Thylacine lives up to its tiger moniker

Andrew Darby, Hobart
May 5, 2011

CLOSE study of thylacine leg bones has pointed to the lost marsupial's hunting technique, showing it probably behaved more like a tiger than a wolf.

Work on the thylacine's tell-tale elbow joint by US scientists found it was flexible enough to subdue prey after a surprise attack, indicating it was a sudden ambush predator.

The shape of the joint contrasts with those of dingoes and wolves, which have less foreleg movement, which is why they may rely on lengthy pack hunts, said biologists at Brown University, Rhode Island.

Scientists have been forced to forensically reconstruct the life of the unique striped marsupial, which was driven to extinction by hunters in Tasmania last century.

With a head like a large dog and a body striped like a cat, known as both the marsupial wolf and Tasmanian tiger, the animal's hunting habits were poorly documented.

In a study published in Biology Letters yesterday, Brown University researcher Borja Figueirido compared the bones of the thylacine with 31 other mammals.

Previous research pointed to the elbow joint as a clue to predatory habits because it showed whether the animal was built for flexibility and dexterity in handling prey, or for a chase.

''It's a very subtle thing,'' said Christine Janis, professor of biology in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at Brown. ''You never would think that the shape of just one bone would mean so much.''

Examining the bones, the researchers found the thylacine's humerus, or upper ''arm'' bone, was oval and elongated at the end closest to the elbow, implying the foreleg bones, the radius and ulna, were separated. That meant the thylacine would have been able to rotate the lower leg so that the foot pad faced up like a cat's.

Professor Janis said the thylacine's hunting tactics appeared to be a unique mix. "I don't think there's anything like it around today," she said. "It's sort of like a cat-like fox."

David Owen, author of the 2003 natural history Thylacine, told The Age conflicting accounts of the animal's speed and agility meant its hunting behaviour was still subject to conjecture. ''This work lends weight to it being an ambush predator, but I'm not convinced that it's not a pursuit predator by any means.''

http://www.theage.com.au/national/thylacine-lives-up-to-its-tiger-moniker-20110504-1e8fh.html

What Exactly Was The Australian Thylacine?

Though highly similar in their skull anatomy, specialized for a carnivorous diet, the thylacine, front, and the dingo very likely had different hunting styles. Researchers analyzing skeletons of the forelimbs found important differences
CREDIT: Carl Buell

Posted on: Wednesday, 4 May 2011, 09:45 CDT

The thylacine had the head and body of a dog, but its striped coat resembled a cat and it carried its young in a pouch like a kangaroo. These enigmatic, iconic creatures of Australia and Tasmania have been given conflicting names such as the “marsupial wolf” and the “Tasmanian tiger.”

Researchers at Brown University may have discovered the answer as to what type of creature the extinct thylacine was.

Bones of the thylacines, along with other dog-like and cat-like animals such as pumas, jackals, wolves and Tasmania devils, were examined by the researchers. Their findings concluded that these creatures were Tasmanian tigers, which meant that they were more like cats than dogs, and were clearly a marsupial.

The thylacine was able to rotate its arm so that the palm faced upwards, similar to a cat, reports BBC News. This allowed the animal to increase the amount of arm and paw movement to help the Tasmanian tiger subdue its prey after an ambush.

Borja Figueirido, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and lead author says, "We provide quantitative support to the suspicions of earlier researchers that the thylacine was not a pursuit predator. Although there is no doubt that the thylacine diet was similar to that of living wolves, we find no compelling evidence that they hunted similarly."

The research, published in Biology Letters, shows that the extinct thylacine was a “solitary, ambush-style predator, with hunting skills that are unlike those of wolves or dog-like species that hunt in packs and pursue their prey over distances.

Dog-like animals such as wolves and dingos have a more restrictive arm-hand movement, which has their paws fixed at a palm-down position; therefore, showing that their hunting strategy is to pursue a prey in packs rather than by ambush.

But this in not all-encompassing, since cats like the cheetah use speed to catch its meal and dog-like foxes rely on ambushing their prey.

Christine Janis, co-author and professor of biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown, says that the thylacine’s hunting method seems to be a unique mix.

“I don’t think there’s anything like it around today. It’s sort of like a cat-like fox.”

After millions of years of existence in Australia, the Tasmanian tiger ended its species with the final thylacine named Benjamin, who died in Hobart Zoo, Tasmania in 1936.

