that will require lab work both on and off campus. If progress is made quickly, Simmons may have some answers in time for the 100th anniversary of the fire, April 28.

Already, however, the researchers have made a shocking discovery: The casket they exhumed contained not just an adult woman’s body, but also the partial remains of two children.

To Nawrocki, this surprise further confirmed that the initial investigations of the fire and Gunness’ crimes were botched from the start.

“It makes me doubt every conclusion these people came to,” he says. “Instead of answering questions, it just opened up more.”

Gunness, a Norwegian immigrant, is thought to have killed her first two husbands, several of her children or stepchildren, and a series of suitors she lured to her La Porte farm with classified ads promising marriage to a wealthy widow. The mysterious disappearances at her farm generated suspicion, but only after the fire gutted her house did investigators begin finding human remains around the property.

The case immediately became an international sensation, with intense media attention and a circus-like atmosphere. Even by the standards of the day, investigators clearly mishandled and misinterpreted evidence. Unearthed bones were put on public display at the farm, and other items toured the nation with the Ringling Brothers show.

Newspaper stories, pulp books and decades of speculation have further clouded the facts. For example, many sources cite Gunness’ death toll at 40 or more. Simmons’ research, which has included poring over court records, museum files and contemporaneous media accounts, places the total around 25.

“They never even made a good attempt to count the bodies,” says Simmons, a former prosecutor and Army JAG who lives with her family in Zionsville, Ind.

Rumors about Gunness’ escape are well grounded, however. The body found in the gutted house was smaller than her sturdy 5-foot-8-inch, 230-pound frame, and it was inexplicably missing its head. She reportedly made out a will and bought a quantity of kerosene just before the fire. The blaze was blamed on her handyman, who confessed on his prison deathbed that he had been involved in the crimes and removed and disposed of a human head on the property shortly before the fire.

One theory suggests Gunness fled to California, assumed a new identity and later was charged with similar crimes. If the body exhumed in Illinois turns out not to be Gunness, Simmons’ investigation may take her to the West Coast to seek samples from that murderer’s grave, or from the grave of Gunness’ sister, who suspiciously moved there from the Midwest after Gunness’ death or disappearance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109105956.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 11, 2008, 12:51pm

480-million-year-old Fossil Sheds Light On 150-year-old Paleontological Mystery


Fossil (left) and depiction (right) of extinct armored machaeridian worm. Colors indicate the trunk (yellow), limb (red), bristles (gray), attachment of shell plates (green), gut (purple) and dorsal linear structure (blue). (Credit: Vinther, et al Nature)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2008) — Discovery of an exceptional fossil specimen in southeastern Morocco that preserves evidence of the animal's soft tissues has solved a paleontological puzzle about the origins of an extinct group of bizarre slug-like animals with rows of mineralized armor plates on their backs, according to a paper in Nature.

While evolution has produced great diversity in the body designs of animals, over the course of history several highly distinct groups, such as trilobites and ammonites, have become extinct. The new fossil is of an unusual creature known as a machaeridian, an invertebrate, or animal without a backbone, that existed for about 180 million years from 485 to 305 million years ago.

"The new specimen unequivocally identifies machaeridians as annelid worms, an extremely successful and diverse group of animals that includes familiar living animals like the sea mouse, the earthworm and the leech," said Jakob Vinther, graduate student in the Department of Geology & Geophysics at Yale. The specimen was found in an area that had earlier been identified as a rich source of exceptionally preserved fossils including sponges, trilobites, echinoderms and other less-familiar invertebrates.

First described over 150 years ago, armor plates of these strange animals have been found in marine fossil deposits worldwide covering the time span of their existence, and indicating that they were an important component of ancient seafloor ecosystems. Until now there was little information about their body design or how they might be related to other ancient -- or currently living -- animals.

"These animals disintegrated quickly after death, so complete fossils of their dorsal armor are rare, and their record until now consisted mostly of isolated armor plates scattered in the sediment," said Vinther. The dilemma of studying ancient organisms, he notes, is that the soft body parts, including most internal organs, are unavailable for study because they usually decompose before they can become fossilized.

Previous patchy evidence was insufficient to reveal the relationships of the machaeridians to other animals and there was much speculation about their position in the tree of life. Different authors suggested relationships to groups as varied as mollusks (clams and snails), barnacles (crustaceans -- including shrimps, crabs and crayfish), echinoderms (starfish and sea urchins) and annelid worms (aquatic bristle worms and garden earthworms).

This inch-long specimen that was recently discovered shows that, below the dorsal armor, the machaeridians had an elongate body with paired, soft, limb-like extensions on each segment, and two bundles of long, stiff bristles on each extension. The segmented nature of the body, and especially the presence of soft "limbs" carrying bristles, unequivocally identified the machaeridians as annelid worms, say the scientists.

According to the authors, although the exact relationship of machaeridians within the annelid worms is still uncertain, the presence of modified scales suggests that they may even belong to a group of marine bristle worms that are still in existence today.

"This exciting discovery has provided important new insights into annelid evolution, showing that some of these worms, which first appeared during the Cambrian radiation, evolved a highly distinctive dorsal, mineralised armor early in their history," said senior author Derek Briggs, the Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University. "It also highlights the great importance of the study of exceptional fossil sites, and of palaeobiology in general, for a better understanding of the evolution of our biosphere." Briggs, the director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies, will assume the directorship of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in July.

The third author of the study is Peter Van Roy at Ghent University (Belgium), now at University College, Dublin, who first recognized the importance of the specimen.

Citation: Nature; January 10, 2008.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109173812.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 16, 2008, 9:44pm

Discovered: a rodent bigger than a bull

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/01/2008

It is the nightmare tale of the riverbank: scientists have uncovered the remains of a fossil rodent that weighed more than a bull.

Although a relative of the mouse, rat, and guinea pigs kept by thousands of children, the four million year old heavyweight champ of rodents looks more like a capybara, the largest living rodent, which also harks from South America and enjoys an aquatic lifestyle.


The huge capybara-like rodent weighed between one and 1.4 tons

The behemoth, which once lived in forests near fresh water, was uncovered by an amateur palaeontologist on the coast of Rio de La Plata, Uruguay, and has now been studied in detail by by Andres Rinderknecht and Ernesto Blanco of the Musuem of Natural History and Institute of Physics, respectively, in Montevideo.

"We report the discovery of an exceptionally well preserved fossil skull of a new species of rodent, by far the largest ever recorded," say the team in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences, who found the remains of what they call "a "mouse" larger than a bull" in a broken boulder.

The creature itself weighed between one and 1.4 tons. Its skull is half a metre long and reached a length of around three metres, assuming its body was barrel-shaped like that of a capybara. The incisors of the mega rodent were around four inches and characteristics of its teeth suggest that it dined on aquatic plants, perhaps even fruit, Dr Blanco tells The Daily Telegraph.

Rodents are a very successful group of mammals - accounting for four in every 10 species of mammal - but they are usually small, generally less than 1 kg (2.2 lb), with the capybara only reaching 60kg (130lb), a lightweight compared with the new find.

There are various theories to explain why rodents grew so big millions of years ago in South America, explained Dr Blanco. "One possibility is to avoid predation. In South America at the time this rodent was living, there were giant predatory birds (terror birds) and sabertoothed marsupial carnivores. Rodents are not good at running, and their only effective weapons are their teeth, then big size is a good way to intimidate predators."

The giant has been named Josephoartigasia monesi after the South American rodent expert Alvaro Mones and is a member of the family that today includes the pakarana (Dinomys branickii ), a poorly studied rodent that grows up to approximately 15 kg (33 lb) The size of its skull suggests that it is twice as big as Phoberomys which was reported previously as the largest rodent that ever existed with a weight of 700 kilograms (1500 lb). Unearthed in the town of Urumaco, in an arid region of Venezuela 250 miles west of Caracas, Phoberomys may have even grazed in herds.

The creature was described by Prof Marcelo Sánchez, now at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, as " a weird guinea pig, but huge, with a long tail for balancing on its hind legs and continuously growing teeth."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jh....cirodent116.xml

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 16, 2008, 11:40pm

Underwater city could be revealed



Britain's own underwater "Atlantis" could be revealed for the first time with hi-tech underwater cameras.

Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast.

Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion.

"It's about the application of new technology to investigate Britain's Atlantis, then to give this information to the public," Professor Sear said.

Mr Bacon, director of the Suffolk Underwater Studies, first located the debris of the lost city in the 1970s.

Technical advances

"I know the site like the back of my hand because I have dived on it about 1,000 times," said Mr Bacon who has been working on the medieval site since 1971.

"We have found three churches and one chapel."

There is diving evidence of debris from lost chapels and churches but high silt levels in the water means visibility is only a few centimetres.

Mr Sear, professor in physical geography at the University of Southampton, said: "Technical advances have massively improved our ability to create accurate acoustic images of the seafloor."

The expedition will use the latest sonar, underwater camera and scanning equipment to build up a picture of the ancient sunken city, that lies between 10ft (3m) and 50ft (15m) down.

Dunwich was the capital of East Anglia 1,500 years ago.

Its decline began in 1286 when a sea surge hit the East Anglian coast and it was eventually reduced through coastal erosion to the village it is today.

Mr Bacon and Professor Sear hope to begin exploring the seabed in June.

The expedition will cost £25,000 - £20,000 of which has already been raised through a donation from the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation.

Maps and images of the lost city will be exhibited at the Dunwich museum.

A dive of the site will take place later in the year.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/7187239.stm

Published: 2008/01/14 13:00:08 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 18, 2008, 11:41am

Genome Scan Shows Polynesians Have Little Genetic Relationship To Melanesians

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2008) — The origins and current genetic relationships of Pacific Islanders have generated interest and controversy for many decades. Now, a new comprehensive genetic study of almost 1,000 individuals has revealed that Polynesians and Micronesians have almost no genetic relation to Melanesians, and that groups that live in the islands of Melanesia are remarkably diverse.

See further:
http://chem11.proboards2.com/index.cgi?b....ge=9#1200674432

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 18, 2008, 11:44am

When teen pregnancies weren't frowned upon:

Rapid Growth, Early Maturity Meant Teen Pregnancy For Dinosaurs


Cross-sections through the fossilized tibia or shinbone of a 120 million-year-old female Tenontosaurus skeleton, showing growth rings and medullary bone laid done in the marrow cavity just prior to egg laying. This individual died at the age of eight, shortly before she would have laid her eggs. (Credit: Sarah Werning/UC Berkeley & Andrew Lee/Ohio University; fossils courtesy of the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2008) — Dinosaurs descended from reptiles and evolved into today's birds, but their growth and sexual maturation were more like that of mammals - complete with teen pregnancy, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

Though dinosaurs grew for much of their lives, they experienced a rapid growth spurt in adolescence, like mammals, said UC Berkeley graduate student Sarah Werning. She and Andrew H. Lee, a recent UC Berkeley Ph.D. recipient who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine in Athens, Ohio, have now shown that dinosaurs reached sexual maturity near the end of this rapid growth phase, well before reaching maximum body size. Medium-to-large mammals, including humans, also are able to reproduce before they finish growing.

The finding, Werning said, suggests that dinosaurs were born precocious and suffered high adult mortality, making early sexual maturity necessary for survival.

"This is an exciting finding, because age at sexual maturity is related to so many things," said the students' advisor, Kevin Padian, who is a professor of integrative biology and a curator in UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology. "It also shows that you can't use reptiles as a model for dinosaur growth, as many scientists still do."

Pinpointing the age of reproductive maturity "opens up so many complementary avenues of dinosaur research," Werning added. "You can talk about dinosaur physiology, lifespan, reproductive strategies. And you could use this technique to look at all kinds of extinct animals."

The conclusion, reported the week of Jan. 14 in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes from an analysis of the only three dinosaur fossils that have been definitively identified as female. Thin slices of these dinosaurs' fossil bones all show an internal structure similar to tissue found in living female birds - a layer of calcium-rich bone tissue called medullary bone that is deposited in the marrow cavity just before egg-laying as a resource for making eggshells.

Dinosaurs, which also laid eggs, apparently stored calcium in similar structures prior to ovulation. In their new paper, Werning and Lee report that leg bones from the carnivorous Allosaurus and the plant eater Tenontosaurus both contained this structure, which means both creatures died shortly before laying eggs. The researchers concluded that these dinosaurs were both mere adolescents, because the Allosaurus was age 10 and the Tenontosaurus age eight at time of death, and prior studies have shown that these types of dinosaurs probably lived up to 30 years.

Werning and Lee also confirmed that a third bone, from a female Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) reported by Museum of the Rockies paleontologist Mary H. Schweitzer in 2005, contained medullary tissue upon the dinosaur's death at the age of 18. Werning noted that all three dinosaurs might have reached sexual maturity much earlier.

"We were lucky to find these female fossils," Werning said. "Medullary bone is only around for three to four weeks in females who are reproductively mature, so you'd have to cut up a lot of dinosaur bones to have a good chance of finding this."

In the past 10 to 15 years, studies of dinosaur bones have revealed much about the growth strategy of dinosaurs because bone lays down rings much like tree rings. If, as with trees, each ring signifies one year, then dinosaurs grew rapidly after birth and continued to grow over several years until death. Despite the presumed close relationship between dinosaurs and reptiles, dinosaurs grew faster than living reptiles, and their bones had a bigger blood supply. Among living vertebrates, only birds and mammals exhibit such fast growth. Birds and small mammals grow quickly to maturity and then become sexually mature, but large mammals reach sexual maturity just before growth slows.

Attempts to determine when dinosaurs became sexually mature, and thus whether they more closely resemble birds or mammals, have been difficult because there have been no clear signs of reproductive maturity in dinosaur skeletons.

Hence the excitement when Schweitzer discovered medullary bone in a T. rex femur. Though other paleontologists have searched fruitlessly for similar signs in fossil bones, Werning and Lee found success by focusing on Tenontosaurus, perhaps the most common and most boring dinosaur in North America, and Allosaurus, a T. rex-like predator.

Tenontosaurus lived in North America during the Early Cretaceous period, 125 to 105 million years ago, and was an ancestor of the duck-billed dinosaurs. A common plant eater, it is known for its long tail that made the dinosaur up to 27 feet long when walking on four legs. Because fossils of these one- to two-ton beasts are common in Oklahoma, Werning was able to obtain many fossil bone slices from the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. Both a femur (thigh bone) and a tibia (shin bone) from the same fossilized Tenontosaurus showed medullary bone, while growth rings in its bones indicated the pregnant dinosaur was eight years old.

"These were prey dinosaurs, so they were probably taken out when really young and small or when old," Werning said. "So, if you don't reproduce early, you lose your chance."

Lee, on the other hand, focused on Allosaurus fossils from the Cleveland-Lloyd quarry in Utah, where several thousand Allosaurus bones from at least 70 individuals have been discovered. A smaller and older version of T. rex, Allosaurus lived 155 to 145 million years ago in the late Jurassic period. Lee found one tibia with medullary bone from the University of Utah vertebrate paleontology collection.

The two researchers are continuing to analyze thin slices of fossilized dinosaur bone in hopes of finding more skeletons with medullary bone.

The work was made possible by grants from the Geological Society of America, the Paleontological Society and the University of Oklahoma Graduate Student Senate to Werning and by grants to Lee from the Jurassic Foundation and UC Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080114173919.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 18, 2008, 11:51am

Unusual Fish-eating Dinosaur Had Crocodile-like Skull


This image shows the results of the CT scan reconstruction. The Baryonyx snout bone is transparent brown. This shows us that the teeth (yellow) had extremely deep roots and that Baryonyx had independently evolved a bony palate (the pink structure), also seen in crocodilians -- another feature that makes this dinosaur even more 'crocodile-like'. (Credit: Emily Rayfield)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2008) — An unusual dinosaur has been shown to have a skull that functioned like a fish-eating crocodile, despite looking like a dinosaur. It also possessed two huge hand claws, perhaps used as grappling hooks to lift fish from the water.

Dr Emily Rayfield at the University of Bristol, UK, used computer modelling techniques -- more commonly used to discover how a car bonnet buckles during a crash -- to show that while Baryonyx was eating, its skull bent and stretched in the same way as the skull of the Indian fish-eating gharial -- a crocodile with long, narrow jaws.

Dr Rayfield said: "On excavation, partially digested fish scales and teeth, and a dinosaur bone were found in the stomach region of the animal, demonstrating that at least some of the time this dinosaur ate fish. Moreover, it had a very unusual skull that looked part-dinosaur and part-crocodile, so we wanted to establish which it was more similar to, structurally and functionally -- a dinosaur or a crocodile.

"We used an engineering technique called finite element analysis that reconstructs stress and strain in a structure when loaded. The Baryonyx skull bones were CT-scanned by a colleague at Ohio University, USA, and digitally reconstructed so we could view the internal anatomy of the skull. We then analysed digital models of the snouts of a Baryonyx, a theropod dinosaur, an alligator, and a fish-eating gharial, to see how each snout stressed during feeding. We then compared them to each other."

The results showed that the eating behaviour of Baryonyx was markedly different from that of a typical meat-eating theropod dinosaur or an alligator, and most similar to the fish-eating gharial. Since the bulk of the gharial diet consists of fish, Rayfield's study suggests that this was also the case for Baryonyx back in the Cretaceous.

Dr Angela Milner from the Natural History Museum, who first described the dinosaur and is co-author on the paper, said: "I thought originally it might be a fish-eater and Emily's analysis, which was done at the Natural History Museum, has demonstrated that to be the case.

"The CT-data revealed that although Baryonyx and the gharial have independently evolved to feed in a similar manner, through quirks of their evolutionary history their skulls are shaped in a slightly different way in order to achieve the same function. This shows us that in some cases there is more than one evolutionary solution to the same problem."

The unusual skull of Baryonyx is very elongate, with a curved or sinuous jaw margin as seen in large crocodiles and alligators. It also had stout conical teeth, rather than the blade-like serrated ones in meat-eating dinosaurs, and a striking bulbous jaw tip (or 'nose') that bore a rosette of teeth, more commonly seen today in slender-jawed fish eating crocodilians such as the Indian fish-eating gharial.

The dinosaur in question, Baryonyx walkeri, was discovered near Dorking in Surrey, UK in 1983 by an amateur collector, William Walker, and named after him in 1986 by Alan Charig and Angela Milner. It is an early Cretaceous dinosaur, around 125 million years old, and belongs to a family called spinosaurs.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080113212741.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 18, 2008, 11:55am

96-million-year-old Fossil Pollen Sheds Light On Early Pollinators


This 96-million-year-old fossilized angiosperm pollen clump of Phimopollenites striolata was extracted by careful processing of sediment from three sites in Minnesota's Dakota Formation. Each individual grain within the clump in this image measures approximately 14-by-19 microns. Clumping is generally found only in animal-pollinated flowering plants. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Florida)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2008) — The collapse of honeybee colonies across North America is focusing attention on the honeybees’ vital role in the survival of agricultural crops, and a new study by University of Florida and Indiana University Southeast researchers shows insect pollinators have likely played a key role in the evolution and success of flowering plants for nearly 100 million years.

The origins of when flowers managed to harness insects’ pollinating power has long been murky. But the new study, published online this week on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Web site and appearing in its Dec. 24 print edition, is the first to pinpoint a 96-million-year-old timeframe for a turning point in the evolution of basal angiosperm groups, or early flowering plants, by demonstrating they are predominantly insect-pollinated.

“Our study of clumping pollen shows that insect pollinators most likely have always played a large role in the evolution of flowering plants,” said David Dilcher, a graduate research professor of paleobotany at the Florida Museum of Natural History. “It was true 96 million years ago and we are seeing it today with the potential threat to our agricultural crops because of the collapse of the honeybee colonies. The insect pollinators provide for more efficient and effective pollination of flowering plants.”

The study provides strong evidence for the widely accepted hypothesis that insects drove the massive adaptive radiation of early flowering plants when they rapidly diversified and expanded to exploit new terrestrial niches. Land plants first appear in the fossil record about 425 million years ago, but flowering plants didn’t appear until about 125 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous period.

The study also is the first to describe the biological structure of pollen clumping in the early Late Cretaceous, which holds clues about the types of pollinators with which they were coevolving, said lead author Shusheng Hu, who started the study while at the Florida Museum but is currently at Indiana University Southeast. Hu said previous scientists found examples of early clumped pollen from a slightly earlier time period but these were interpreted as immature parts of anther from a flower, or dismissed as insect packaging activity or fecal pellets.

“We really had to jump out of the box and think in a new way on these widespread pollen clumps,” said Hu, who completed the research in 2006 as part of his UF doctoral work.

Today, flowers specialized for insect pollination disperse clumps of five to 100 pollen grains. Clumped grains are comparatively larger and have more surface relief than wind- or water-dispersed pollen, which tend to be single, smaller and smoother.

“These clumps represent an amazing new strategy in the evolution of flowering plants,” Dilcher said. “For me, the excitement here lies in the early times of these fossil flowers, when angiosperms were making these huge evolutionary steps. What we found with the fossil pollen clumps folds nicely into what has been suggested by molecular biologists that those plants that are basal in angiosperm evolutionary relationships seem to have been dominated by insect pollination.”

The nine species of fossil pollen clumps, combined with known structural changes occurring in flowering plants at this time, led the researchers to suggest that insect pollination was well established by the early Late Cretaceous — only a few million years before the explosion in diversity and distribution of flowering plant families. Known structural changes include early prototypes of stamen and anther, plant organs which lift pollen up and away from the plant, positioning the plants’ genetic material to be passed off to visiting insects.

The researchers sampled pollen from three sites in Minnesota’s Dakota Formation, which represents a time period when a shallow seaway covered North America’s interior.

Co-author David Jarzen, a Florida Museum pollen scientist, refined existing pollen processing techniques for extracting intact fossil pollen from the calcareous Minnesota limestone and silicate mudstone rock matrix. Co-author David Taylor, a botanist from Indiana University Southeast contributed a statistical analysis of pollination methods among living and early plants.

A Smithsonian Institution paleobiologist, Conrad Labandeira, who specializes in insect-plant associations, and who is unassociated with the study, said that the authors’ ability to demonstrate pollen clumping in basal angiosperms adds one more piece to the puzzle of several pollination types established in the mid-Cretaceous.

“These data are very comparable with parallel data such as flower structure, pollen structure, and insect mouthpart morphology, that now documents a wide variety of pollination types that occurred before the Cenomanian,” Labandeira said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080117181233.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 18, 2008, 12:17pm

Extinct Marsupial Lion Tops African Lion In Fight To Death


Side view of the 3 Dimensional Marsupial lion skull simulation showing the distribution of stress during a bite at the 'canine' teeth. Blue denotes little or no stress - through greens and yellows to red and then white as highest stresses. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of New South Wales)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2008) — Pound for pound, Australia's extinct marsupial lion (Thylacoleo carnifex) would have made mince meat of today's African lion (Panthera leo) had the two big hyper-carnivores ever squared off in a fight to the death, according to an Australian scientist.

New research published in the Journal of Zoology suggests that Thylacoleo killed prey rapidly, using its "bolt-cutter" type teeth to scissor through hide and flesh to produce major trauma and blood loss.

By contrast, African lions and similar big cats of today use their bite force to suffocate prey, using a "clamp and hold" technique that can take up to 15 minutes with large prey such as Cape buffalo.

"My results suggest that the marsupial lion employed a unique killing technique," says research author Stephen Wroe. "It used its massive carnassial cheekteeth to effect major trauma and a rapid kill. Unlike any living mammalian carnivores, the marsupial's carnassials were not only butchery tools but also active components in the killing process."

Using a sophisticated computer modelling method [finite element (FE) analysis], that renders dynamic 3D models based on CT scans of the marsupial's cranial mechanics and musculoskeletal architecture, Wroe has revealed that the creature's skull, jaw, and head and neck muscles were well adapted to using the unique technique for killing large prey, but not for delivering the prolonged suffocating bite of living big cats.

"The marsupial lion also had an extremely efficient bite," Wroe says. "In addition to very powerful jaw muscles for its size, its muscle and skull architecture were arranged in such a way as to take greater advantage of leverage than in living cats."

Wroe, who has published findings about bite force in other hypercarnivores, such as great white sharks and sabre tooth tigers, believes there is now no doubt that Australia's marsupial lion was a fearsome predator that punched well above its weight.

"Certainly, T carnifex was seriously over-engineered for dispatching small prey. These new findings support the conclusion that the creature regularly preyed on relatively large species and was able to effect quick kills and withstand large forces generated by large struggling prey.

"Hypothetically, had a large marsupial lion ever come face to face with an African lion of similar size, it could have use its deadly cheek teeth and incredibly powerful arms to inflict mortal wounds on the mammal," Wroe says. "Had it not become extinct, it might now hold top spot over toady's 'king of the jungle.'"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080117093440.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 23, 2008, 11:32am

Earth begins new epoch because of humans

LEICESTER, England, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- British geologists suggest humans have so changed the Earth that the planet has ended its Holocene era and has entered a new epoch -- the Anthropocene.

Jan Zalasiewicz and colleagues at the University of Leicester said Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, in 2002, suggested the Earth had left the Holocene and started the Anthropocene era because of the global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development.

The researchers said they have now documented a radical, yet compelling, case for the idea that the appearance of humans has so physically changed Earth that there is no organic justification for linking pre- and post-industrialized Earth within the same epoch -- the Holocene.

The scientists said their findings present the scholarly groundwork for the formal adoption by the International Commission on Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene as the youngest epoch of, and most recent addition to, the Earth's geological timescale.

The research is presented in the journal Geology.

http://www.newsdaily.com/Science/UPI-1-20080123-10241000-bc-britain-epoch.xml

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 24, 2008, 9:23am

Maya Mask Splendor Enhanced With Sparkling Mica


Reconstruction of the Rosalila in the Copan museum. The Rosalila is still entombed within another pyramid. Ms Goodall said the mica was applied over the red paint of stucco masks on the corners of Copan's well-preserved Rosalila temple, found buried under another pyramid. (Credit: Dr. Jay Hall)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2008) — Ancient Mayan temple builders discovered and used lustrous pigments to make their buildings dazzle in the daylight, a Queensland University of Technology researcher has discovered.

Studying tiny shards of paint from the Mayan city of Copan, QUT physical and chemical sciences PhD researcher Rosemary Goodall found evidence of mica that would have made the buildings glitter when hit by the sun.

Ms Goodall said the mica was applied over the red paint of stucco masks on the corners of Copan's well-preserved Rosalila temple, found buried under another pyramid.

"The Rosalila would have been one of the highest buildings of the valley in its time, built by the Maya ruler to exhibit his power and impress his subjects," Ms Goodall said.

Using a novel analysis technique to examine tiny paint samples, Ms Goodall found two new pigments at the famous Maya archaeological and tourist site in Honduras, Central America.

"I discovered a green pigment and a mica pigment that would have had a lustrous effect," she said.

"I'm sure that when the sun hit it, it must have sparkled. It must have had the most amazing appearance."

She said site of Copan was first populated in 1600 BC, but it wasn't until the cultural heyday of AD 400-800 that the Rosalila was built. Mystery surrounds the Maya people, who had largely disappeared by about AD 900.

"I used an infrared analysis technique, called FTIR-ATR spectral imaging, which has not been used for archaeology before," she said.

"Using this technique and Raman spectroscopy I found the 'signature' of each mineral in paint samples only millimetres in size.

"The Rosalila has more than 15 layers of paint and stucco. Knowing the mineral make-up of the pigments tells us what colours were painted on each layer.

"I also found the stucco changed over time. It became more refined and changed in colour from grey to white."

Ms Goodall said the Rosalila is a fine example of the Copan buildings, which were painted in red and white, with beautiful masks and carvings painted in multiple colours.

She said it the temple was coated in stucco then filled with rubble and a larger pyramid was built around it, keeping it brilliantly preserved inside. "The next step of my research will be to take a portable Raman spectrometer to Copan to undertake more paint analysis," she said.

"The research will help determine the best ways to conserve the Copan ruins - by understanding what's there, you can suggest ways to stop damage, and the tests do not destroy the samples."

Ms Goodall and her PhD supervisor Peter Fredericks are working in collaboration with Dr Jay Hall (University of Queensland) and Dr Rene Viel (Copan Formative Project, Honduras), who are directing the long-term UQ-led archaeological field research program at Copan.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080123085308.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 24, 2008, 9:25am

New Discoveries At The Ash Altar Of Zeus Offer Insights Into Origins Of Ancient Greece's Most Powerful God


Top: Altar of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion. Left to right: Dan Diffendale, University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Arthur Rhon, Wichita State University, and Arvey Basa, University of Arizona. Bottom Left: Crystal lentoid seal of a bull, Late Minoan I or II, ca. 1400 B.C. Diameter 3 cm. Bottom Right: Reverse of Arcadian League silver stater, Zeus Lykaios seated on a throne with an eagle in his left hand. 5th century B.C. Diameter 2 cm. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania Museum)

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2008) — The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and particularly the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia.

“On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from it most of the Peloponnesos can be seen,” wrote Pausanias, in his famous, well-respected multi-volume Description of Greece. “Before the altar on the east stand two pillars, on which there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they sacrifice in secret to Lykaion Zeus. I was reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice; let them be as they are and were from the beginning.”

What would surprise Pausanias—as it is surprising archaeologists—is how early that “beginning” actually may be. New pottery evidence from excavations by the Greek-American, interdisciplinary team of the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project indicates that the ash altar—a cone of earth located atop the southern peak of Mt Lykaion where dedications were made in antiquity— was in use as early as 5,000 years ago—at least 1,000 years before the early Greeks began to worship the god Zeus.

In addition, a rock crystal seal, bearing an image of a bull, of probable Late Minoan times (1500-1400 BCE) and also found on the altar, suggests an intriguing early connection between the Minoan isle of Crete and Arcadia, and bears witness to another chapter in what now appears to be an especially long history of activity atop the mountain.

“Mt. Lykaion, Arcadia is known from ancient literature as one of the mythological birthplaces of Zeus, the other being on Crete,” noted Dr.Romano. David Gilman Romano is Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and a co-director of the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project.“

The fact that the ash altar to Zeus includes early material dating back to 3000 BCE suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient. The altar is long standing and may in fact pre-date the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world. We don’t yet know how the altar was first used, and whether it was used in connection with natural phenomena such as wind, rain, light or earthquakes, possibly to worship some kind of divinity male or female or a personification representing forces of nature.” Below the altar in a mountain meadow is an ancient hippodrome, a stadium and buildings related to the ancient athletic festival that rivaled the neighboring sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia.

Although the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, just 22 miles from the extensively-studied Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, has been well known since antiquity, no excavations had taken place there in a century. The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project, begun in 2004 with the first seasons of excavation work in 2006 and 2007, is a collaborative project of the Greek Archaeological Service, 39th Ephoreia in Tripolis, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the University of Arizona.

David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania Museum co-directs the project with Michaelis Petropoulos of the Greek Archaeological Service in Tripolis, and Mary Voyatzis of the University of Arizona.

High in the Arcadian mountains, the sanctuary at Mt. Lykaion was well known in antiquity as one of the most famous Zeus shrines in ancient Greece, as well as a site of early athletics in honor of the Greek’s greatest god. The site, which features an ancient hippodrome, a stadium and buildings related to the ancient athletic festival that rivaled the neighboring sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, is known to have served as an important Pan Arcadian as well as Pan Hellenic Sanctuary that attracted pilgrims, athletes and dignitaries from all over the Greek world from the Archaic period to the Hellenistic period, ca. 700-200 BCE.

Last summer, a small excavation trench in the altar yielded Early, Middle and Late Helladic, ca. 3000-1200 BCE pottery sherds, indicating activity in this region from as early as 3000 BCE. The new material creates a vastly different account of the history of the altar and the site.

The intriguing discovery of one rock crystal lens-shaped seal bearing the image of a bull with full frontal face, likely of Late Minoan I or Late Minoan II date (1500-1400 BC), has, as of yet, no related materials to accompany it—but it does show at least some early connection between the two cultural areas.

Early 20th century excavations of the Greek Archaeological Society at the altar suggested the earliest activity there to be about 700 BCE, and the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project excavation found much evidence for activity in later periods: pottery and objects from the Geometric, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods (900-200 BCE), including miniature vases, bronze tripods and rings, iron blades, an iron spit, and silver coins, were excavated from the trench.

Several ancient authors mention that human sacrifice was practiced at the altar of Zeus—Pausanias alludes to mysterious sacrificial practices in his Descriptions of Greece—but to date, no evidence has been found. A considerable amount of animal bones was recovered from the altar excavations, with analysis underway, but preliminary results indicate large and small animal bones of various kinds, and no human bones.

The Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project boasts a Greek-American, interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists, geophysicists, architects, topographical surveyors and students working throughout the site. The project will continue excavations at the altar, and other areas of the sanctuary, in 2008, with plans to continue work through 2010, and a long-range proposal under consideration to develop an archaeological park to unify and protect nearly 300 square kilometers of land in and around the site.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080123114601.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Jan 27, 2008, 10:49am

Grim secrets of Pharaoh's city
By John Hayes-Fisher
BBC Timewatch


Bones reveal the darker side to building Ancient Egypt

Evidence of the brutal lives endured by some ancient Egyptians to build the monuments of the Pharaohs has been uncovered by archaeologists.

Skeletal remains from a lost city in the middle of Egypt suggest many ordinary people died in their teenage years and lived a punishing lifestyle.

Many suffered from spinal injuries, poor nutrition and stunted growth.

The remains were found at Amarna, a new capital built on the orders of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, 3,500 years ago.

Hieroglyphs written at the time record that the Pharaoh, who was father of Tutankhamun, was driven to create a new city in honour of his favoured god, the Aten, with elaborate temples, palaces and tombs.

Along with his wife Nefertiti, he abandoned the capital Thebes, leaving the old gods and their priests behind and marched his people 200 miles (320km) north to an inhospitable desert plain beside the River Nile.

The city, housing up to 50,000 people, was built in 15 years; but within a few years of the Pharaoh's death, the city was abandoned, left to the wind and the sand.

The bones reveal a darker side to life, a striking reversal of the image that Akhenaten promoted
Professor Barry Kemp

Disease found

For more than a century archaeologists looked in vain for any trace of Amarna's dead.

But recently archaeologists from a British-based team made a breakthrough when they found human bones in the desert, which had been washed out by floods.

These were the first bones clearly identifiable as the workers who lived in the city; and they reveal the terrible price they paid to fulfil the Pharaoh's dream.

"The bones reveal a darker side to life, a striking reversal of the image that Akhenaten promoted, of an escape to sunlight and nature" says Professor Barry Kemp who is leading the excavations.

Painted murals found in the tombs of high officials from the time show offering-tables piled high with food. But the bones of the ordinary people who lived in the city reveal a different picture.

"The skeletons that we see are certainly not participating in that form of life," says Professor Jerry Rose, of the University of Arkansas, US, whose anthropological team has been analysing the Amarna bones.

"Food is not abundant and certainly food is not of high nutritional quality. This is not the city of being-taken-care-of."

The population of Amarna had the shortest stature ever recorded from Egypt's past, but they would also have been worked hard on the Pharaoh's ambitious plans for his new capital.

The temples and palaces required thousands of large stone blocks. Working in summer temperatures of 40C (104F), the workers would have had to chisel these out of the rock and transport them 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from the quarries to the city.

The bone remains show many workers suffered spinal and other injuries. "These people were working very hard at very young ages, carrying heavy loads," says Professor Rose.

"The incidence of youthful death amongst the Amarna population was shockingly high by any standard." Not many lived beyond 35. Two-thirds were dead by 20.

But even this backbreaking schedule may not be enough to explain the extreme death pattern at Amarna.

Even Akhanaten's son, Tutankhamen, died aged just 20; and archaeologists are now beginning to believe that there might also have been an epidemic here.

This corroborates the historical records of Egypt's principal enemy, the Hittites, which tell of the devastation of an epidemic caught from Egyptians captured in battle around the time of Tutankhamen's reign. It appears this epidemic may also have been the final blow to the people of Amarna.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7209472.stm

Published: 2008/01/25 17:11:21 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 1, 2008, 6:51am



'Missing link' to crocodiles found
Source: Antonio Scorza, AFP
Published: Friday, February 1, 2008 1:13 AEDT

A life-size reproduction of a Montealtosuchus Arrudacamposi from the Late Cretaceous stands on display during a presentation at the Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil, on January 31, 2008.

Brazilian paleontologists say they have found the well-preserved fossil of Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, a new species of prehistoric predator dating back about 80 million years, that represents a 'missing link' to modern-day crocodiles.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/2008/02/01/2152207.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 2, 2008, 4:05am

Lost City Pumps Life-essential Chemicals At Rates Unseen At Typical Deep Ocean Hydrothermal Vents


The carbonate structures at the Lost City Field include these spires stretching 90 feet tall. The white, sinuous spine is freshly deposited carbonate material. Added digitally to this image are the remotely operated vehicles Hercules and Argus that were used to explore the hydrothermal vent field during an expedition in 2005 funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Credit: Kelley, U of Washington, IFE, URI-IAO, NOAA)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2008) — Hydrocarbons -- molecules critical to life -- are being generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal vent field in the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

Being able to produce building blocks of life makes Lost City-like vents even stronger contenders as places where life might have originated on Earth, according to Giora Proskurowski and Deborah Kelley, two authors of a paper in the Feb. 1 Science. Researchers have ruled out carbon from the biosphere as a component of the hydrocarbons in Lost City vent fluids.

Hydrocarbons, molecules with various combinations of hydrogen and carbon atoms, are key to cellular life. For instance, cell walls can be built from simple hydrocarbon chains and amino acids are short hydrocarbon chains hooked up with nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur atoms.

"The generation of hydrocarbons was the very first step, otherwise Earth would have remained lifeless," says lead author Proskurowski, who conducted the research while earning his doctorate from the University of Washington and during post-doctoral work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Some researchers believe the first building blocks of life made their way from outer space while others hypothesize that the right ingredients were generated by geological process on Earth, perhaps at hydrothermal vent systems where seawater seeps into the seabed and picks up heat and minerals until the water is so hot it vents back into the ocean.

The Lost City hydrothermal vents, discovered by Kelley and others during a National Science Foundation expedition in 2000, are formed in a very different way than the black smoker vents scientists have known about since the 1970s. Black smokers are so named because it can appear as if smoke is billowing from them. In fact the smoke is actually dark iron- and sulfur-rich minerals precipitating when scalding vent waters -- as hot as 760 F --meet the icy cold depths. The spires and mounds that form are darkly mottled mixes of sulfide minerals.

In contrast, structures at the Lost City hydrothermal vent field are nearly pure carbonate, the same material as limestone in caves, and they range in color from white to cream to gray. The structures drape the cliffs at Lost City and range from the size of tiny toadstools to the 18-story column, named Poseidon, that dwarfs most known black smoker vents by at least 100 feet. The field was named Lost City in part because it is on top of a submerged mountain named Atlantis and was discovered by chance during an expedition on board the research vessel Atlantis.

Water venting at Lost City is generally 200 F. The fluids do not get as hot as the black smokers because the water is not heated by magma but rather by heat released during serpentinization, a chemical reaction between seawater and mantle rock.

That's also the reason for all the hydrocarbons.

Naturally occurring carbon dioxide is locked in mantle rock. At Lost City, the reaction between the rock and seawater produces 10 to 100 times more hydrogen and the hydrocarbon methane than a typical black smoker system found along mid-ocean ridges, the Science co-authors found.

The Lost City system forms hydrocarbons in higher concentrations and with more complexity than do typical black smoker systems on mid-ocean ridges, says Kelley, a University of Washington professor of oceanography who was the principal investigator for a 2005 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's expedition that gathered the samples analyzed for the Science paper.