The extinction of the thylacines probably began about 40,000 years ago when humans started to settle in Australia, and the dingo, a small, dog-like creature, was introduced into the environment around 4,000 years ago.

Humans most likely disrupted thylacine habitat and probably even its food sources, but the dingo’s role in the disappearance of the Tasmanian tiger is still debatable, say researchers, since the hunting habits of these two animals are different from one another.

"Dingoes were more like the final straw [to the Tasmanian tigers' demise in continental Australia]," Janis says, "Because they weren't in the same niche. It's not just that a dingo was a placental version of a thylacine."

Eventually, the dingo-free island of Tasmania became the thylacines final living environment, where there was an effort to eradicate the animals in the 19th and 20th centuries.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/2041005/what_exactly_was_the_australian_thylacine/index.html 

See also: Thylacine hunting behavior - A Case of crying wolf

Millions of Mummy Puppies Revealed at Egyptian Catacombs

Dog remains in the catacomb uncovered beneath the Egyptian desert.
CREDIT: Scott Williams, Cardiff University

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 30 March 2011 Time: 11:01 AM ET

The excavation of a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the Egyptian desert has revealed the remains of millions of animals, mostly dogs and jackals. Many appear to have been only hours or days old when they were killed and mummified.

The Dog Catacombs, as they are known, date to 747-730 B.C., and are dedicated to the Anubis, the Egyptians' jackal-headed god of the dead. They were first documented in the 19th century; however, they were never fully excavated. A team, led by Paul Nicholson, an archaeologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, is now examining the tunnels and their contents, they announced this week. [Image of mummified puppy remains]

They estimate the catacombs contain the remains of 8 million animals. Given the sheer numbers of animals, it is likely they were bred by the thousands in puppy farms around the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, according to the researchers. The Dog Catacombs are located at Saqqara, the burial ground for the ancient capital Memphis.

"Our findings indicate a rather different view of the relationship between people and the animals they worshipped than that normally associated with the ancient Egyptians, since many animals were killed and mummified when only a matter of hours or days old," Nicholson said. "These animals were not strictly 'sacrificial.' Rather, the dedication of an animal mummy was regarded as a pious act, with the animal acting as intermediary between the donor and the gods." [Prehistoric Cemetery Reveals Man and Fox Were Pals]

In 1897, the French Egyptologist Jacques De Morgan published a map of the necropolis of Saqqara, which included a plan for the Dog Catacombs, but no information about the date or circumstances of their discovery, Nichols wrote in the September/October 2010 issue of Archaeology Magazine.

"In fact, virtually nothing is known about these catacombs," he wrote.

http://www.livescience.com/13473-mummified-puppies-egyptian-dog-catacombs.html

Dinosaur named 'thunder-thighs'

23 February 2011
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News

Scientists have named a new dinosaur species "thunder-thighs" because of the huge thigh muscles it would have had.

Fossil remains recovered from a quarry in Utah, US, are fragmentary but enough to tell researchers the creature must have possessed extremely powerful legs.

The new species, described in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, is a sauropod - the family of dinosaurs famous for their long necks and tails.

It could have given other animals a hefty kick, say its discoverers.

"If predators came after it, it would have been able to boot them out of the way," said Dr Mike Taylor, from University College London, UK.

The team has named its dinosaur Brontomerus mcintoshi - from Greek "bronto", meaning "thunder"; and "merós", meaning "thigh".

The fossilised bones of two specimens - an adult and a juvenile - have been dated to be about 110 million years old.

They were rescued from the Hotel Mesa Quarry in Grand County, Utah.

The site has been looted by commercial fossil-hunters and so scientists have probably been denied the full range of material from which to make their classification.

Nonetheless, those bones they do have sport tell-tale features that mark out an extraordinary species.
Chief among them is a hip-bone, called the ilium, which is unusually large in comparison to that of similar dinosaurs.

The wide, blade-shaped bone projects forward ahead of the hip socket, providing a proportionally massive area for the attachment of muscles.

"As you put the skeleton together, you can run muscles down from the hip-bone to join at the knee and that gives you a whopping thigh," Dr Taylor told BBC News.

"What's interesting is that if it were a sauropod that could move particularly fast, you would expect to see very strong muscles on the back of the leg to pull it along. But we don't; this is the opposite. It seems most likely to us that what this is about is being able to deliver a strong kick," he told BBC News.

The paleo-scientists speculate that the larger specimen in their possession is the mother of the juvenile.