The hydrocarbons being produced at Lost City are not formed from atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater because none of the carbon carries the radioisotopic signature that would be present if they had been exposed to sunlight, Proskurowski says.

Analysis of rock from Lost City shows that the hydrocarbons are not coming from the living biosphere. Rock in contact with seawater has a very consistent ratio of carbon dioxide to helium. But the rock at Lost City had a strikingly different ratio. It turns out that the depleted amount of carbon dioxide in the rocks roughly equals the amount of hydrocarbons being produced in the fluids, he says.

"The detection of these organic building blocks from a non-biological source is possible evidence in our quest to understand the origin of life on this planet and other solar bodies," Proskurowski says.

Lost City is exceptional, Kelley says, because chemical reactions in the seafloor produce acetate, formate, hydrogen and alkaline fluids. All these substances may have been key to the emergence of life, according to work published recently by Michael Russell and A.J. Hall of Glasgow and William Martin of Germany. In addition, acetate and formate found in Lost City fluids may have been an important energy source for the ancestors of methanogens, microorganisms that live off the methane at places like Lost City. It's perhaps one more bit of evidence about where life may have originated, Kelley says.

The Lost City hydrothermal vent field is about 2,300 miles east of Florida, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, at a depth of 2,600 feet. Microorganisms there thrive in alkaline vent fluids, some nearly as caustic as liquid drain cleaner. This contrasts to the previously studied black-smoker vents where organisms have adjusted to acidic water. Lost City microbes live off methane and hydrogen instead of the carbon dioxide that is the key energy source for life at black-smoker vents.

Although nobody has found another field like Lost City, Kelley says she's sure others exist because there are so many other places where mantle rock has been thrust up through the seafloor, exposing it to seawater and serpentinization. It is likely that even more mantle rock was present in the oceans of early Earth, Kelley says.

Other co-authors of the paper, "Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field," are Marvin Lilley and Erick Olson from the University of Washington, Jeffrey Seewald and Sean Sylva from Woods Hole Oceanograhic Institution, Gretchen Früh-Green from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and John Lupton with NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080131151856.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 6, 2008, 11:03am

As A River Runs Through It, A Death Valley Stream Offers Insights Into Flooding And Climate Change


Gower Gulch in the Amargosa Mountains, Death Valley National Park, California. (Credit: iStockphoto/Steve Geer)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — Death Valley may be known by its three superlatives: hottest, driest, and lowest – as in temperature, rainfall, and elevation in the United States. But it was the flow of water through the National Park that attracted Boston College Asst. Prof. of Geology and Geophysics Noah P. Snyder to the desert of eastern California.

In one of the few places where rivers do not flow to the sea, Snyder's research into a 1941 stream diversion in the historic park uncovered a rare glimpse into a range of geological changes that might otherwise take centuries to unfold but instead are revealed following the flashfloods that strike the park, located against the Nevada border.

Furnace Creek Wash, diverted to protect a village from flooding during infrequent but powerful rainstorms, has carved through Gower Gulch over the years. The way the creek cuts through the sandy hills highlights the effects original landscape and changing channel dynamics exert on the responses of diverted rivers and streams, according to research by Snyder, published in February edition of the journal Geology.

"This is an unusual opportunity to see how a river system responds to an extreme change in the historic rates of water and sediment flow," said Snyder, who co-authored the paper with former graduate student Lisa R. Kammer '05. "It's a hot topic in the earth sciences where we're interested in learning more about the interaction of climate change, tectonics and bedrock erosion."

In response to the diversion, Snyder found the Furnace Creek produced an unusual hybrid of consequences: at some points, the creek cuts into the land, leaving deep slices in the bedrock from the surge of flood waters brought on by as little as a half-inch to an inch of rain falling over the watershed that rolls out of the Funeral Mountains. At other points, where soft, sedimentary rocks sit below the surface, the creek has had a widening effect on its channel. These changes are brought on by periodic storms, not the steady flow of a routinely-fed creek or river, giving Snyder a chance to document this combination of effects at work.

Geologists have established models to predict the responses of channels, particularly bedrock rivers, Snyder said. Until he decided to investigate Gower Gulch, there had been few natural experiments to allow geologists to test and validate the models.

Snyder, who presented some of his findings in December at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, specializes in river habitat restoration and lends his expertise to a number of dam removal projects throughout New England. He said he was drawn to Gower Gulch because of the unique opportunity to measure effects that mimic the impact of climate change on river flooding and erosion.

His research included a field study in the park in 2005, a review of aerial photographs taken between 1948 and 1995, as well as laser-guided elevation data provided by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping.

A geological wonder known for its searing summer-time temperatures, Death Valley sits nearly 300 feet below sea level, making it one of the few sites in the U.S. where rivers do not flow to the sea. A small dam and an opening blasted by engineers in 1941 now send Furnace Creek Wash rushing through Gower Gulch before emptying into the valley floor. Gower Gulch, dominated by sculpted sedimentary rock reminiscent of the rutted landscape of the Badlands of South Dakota, was photographed after the diversion by the late naturalist and photographer Ansel Adams.

The creek was diverted to prevent the flooding of a small village, but the National Park continues to sustain damage when heavy rains deluge the region. A flash flood in 2006 swept away vehicles, washed out roads and undermined visitor facilities at the Zabriskie Point look-out, according to park service reports.

Snyder said he does not expect any efforts to return Furnace Creek Wash to its original state because that would probably require relocation of the National Park Service village downstream. But the activity in Gower Gulch provides almost a time-lapse view into the effects of water flow. Under normal conditions, the effects of rivers and streams take eons to clearly manifest themselves in the land. But the man-made diversion, coupled with the intermittent flow of the creek through Gower Gulch has produced a microcosm of geological activity for Snyder and other scientists to observe, Snyder said.

"We would never see anything quite like this in New England, which certainly made this an interesting research project," Snyder said. "But given the climatic change that has been documented, the potential impact of that change on river floods, and the growing burden placed on waterways around the world, there's a value in better understanding the dynamics at play as rivers flow naturally or as a result of our intervention."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130092039.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 6, 2008, 11:06am

History Of Quaternary Volcanism And Lava Dams In Western Grand Canyon

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2008) — John Wesley Powell wrote in 1895: “...what a conflict of water and fire there must have been [in western Grand Canyon]! Just imagine a river of molten rock running down over a river of melted snow.”

Over 110 years later, a synthesis of new and existing dates on these lava flows shows that many are significantly younger than initially thought and all are less than 725 thousand years old. The geochronology data indicates four major episodes when lava flows either erupted into the canyon or flowed over the rim into it: 725-475 thousand years ago (ka), 400-275 ka, 225-150 ka, and 150-75 ka.

These flows formed lava dams in western Grand Canyon that had dramatic impact on the Colorado River.

This paper* presents light detection and ranging (lidar) data to establish the elevations of the tops and bottoms of basalt flow remnants along the river corridor. These data show the original extent of now-dissected intra-canyon flows and aid in correlation of flow remnants.

From 725 to 475 ka, volcanism built a high edifice within Grand Canyon in the area of the Toroweap fault, with dike-cored cinder cones on both rims and within the canyon itself. These large-volume eruptions helped drive the far-traveled basalt flows which flowed down-canyon over 120 km. A second episode of volcanism, from 400 to 275 ka, built a 215-m-high dam along the Hurricane fault, about 15 km downstream.

The ca. 200 and 100 ka flows (previously mapped as Gray Ledge) were smaller flows and lava cascades that entered the canyon from the north rim between the Toroweap and Hurricane faults.

The combined results suggest a new model for the spatial and temporal distribution of volcanism in Grand Canyon in which composite lava dams and edifices were generally leaky in proximal areas.

Available data suggest that the demise of volcanic edifices may have involved either large outburst-flood events or normal fluvial deposition at times when the river was established on top of basalt flows. These data highlight complex interactions of volcanism and fluvial processes in this classic locality.

This research, authored by Ryan Crow (University of New Mexico) et al. was published in the February issue of Geosphere, published by the Geological Society of America.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205100014.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 6, 2008, 11:40am

Archaeologists Discover Roman Fort In Cornwall, England

ScienceDaily (Feb. 5, 2008) — University of Exeter archaeologists have discovered a Roman fort in South East Cornwall. Dating back to the first century AD, this is only the third Roman fort ever to have been found in the county. The team believes its location, close to a silver mine, may be significant in shedding light on the history of the Romans in Cornwall.

Situated next to St Andrew’s Church, Calstock, the site is on top of a hill in an area known to have been involved with silver mining in medieval times. University archaeologists became interested in the site when they found references in medieval documents to the smelting of silver ‘at the old castle’ and ‘next to the church’ in Calstock.

The team conducted a geophysical survey, which clearly showed the outline of a feature that is a very similar shape to another Roman fort recently found near Lostwithiel. They started digging and uncovered the unique and instantly-recognisable shape of a Roman military ditch, confirming their find as a Roman fort.

Dr Stephen Rippon of the University of Exeter’s School of Geography, Archaeology and Earth Resources, said: “When I first saw the results from the geophysical survey, suggesting the outline of a Roman fort, I could hardly believe my eyes. As an archaeologist it is so rare to find something so significant, which was previously entirely unknown. It’s a very exciting discovery.”

The team of excavators, led by University of Exeter research fellow Chris Smart, has also dug up pottery, believed to be from the first century AD. Perhaps the most intriguing finds, though, are the remains of furnaces, possibly related to silver working. The team will now use radiocarbon dating techniques to establish the age of these finds. If they are Roman, this will show for the first time the Romans’ interest in exploiting Cornish minerals.

Very little is known about the Roman occupation in Cornwall, so this discovery could mark an important step in piecing together this period of history. Dr Rippon continued: “The Roman army only stayed in the South West for a few decades after the Conquest, before moving on to Wales. This find could help us to understand whether they were merely keeping watch over the locals, or were actually interested in exploiting commercial opportunities in the region. The discovery could therefore further our understanding of the rich history of mining in the county.”

The two other known sites of Roman forts in Cornwall are also in the South East of the county. One was discovered last year near Restormel Castle, Lostwithiel, and the other is at Nanstallon, near Bodmin. Both sites are close to mineral deposits in areas associated with tin mining.

This research project was generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust with additional support from the University of Exeter.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205202327.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 6, 2008, 1:10pm

How Did Huge Dinosaurs Find Enough Food? Did Bacteria Aid Their Digestion?

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — Scientists from the University of Bonn are researching which plants giant dinosaurs could have lived off more than 100 million years ago. They want to find out how the dinosaurs were able to become as large as they did. In fact such gigantic animals should not have existed according to general rules of ecology.

Dinosaur digestion

Take 200 milligrammes of dried and ground equisetum, ten millilitres of digestive juice from sheep's rumen, a few minerals, carbonate and water. Fill a big glass syringe with the mix, clamp this into a revolving drum and put the whole thing into an incubator, where the brew can rotate slowly. In this way you obtain the artificial 'dinosaur rumen'. With this apparatus (also used as a 'Menke gas production technique' in assessing food for cows) Dr. Jürgen Hummel from the Bonn Institute of Animal Sciences (Bonner Institut für Tierwissenschaften) is investigating which plants giant dinosaurs could have lived off more than 100 million years ago, since this is one of the pieces which are still missing in the puzzle involving the largest land animals that ever walked the earth. The largest of these 'sauropod dinosaurs' with their 70 to 100 tonnes had a mass of ten full grown elephants or more than 1000 average people.

Larger than permitted

How the dinosaurs could ever attain this size is something which scientists from Germany and Switzerland are investigating. The Bonn palaeontologist, Professor Martin Sander, the coordinator of the research group 'Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs: The Evolution of Gigantism', says, 'There is a law to which most animals living today conform. The larger an animal, the smaller the density of the population, i.e. the fewer animals of the same species there are per square kilometre.' The larger an animal is, the larger the amount of food it has to have in order to survive. Therefore a specific area can only feed a certain maximum number of animals.

At the same time there is a lower limit to the density of population. If this is undercut, the species dies out: 'In this case diseases can rapidly wipe out the whole stock. Moreover, finding a mate becomes difficult,' Martin Sander explains. An animal like the 100-tonne argentinosaurus should have normally not had this 'minimum population density', actually it should not have been able to exist. But there are hypotheses for this apparent paradox: for example the giant dinosaurs presumably had a metabolism that was lower than that of mammals. In this context it is unclear how nutritious the plants were that formed their diet.

This question is being investigated by Dr. Jürgen Hummel in conjunction with Dr. Marcus Clauss from the University of Zurich. 'We assume that the herbivorous dinosaurs must have had a kind of fermenter, similar to the rumen in cows today.' Almost all existing herbivores digest their food by using bacteria in this way. The panda is the exception. Because the panda is not like this its digestion is inefficient. It stuffs bamboo leaves into its mouth all day long, in order to meet its energy needs, despite the fact that it does not move about much, thereby saving energy.

Jürgen Hummel transforms glass syringes into simple fermenters, which he fills with bacteria from the sheep's rumen. 'These micro-organisms are very old from an evolutionary point of view; we can therefore assume that they also existed in the past,' he explains. To the mix of bacteria he adds dried and ground food plants: grass, foliage or herbs which still form part of animals' diet, and for comparison equisetum, Norfolk Island pine or ginkgo leaves, i.e. parts of plants which have been growing for more than 200 million years on earth. The gas formed during the fermentation process presses the plunger out of the syringes. Jürgen Hummel can therefore read the success of the fermentation process directly off their scales. This is measured according to a simple rule: the more gas is produced, the 'higher the quality' of the food.

Equisetum is bad for the teeth

These 'old' plants stand their ground surprisingly well compared to today's flora. 'The difference is not as great as might be expected,' Jürgen Hummel emphasises. The bacteria digest ginkgo even better than foliage, but they seem to prefer equisetum most. With it gas production is even higher than with some grasses. Nevertheless, equisetum figures in the diet of comparatively few animals. The reason is that in addition to the toxins present in many modern species it wears down animals' teeth too much. 'Equisetum contains a lot of silicates,' Jürgen Hummel says. 'It acts like sand paper.'

However, many dinosaurs did not have any molars at all. They just pulled up their food and gulped it down. The mechanical break-up may have been carried out by a 'gastric mill'. Similar to today's birds, dinosaurs may have swallowed stones with which they ground the food to a paste with their muscular stomach. However, there are no clear indications of this. Only recently the Bonn palaeontologist Dr. Oliver Wings doubted that dinosaurs had bezoar stones, at least this assumption could not be verified from fossil findings.

The results of the research have now been published in the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B'.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080206105443.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 7, 2008, 8:56am

Oldest Australian Crayfish Fossils Provide Missing Evolutionary Link

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — Crayfish body fossils and burrows discovered in Victoria, Australia, have provided the first physical evidence that crayfish existed on the continent as far back as the Mesozoic Era, says Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin, who headed up a study on the finds.

"Studying the fossil burrows gives us a glimpse into the ecology of southern Australia about 115 million years ago, when the continent was still attached to Antarctica," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory and an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne.

During that era, diverse plants grew in what is today Antarctica and dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness along southern Australia river plains. The period is of particular interest to scientists since it is believed to be the last time the Earth experienced pronounced global warming, with an average temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit – just 10 degrees warmer than today.

The crayfish body fossils consist of an abdomen and two claws, and the fossil burrows are nearly identical to those made by modern crayfish in southeastern Australia. "Comparing these fossil burrows to those made by modern crayfish in Australia shows us that their behavior hasn't changed that much," says Martin, who specializes in trace fossils.

Biologists have long been fascinated by crayfish, due to their wide range – the freshwater decapods are found on almost every continent and have adapted to extremely diverse environments. Thomas Huxley, a colleague of Charles Darwin, was the first scientist to ponder how crayfish, which cannot survive in saltwater, could have spread to so many continents, according to Martin.

Such studies helped lay the groundwork for plate tectonics, which revolutionized the earth sciences in the 1960s through the theory that the continents were once connected. More recently, molecular biologists have theorized that all Southern Hemisphere crayfish originated in southeastern Australia.

"The evolution of Southern Hemisphere crayfish has challenged researchers since the 1870s," Martin says. "Only now, 140 years later, are we starting to put together the physical evidence for this evolution through the discovery of fossils."

On Feb. 2, the earth science journal Gondwana Research published online the results of the crayfish study, which was conducted by Martin and a consortium of Australian scientists, including Thomas Rich and Gary Poore of the Museum of Victoria; Mark Schultz and Christopher Austin of Charles Darwin University; and Lesley Kool and Patricia Vickers-Rich of Monash.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080206175537.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 7, 2008, 8:58am

Pygmy Dinosaur Inhabited Bristol's Tropical Islands, UK


Size comparison of the Bristol Dinosaur, Thecodontosaurusa, beside the Plateosaurus dinosaur and an ostrich. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — The celebrated Bristol Dinosaur, Thecodontosaurus, has now been shown to live on subtropical islands around Bristol, instead of in a desert on the mainland as previously thought.

This new research could explain the dinosaur's small size (2 m) in relation to its giant (10 m) mainland equivalent, Plateosaurus. Like many species trapped on small islands, such as the 'hobbit' Homo floresiensis of Flores and pygmy elephants on Malta, the Bristol Dinosaur may have been subjected to island dwarfing.

Geological mapping indicates that the islands were quite small in size and, judging by abundant remains of fossil charcoal, were often swept by fires. Thus the pygmy Bristol Dinosaur may have met its death in a wildfire.

Thecodontosaurus is one of the earliest named dinosaurs. Its bones were originally found near what is now Bristol Zoo in 1834 - some time before dinosaurs were recognised as a group. In 1975, the remains of at least 11 other individual dinosaurs were uncovered in a quarry at Tytherington, north of Bristol.

Now, a collaboration between two palaeontologists, Professor John Marshall, a University of Southampton expert on fossil pollen, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and Bristol University's Dr David Whiteside, an authority on extinct reptiles, has revealed that Thecodontosaurus lived more recently than was previously thought.

Dr Whiteside emphasises that this is 'a unique equal collaboration between a palaeontologist specialising in pollen which are microfossils and a vertebrate palaeontologist working on Triassic reptiles.' He says: 'I can't think of any other scientific paper where the two specialisms were combined to produce a complete paleoenvironmental model which includes the whole community of land animals showing the time and habitat they lived in and how they died.'

Microscopic study of marine algae and fossil pollen shows that, rather than inhabiting the arid uplands of the late Triassic Period, the dinosaurs lived just before the Jurassic Period in a series of lushly vegetated islands around Bristol, the outlines of which can still be seen today in the shape of the land.

Professor John Marshall comments: 'The cave deposits with dinosaurs have been known for over 150 years and are world famous. You would think there would be nothing new to find. But by looking at new deposits with a fresh mind we have been able to radically change the environmental interpretation. The big surprise was discovering that these reptiles did not live on arid uplands but rather on small well-vegetated tropical islands around Bristol around 200 million years ago. It is only the microfossil pollen and algae that can tell us this. The outlines of the islands can still be seen today in the shape of the land.'

Professor Marshall and Dr Whiteside add that the deposits that contain the dinosaurs and other reptiles are very unusual. The bones are found in fossil caves, formed by Triassic rain and seawater dissolving the 350 million-year-old Carboniferous Limestone. The caves then filled with sediments including the dinosaur bones as sea levels rose at the very end of the Triassic Period.

Thecodontosaurus bones have been discovered on both Cromhall Island, north of Bristol and Failand Island, part of which is in the city of Bristol and a short distance inland from the present coast. Geological mapping indicates that the islands the dinosaurs lived on were quite small in size.

The discovery that the Bristol dinosaur lived on very small islands is very important as most researchers have believed that it was a primitive member of the prosauropods, which included some very large animals and existed before the huge sauropods such as Diplodocus of the Jurassic.

'This changes the context which we should view Thecodontosaurus,' says Dr Whiteside. 'It has many similarities to the giant Plateosaurus that lived at the same time and other researchers have not taken into account the rapid changes that take place when large animals are isolated on islands of decreasing size. We believe that the Bristol dinosaur is probably a dwarfed species that derived from the giant Plateosaurus or a very similar animal.'

The study The age, fauna and palaeoenvironment of the Late Triassic fissure deposits of Tytherington, South Gloucestershire, UK is published in Geological Magazine, vol 145, pages 105-147 (2008).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080206193723.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 7, 2008, 9:58am

Earliest Oil Paintings Found in Famed Afghan Caves
Carolyn Barry
for National Geographic News
February 6, 2008

Buddhist murals from Afghanistan's famed Bamian caves are the world's earliest known oil paintings, according to a new chemical analysis. (See photos of the paintings and the cliffs that housed them below.)

The finds, dated to around the 7th century A.D., predate the origins of similar sophisticated painting techniques in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean by more than a hundred years.

The discovery may also provide insights into cultural exchange along the Silk Road connecting east and west Asia during that time period.

The UN World Heritage-listed Bamian Valley, which lies 145 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, is best known as the home of two giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

But murals depicting ornate swirling patterns, Buddhist imagery, and mythological animals also adorn 50 of up to a thousand caves in the region. The decorations date to between the 5th and 9th centuries A.D.

Since 2003 Japanese, European, and U.S. researchers have been working to preserve the damaged murals in a project partly funded by UNESCO. As part of that venture, the scientists tested the composition of the paint to aid restoration efforts—the first scientific analysis of the caves since the 1920s.

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, scientists found that samples from 12 caves and the two destroyed giant Buddhas contained oil- and resin-based paints—likely the earliest known use of either substance for painting.

"Sophisticated" Find

Yoko Taniguchi of the Japan Center for International Cooperation in Conservation in Tokyo presented the findings at a recent international symposium held there.

The analysis showed the murals were painted using a structured, multilayered technique reminiscent of early European methods.

The murals typically have a white base layer of a lead compound, followed by an upper layer of natural or artificial pigments mixed with either resins or walnut or poppy seed drying oils, Taniguchi said.

Oil is used in paint to help fix the dye and help it adhere to a surface. Oil also changes a paint's drying time and viscosity.

More complex than the standard mineral pigments and animal glue previously favored, the technique hints of Indian, West Chinese, and Mediterranean influences, Taniguchi said.

The murals were likely completed by teams of artisans, as was common in Asia until recent times.

The mixed layers of organic material such as oil and resins blended with pigments is quite a "sophisticated manner" of painting, she noted.

The Bamian murals might also be the first confirmed use of resins in paintings, Taniguchi added.

Centuries-Old Knowledge

Drying oils have been identified in a number of medieval European and Byzantine paintings. Such substances, for instance, were being used throughout Europe by around A.D. 800.

But the Afghan research shows that the chemical properties of oils were known long before then.

"The use of drying oils in painting clearly shows an understanding of the properties of this material," said Ioanna Kakoulli, a materials archaeologist at the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program in Los Angeles, California, who was not involved in the analysis project.

Kakoulli and fellow researchers will soon announce the discovery of oil-based paint in a Byzantine mural in Cyprus dating to the 12th century A.D.

"... To date, the [Afghan] murals are among the earliest examples where drying oils have been identified as binding media in painting," Kakoulli said.

Sharon Cather is a wall-painting expert from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

"The discovery of the use of oil [in Afghanistan] is important, because it shows that these undervalued paintings are far more important and far more sophisticated than anyone might have thought," Cather said.

The method also "very probably reflects [the] prevailing painting practice in the region," she added.

Other paintings of similar technical complexity and age can be found along the Silk Road, which was "the avenue for the diffusion of Buddhist religion and Buddhist art," Cather said.

Not all of the cave murals contained oil-based paints, though, or used them in the same way.

"Some paintings from other caves were depicted with different materials and techniques," Japanese researcher Taniguchi said.

"This shows how different painting techniques were introduced in Bamian from different regions in different periods of time."

Further analysis of Central Asian sites might provide even older examples of oil-based paintings, Taniguchi said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080205-afghan-paintings.html

Oldest Oil Paintings Found in Caves


February 6, 2008—A newly discovered mural is one of many in 12 of Afghanistan's famed Bamian caves that show evidence of an oil-based binder. The binder was used to dry paint and help it adhere to rocky surfaces.

The murals—and the remains of two giant, destroyed Buddhas—include the world's oldest known oil-based paint, predating European uses of the substance by at least a hundred years, scientists announced late last month.

Researchers made the discovery while conducting a chemical analysis as part of preservation and restoration efforts at Bamian, which lies about 145 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of the Afghan capital, Kabul.


Seen in a 2005 photo, a towering alcove in Afghanistan's Bamian Valley cliffs shows the former home of a giant Buddha statue. Dating to between the fifth and ninth centuries A.D., the statue was one of a pair destroyed by Taliban officials in 2001 for allegedly insulting Islam.

The region also has as many as a thousand caves. About 50 contain the depictions of ornate swirling patterns, Buddhist imagery, and mythological animals that led UNESCO to name the area a World Heritage site.

Since 2003 Japanese, European, and U.S. researchers have been working to preserve the damaged murals. As part of that venture, the scientists conducted the first scientific analysis of the paintings since the 1920s.

Gas chromatography and mass spectrometry revealed that some of the murals contained oil- and resin-based paints—likely the earliest known use of either substance for painting.


Afghanistan's Bamian cliffs are probably best known for once holding two enormous Buddha statues, as seen in this February 2001 image.

Just one month after this photo was taken, Taliban officials began to destroy the mighty carvings as part of a hard-line crackdown on anything they considered anti-Islamic and idolatrous.

Scientists from around the world have since embarked on a painstaking process to collect the remnants of the dynamited statues and reconstruct them.

In the meantime, researchers have found that the paint used on the Buddhas, along with murals in 12 of 50 painted Bamian caves, contained oil-based binders—the world's oldest known examples of oil paintings.


A Buddhist mural dated to around the seventh century A.D. is one of many in Afghanistan's Bamian Valley that were recently found to contain oil- and resin-based paints.

The use of the substances at such an early date is a surprise, since they require sophisticated knowledge of chemical properties, scientists say.

Oil is used in paints to help fix dyes and help them adhere to surfaces. It also changes a paint's drying time and viscosity.

Europeans began using oil in their pictures by about 800 A.D., but the new research on the Central Asian pushes back the onset of oil-based painting by at least a hundred years.

Researchers hope to find even earlier examples by studying other Central Asian sites.


A mural from the Bamian cave Foladi 6 has been dated to the eighth century A.D. Its artists used an oil-based paint, scientists say, in an early example of mixing organic binding agents with pigments.

The murals were painted using a structured, multilayered technique reminiscent of early European methods, according to researcher Yoko Taniguchi of the Japan Center for International Cooperation in Conservation in Tokyo.

The painters first applied a white base layer of a lead compound. Then an upper layer—natural or artificial pigments mixed with either resins or walnut or poppy seed drying oils—was added.

"The discovery of the use of oil [in Afghanistan] is important, because it shows that these undervalued paintings are far more important and far more sophisticated than anyone might have thought," said Sharon Cather, a wall-painting expert from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/....ures/index.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 8, 2008, 8:35pm

The Romans carried out cataract ops
By Jane Elliott
Health reporter, BBC News

Think of the Roman legacy to Britain and many things spring to mind - straight roads, under-floor heating, aqueducts and public baths.

But they were also pioneers in the health arena - particularly in the area of eye care, with remedies for various eye conditions such as short-sightedness and conjunctivitis.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all is that the Romans - and others from ancient times, including the Chinese, Indians and Greeks - were also able also to carry out cataract operations.


An eye stamp: the equivalent of the modern medicine label

The Romans were almost certainly the first to do this in Britain.

Surgical skills

Nowadays the procedure can be carried out by lasers, but in Roman times technology was rather more basic - needles were inserted into the eye.

The sharp end of the needle was used for surgery and the blunt end heated to cauterise the wound.

A needle is to be taken, pointed enough to penetrate, yet not too fine, and this is to be inserted straight through the two outer tunics
Celsus, Roman author

Blows to the head were sometimes used to try and dislodge the cataract.

Dr Nick Summerton, GP and advisor to the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has written a book "Medicine and Health in Roman Britain".

In it, he details how various medical instruments found in Britain indicate that the Romans carried other advanced procedures, such as head surgery and induced abortions.

"Archaeological finds of eye medicine stamps, representations of eyes together with a sickness report from the Roman fort at Vindolanda suggest that eye diseases were a particular concern within Roman Britain," said Dr Summerton.

"Interestingly the Roman author Celsus described cataract extraction surgery using a specially pointed needle - and possible cataract needles (specilla) have been found in Britain as well as elsewhere in the Roman Empire."

Detailing the procedure Celsus said: "A needle is to be taken, pointed enough to penetrate, yet not too fine, and this is to be inserted straight through the two outer tunics.

"When the (correct) spot is reached, the needle is to be sloped.........and should gently rotate there and little by little."

Dr Summerton explained how eye doctors (oculists) manufactured ointment sticks (collyria) stamped with the ingredients and the name of the eye specialist.

These were used to treat a range of eye problems such as conjunctivitis and other inflammatory or infectious eye condition in addition to short-sightedness.

A large number of the eye remedies contained antiseptics in one form or another.

"The vinegar lotion of Gaius Valerius Amandus (from a stamp found at Biggleswade) or the copper oxide of Aurelius Polychronius (from a stamp found at Kenchester) would have been very effective antiseptics either in treating conjunctivitis or in preventing any scar on the eye becoming infected while it healed."

Excavations provide clues

Dr Summerton has also discovered that religion played an important role in eye care.

"It may be somewhat artificial to seek to rigidly separate out the spiritual from the physical aspects of Romano-British health care," he said.

"At Wroxeter in Shropshire there may have been a particular focus on eye care with the discovery of two collyrium stamps in the names of Tiberius Claudius and Lucillianus together with a case of probable surgical instruments including an eye needle for cataract extraction.

"However, this evidence of 'physical medicine' is complemented by the presence of eye votives (offerings to the Gods).

"In 1967 a piece of sheet-gold in the shape of a pair of eyes was found at the north-west corner of the Baths-Basilica.

"In the same area bronze eyes have been unearthed in addition to numerous eyes carved from wall plaster.

"Wroxeter has also yielded an altar to the Apollo who was considered to have a particular association with eyes."

Dr Alex Ionides, eye surgeon at Moorfield eye hospital said an ancient method for treating cataracts was referred to as "couching".

"A cataract is a clouding of the lens, which loses its transparency and becomes misty and foggy and white," he said.

"The lens is held in place within the eye by multiple radial 'strings' called zonules. These become weaker with age and with cataract formation.

"'Couching' breaks these weakened strings so that the lens is no longer suspended in the correct position and falls away from the pupil, dropping into the back of the eye, allowing light into the eye once more.

"There are different ways of performing couching, one is with a blunt stick to 'knock' the eye hard from the outside, thus dislodging the lens from the zonules by shear blunt force.

"Another form of 'couching' was with a sharp metal probe that would be inserted, without anaesthetic through the edge of the iris, into the eye, and wiggled around to dislodge the cataract from the pupil.

"It wasn't until the 18th century that Daviel in France suggested opening up the eye and removing the cataract.

"This technique met with various success and blinded many people including Handel, who as a result of his cataract surgery, was blind for the last few years of his London life."

Cataract surgery is now the commonest operation performed on the NHS with vastly superior techniques and generally excellent visual outcomes - although no surgery is without some risk.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7194352.stm

Published: 2008/02/09 00:06:13 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 10, 2008, 6:20am

Oldest Horseshoe Crab Fossil Found, 445 Million Years Old


Lunataspis aurora - fossil paratype specimen (about 25 mm wide) beside the dried carapace of a young modern horseshoe crab. (Credit: Left image courtesy of G. Young, The Manitoba Museum; right, D. Rudkin, Royal Ontario Museum)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2008) — Few modern animals are as deserving of the title “living fossil” as the lowly horseshoe crab. Seemingly unchanged since before the Age of Dinosaurs, these venerable sea creatures can now claim a history that reaches back almost half-a billion years.

In a collaborative research article published recently in the British journal Palaeontology, a team of Canadian scientists revealed rare new horseshoe crab fossils from 445 million year-old Ordovician age rocks in central and northern Manitoba, which are about 100 million years older than any previously known forms.

Palaeontologist Dave Rudkin from the Royal Ontario Museum, with colleagues Dr. Graham Young of The Manitoba Museum (Winnipeg) and Dr. Godfrey Nowlan at the Geological Survey of Canada (Calgary), gave their remarkable new fossils the scientific name Lunataspis aurora, meaning literally “crescent moon shield of the dawn” in reference to their shape, geological age and northerly discovery sites. Although they are more “primitive” in several aspects than other known horseshoe crabs, their resemblance to living forms is unmistakable.

The fossil horseshoe crabs were recovered in the course of fieldwork studies on ancient tropical seashore deposits, providing yet another important link to their modern descendants that are today found along warmer seashores of the eastern United States and the Indian Ocean.

This is particularly significant, explains Rudkin. “Understanding how horseshoe crabs adapted to this ecological niche very early on, and then remained there through thick and thin, can give us insights into how ocean and shoreline ecosystems have developed through deep time.”

Today, marine shorelines worldwide are being threatened by human activity, and although some horseshoe crab populations are endangered, their enviably long record on Earth indicates that they have successfully weathered many previous crises, including the mass extinction that saw the demise of the dinosaurs and many other life forms 65 million years ago.

“We do need to be concerned about horseshoe crabs and many of the other unusual life forms found on marine shores,” said Dr. Young. “Nevertheless, we can also be mildly optimistic that some of these things have demonstrated a toughness that may allow them to survive our abuse of these environments.”

Living horseshoe crabs are extensively studied, especially in the fields of ecology and medical research. The exciting discovery of these unusual early fossil relatives adds a new introductory chapter to their remarkable story.

David Rudkin is Assistant Curator in the Department of Natural History (Palaeobiology) at the Royal Ontario Museum, and holds an appointment to the Department of Geology, University of Toronto, as a Lecturer in palaeontology. Rudkin joined the former Department of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM in 1975 and began working on fossils from the Burgess Shale in British Columbia.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207135801.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 10, 2008, 12:07pm

Rubik's Cube In Center Of Earth? Computer Simulations Support New Model Of Earth's Core


Swedish researchers have presented evidence to support their new theory about the structure of the earth's core. "We found that the body-centered cubic structure of iron is the only structure that could correspond to the experimental observations," says Börje Johansson, professor of condensed-matter theory at Uppsala University. (Credit: Image courtesy of Uppsala University)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2008) — Swedish researchers have presented evidence to support their new theory about the structure of the earth's core. The findings may be of significance for our understanding of the cooling down of the earth, and of the stability of the earth’s magnetic field.

It has long been known that the inner core of the earth, a sphere consisting of a solid mass with a radius of about 1,200 km, is mainly made up of iron. However, seismic observations have shown that elastic waves pass more rapidly through this core in directions that are parallel to the earth’s axis of rotation than in directions parallel to the equator­-a phenomenon that has not been previously explained. At the high temperatures that prevail in the core of the earth, these waves should pass at the same speed regardless of their direction.

In the present study, scientists from Uppsala University and KTH present an explanation for this puzzling characteristic. The new publication in Science is part of a series of articles published by the same research team in Nature and Science.

Initially, in 2003, they published strong theoretical proof that the earth’s core assumes the so-called body-centered cubic crystal structure at high temperatures­-a structure that despite its high degree of symmetry evinces a surprisingly high level of elastic anisotropy, that is, its elastic properties are contingent on direction. This theory about the crystal structure directly contradicted the then prevailing view, but since then the theory has found both experimental and theoretical support.

In this new study the researchers present simulations of how seismic waves are reproduced in iron under the conditions that prevail in the core of the earth, showing a difference of about 12 percent depending on their direction-­which suffices as an explanation for the puzzling observations. First the trajectories of movement were calculated for several million atoms in strong interaction with each other. On this basis, the scientists were then able to determine that the progress of the sound waves was actually accurately described in the computer-generated model for iron under the conditions prevailing in the core of the earth.

“We found that the body-centered cubic structure of iron is the only structure that could correspond to the experimental observations,” says Börje Johansson, professor of condensed-matter theory at Uppsala University.

The earth’s heat balance, like its magnetic field, is dependent on the amount of heat that is stored in the inner core of the earth. These conditions, in turn, are dependent on the crystal structure of the iron in the inner core. Previously these estimates were based on models deriving from the hexagonal structure of iron in the inner core. The Swedish scientists’ discovery will now entail a critical revaluation of the cooling off of the earth and of the stability of its magnetic field.

“This study opens new perspectives for our understanding of the earth’s past, present, and future,” says Natalia Skorodumova, a researcher at the Department of Physics and Materials Science.

In their studies these researchers have used models based on the so-called density-functional theory for which Walter Kohn was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize. The calculations were carried out using the most powerful parallel supercomputers in existence, in Stockholm and Linköping.

The body-centered cubic crystal structure forms a cube with atoms in each corner and a further atom in the middle of this cube. It is oriented in such a way that its great diagonal is directed along the earth’s axis of rotation, which makes it possible for the iron to evince sound propagations with the velocities observed.

Journal reference: Anatoly B. Belonoshko, Natalia V. Skorodumova, Anders Rosengren, Börje Johansson. Elastic Anisotropy of Earth's Inner Core. Science 8 February 2008: Vol. 319. no. 5864, pp. 797 - 800 DOI: 10.1126/science.1150302

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080208091314.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 11, 2008, 10:23pm

Nuclear 'Eye' Reveals That Napoleon Was Not Poisoned, Although Arsenic Levels High At That Time


The hairs were placed in capsules and inserted in the core of the nuclear reactor in Pavia. The technique used is known as “neutron activation”, which has two enormous advantages: it does not destroy the sample and it provides extremely precise results even on samples with an extremely small mass, such as human hair samples. (Credit: INFN)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2008) — Arsenic poisoning did not kill Napoleon in Saint Helena, as affirmed by a new meticulous examination performed at the laboratories of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Milano-Bicocca and Pavia, together with the University of Milano-Bicocca and the University of Pavia.

The physicists performing the study used a small nuclear reactor used exclusively for research purposes at the University of Pavia, applying techniques that were created for the project known as “Cuore” (“Heart”), which is being developed at the INFN’s national laboratories in Gran Sasso.

The research, the results of which will be published in the journal “Il Nuovo Saggiatore”, was performed on hair samples that had been taken during different periods of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, from when he was a boy in Corsica, during his exile on the Island of Elba, on the day of his death (May 5, 1821) on the Island of Saint Helena, and on the day after his death.

Samples taken from the King of Rome (Napoleon’s son) in the years 1812, 1816, 1821, and 1826, and samples from the Empress Josephine, collected upon her death in 1814, were also analysed. The hair samples were provided by the Glauco-Lombardi Museum in Parma (Italy), the Malmaison Museum in Paris, and the Napoleonic Museum in Rome. In addition to these “historical” hair samples, 10 hairs from living persons were examined for comparison purposes.

The hairs were placed in capsules and inserted in the core of the nuclear reactor in Pavia. The technique used is known as “neutron activation”, which has two enormous advantages: it does not destroy the sample and it provides extremely precise results even on samples with an extremely small mass, such as human hair samples.

Using this technique, the researchers have established that all of the hair samples contained traces of arsenic. The researchers chose to test for arsenic in particular because for a number of years various historians, scientists, and writers have hypothesized that Napoleon was poisoned by guards during his imprisonment in Saint Helena following the Battle of Waterloo.