The adult would have weighed about six tonnes - something like the size of a large modern elephant - and probably measured 14m in length.

At a third of the size, the juvenile would have weighed in at about 200kg - the size of a pony - and been 4.5m long.

Brontomerus was living in what geologists term the Early Cretaceous Period.

Some other marks on the fossils give additional clues to what sort of lifestyle the creature had and the environment it faced.

"The shoulder blade of Brontomerus has unusual bumps that probably mark the boundaries of muscle attachments, suggesting that Brontomerus had powerful forelimb muscles as well," explained team-member Dr Matt Wedel, from the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California.

"It's possible that Brontomerus mcintoshi was more athletic than most other sauropods. It is well established that far from being swamp-bound hippo-like animals, sauropods preferred drier, upland areas; so perhaps Brontomerus lived in rough, hilly terrain and the powerful leg muscles were a sort of 'dinosaur four-wheel drive'."

The team also believes the find is significant for its position in Earth history, in that it challenges the notion that sauropods began to disappear in the Early Cretaceous.

"Because sauropods were the most abundant dinosaurs found during the Jurassic Period and the rarest during the Early Cretaceous, there's long been the perception that sauropods were successful in the Jurassic and were replaced by duckbills and horned dinosaurs in the Cretaceous," said Dr Wedel.

"In the past 20 years, however, we are finding more sauropods from the Early Cretaceous period, and the picture is changing. It now seems that sauropods may have been every bit as diverse as they were during the Jurassic, but much less abundant and so much less likely to be found."

Dr Taylor is disappointed that more of Brontomerus could not be recovered, and wonders whether larger fossil pieces are being held in some unknown private collection.

"The fossil-hunters basically pillaged this site," he told BBC News.

"They left behind broken remnants and smashed bits of bone; and in some cases they were using broken bones to hold down tarpaulins - that's really the most disgraceful aspect of it."

See video and more at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12542664
(Submitted by Paul Vella)

On their own 2 feet: 3.2 million-year-old fossil foot bone supports humanlike bipedalism in Lucy's species

February 10, 2011

A fossilized foot bone recovered from Hadar, Ethiopia, shows that by 3.2 million years ago human ancestors walked bipedally with a modern human-like foot, a report that appears Feb. 11 in the journal Science, concludes. The fossil, a fourth metatarsal, or midfoot bone, indicates that a permanently arched foot was present in the species Australopithecus afarensis, according to the report authors, Carol Ward of the University of Missouri, together with William Kimbel and Donald Johanson, of Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins.

The research helps resolve a long-standing debate between paleoanthropologists who think A. afarensis walked essentially as modern humans do and those who think this species practiced a form of locomotion intermediate between the quadrupedal tree-climbing of chimpanzees and human terrestrial bipedalism. The question of whether A. afarensis had fully developed pedal, or foot, arches has been part of this debate. The fourth metatarsal described in the Science report provides strong evidence for the arches and, the authors argue, support a modern-human style of locomotion for this species. The specimen was recovered from the Hadar locality 333, popularly known as the "First Family Site," the richest source of A. afarensis fossils in eastern Africa, with more than 250 specimens, representing at least 17 individuals, so far known.

"This fourth metatarsal is the only one known of A. afarensis and is a key piece of evidence for the early evolution of the uniquely human way of walking," says Kimbel. "The ongoing work at Hadar is producing rare parts of the skeleton that are absolutely critical for understanding how our species evolved."

Humans, uniquely among primates, have two arches in their feet, longitudinal and transverse, which are composed of the midfoot bones and supported by muscles in the sole of the foot. During bipedal locomotion, these arches perform two critical functions: leverage when the foot pushes off the ground and shock absorption when the sole of the foot meets the ground at the completion of the stride. Ape feet lack permanent arches, are more flexible than human feet and have a highly mobile large toe, important attributes for climbing and grasping in the trees. None of these apelike features are present in the foot of A. afarensis.

"Understanding that the foot arches appeared very early in our evolution shows that the unique structure of our feet is fundamental to human locomotion," observes Ward. "If we can understand what we were designed to do and how natural selection shaped the human skeleton, we can gain insight into how our skeletons work today. Arches in our feet were just as important for our ancestors as they are for us."