The examination produced some surprising results. First of all, the level of arsenic in all of the hair samples from 200 years ago is 100 times greater than the average level detected in samples from persons living today. In fact, the Emperor’s hair had an average arsenic level of around ten parts per one million whereas the arsenic level in the hair samples from currently living persons was around one tenth of a part per one million. In other words, at the beginning of the 19th people evidently ingested arsenic that was present in the environment in quantities that are currently considered as dangerous.

The other surprise regards the finding that there were no significant differences in arsenic levels between when Napoleon was a boy and during his final days in Saint Helena. According to the researchers, and in particular the toxicologists who participated in the study, it is evident that this was not a case of poisoning but instead the result of the constant absorption of arsenic.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080211131357.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 12, 2008, 12:22am

Ancient Proteins Rebuilt To Reveal Primordial Earth's Temperature

ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2008) — Using the genetic equivalent of an ancient thermometer, a team of scientists has determined that the Earth endured a massive cooling period between 500 million and 3.5 billion years ago.

Reporting Feb. 7 in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Florida, the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution and the biotechnology company DNA2.0 describe how they reconstructed proteins from ancient bacteria to measure the Earth's temperature over the ages.

"By studying proteins encoded by these primordial genes, we are able to infer information about the environmental conditions of the early Earth," said Eric Gaucher, Ph.D., president of scientific research at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville and the study's lead scientist. "Genes evolve to adapt to the environmental conditions in which an organism lives. Resurrecting these since long-extinct genes gives us the opportunity to analyze and dissect the ancient surroundings that have been recorded in the gene sequence. The genes essentially behave as dynamic fossils."

The team wanted to measure Earth's temperature billions of years ago to learn more about life on Earth during the Precambrian period. But instead of taking the traditional route -- analyzing rock formations or measuring isotopes in fossils -- they opted to do what they knew best: protein reconstruction.

"We've analyzed the temperature stability of proteins inside organisms that were around during those times," said Omjoy Ganesh, Ph.D., a structural biologist in the UF College of Medicine's department of biochemistry and molecular biology. "The ancient oceans were warmer. For ocean organisms living during that time to survive, the proteins within them had to be stable at high temperatures."

After scanning multiple databases, the scientists struck gold with a protein called elongation factor, which helps bacteria string together amino acids to form other proteins. Each bacterial species has a slightly different form of the protein: Bacteria that live in warmer environments have resilient elongation factors, which can withstand high temperatures without melting. The opposite is true for bacteria that live in cold environments.

Armed with information about when bacterial species evolved, the scientists rebuilt 31 elongation factors from 16 ancient species. By comparing the heat sensitivity of the reconstructed proteins, they were able to discern how Earth's temperature changed over the ages.

"Although the concept of ancestral gene resurrection was proposed more than 40 years ago, the development of efficient gene synthesis has only recently enabled the synthesis of ancestral genes," said Sridhar Govindarajan, Ph.D., co-author of the paper and vice president of informatics at DNA2.0, a California-based company that constructed the genes. "Gene synthesis allows for a direct route from a calculated gene sequence to a protein that can be tested for function in the laboratory."

Almost all bacteria are related if you go back far enough, the scientists said. Even organisms that like extreme heat are related to organisms that are very sensitive to temperature change. The key is determining when, during Earth's history, each type of bacteria came into existence.

"Remarkably, our results are nearly identical to geologic studies that estimate the temperature trend for the ancient ocean over the same time period. The convergence of results from biology and geology show that Earth's environment has continuously been changing since life began, and life has adapted appropriately to survive," Gaucher said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207115401.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 12, 2008, 12:23am

Mummy Lice Found In Peru May Give New Clues About Human Migration

ScienceDaily (Feb. 8, 2008) — Lice from 1,000-year-old mummies in Peru may unravel important clues about a different sort of passage: the migration patterns of America’s earliest humans, a new University of Florida study suggests.

“It’s kind of quirky that a parasite we love to hate can actually inform us how we traveled around the globe,” said David Reed, an assistant curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus and one of the study’s authors.

DNA sequencing found the strain of lice to be genetically the same as the form of body lice that spawns several deadly diseases, including typhus, which was blamed for the loss of Napoleon’s grand army and millions of other soldiers, he said.

The discovery of these parasites on 11th-century Peruvian mummies proves they were infesting the native Americans nearly 500 years before Europeans arrived, Reed said. His findings are published this week in an online edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“This definitely goes against the grain of conventional thought that all diseases were transmitted from the Old World to the New World at the time of Columbus,” he said.

It came as a surprise to Reed and his research team that the type of lice on the mummies was of the same genetic type as those found as far away as the highlands of Papua, New Guinea, instead of the form of head lice that is widespread in the Western Hemisphere, Reed said. This latter version, the bane of many school children, accounts for more than half the cases of lice that appear in the United States, Canada and Central America, he said.

“Given its abundance in the Americas on living humans, we thought for sure that this form of lice was the one that was here all along and had been established in the New World with the first peoples,” he said.

“We hope to be able to understand human migration patterns by investigating their parasites since people have carried these parasites with them as they moved around the globe,” he said. “Called a parascript, it’s a whole other transcript of our evolutionary history that can either add to what we know or in some cases inform us about things we didn’t know.”

Looking at evidence from parasites’ perspectives, for example, may yield valuable clues about when the first Americans arrived on the continent and which route they took, Reed said. Building upon this DNA sequencing work, scientists may be able to link the 1,000-year-old lice found in the Western Hemisphere with those in Siberia or Mongolia, confirming existing theories that America’s earliest residents originated there, he said.

Had these immigrants traveled by land masses, there was a very small window of time, about 13,000 years ago, when the glaciers retreated enough to allow passage through the Bering Strait on the way to South America, Reed said. Another proposed theory is a seafaring route, but this would have required sophisticated oceangoing vessels for which no evidence from the time exists, he said.

Being able to chart these early migration patterns would give insight into how these early immigrants lived, Reed said. “If you’re skirting the edge of glaciers, it’s obviously a very cold time period and humans would have needed certain creature comforts just to stay alive, such as tight clothing to maintain warmth,” he said.

Today, the people who don’t have the opportunity to change their clothes are the ones at risk for epidemic typhus, which along with the lesser-known diseases of relapsing fever and trench fever are carried by body lice, Reed said. These pests lay their eggs in clothing fibers and washing the clothes is all it takes to get rid of them, he said.

“The disease pops up primarily in refugees who have been displaced from their homeland with the clothes on their backs and nothing else,” he said. “They’re living in crowded conditions where hygiene is poor.”

Reed said he hopes the team’s lice research might someday increase human understanding of typhus by pinpointing where the disease originated.

Studying parasites to learn about their hosts’ history has been around for only about 20 years, Reed said. “By looking at things like tapeworms, pinworms, lice or bedbugs that humans have carried around for at least tens of thousands of years, and in some cases millions of years,” he said, “we can learn much more about human evolutionary history.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080207120006.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 12, 2008, 12:25am

Viking Blood Courses Through Veins Of Many A Northwest Englander


The blood of the Vikings is still coursing through the veins of men living in the North West of England -- according to a new study. (Credit: iStockphoto/Manuel Velasco)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2008) — The blood of the Vikings is still coursing through the veins of men living in the North West of England — according to a new study.

Focusing on the Wirral in Merseyside and West Lancashire the study of 100 men, whose surnames were in existence as far back as medieval times, has revealed that 50 per cent of their DNA is specifically linked to Scandinavian ancestry.

The collaborative study, by The University of Nottingham, the University of Leicester and University College London, reveals that the population in parts of northwest England carries up to 50 per cent male Norse origins, about the same as modern Orkney.

Stephen Harding, Professor of Physical Biochemistry in the School of Biosciences said; “DNA on the male Y-chromosome is passed along the paternal line from generation to generation with very little change, providing a powerful probe into ancestry. So a man's Y-chromosome type is a marker to his paternal past. The method is most powerful when populations rather than individuals are compared with each other. We can also take advantage of the fact that surnames are also passed along the paternal generations. Using tax and other records the team selected volunteers who possess a surname present in the region prior to 1600. This gets round the problems of large population movements that have occurred since the Industrial revolution in places like Merseyside.”

After their expulsion from Dublin in 902AD the Wirral Vikings, initially led by the Norwegian Viking INGIMUND, landed in their boats along the north Wirral coastline. Place names still reflect the North West's Viking past. Aigburth, Formby, Crosby, Toxteth, Croxteth are all Viking names — even the football team Tranmere is Viking. Thingwall is the name of a Viking parliament or assembly (Thingvellir in Iceland) and the only two in England are both in the North West — one in Wirral and one in Liverpool.

The results of this research have just been published by Molecular Biology and Evolution. The 14-strong research team, funded by the Wellcome Trust and a Watson-Crick DNA anniversary award from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), was led by the University of Nottingham's Professor Stephen Harding and Professor Judith Jesch and the University of Leicester's Professor Mark Jobling.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080208105851.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 12, 2008, 3:32am

Flying reptiles came in miniature

A new fossil species of flying reptile with a wingspan of less than 30cm (1ft) has been discovered in China.

The nearly complete articulated skeleton was unearthed in fossil beds from north-eastern China.

The 120-million-year-old reptile had not reached adulthood when it died, but neither was it a hatchling.

Study of the fossil suggests it is one of the smallest pterosaurs known, a team says in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.



The new species has been named Nemicolopterus crypticus , which means "hidden flying forest dweller".

The researchers from Brazil and China say the toothless, sparrow-sized specimen contains several unique anatomical features that distinguish it from other pterosaurs (ancient flying reptiles).

For example, some of the foot bones are curved in a way not seen in other members of this reptile group. This, say the authors, indicates the pint-sized creature spent much of its time living in the trees.



"It is very likely that this pterosaur represents a lineage of arboreal creatures that lived and foraged for insects in the gymnosperm forest canopy of north-east China during the Early Cretaceous," the researchers write in PNAS.

They add that its life among the gingko forests of China marks this species as a rarity among pterosaur species.

"The fundamental importance of this discovery is that it opens a new chapter in the history of evolution of flying reptiles," said co-author Alexander Kellner of Rio de Janeiro Federal University's National Museum.

"Until now, it was unknown that some of these animals had these adaptations to live on tree canopies."

Matthew Carrano, a palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC said some smaller specimens had been found, but those were clearly younger than this animal.

"It is interesting to see some clear arboreal adaptations in this species," said Dr Carrano, who was not on the research team.

"It confirms a suspicion we had, that pterosaurs were more diverse in their habitats than we knew from the [fossil] record."

Pterosaurs lived alongside the dinosaurs, from 228 million years ago to 65 million years ago. They were the first vertebrates to evolve winged flight.

One pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus was enormous, sporting a wingspan of up to 11m (36ft), placing it among the largest flying animals ever.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7239862.stm

Published: 2008/02/11 21:15:40 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 13, 2008, 6:42pm

Bat fossil solves evolution poser

A fossil found in Wyoming has resolved a long-standing question about when bats gained their sonar-like ability to navigate and locate food.


The specimen is the most primitive bat known to science

They found that flight came first, and only then did bats develop echolocation to track and trap their prey.

A large number of experts had previously thought this happened the other way around.

Details of the work by an international team of researchers is published in the prestigious journal Nature.

Echolocation - the ability to emit high-pitched squeaks and hear, for example, the echo bouncing off flying insects as small as a mosquito - is one of the defining features of bats as a group.

There are over 1,000 species of bats in the world today, and all of them can echolocate to navigate and find food.

But some, especially larger fruit bats, depend on their sense of smell and sight to find food, showing that the winged mammals could survive without their capacity to gauge the location, direction and speed of flying creatures in the dark.

The new fossil, named Onychonycteris finneyi , was found in the 52-million-year-old Green River Formation in Wyoming, US, in 2003. It is in a category all on its own, giving rise to a new genus and family.

Its large claws, primitive wings, broad tail and especially its underdeveloped cochlea - the part of the inner ear that makes echolocation possible - all set it apart from existing species. It is also drastically different from another bat fossil unearthed in 1960, Icaronycteris index , that lived during the same Early Eocene epoch.

Many experts had favored an "echolocation first" theory because this earlier find, also from the Green River geological formation in Wyoming, was so close in its anatomy to modern species.

But the new fossil suggests this wasn't the case.

"Its teeth seem to show that it was an insect eater," said co-author Kevin Seymour, a palaeontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada.

"And if it wasn't echolocating then it had to be using other methods to find food."

The next big question to be answered, he added, was when and how bats made the transition from being terrestrial to flying animals .

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7243502.stm

Published: 2008/02/13 17:42:02 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 14, 2008, 12:14pm



By Mira Oberman

February 15, 2008 01:00am

THEY are among the strangest and most terrifying creatures ever unearthed.

With powerful claws, bodies made for hunting and teeth almost too scary to contemplate, two previously unknown flesh-eating dinosaurs that hunted the rich forests of Africa some 110 million years ago have been discovered in Niger.

Both ran quickly on powerful hind legs and competed for prey with a previously discovered third creature, which hunted both in and out of the water.

The three massive predators divided up the rich spoils, lead researcher Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago said.

The heavy-browed 12m-long eocarcharia dinops (fierce-eyed dawn shark) was probably the main predator - its powerful claws and teeth could tear entire limbs from its prey.

Its brow was a massive band of bone, giving it a menacing glare, that may have been used as a battering ram against rivals for mating rights.

The short-snouted 7.5m-long kryptops palaios (old hidden face) was a scavenger - its short forearms and armoured snout were designed for digging into carcasses.

The sail-backed 11m-long suchomimus (crocodile mimic) feasted mostly on fish, using its long, narrow snout and hook-like teeth.

The mighty Tyrannosaurus dominated the northern continent but did not reach Africa.

Instead these three carnivores arose and found a way to coexist.

"You've got three big animals, one is getting in with fish but it has huge powerful forearms so it is a predator as well, that's the suchomimus," Professor Sereno said.

"The eocarcharia has blade-shaped teeth: it was definitely an active predator, severing limbs and gashing flesh.

"Then you have this other guy (kryptops) picking up the pieces - digging into carcasses and going after guts."

The team discovered the fossils during a rich dig in which they recovered 20 tons of fossils in a site deep in the Sahara.

They have been sorting through the fossils and discovered enough pieces of the eocarcharia and kryptops to determine that they were new species. Their findings will be published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

By examining the bone structure and comparing it to similar species which roamed the area about 90 million years ago, Professor Sereno was able to develop a picture of what the creatures would be like.

'Kryptops, he would have had bad breath," Professor Serenos said.

With a short neck and "dinky little arms" kryptops would have been a balanced, two-legged runner like an ostrich.

"I imagine he would have been pretty brightly coloured," Professor Sereno said, adding it was possible kryptops had feathers like many other predators of the time.

"Eocarcharia, I imagine to be more of a sabotage attacker," he said, describing its powerful legs and strong forearms.

"It would track something down and gash it and feed on it and maybe leave the entrails and the carcass to kryptops."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23214143-2,00.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 14, 2008, 10:58pm

New Dinos May Have Killed Like Sharks, Ate Like Hyenas
James Owen
for National Geographic News
February 13, 2008



Two 110-million-year-old fossils of meat-eating dinosaurs that once ruled the southern continents have been found in Africa, scientists announced.

First discovered in 2000, the new species are theropods — two-legged carnivores — that lived in the same habitat and grew to about 25 feet (7.6 meters) long.

Eocarcharia dinops, or "fierce-eyed dawn shark," was likely an ambush predator armed with massive, shark-like teeth. Kryptops palaios, or "old hidden face," is thought have been a hyena-like scavenger that feasted on carcasses.

The dinosaurs were discovered in Africa's Sahara Desert by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence. (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society.)

The bizarre-looking dinosaurs are described in the latest issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Menacing Glare

Kryptops was likely a short-snouted species with small, sharp teeth, tiny arms, and a horny face that may have helped the creature gobble its prey's internal organs.

"From the texture of the [skull] bone it seems like they almost have a bill on the front of their faces for sticking their head in and gnawing away at carcasses," Sereno said.

"With such a short snout and such puny arms, Kryptops would not be so well designed for grabbing something that was trying to run away," he said.

Eocarcharia, by contrast, had powerful forelimbs and 3-inch-long (7.6-centimeter-long) blade-shaped teeth for disabling prey and severing body parts, according to Sereno and study co-author Stephen Brusatte of the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

The dinosaur's brow was also massively swollen, giving it a menacing glare.

The paleontologists speculate that this bony feature may have been used by Eocarcharia and related species in head-butting contests over mating rights.

Matt Lamanna, a dinosaur expert at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh was not involved in the research.

"[The head-butting] is an interesting idea that deserves further study," he said.

While head-butting between males is usually confined to plant-eating animals, such behavior has been suggested for a few other meat-eating theropods, Lamanna said.

Meanwhile the idea of a scavenging lifestyle for carnivores such as Kryptops is controversial, Lamanna said.

"If this thing had a fingernail-like covering all over its face, then maybe that was used to poke into carcasses, but I'd like to see more evidence for it," he said.

"This is why studying the Southern [Hemisphere] theropods is so much fun—we're still learning so much about them," Lamanna added.

Important Insights

The newly revealed species give important insights into the southern-dwelling dinosaurs that rose to the top of the food chain during the Cretaceous period, 144 to 65 million years ago.

Kryptops represents one of the earliest known abelisaurids, a group that was also found in South America and India, the researchers said.

Eocarcharia was a carcharodontosaurid, a family that gave rise to some of the largest southern predatory dinosaurs, matching or exceeding Tyrannosaurus rex in size.

"What we've found are primitive members of the two groups of megacarnivorous dinosaurs that ruled the southern continents for 50 million years," study co-author Brusatte said.

"For those of us [who] work on dinosaur evolution, finding these very old and primitive species is kind of like a paleoanthropologist finding a Neandertal," he said.

The two new dinosaurs—along with an even bigger predator, the fish-eating, sail-backed Suchomimus—represent a trio of meat-eating lineages that became dominant in Africa and possibly other southern landmasses, Sereno said.

"For some 20 to 25 million years, these would have been the three big ones you'd have had to watch out for if you'd gone down there," Sereno said.

Strange Prey

The creatures likely targeted other large African dinosaurs such as the strange, long-necked plant-eater Nigersaurus, which had a muzzle resembling a vacuum cleaner.

Around this time Africa was breaking free of Gondwana, the huge southern supercontinent that also included South America, the researchers said.

This makes the discovery of a primitive abelisaurid like Kryptops highly significant, the Carnegie Museum's Lamanna said.

"Kryptops shows that abelisaurid origins may have predated the separation of most major Gondwanan continents," he said.

"Therefore the group may have been able to spread around Gondwana before it broke apart."

While abelisaurids are known from most former Gondwanan landmasses, it isn't known whether different geographical groups evolved while the supercontinent was still joined, Lamanna added.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080213-new-dinosaurs.html

Further:

Bizarre New Dinosaurs Found in Sahara

February 13, 2008—Face-to-face in a new fossil discovery, two newfound dinosaur species were revealed today. Both roamed Africa's Sahara desert some 110 million years ago and were found in present-day Niger.



Eocarcharia dinops, or ''fierce-eyed dawn shark,'' (left) was armed with three-inch (7.6-centimeter), blade-like teeth, likely for disabling and dismembering prey. Some experts speculate that its menacing brow was used in head-butting contests with rival males.

Kryptops palaois, or ''old hidden face,'' boasted a horny face that may have had a special role.

"From the texture of the [skull] bone, it seems like they almost have a bill on the front of their face for sticking their head in and gnawing away at carcasses," said Paul Sereno. The University of Chicago paleontologist co-authored the new study on the species, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.



Newfound dinosaur Eocarcharia dinops grew to about 25 feet (7.6 meters) long.

It had powerful limbs and 3-inch-long (7.6 centimeter-long) blade-shaped teeth, likely for disabling prey and severing body parts, according to a study released on February 12, 2008.

The dinosaur's brow was also massively swollen, giving it a menacing glare. Scientists speculate that the feature may have been used by the reptile and related species in head-butting contests over mating rights.

Eocarcharia was a carcharodontosaurid, meaning it was from the family that gave rise to some of the largest southern predatory dinosaurs, matching or exceeding Tyrannosaurus rex in size.



Kryptops palaios is one of two newfound African dinosaurs announced on February 12, 2008.

The 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) species was likely a short-snouted animal with small, sharp teeth, tiny arms, and a horny face, which may helped the reptile in scavenging.

''With such a short snout and such puny arms, Kryptops would not be so well designed for grabbing something that was trying to run away,'' paleontologist Paul Sereno said.

Kryptops represents one of the earliest known abelisaurids, dinosaurs that were also found in South America and India, the researchers said.

The newly revealed species give insights into southern-dwelling dinosaurs that rose to the top of the food chain during the Cretaceous period, 65 to 144 million years ago.

"What we've found are primitive members of the two groups of megacarnivorous dinosaurs that ruled the southern continents for 50 million years," co-author Stephen Brusatte said.

The two new dinosaurs, along with an even bigger predator, the fish-eating, sail-backed Suchomimus, represent a trio of meat-eating lineages that became dominant in Africa and possibly other southern landmasses, Sereno said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/....ures/index.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 15, 2008, 7:35am

Egypt's Earliest Agricultural Settlement Unearthed


A fragment of a bangle made of a shell found only at the Red Sea suggests possible trade links with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. (Credit: Copyright UC Regents)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2008) — Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings.

The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible trade links with the Red Sea, including a thoroughfare from Mesopotamia, which is known to have practiced agriculture 2,000 years before ancient Egypt.

"By the time of the Pharaohs, everything in ancient Egypt centered around agriculture," said Willeke Wendrich, the excavation's co-director and an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA. "What we've found here is a window into the development of agriculture some 2,000 years earlier. We hope this work will help us answer basic questions about how, why and when ancient Egypt adopted agriculture."

Just centimeters below the surface of a fertile oasis located about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, the UCLA-RUG team excavated domestic wheat and barley and found the remains of domesticated animals -- pigs, goats and sheep -- along with evidence of fishing and hunting. None of the varieties of domesticated animals or grains are indigenous to the area, so they would have to have been introduced.

The archaeological team also found a bracelet made of a type of shell only found along the Red Sea, suggesting a possible trade link with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. In addition, they unearthed clay floors of what may have been simple structures -- possibly posts with some kind of matting overhead.

In the 1920s, British archaeologist Gertrude Caton Thompson found traces of the same domesticated grains in storage pits less than a mile from the current site. After the advent of carbon-dating technology, the grain was dated to 5,200 B.C., making the discovery the earliest evidence of agriculture in ancient Egypt. To this day, no earlier evidence of agriculture has been found in Egypt. But because no surrounding settlement was ever excavated, all kinds of questions remained about the context in which agriculture began to unfold in ancient Egypt.

"We had evidence that there was agriculture by 5,200 B.C. but not how it was used in a domestic context," said excavation co-leader René Cappers, a professor of paleobotany at the University of Groningen, the second-oldest university in the Netherlands. "Now, for the first time, we have domesticated plants and animals in a village context."

The latest findings date to the Neolithic period, a stage of human development that occurred at various times around world, beginning in 8,600 B.C. Sometimes called the New Stone Age, the period is characterized by the introduction of farming, animal husbandry and a movement away from hunting and gathering and toward a less nomadic way of life, with pots, tools and settlements.

Few clues have been found of Egypt's Neolithic past in the Nile Valley, possibly because they were either buried under silt from the Nile or wiped away when the river changed its course, the archaeologists said. The UCLA-RUG excavation site is located just outside the river valley in what is now a desert region.

With more than three feet of undisturbed strata at the site, the team expects to be able to piece together the evolution of domestication in the area between 5,200 B.C. and about 4,200 B.C.

"The arrival of the entire Neolithic package in ancient Egypt has always been treated as a moment in time, but we're finding stratified layers that will allow us to tease out the development of agriculture in this area as it developed over the course of hundreds of years," said Wendrich, who is one of the core faculty members at UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

Called the Fayum, the oasis where the team is working was surrounded by prehistoric sites, most of which were excavated in the 1920s. Generations of archaeologists had written off the area, until the UCLA-RUG team decided to re-explore the site.

"We knew that the settlement existed, but the site had been under cultivation since the 1960s, so archaeologists assumed it had been destroyed," Wendrich said. "We got to this site in the nick of time."

Modern laser-leveling farming techniques were about to annihilate the site in 2006, but the archaeological team succeed in rescuing the six-acre plot for future research by renting it for a year while they conducted their initial fieldwork. In the meantime, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has taken steps to permanently protect the site.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, UCLA, RUG and private donors on the Directors Council of Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080212131300.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 15, 2008, 7:42am

Thousands Of Humans Inhabited New World's Doorstep For 20,000 Years


Maps depicting each phase of our three-step colonization model for the peopling of the Americas. (Credit: Kitchen A, Miyamoto MM, Mulligan CJ (2008) A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1596. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001596)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2008) — The human journey from Asia to the New World was interrupted by a 20,000 -year layover in Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait. Furthermore, the New World was colonized by approximately 1,000 to 5,000 people - a substantially higher number than the 100 or fewer individuals of previous estimates.

The developments, to be reported by University of Florida Genetics Institute scientists in PloS One, help shape understanding of how the Americas came to be populated - not through a single expansion event that is put forth in most theories, but in three distinct stages separated by thousands of generations.

"Our model makes for a more interesting, complex scenario than the idea that humans diverged from Asians and expanded into the New World in a single event," said Connie Mulligan, Ph.D., an associate professor of anthropology at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and assistant director of the UF Genetics Institute. "If you think about it, these people didn't know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum, but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World. So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years. It wasn't paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place."

UF scientists analyzed DNA sequences from Native American, New World and Asian populations with the understanding that modern DNA is forged by an accumulation of events in the distant past, and merged their findings with data from existing archaeological, geological and paleoecological studies.

The result is a unified, interdisciplinary theory of the "peopling" of the New World, which shows a gradual migration and expansion of people from Asia through Siberia and into Beringia starting about 40,000 years ago; a long waiting period in Beringia where the population size remained relatively stable; and finally a rapid expansion into North America through Alaska or Canada about 15,000 years ago.

"This was the raw material, the original genetic source for all of the Americas," said Michael Miyamoto, Ph.D., a professor and associate chairman of zoology in UF's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "You can think of the people as a distinct group blocked by glaciers to the east. They had already been west, and had no reason to go back. They had entered this waiting stage and for 20,000 years, generations were passing and genetic differences were accumulating. By looking at the kinds and frequencies of these mutations in modern populations, we can get an idea of when the mutations arose and how many people were around to carry them."

Working with mitochondrial DNA - passed exclusively from mothers to their children - and nuclear DNA, which contains genes from both parents, UF scientists essentially added genetic information to what had been known about the archaeology, changes in climate and sea level, and geology of Beringia.

The result is a detailed scenario for the timing and scale of the initial migration to the Americas, more comparable to an exhaustive video picture rather than a single snapshot in time.

"Their technique of reading population history by using coalescence rates to analyze genetic data is very impressive - innovative anthropology and edge-of-the-seat population study," said Henry C. Harpending, Ph.D., a distinguished professor and endowed chairman of anthropology at the University of Utah and a member of the National Academy of Sciences who was not involved with the research. "The idea that people were stuck in Beringia for a long time is obvious in retrospect, but it has never been promulgated. But people were in that neighborhood before the last glacial maximum and didn't get into North America until after it. It's very plausible that a bunch of them were stuck there for thousands of years."

As for Beringia, sea levels rose about 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, submerging the land and creating the Bering Strait, which now separates North America from Siberia with more than 50 miles of open, frigid water.

"Our theory predicts much of the archeological evidence is underwater," said Andrew Kitchen, a Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department at UF who participated in the research. "That may explain why scientists hadn't really considered a long-term occupation of Beringia."

UF researchers believe that their synthesis of a large number of different approaches into a unified theory will create a platform for scientists to further analyze genomic and non-genetic data as they become available.

Citation: Kitchen A, Miyamoto MM, Mulligan CJ (2008) A Three-Stage Colonization Model for the Peopling of the Americas. PLoS One 3(2): e1596. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001596

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080213090524.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 16, 2008, 11:29pm

Neanderthals Moved From Place To Place, Tooth Analysis Shows


The 40,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth that has given scientists the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. (Credit: Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 15, 2008) — A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided scientists with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. In a collaborative project involving researchers from the Germany, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and Durham University, UK, and his team used laser technology to collect microscopic particles of enamel from the tooth. By analysing strontium isotope ratios in the enamel - strontium is a naturally occurring metal ingested into the body through food and water - the scientists were able to uncover geological information showing where the Neanderthal had been living when the tooth was formed.

The tooth, a third molar, was formed when the Neanderthal was aged between seven and nine. It was recovered in a coastal limestone cave in Lakonis, in Southern Greece, during an excavation directed by Dr Eleni Panagopoulou of the Ephoreia of Paleoanthropology and Speleology (Greek Ministry of Culture). The strontium isotope readings, however, indicated that the enamel formed while the Neanderthal lived in a region made up of older volcanic bedrock. The findings could help answer a long-standing debate about the mobility of the now extinct Neanderthal species.

Some researchers argue that Neanderthals stayed in one small area for most of their lives; others claim their movements were more substantial and they moved over long distances; and others say they only moved within a limited area, perhaps on a seasonal basis to access different food sources.

Professor Richards said: "Strontium from ingested food and water is absorbed as if it was calcium in mammals during tooth formation. Our tests show that this individual must have lived in a different location when the crown of the tooth was formed than where the tooth was found. The evidence indicates that this Neanderthal moved over a relatively wide range of at least 20 kilometres or even further in their lifetime. Therefore we can say that Neanderthals did move over their lifetimes and were not confined to limited geographical areas."

"Previous evidence for Neanderthal mobility comes from indirect sources such as stone tools or the presence of non-local artefacts such as sea shells at sites far away from the coast. None of these provide a direct measure of Neanderthal mobility." said Dr Katerina Harvati of the Max Planck Institute, in Germany, who initiated the study.

The researchers believe the laser ablation technique used to collect the minute particles of enamel will allow the measurement of other rare Neanderthal remains to see how the result compares in other regions and at other time periods.

The technique could also allow scientists to look at very small scale migrations, which is not possible with traditional research methods, and could possibly be applied to research into early humans.

Journal reference and research team: Journal of Archaeological Science, February 11th, 2008. The research team, led by Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck Society and Durham University, included Katerina Harvati, Vaughan Grimes, Colin Smith, Tanya Smith and Jean-Jacques Hublin, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany, and Panagiotis Karkanas and Eleni Panagopoulou of the Ephoreia of Palaeoanthropology-Speleology of Southern Greece.

The isotopic research was funded by the Max Planck Institute and the excavation of Lakonis was funded by the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the LSB Leakey Foundation and the Institute for Aegean Prehistory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215103148.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 18, 2008, 11:39am

Dung Happens And Helps Scientists: Scoop On Poop And Climate Change


Jim Mead cradles a box of 23,000-year-old archived bison dung that came from a cave in southern Utah. Mead, director of NAU's Laboratory of Quaternary Paleontology, is an expert on researching dung for clues about ancient life. (Credit: Image courtesy of Northern Arizona University)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2008) — When scientists around the world think of dung, they think of Jim Mead.

Mead, a researcher at Northern Arizona University, is one of the world's foremost authorities on animal dung, and he's got the poop to prove it.

"You have got to laugh at this bizarre resource," says Mead, director of NAU's Laboratory of Quaternary Paleontology. "Although I don't think anyone is keeping track, I suspect we have the largest comparative animal dung collection in the world. If someone needs to identify dung, they send it to me."

The lab, part of the university's Center for Environmental Sciences and Education, has row after row of cabinets with thousands of dung pieces used by scientists to get accurate data on an array of topics, including the environmental changes that took place on the Colorado Plateau during the last 100,000 years.

"Dung is accurate for carbon dating," Mead explains. "It's a data set that typically disappears in the fossil record. All we typically get are bones, but with dung we get biochemistry. We can tell a lot about the climate by analyzing what plants the animal ate."

Through the digested plants, scientists can tell what was going on in the environment at the time, such as the amount of rainfall that was occurring. The data help researchers pinpoint when different changes in the environment took place.

"The plant remains in the dung allow us to determine the mosaic of plants in the local plant community. The community structure changes with changes in climate," he says.

Mead's research includes tracking and comparing ancient dung DNA samples to learn about an animal's gender, food and water sources, air pollen, parasites and community structure during the Ice Age. The data allow him to determine when and how an animal evolved and became extinct.

The collection includes dung from modern animals to prehistoric ground sloths and 40,000-year-old mammoths.

Molecular biologists in Denmark, Australia and Canada are using pieces from NAU's dung collection to compare its DNA to dung they are finding. "To understand ancient dung, one must have a modern comparative collection, and we have one of the best there is," Mead notes. "It is extremely rare to have preserved fossil dung—yet we have the best and most there are in any collection—from Siberia to Tierra del Fuego to Argentina—we have it."

Most of NAU's dung collection is dried and stored wrapped in tissue inside sturdy, archival cardboard boxes.

Mead opens a box of chunky 14,000-year-old mammoth dung and a slight scent of musty grass escapes. He points to the chomped blades of grass fossilized into the brown dried dung and surmises that the mammoth ate about 600 pounds of grass a day.

Mead currently is working with the National Park Service to figure out when bison were introduced to the plateau region. Previous research suggests bison dispersed into the Grand Canyon area more than 11,000 years ago, but with dating from dung, Mead knows that they roamed the plateau at least 23,000 years ago.

He also curates dung and skeletal collections for 22 national parks. Dung from the NAU collection also finds its way into public displays in museums, including the International Wildlife Museum in Tucson, Mesa Southwest Museum in Mesa and at the National Museum in Paris.

"It's no coincidence this dung collection is here," Mead says. "The Colorado Plateau is arid and replete with shelters and caves that are perfect for dung collection. Most other places in the world stay moist and the bacteria break down the dung."

Mead began collecting dung during his research at the University of Arizona in the 1970s. When he came to teach at NAU in 1985, Mead brought the collection with him and has since grown it by gathering dung from zoos and remote regions throughout United States and in places such as Africa, Canada, Mexico, South America, Australia and Siberia.

"Although our research is humorous," Mead says, "the data from dung is nothing to laugh about."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080215191431.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 18, 2008, 8:38pm


Meet Beelzebufo - the Devil Toad

By staff writers

February 19, 2008 10:30am

A GIANT frog that wore heavy armour and launched feeding raids on dinosaur nests has experts baffled.



The bowling ball-sized frog is thought to have been so fearsome that it has been dubbed "Beelzebufo" - Devil Toad.

Fossils belonging to Devil Toad were first found more than a decade ago, but it is only now that a clear picture has emerged of how big and formidable it was.

And at the same time, they have unearthed a discovery that might force them to rethink all they thought they knew about the earth's prehistoric geography.

The Devil Toad would have weighed more than 4kg and was more than 40cm long, dwarfing the current largest toad on the planet - the Goliath frog from West Africa. The findings have been published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The bones have been found in Madagascar, but it seems more closely related to frogs living today in South America.

"This frog, if it has the same habits as its living relatives in South America, was quite voracious," said paleontologist David Krause, who led the discovery team.

"It's even conceivable that it could have taken down some hatchling dinosaurs."

Its modern cousins are known for their healthy appetites but are kept as pets in South America, where they are known as "pacman frogs" because of their large mouths, the Associated Press reported.

Devil Toad had a similarly wide smile but also powerful jaws and sharp teeth. Its bones were thick and strong, with ridges and grooves akin to a modern armour shield.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23238781-401,00.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 19, 2008, 10:17pm

Excavations In Iran Unravel Mystery Of 'Red Snake'



ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2008) — New discoveries unearthed at an ancient frontier wall in Iran provide compelling evidence that the Persians matched the Romans for military might and engineering prowess.

The 'Great Wall of Gorgan'in north-eastern Iran, a barrier of awesome scale and sophistication, including over 30 military forts, an aqueduct, and water channels along its route, is being explored by an international team of archaeologists from Iran and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham. This vast Wall-also known as the 'Red Snake'-is more than 1000 years older than the Great Wall of China, and longer than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall put together.



Until recently, nobody knew who had built the Wall. Theories ranged from Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC, to the Persian king Khusrau I in the 6th century AD. Most scholars favoured a 2nd or 1st century BC construction. Scientific dating has now shown that the Wall was built in the 5th, or possibly, 6th century AD, by the Sasanian Persians. This Persian dynasty has created one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world, centred on Iran, and stretching from modern Iraq to southern Russia, Central Asia and Pakistan.

Modern survey techniques and satellite images have revealed that the forts were densely occupied with military style barrack blocks. Numerous finds discovered during the latest excavations indicate that the frontier bustled with life. Researchers estimate that some 30,000 soldiers could have been stationed at this Wall alone. It is thought that the 'Red Snake'was a defence system against the White Huns, who lived in Central Asia.

Eberhard Sauer, of the University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “Our project challenges the traditional Euro-centric world view. At the time, when the Western Roman Empire was collapsing and even the Eastern Roman Empire was under great external pressure, the Sasanian Persian Empire mustered the manpower to build and garrison a monument of greater scale than anything comparable in the west. The Persians seem to match, or more than match, their late Roman rivals in army strength, organisational skills, engineering and water management.”

The research is published in the new edition of Current World Archaeology and the periodical Iran, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 45.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080218155534.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 19, 2008, 10:18pm

Fossils From Canadian Rockies, Dating To Cambrian Explosion, Preserved In Ancient Mud Slide


Illustration of what life might have been like shortly after the Cambrian explosion in what is now the Canadian Rockies. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leicester)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2008) — Geologists at the University of Leicester have solved a puzzle found in rocks half a billion years old.

Some of the most important fossil beds in the world are the Burgess Shales in the Canadian Rockies. Once an ancient sea bed, they were formed shortly after life suddenly became more complex and diverse -- the so-called Cambrian explosion -- and are of immense scientific interest.

Normally, only hard parts of ancient animals became fossilised; the bones, teeth or shells. Soft parts were rarely preserved: many plants and invertebrate animals evolved, lived for millions of years and became extinct, but left no trace in the fossil record.

The Burgess Shales preserved soft tissue in exquisite detail, and the question of how this came to happen has troubled scientists since the discovery of the fossils in 1909.

Now, painstaking work by Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, with Desmond Collins of the Royal Ontario Museum, has provided an answer.

They analysed the shales millimetre by millimetre, and found that unlike most rocks of this type, they weren't slowly deposited, mud flake by mud flake. Instead, a thick slurry powered down a steep slope and instantly buried the animals to a depth where normal decay couldn't occur.

Dr Gabbott said, "Not a nice way to go, perhaps, but a swift one- and one that guaranteed immortality (of a sort) for these strange creatures."

This research has been published in the Journal of the Geological Society (2008, vol.165, pp. 307-318)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080219095801.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 23, 2008, 12:46am

Fossil finds are rabbit forebears

Fossil hunters have found the remains of ancient mammals that were related to today's rabbits and hares.


The Indian fossils are about 53 million years old

The 53-million-year-old specimens consist of small ankle bones unearthed in Gujarat, central India.

They belong to early examples of an animal group called lagomorphs, which today comprises hares, rabbits and a hamster-like animal called a pika.

Details of the discovery appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The oldest lagomorphs known before this were from Central Asia and date to between 40 and 48 million years ago.

The latest finds come from clay beds in the Vastan lignite mine, north-east of Mumbai in Gujarat.

They date to the early part of the Eocene Epoch, when mammals first began to diversify into their present day forms.

Early divergence

The study shows that the lagomorphs were already distinct from other mammals by 53 million years ago.

Analysis of some ankle bones from Vastan revealed anatomical features characteristic of hares and rabbits, suggesting that the lagomorphs were already beginning to diversify by the early Eocene.