This species, whose best-known specimen is "Lucy," lived in eastern Africa 3.0𔃁.8 million years ago. Prior to A. afarensis, the species A. anamensis was present in Kenya and Ethiopia from 4.2 to 4.0 million years ago, but its skeleton is not well known. At 4.4 million years ago, Ethiopia's Ardipithecus ramidus is the earliest human ancestor well represented by skeletal remains. Although Ardipithecus appears to have been a part-time terrestrial biped, its foot retains many features of tree-dwelling primates, including a divergent, mobile first toe. The foot of A. afarensis, as with other parts of its skeleton, is much more like that of living humans, implying that by the time of Lucy, our ancestors no longer depended on the trees for refuge or resources.

The Hadar project is the longest running paleoanthropology field program in the Ethiopian rift valley, now spanning more than 38 years. Since 1973, the fieldwork at Hadar has produced more than 370 fossil specimens of Australopithecus afarensis between 3.4 and 3.0 million years ago – one of the largest collections of a single fossil hominin species in Africa – as well as one of the earliest known fossils of Homo and abundant Oldowan stone tools (ca. 2.3 million).

Through ASU's Institute of Human Origins, the Hadar project plays an important role in training Ethiopian scholars by offering graduate degree and postdoctoral opportunities in the U.S. Promotion of local awareness of the global scientific importance and Ethiopian cultural heritage value of the Hadar site is also a project priority. Additionally, the fundraising phase of a planned "Hadar Interpretive Center" at Eloaha town, 30 kilometers from the site, was successfully completed in January 2011.

Provided by Arizona State University (news : web)

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-feet-million-year-old-fossil-foot-bone.html

Dinosaur species named for Boise State postdoctoral student and her twin sister

Idaho Statesman
Published: 02/08/11

Boisean Celina Suarez and her twin sister, Marina, had always hoped they'd find dinosaur bones in the backyard of their childhood home in San Antonio, Texas.

The pair never found any dinosaur bones behind their home. But they have found dinosaur bones -- more than once. It was their find in Utah in 2004 that led to the naming of a new species of dinosaur after the sisters, both now 29-year-old geochemists doing post-doctoral research.

"We're very honored," said Celina Suarez, who is doing research at Boise State University. Her sister, Marina, is a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The sisters are identical, mirror-image twins ("She's a leftie, and I'm a rightie," Celina said.)

At the time of their big find, they were both Temple University master's students working on a summer excavation project near Green River, Utah, with the Utah Geological Survey. While investigating the sediment near the site, they came across a gulley with rocks that had bones sticking out.

"There were toe bones and limb bones. We collected a few that were in danger of getting washed away. The next morning, we scoured the hillside for more limb bones," Celina Suarez said.

Later, after more excavation and study of the bones from the site, researchers determined that the bones came from at least three different dinosaur species, including skull bones from a raptor-like species considered to be the oldest known member of the family Troodontidae and the only one from the Early Cretaceous period ever found in North America (98 to 145 million years ago).

"When we first found the Utah site we knew it was significant, but we had no idea we would become part of history," Celina Suarez said.

That newly discovered dinosaur needed a name, so the team of researchers who published the first paper describing it named it after the Suarez sisters: Geminiraptor suarezarum (Gemini is Latin for twins). It is one of about 700 named species of dinosaur.

Celina Suarez said she found out the dinosaur species would be named for her and her sister in November, after reading a draft paper by Jim Kirkland, John Bird, Phil Senter and Jeff Bartlett (later published in Public Library Science Journal).

Suarez said Geminiraptor suarezarum was close to the size of an ostrich. She estimates it at about 125 million years old.

"It wasn't super-big," she said. "Unfortunately, not a whole lot of the animal had been found - just the skull."

Celina Suarez now specializes in geochemical paleontology. She analyzes the chemical makeup of ancient bones as it relates to the original biology of an animal and the geology of the environment that became its tomb.

Her work is being funded by a two-year, $170,000 National Science Foundation fellowship. Using bone specimens from Hagerman and the Idaho Museum of Natural History, she will examine the chemical and physical processes of fossilization.

Suarez is preparing for a summer trip to China, where she will examine dig sites with scientists from the Chinese Geological Academy of Sciences and the University of Pennsylvania.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/02/07/1518461/dinosaur-species-named-for-boise.html

Dinos were alive for ’700,000 yrs after the mass extinction’

January 28, 2011 1:16 pm

Researchers at University of Alberta have discovered a dinosaur fossil in New Mexico that indicates they were alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction.