The dates and locations of the finds suggests some of their early evolution must have taken place while India was in the process of colliding with Asia.

An explosion in the diversity of mammals has been linked to a sharp bout of global warming about 55 million years ago.

Global temperatures at the time rose by about 6C (11F) in less than 1,000 years - an event known as the "thermal maximum". It was one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events in the geological record.

The causes are not fully understood; but rising temperatures may have caused a sudden release from the sea floor of ice-trapped methane - a potent greenhouse gas - which contributed to greenhouse warming.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7253518.stm

Published: 2008/02/22 18:53:09 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 23, 2008, 11:34am

Mysterious Pyramid Complex Discovered in Peru

Kelly Hearn in Buenos Aires, Argentina
for National Geographic News
February 20, 2008

The remnants of at least ten pyramids have been discovered on the coast of Peru, marking what could be a vast ceremonial site of an ancient, little-known culture, archaeologists say.

In January construction crews working in the province of Piura discovered several truncated pyramids and a large adobe platform:



Officials from Peru's National Institute of Culture (INC) were dispatched to inspect the discovery.


The adobe bricks of an ancient pyramid are among the finds at a mysterious complex recently discovered on the coast of Peru.

Last week they announced that the complex, which is 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) long and 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide, belonged to the ancient Vicús culture and was likely either a religious center or a cemetery for nobility.

The Vicús was a pre-Hispanic civilization that flourished in Peru's northern coastal desert from 200 B.C to 300 A.D. and is known for its decorated ceramics.

Experts say little is known about the culture, because its sites have been heavily looted over the years.

"We found several partial pyramids, at least ten," said César Santos Sánchez, chief archaeologist for INC's Piura division.

"We also found a large adobe platform that we speculate could have been used for burial rituals. But we cannot know without further testing."

Skull Fragments

The platform, measuring 82 feet (25 meters) by 98 feet (30 meters), was found alongside one of the larger pyramids in the complex.

Another of the larger pyramids contained some artifacts as well as bone fragments from a human skull.

The fact that the skull fragments were found several meters below the surface, indicating a deep grave that took much time to dig, prompted researchers to theorize that the individual buried there had high social status.

Santos added that the complex is surrounded by four large hills: Pilán, Vicús, Chanchape, and Tongo.

"We think that because of its geographic location the complex could have been a place of strategic value," Santos said.

The area containing the pyramids is surrounded by a cemetery that has been looted by grave robbers.

"But the complex itself is intact," Santos said.

Who Were the Vicús?

"The Vicús are very interesting but so poorly understood, given that most of what we know about them is through looted ceramic art," said Steve Bourget, an archaeologist at the University of Texas at Austin.

"This could be an important find, because it is one of the few with monumental architecture. But it is too soon to tell."

Experts say the Vicús ceramic style is similar in some respects to that of the Moche, a fact that has spawned research on the relationship between the two cultures.

The Moche civilization flourished in areas south of the Vicús from around A.D. 100 to 750, producing intricately painted pottery as well as gold ornaments, irrigation systems, and monuments.

The two cultures thrived within a relatively short distance of each other—less than that between Los Angeles and San Francisco—experts point out.

"It is possible that the Vicús for part of its history was closely affiliated with the Moche culture," said Joanne Pillsbury, an archaeologist at the Washington, D.C.-based Dumbarton Oaks, a research institute affiliated with Harvard University.

The discovery of the Vicús pyramids comes as perceptions about the Moche have shifted, she added.

"It was once thought that Moche was a single monolithic state, but people don't think that is true anymore," Pillsbury said.

"It was likely a series of regional or multi-valley kingdoms that shared a broader culture. And Vicús was probably part of that sphere of interaction."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/22926015.html

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 26, 2008, 10:00pm

Two Oxygenation Events In Ancient Oceans Sparked Spread Of Complex Life


The photo (field of view about 0.15 millimeter in width) is of an exceptionally preserved eukaryotic fossil from the Doushantuo Formation (635--551 million years old) in South China. High-resolution geochemical data from the Doushantuo Formation indicate that the early diversification of eukaryotes may have coupled with episodic oxygenation of Ediacaran oceans. (Credit: Photograph by Shuhai Xiao)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — The rise of oxygen and the oxidation of deep oceans between 635 and 551 million years ago may have had an impact on the increase and spread of the earliest complex life, including animals, according to a new study.

Today, we take oxygen for granted. But the atmosphere had almost no oxygen until 2.5 billion years ago, and it was not until about 600 million years ago when the atmospheric oxygen level rose to a fraction of modern levels. For a long time, geologists and evolutionary biologists have speculated that the rise of the breathing gas and subsequent oxygenation of the deep oceans are intimately tied to the evolution of modern biological systems.

To test the interaction between biological evolution and environmental change, an international team of scientists from Virginia Tech, the University of Maryland, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and Chinese Academy of Sciences, examined changes in the geochemistry and fossil distribution of 635- to 551-million-year old sediments preserved in the Doushantuo Formation in the Yangtze Gorges area of South China.

Millions of years ago, the Yangtze Gorges area was an ancient sea, said Kathleen A. McFadden, a Ph.D. candidate in geobiology at Virginia Tech and the lead author of the PNAS article.

To determine when there was enough oxygen to support animal life in the ocean, the researchers asked, "What kind of geochemical evidence would there be in the rock record?" said Shuhai Xiao, associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech.

Scientists hypothesized that there was a lot of dissolved organic carbon in the ocean when oxygen levels were low. If oxygen levels rose, some of this organic carbon would be oxidized into inorganic forms, some of which can be preserved as calcium carbonate in the rock record. "We measured the carbon isotope signatures of organic and inorganic carbon in the ancient rocks to infer oxidation events," said co-author Ganqing Jiang, assistant professor of geology at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

The layers of sediment exposed by the Three Gorges Dam represent millions of years of deposits. "We went through road cuts, bed by bed, measuring and describing the exposed rock, then took small rock samples every few feet or so,," said McFadden. She collected about 200 samples; hundreds of samples were taken to three labs.

The researchers cleaned and crushed the small samples to powder, which they reacted with acid to release carbon dioxide from carbonate minerals, and then burned the residue to get carbon dioxide from organic matter. "The CO2 that is released was measured with mass spectrometers to gives us the isotopic signature of the carbonate and organic carbon that was present in the rock," said McFadden.

"The relative abundances of the carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes, which are stable and do not decay with time, provide a snapshot of the environmental processes taking place in the ocean at the different times recorded in the layers of rock," McFadden said.

The stratigraphic pattern of carbon isotope abundances suggested to these researchers that the ocean, which largely lacked oxygen before animals arrived on the scene, was aerated by two discrete pulses of oxygen.

"The first pulse apparently had little impact on a large organic carbon reservoir in the deep ocean, but did spark changes in microscopic life forms," McFadden said. "The second event, which occurred around 550 million years ago, however, resulted in the reduction of the organic carbon reservoir, indicating that the ocean became fully oxidizing just before the evolution and diversification of many of Earth's earliest animals," she said.

"The Doushantuo Formation has a wonderful fossil record," McFadden said. "It allows us to look at major fossil groups, when they appear and when they disappear, and to see a relationship between oxidation events and biological groups."

"This study supports the growing view that life and environment co-evolved through this tumultuous period of Earth history," said geochemist Alan J. Kaufman, a co-author of the study from the University of Maryland.

The researchers analyzed the fossils in the Doushantuo Formation, from microscopic life forms of 635 million years ago to large algae around 551 million years ago. Looking at data from four locations with very similar isotopic records, they report that the first oxygen spike resulted in a rise in microscopic organisms, some of which are thought to be the earliest animal embryos. The second spike in oxygen coincides with a dramatic increase in species of large complex algae.

"Both oxidation events appear to coincide with increased diversity of fossils assemblages in the Doushantuo basin, with the number of species nearly doubling," McFadden said.

Following this second oxidation event, between 550 and 542 million years ago, there was a worldwide increase of Ediacara organisms, complex macroscopic life forms, an event recently dubbed as the Avalon Explosion. "This was when we see the first burrowing animals and biomineralizing animals in the fossil record," McFadden said. Biomineralizing animals are the first animals to form external skeletons, or shells.

The triggers for the oxidation events remain elusive, however. "These events recorded in the ocean were probably related to oxygen in the atmosphere reacting with sediments on land," McFadden said. "Weathering of rocks and soils on the continents would result in the release of certain dissolved ions, such as sulfate, into rivers. These would then be transported to the sea where they might be used by bacteria to oxidize the organic carbon pool in the deep oceans," she said..

The article, "Pulsed oxidation and biological evolution in the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation," was written by Kathleen A. McFadden; Jing Huang and Xuelei Chu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Ganqing Jiang; Alan J. Kaufman; Chuanming Zhou and Xunlai Yuan of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Shuhai Xiao. The URL for the paper is http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0708336105v1 . The paper will publish in the print issue of March 4 (Issue 9, Volume 105, pp. 3197-3202).

The joint research was supported by NSF Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program, NASA Exobiology Program, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Virginia Tech Institute of Critical Technology and Applied Sciences, Evolving Earth Foundation, and several other funding agencies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080225213645.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 27, 2008, 9:21am

Vikings With Vanity: Vivid Colors, Flowing Silk, Fashionable Until Advent of Christianity


Swedish viking men's fashions were modeled on styles in Russia to the east. Archeological finds from the 900s uncovered in Lake Malaren Valley accord with contemporary depictions of clothing the Vikings wore on their travels along eastern trade routes to the Silk Road. (Credit: Photo by Annika Larsson)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2008) — Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but with the advent of Christianity, fashions changed, according to Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson.

"They combined oriental features with Nordic styles. Their clothing was designed to be shown off indoors around the fire," says textile researcher Annika Larsson, whose research at Uppsala University presents a new picture of the Viking Age.

She has studied textile finds from the Lake Mälaren,Valley, the area that includes Stockholm and Uppsala and was one of the central regions in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The findings, some of which were presented in her dissertation last year, show that what we call the Viking Age, the years from 750-1050 A.D., was not a uniform period. Through changes in the style of clothing we can see that medieval Christian fashions hit Sweden as early as the late 900s and that new trade routes came into use then as well. The oriental features in clothing disappeared when Christianity came and they started to trade with the Christian Byzantine and Western Europe.

"Textile research can tell us more about the state of society than research into traditions. Old rituals can live on long after society has changed, but when trade routes are cut off, there's an immediate impact on clothing fashions," says Annika Larsson.

She maintains that Swedish Viking women in the pre-Christian period probably dressed much more provocatively than we previously believed. She bases her theory on a new find uncovered in Russian Pskov, close to Novgorod and the eastward trade routes then plied from Sweden. The find consists of extensive remnants of a woman's attire, which Annika Larsson claims does not square with the traditional picture of how Viking women dressed.

Previously it was thought that Viking women wore a long suspender (brace) skirt, with both the front and back pieces consisting of square sections, held together by a belt. Clasps, often regarded as typical of the Viking Age, were attached to the suspenders roughly at the collar bone. Under this dress they wore a linen shift, and on top of it a woolen shawl or sweater.

"The grave plans from excavations at Birka outside Stockholm in the 19th century show that this is incorrect. The clasps were probably worn in the middle of each breast. Traditionally this has been explained by the clasps having fallen down as the corpse rotted. That sounds like a prudish interpretation," says Annika Larsson.

She maintains instead that the Birka women's skirts consisted of a single piece of fabric and were open in front. The suspenders held up the train and functioned as a harness that was fastened to the breasts with the clasps. Annika Larsson's theory is strengthened by that fact that a number of female figures have been preserved whose outfits both have trains and are open in front. But if we are to believe the archeological finds, this style of clothing disappeared with the advent of Christianity.

"It's easy to imagine that the Christian church had certain reservations about clothing that accentuated the breasts in this way and, what's more, exposed the under shift in front. It's also possible that this clothing was associated with pre-Christian rituals and was therefore forbidden," she believes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080225101117.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 27, 2008, 9:23am

Royals Weren't Only Builders Of Maya Temples, Archaeologist Finds


Yalbac site map, showing positions of temples and other structures. (Credit: Courtesy of the Valley of Peace Archaeology Project)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples.

From the grueling work of analyzing the “attributes,” the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize – and a popular target for antiquities looters – primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago.

Her findings from the fill, the mortar and other remnants of jungle-wrapped structures lead her to believe that kings weren’t the only people building or sponsoring Late Classic period temples (from about 550 to 850), the stepped pyramids that rose like beacons out of the southern lowlands as early as 300 B.C.

“Preliminary results from Yalbac suggest that royals and nonroyals built temples,” said Lucero, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois.

In fact, judging by the varieties of construction and materials, any number of different groups – nobles, priests and even commoners – may have built temples, Lucero said, and their temples undoubtedly served their different purposes and gods.

That different groups had the wherewithal – the will, resources and freedom – to build temples suggests to Lucero that “the Maya could choose which temples to worship in and support; they had a voice in who succeeded politically.”

Yalbac’s location on the eastern periphery of the southern Maya lowlands and its distance from regional centers may explain its particular dynamics and its “relative political independence,” Lucero said.

The archaeologist’s new propositions challenge academic thinking on Maya temples. “Maya scholars have basically assumed that rulers built all the temples,” she said. “No one has questioned this, although cross-cultural comparison alone would suggest otherwise."

To be sure, the historic record is largely silent on why the Maya, a complex culture with many mysteries still to unravel, had several temples in any given center, which is why Lucero, among others, believes that archaeologists must seek answers from the buildings themselves and “construct more creative ways to assess what temple attributes can reveal about their non-material qualities.”

While largely unknown – except to looters and loggers – Yalbac is a rich site. In addition to the six temples, it also includes two plazas, a large royal residence or acropolis, and a ball court. Several of the temples are likely royal, three likely residential or memorial. None so far has been cleared of surface debris. Only one of the temples has escaped looting.

Looters, ironically, paved the way for Lucero’s work to map, excavate and analyze Yalbac’s Late Classic period temples. Over the years, thieves have carved nine trenches into the site in their pursuit of priceless booty. These same trenches have become Lucero’s access routes to the temples. Still, in order to reduce additional invasion and damage to the historic site, Belizean authorities restrict her excavation beyond the trenches.

Some of the evidence she is accumulating is in the tons of fill – cobbles, boulders and stone pebbles, some in the tons of mortar – marl, plaster, and various kinds of loam.

Lucero – either on her own or leading groups of archaeology field school students – has been able to map the Yalbac site, including its structures, looters’ trenches and stelae – upright marker stones, sometimes inscribed, erected by the Maya over the millennia.

Over the years, she has dated ceramics found at Yalbac from about 300 B.C. through A.D. 900; her plaza test pit excavations have exposed floors that date to the same period, “a typical occupation history for Maya centers.”

“We also have placed test units throughout the site to get an idea as to monumental architecture construction histories and functions.”

To date she has taken four New Mexico State University field school classes to Yalbac. She will take her first U. of I. field school class this May for a six-week hands-on course in archaeological survey and excavation. Lucero joined Illinois’ department of anthropology last August, after a decade at NMSU.

The focus this summer will be on profiling the temple looters’ trenches and test excavations. Lucero and 10 undergraduates and two graduate assistants will collect data from the six temples in order to compare temple frequency, size differences, location, layout, accessibility, history of use, construction patterns, surface decoration and ritual deposits.

“We also will expand the trenches to see if the looters missed caches – artifacts consisting of shell, jade, ceramics, lithics, etc. – that may provide clues as to temple function and purpose.”

Lucero doesn’t spend much time worrying about looters.

“While looting is still a problem, the relatively new management of the land-owning company, Yalbac Cattle and Ranch Co., which logs the 200,000 acres they own, have armed patrols that protect the area from illegal poachers, loggers and looters.”

Because Yalbac is directly behind the guardhouse, she said, “the site is very well protected, as are the students and staff.”

“We have been surveying the area for years without any problems,” she said. “Often the loggers show us sites they have found in the process of searching for mahogany, cedar and rosewood.”

Lucero’s latest findings are detailed in the journal Latin American Antiquity in an article titled “Classic Maya Temples, Politics, and the Voice of the People.” Lucero is the leading expert on Yalbac and the sole authorized archaeologist on the site, authorized by the Belize Institute of Archaeology. She has conducted research in the area since 1997, and on the Yalbac site since 2002. The work Lucero is doing will provide the basis for her next book project, an exploration of temples as text.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080225134239.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 27, 2008, 9:26am

Centuries-old Maya Blue Mystery Finally Solved


The altar on the Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá upon which human sacrifices were made. The altar was painted blue. After human victims were stripped, painted blue, and thrust back down on the altar, their beating hearts were removed. (Credit: Photo by Dean E. Arnold, Courtesy of Dean E. Arnold)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500.

First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world's harshest climates.

The anthropologists solved another old mystery, namely the presence of a 14-foot layer of blue precipitate found at the bottom of the Sacred Cenote (a natural well) at Chichén Itzá. This remarkably thick blue layer was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century when the well was dredged.

Chichén Itzá, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is an important pre-Columbian archeological site built by the Maya who lived on what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.

The findings from this research will be published online Feb. 26, 2008, by the prestigious British journal Antiquity and will appear in the print version of the quarterly journal to be released in early March.

According to 16th Century textual accounts, blue was the color of sacrifice for the ancient Maya. They painted human beings blue before thrusting them backwards on an altar (see below for image) and cutting their beating heart from their bodies. Human sacrifices were also painted blue before they were thrown into the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá. In addition, blue was used on murals, pottery, copal incense, rubber, wood and other items thrown into the well.

The new research concludes that the sacrificial blue paint found at this site was not just any pigment. Instead, it was the renowned Maya Blue -- an important, vivid, virtually indestructible pigment.

Maya Blue is resistant to age, acid, weathering, biodegradation and even modern chemical solvents. It has been called "one of the great technological and artistic achievements of Mesoamerica."

Scientists have long known that the remarkably stable Maya Blue results from a unique chemical bond between indigo and palygorskite, an unusual clay mineral that, unlike most clay minerals, has long interior channels. Several studies have found that Maya Blue can be created by heating a mixture of palygorskite with a small amount of indigo, but they have not been able to discover how the ancient Maya themselves actually produced the pigment.

The new research shows that at Chichén Itzá the creation of Maya Blue was actually a part of the performance of rituals that took place alongside the Sacred Cenote. Specifically, the indigo and palygorskite were fused together with heat by burning a mixture of copal incense, palygorskite and probably the leaves of the indigo plant. Then the sacrifices were painted blue and thrown into the Sacred Cenote.

"These sacrifices were aimed at placating the rain god Chaak," said Dean E. Arnold, Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College, Research Associate at The Field Museum and lead author of the study. "The ritual combination of these three materials, each of which was used for healing, had great symbolic value and ritualistic significance.

"The Maya used indigo, copal incense and palygorskite for medicinal purposes," Arnold continued. "So, what we have here are three healing elements that were combined with fire during the ritual at the edge of the Sacred Cenote. The result created Maya Blue, symbolic of the healing power of water in an agricultural community."

Rain was critical to the ancient Maya of northern Yucatan. From January through mid-May there is little rain -- so little that the dry season could be described as a seasonal drought. "The offering of three healing elements thus fed Chaak and symbolically brought him into the ritual in the form a bright blue color that hopefully would bring rainfall and allow the corn to grow again," Arnold said.

Museum collections play key role

One of the keys to solving the mystery of Maya Blue production was a three-footed pottery bowl (Field Museum catalog number 1969.189262; see below for reference to image) containing rarely preserved copal dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá in 1904 and traded to The Field Museum in the 1930s. Preserved in the copal were fragments of a white substance and blue pigment. Using The Field Museum's scanning electron microscope, the authors studied these inclusions and found signatures for palygorskite and indigo. From this they concluded that the Maya produced Maya Blue as part of their sacrificial ceremonies.

"This study documents the analytical value of museum collections for resolving long-standing research questions," said Gary Feinman, Curator of Anthropology at The Field Museum and co-author of the study.

But other knowledge was necessary to understand the significance of the bowl and the hardened copal it contains.

"This study required documentary, ethnographic and experimental research to establish the full context and use of the artifacts," Feinman said. "Our work emphasizes the potential rewards of scientific work on old museum collections. It also shows that scientific analysis is necessary but not sufficient for understanding museum objects."

It is this broad knowledge coupled with the scientific analysis that has enabled the scientists to finally -- after more than 100 years -- explain the thick layer of blue precipitate at the bottom of the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá.

Already knowing that Maya Blue was central to Maya ritualistic sacrifices together with discovering that the pigment was produced right beside the Cenote solved the mystery of the 14-foot layer of blue precipitate: So many sacrifices -- from pots to more than 100 human beings -- were thrown into the Sacred Cenote that ultimately a layer of the pigment washed off the sacrifices and settled at the bottom of the well. (Although fully formed Maya Blue is extremely durable, it can be washed off with water, especially if there is no binder to help it adhere to the object on which it is placed.)

Other objects in The Field Museum's collections may reveal more information about Maya Blue, the scientists said. For example, identification of the plant materials on the bottom of the copal incense in other bowls dredged from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá could reveal which portions of the indigo plant were used to make Maya Blue.

"The Field Museum's collection was critical in solving this mystery," Arnold concluded. "This bowl has been in the collection for 75 years yet only now have we been able to use it in discovering the ancient Maya technology of making Maya Blue."

The other co-authors of this research are Jason Branden from Northwestern University, and Patrick Ryan Williams and J.P. Brown, both from The Field Museum.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226162953.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 27, 2008, 9:28am

Crime-fighting Tool: Hair Reveals Where Murder Victims Drank Water

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — University of Utah scientists developed a new crime-fighting tool by showing that human hair reveals the general location where a person drank water, helping police track past movements of criminal suspects or unidentified murder victims.

"You are what you eat and drink -- and that is recorded in your hair," says geochemist Thure Cerling, who led the research effort with ecologist Jim Ehleringer.

The new hair analysis method also may prove useful to anthropologists, archaeologists and medical doctors in addition to police.

"We have found significant variations in hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in hair and water that relate to where a person lives in the United States," Ehleringer says. "Police are already using this to reconstruct the possible origins of unidentified murder victims."

One such officer is Salt Lake County Sheriff's Detective Todd Park, who is using the new type of hair analysis in an effort to identify a murdered woman whose remains were found near the Great Salt Lake in October 2000.

"It's a phenomenal method," says Park, a member of his department's cold case homicide unit. "I think it will help the law enforcement community a great deal."

Isotopes are forms of the same chemical element with different atomic weights. Stable isotopes are those that do not decay radioactively.

Mapping Isotope Concentrations in Hair and Drinking Water

The new technique analyzes stable isotopes of hydrogen (rare hydrogen-2 and common hydrogen-1) and oxygen (rare oxygen-18 and common oxygen-16) incorporated in growing hair from water and food that a person consumes and from air they breathe.

The ratio of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 in the air we breathe is the same everywhere, and Americans tend to get similar oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios from food because the U.S. diet is becoming homogenized.

The study* found a strong correlation between hydrogen and oxygen isotope levels in hair and drinking water; 85 percent of the variation in isotope levels in a person's hair was explained by variations in drinking water isotope levels in areas where they spent time.

So a single hair can help determine a person's location during recent weeks to years, depending on the length of the hair sample and thus how much time it took to grow.

The scientists used the method to produce color-coded maps showing how ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in scalp hair vary in different areas of the United States.

the maps cannot pinpoint a person's exact locations in the past, but identifies general geographic areas where they stayed and drank local water.

"You can tell the difference between Utah and Texas," Ehleringer says. But, Cerling adds, "You may not be able to distinguish between Chicago and Kansas City."

The maps were based on isotope analyses of hair and water samples collected from barbershops and tap water in 65 cities in 18 states across the United States. Each city had 100,000 or fewer people to ensure that hair collected from barbershops most likely came from local residents than from tourists visiting a big city.

Ehleringer's wife, Edna, and one of her friends collected samples in southern, central and southwestern states; Cerling's children -- Claire and Dylan -- traveled across the nation's northern tier. They asked barbers, "Can we have some of that trash from your floor or your trash can?" Jim Ehleringer says. "They came back with cardboard boxes filled with vials of water and envelopes of discarded hair."

Why Isotope Concentrations Vary with Geography

Why do isotopes in water -- made of hydrogen and oxygen -- vary with geography?

As clouds move off the ocean and onto the continent, rain water with oxygen-18 and hydrogen-2 tends to fall first because it is heavier. That should make ratios of oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 and hydrogen-2 to hydrogen-1 higher near the coast and lower farther inland.

But other factors also are important, including cloud temperatures, the season during which rain falls and the amount of water that evaporates from soil and plants.

These factors explain why oxygen-18 and hydrogen-2 levels in drinking water decrease rapidly moving inland from the West Coast (where winter storms are cold) and remain high inland from the Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts (where clouds are warmer).

Isotope concentrations vary seasonally in rain and snow, but drinking water in reservoirs or ground water represents a region's average precipitation over time and space.

Drinking water from any area has an isotope signature that is incorporated into growing hair. That signature is not complicated by other beverages because "a significant fraction of beer, soft drinks and milk is local in its origin," Ehleringer says.

The study found that areas where drinking water and hair have the lowest concentrations of hydrogen-2 and oxygen-18 include northern and western Montana, north-central Idaho and northwest Wyoming. The heavy isotopes drop out of clouds before they reach those inland areas because of both the cold and the distance from the Pacific Ocean.

Regions with the highest amounts of hydrogen-2 and oxygen-18 in drinking water and hair were southern Oklahoma, north-central Texas, Florida, south Georgia and southern South Carolina. Heavy isotope levels are high there because most water falls as summer rain and some evaporates from lakes, leaving more of the heavier isotopes behind in drinking water.

A New Tool for Police, Coroners and Scientists

The method already is being used by police to learn where unidentified murder victims might have been prior to their deaths.

On Oct. 8, 2000, hunters found the remains of a female murder victim near Interstate-80 along the south end of the Great Salt Lake west of Salt Lake City. Detectives recovered 26 bones, some hair, a T-shirt and a necklace.

A few months later, they created a facial reconstruction and publicized it nationally, but the woman's identity remains unknown. She was about 5 feet tall, age 17 to 20.

"We don't know who she is," says Park. "We don't even know the cause of death."

After hearing of Ehleringer's research, Park contacted the scientist and arranged for the isotope analysis of the victim's hair to determine where she traveled prior to her death.

"The samples I gave to Jim told me her approximate location for the last two years of her lifetime," Park says. "She moved around within the Northwest -- mainly in the Idaho-Montana-Wyoming area and maybe into Oregon and Washington."

After the scientists conduct more tests for oxygen isotopes in the woman's teeth -- isotopes that may reveal where her teeth formed and thus where she grew up -- Park will examine missing persons records in areas the victim visited in hopes of identifying her.

"Every little bit helps," the detective says. "You put pieces of the puzzle together to get a whole picture. And this is definitely something that will give us a piece of the puzzle."

Another use of the new method is to analyze hair from a person or animal to learn about their past movements.

In the study, the researchers analyzed a hair sample from a person who moved from Beijing to Salt Lake City. Hair grown during three months before the move contained relatively high levels of oxygen-18 and hydrogen-2, reflecting high concentrations of those isotopes in Beijing drinking water. But in hair closer to the scalp -- hair that grew after the move to Utah -- the concentrations of those isotopes dropped significantly, consistent with lower levels in Salt Lake City's drinking water.

Police could use this technique to check an accused criminal's alibi that he had not been in the region where the crime occurred.

Ehleringer says anthropologists and archaeologists may use the method to analyze ancient hair samples to reveal where Native Americans migrated or show a Mormon settler's movement from Missouri to Utah. Cerling says analyzing preserved bison hair may reveal more about their migration patterns when they were abundant.

To understand how drinking water affects isotope levels in hair, the researchers had to learn how foods influence isotopes in hair. As a result, archaeologists might analyze the hair of ancient people or animals to learn how much protein they ate, whether their diet was seafood or land-based, or what social class they occupied based on whether their diet was rich on meat protein or plant material.

There could be medical uses of the new method. Cerling says that because diabetics drink a lot of water, the proportions of oxygen in their hair from water and food would be different than in non-diabetics. Hair also might record isotope changes due to worsening symptoms of a dietary disease.

Ehleringer is a distinguished professor of biology at the University of Utah, and Cerling is a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics, and of biology. Three years ago, they co-founded IsoForensics, Inc., a company that is using stable isotope analysis of forensic substances to find slight variations in a chemical element's various isotopes.

Cerling and Ehleringer conducted the new study with biology master's student Lesley Chesson, also a technician at the University of Utah and IsoForensics; and David Podlesak, a postdoctoral researcher at both the university and IsoForensics. Other co-authors were former University of Utah postdoctoral researcher Gabriel Bowen, now at Purdue University, and graduate student Adam G. West, now at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ehleringer previously developed a method now used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to help learn where cocaine or heroin were produced based on local variations in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen isotopes absorbed into coca and poppy plants from soil and water. He also analyzed hydrogen and oxygen isotopes to help track counterfeit $100 bills, based on the water used to grow the cotton with which the bills were made.

*These findings are being published online Feb. 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080225213757.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Feb 29, 2008, 12:54pm


Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

· Mechanism hailed as more valuable than Mona Lisa
· Device with gear wheels tracked sun and moon

* Ian Sample, science correspondent
* The Guardian,
* Thursday November 30 2006


A reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

The machine was lost among cargo in 65BC when the ship carrying it sank in 42m of water off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. By chance, in 1900, a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck and recovered statues and other artifacts from the site.

The machine first came to light when an archaeologist working on the recovered objects noticed that a lump of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Closer inspection of material brought up from the stricken ship subsequently revealed 80 pieces of gear wheels, dials, clock-like hands and a wooden and bronze casing bearing ancient Greek inscriptions.

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods.

Using modern computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth at Cardiff University peered inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism and read the faintest inscriptions that once covered the outer casing of the machine. Detailed imaging of the mechanism suggests it dates back to 150-100 BC and had 37 gear wheels enabling it to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The motion, known as the first lunar anomaly, was developed by the astronomer Hipparcus of Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and he may have been consulted in the machine's construction, the scientists speculate.

Remarkably, scans showed the device uses a differential gear, which was previously believed to have been invented in the 16th century. The level of miniaturisation and complexity of its parts is comparable to that of 18th century clocks.

Some researchers believe the machine, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, may have been among other treasure looted from Rhodes that was en route to Rome for a celebration staged by Julius Caesar.

One of the remaining mysteries is why the Greek technology invented for the machine seemed to disappear. No other civilisation is believed to have created anything as complex for another 1,000 years. One explanation could be that bronze was often recycled in the period the device was made, so many artefacts from that time have long ago been melted down and erased from the archaelogical record. The fateful sinking of the ship carrying the Antikythera Mechanism may have inadvertently preserved it. "This device is extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said Professor Edmunds. "The astronomy is exactly right ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." The research, which appears in the journal Nature today, was carried out with scientists at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where the mechanism is held and the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/nov/30/uknews

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Mar 1, 2008, 1:15am

Sea reptile is biggest on record
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.



The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006.

The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island.

Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail.

A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half
Richard Forrest, plesiosaur palaeontologist

And during the last field expedition, scientists discovered the remains of another so-called pliosaur which is thought to belong to the same species as The Monster - and may have been just as colossal.

The expedition's director Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest marine reptile - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus .

"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.

"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."


The Monster's flipper alone measures 3m in length

Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world's oceans during the age of the dinosaurs.

A pliosaur's body was tear drop-shaped with two sets of powerful flippers which it used to propel itself through the water.

"These animals were awesomely powerful predators," said plesiosaur palaeontologist Richard Forrest.

"If you compare the skull of a large pliosaur to a crocodile, it is very clear it is much better built for biting... by comparison with a crocodile, you have something like three or four times the cross-sectional space for muscles. So you have much bigger, more powerful muscles and huge, robust jaws.



"A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half."

"There are a few isolated bones of huge pliosaurs already known but this is the first find of a significant portion of a whole skeleton of such a giant," said Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum

"It will undoubtedly add much to our knowledge of these top marine predators. Pliosaurs were reptiles and they were almost certainly not warm-blooded so this discovery is also a good demonstration of plate tectonics and ancient climates.

"One hundred and fifty million years ago, Svalbard was not so near the North Pole, there was no ice cap and the climate was much warmer than it is today."

The Monster was excavated in August 2007 and taken to the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Team members had to remove hundreds of tonnes of rock by hand in high winds, fog, rain, freezing temperatures and with the constant threat of attack by polar bears.

They recovered the animal's snout, some teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle and a nearly complete flipper.

Unfortunately, there was a small river running through where the head lay, so much of the skull had been washed away.

A preliminary analysis of the bones suggests this beast belongs to a previously unknown species.

Unprecedented haul

The researchers plan to return to Svalbard later this year to excavate the new pliosaur.

A few skull pieces, broken teeth and vertebrae from this second large specimen are already exposed and plenty more may be waiting to be excavated.

"It's a large one, and has the same bone structure as the previous one we found," said Espen Knutsen, from Oslo's Natural History Museum, who is studying the fossils.


Excavations have also yielded long-necked plesiosaurs

Dr Hurum and his colleagues have now identified a total of 40 marine reptiles from Svalbard. The haul includes many long-necked plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs in addition to the two pliosaurs.

Long-necked plesiosaurs are said to fit descriptions of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster. Ichthyosaurs bore a passing resemblance to modern dolphins, but they used an upright tail fin to propel themselves through the water.

Richard Forrest commented: "Here in Svalbard you have 40 specimens just lying around, which is like nothing we know.

"Even in classic fossil exposures such as you have in Dorset [in England], there are cliffs eroding over many years and every so often something pops up. But we haven't had 40 plesiosaurs from Dorset in 200 years."

The fossils were found in a fine-grained sedimentary rock called black shale. When the animals died, they sank to the bottom of a cold, shallow Jurassic sea and were covered over by mud. The oxygen-free, alkaline chemistry of the mud may explain the fossils' remarkable preservation, said Dr Hurum.

The discovery of another large pliosaur was announced in 2002. Known as the "Monster of Aramberri" after the site in north-eastern Mexico where it was dug up, the creature could be just as big as the Svalbard specimen, according to the team that found it.

But palaeontologists told the BBC a much more detailed analysis of these fossils was required before a true picture of its size could be obtained.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7264856.stm

Published: 2008/02/27 00:54:54 GMT

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Mar 2, 2008, 8:55pm

Key To Life Before Its Origin On Earth May Have Been Discovered


Fragment of the Murchison meteorite (at right) and isolated individual particles (shown in the test tube). (Credit: DOE/Argonne National Laboratory)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 29, 2008) — An important discovery has been made with respect to the mystery of "handedness" in biomolecules. Researchers led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University, found that some of the possible abiotic precursors to the origin of life on Earth have been shown to carry "handedness" in a larger number than previously thought.

Pizzarello, in ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, worked with Yongsong Huang and Marcelo Alexandre, of Brown University, in studying the organic materials of a special group of meteorites that contain among a variety of compounds, amino acids that have identical counterparts in terrestrial biomolecules. These meteorites are fragments of asteroids that are about the same age as the solar system (roughly 4.5 billion years.)

Scientists have long known that most compounds in living things exist in mirror-image forms. The two forms are like hands; one is a mirror reflection of the other. They are different, cannot be superimposed, yet identical in their parts.

When scientists synthesize these molecules in the laboratory, half of a sample turns out to be "left-handed" and the other half "right-handed." But amino acids, which are the building blocks of terrestrial proteins, are all "left-handed," while the sugars of DNA and RNA are "right-handed." The mystery as to why this is the case, "parallels in many of its queries those that surround the origin of life," said Pizzarello.

Years ago Pizzarello and ASU professor emeritus John Cronin analyzed amino acids from the Murchison meteorite (which landed in Australia in 1969) that were unknown on Earth, hence solving the problem of any contamination. They discovered a preponderance of "left-handed" amino acids over their "right-handed" form.

"The findings of Cronin and Pizzarello are probably the first demonstration that there may be natural processes in the cosmos that generate a preferred amino acid handedness," Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif., said at the time.

The new PNAS work* was made possible by the finding in Antarctica of an exceptionally pristine meteorite. Antarctic ices are good "curators" of meteorites. After a meteorite falls -- and meteorites have been falling throughout the history of Earth -- it is quickly covered by snow and buried in the ice. Because these ices are in constant motion, when they come to a mountain, they will flow over the hill and bring meteorites to the surface.

"Thanks to the pristine nature of this meteorite, we were able to demonstrate that other extraterrestrial amino acids carry the left-handed excesses in meteorites and, above all, that these excesses appear to signify that their precursor molecules, the aldehydes, also carried such excesses," Pizzarello said. "In other words, a molecular trait that defines life seems to have broader distribution as well as a long cosmic lineage.""

This study may provide an important clue to the origin of molecular asymmetry," added Brown associate professor and co-author Huang.

*The work is being published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper is titled, "Molecular asymmetry in extraterrestrial chemistry: Insights from a pristine meteorite," and is co-authored by Pizzarello, Huang and Alexandre.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080228174823.htm

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Re: Digging In The Dirt
Post by bigbunny on Mar 2, 2008, 9:07pm

Enormous Jurassic Sea Predator, Pliosaur, Discovered In Norway


Scale drawing of the Svalbard pliosaurus, human and Australian giant, kronosaurus. The inset on the left shows the bones found in the paddle. The paddle alone is nearly 10 feet long. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oslo)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 29, 2008) — Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway has announced the discovery of one of the largest dinosaur-era marine reptiles ever found – an enormous sea predator known as a pliosaur estimated to be almost 15 meters (50 feet) feet long.

The 150 million year-old Jurassic fossil was discovered on the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, at 78 degrees north latitude, approximately 1300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole. It was found in the summer of 2006 by a team of Norwegian paleontologists and volunteers from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, led by Dr. Jørn Hurum. The fossil was excavated in the summer of 2007 and has until now been prepared and conserved by a team at the Natural History Museum in Oslo .

A pliosaur is a type of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world's oceans during the age of dinosaurs. Pliosaurs had a tear-drop shaped body and two sets of powerful paddles that it used to “fly” through the water. Their short neck supported a massive skull full of an impressive set of teeth. Pliosaurs were the top predators in the sea at the time, preying upon squid-like animals, fish, and even other marine reptiles.

Pliosaurs were large reptiles that averaged 5-6 meters (16-20 feet) in length. One of the largest pliosaurs known is the Australian giant Kronosaurus , which measures in at 10-11 meters (33-36 feet) long. The new Norwegian find, named “The Monster” by team members, is estimated to be about 15 meters (50 feet) long, making it one of the longest and most massive plesiosaurs yet found.

“Not only is this specimen significant in that it is one of the largest and relatively complete plesiosaurs ever found, it also demonstrates that these gigantic animals inhabited the northern seas of our planet during the age of dinosaurs” said Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller, a plesiosaur specialist at the University of Alaska Museum, and a member of the expedition that found and excavated the fossil.

The team made the discovery in the summer of 2006, when parts of the skeleton, including skull fragments, were found weathering out of the side of a mountain.

“We knew immediately that this was something special. The large pieces of bone and the structure on the fragments told us immediately that this was something big” said Dr. Jørn Hurum.

A larger crew returned in August of 2007 to excavate the fossil. After removing about hundred tons of rock by hand the team was rewarded by uncovering a significant portion of the skeleton.

“Although we didn't get the entire skeleton, we found many of the most important parts, including portions of the skull, teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle, and a nearly complete forelimb (paddle)” said Druckenmiller, “Amazingly, the paddle alone is nearly 10 feet long.”

During its excavation in the summer of 2007, the team of paleontologists and volunteers h