Larry Heaman and colleagues found the bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. The common notion is that a mass extinction of the dinosaurs happened between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

Heaman and colleagues used a new direct-dating method called uranium dating, wherein a laser beam unseats minute particles of the fossil, which then undergo isotopic analysis.

The uranium atoms in bone decay spontaneously to lead over time and once fossilization is complete the uranium-lead clock starts ticking. The isotopic composition of lead therefore, determines the absolute age of the animal.

Experts believe that debris from a giant meteorite impact blocked out the Sun, causing extreme climate conditions and killing vegetation worldwide.

Heaman and his research colleagues have several theories as to why the New Mexico hadrosaur came from a line of dinosaurs that survived the great mass extinction events of the late Cretaceous period (KT extinction event).

One is that in some areas the vegetation wasn’t wiped out and a number of the hadrosaur species survived. The researchers also say the potential survival of dinosaur eggs during extreme climatic conditions needs to be explored.

If the team’s uranium-lead dating technique bears out on more fossil samples then the KT extinction paradigm and the end of the dinosaurs will have to be revised.

http://www.discoveryon.info/2011/01/dinos-were-alive-for-700000-yrs-after-the-mass-extinction.html

Dinos were alive for ’700,000 yrs after the mass extinction’

January 28, 2011 1:16 pm

Researchers at University of Alberta have discovered a dinosaur fossil in New Mexico that indicates they were alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction.

Larry Heaman and colleagues found the bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. The common notion is that a mass extinction of the dinosaurs happened between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

Heaman and colleagues used a new direct-dating method called uranium dating, wherein a laser beam unseats minute particles of the fossil, which then undergo isotopic analysis.

The uranium atoms in bone decay spontaneously to lead over time and once fossilization is complete the uranium-lead clock starts ticking. The isotopic composition of lead therefore, determines the absolute age of the animal.

Experts believe that debris from a giant meteorite impact blocked out the Sun, causing extreme climate conditions and killing vegetation worldwide.

Heaman and his research colleagues have several theories as to why the New Mexico hadrosaur came from a line of dinosaurs that survived the great mass extinction events of the late Cretaceous period (KT extinction event).

One is that in some areas the vegetation wasn’t wiped out and a number of the hadrosaur species survived. The researchers also say the potential survival of dinosaur eggs during extreme climatic conditions needs to be explored.

If the team’s uranium-lead dating technique bears out on more fossil samples then the KT extinction paradigm and the end of the dinosaurs will have to be revised.

http://www.discoveryon.info/2011/01/dinos-were-alive-for-700000-yrs-after-the-mass-extinction.html

Did Australian Aborigines reach America first?

by Jacqui Hayes
Cosmos Online
Thursday, 30 September 2010

SYDNEY: Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.

He and colleagues in the United States, Germany and Chile argue that first population was closely related to the Australian Aborigines and arrived more than 11,000 years ago.

Cranial morphology

The second population to arrive was of humans of 'Mongoloid' appearance - a cranial morphology distinctive of people of East and North Asian origin - who entered the Americas from Siberia and founded most (if not all) modern Native American populations, he argues.

"The results suggest a clear biological affinity between the early South Americans and the South Pacific population. This association allowed for the conclusion that the Americas were occupied before the spreading of the classical Mongoloid morphology in Asia," Neves says.

Until about a decade ago, the dominant theory in American archaeology circles was that the 'Clovis people' - whose culture is defined by the stone tools they used to kill megafauna such as mammoths - was the first population to arrive in the Americas.

Clovis culture

They were thought to have crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska at the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 or so years ago, following herds of megafauna across a land bridge created as water was locked up in glaciers and ice sheets.

But in the late 1990s, Neves and his colleagues re-examined a female skeleton that had been excavated in the 1970s in an extensive cave system in Central Brazil known as Lapa Vermelha.

The skeleton - along with a treasure trove of other finds - had been first unearthed by a Brazilian-French archaeological team that disbanded shortly after its leader, Annette Laming-Emperare, died suddenly. A dispute between participants kept the find barely examined for more than a decade.

The oldest female skeleton, dubbed Luzia, is between 11,000 and 11,400 years old. The dating is not exact because the material in the bones used for dating - collagen - has long since degraded; hence, only the layers of charcoal or sediment above and below the skeleton could be dated.

"We believe she is the oldest skeleton in the Americas," Neves said.

Luzia has a very projected face; her chin sits out further than her forehead, and she has a long, narrow brain case, measured from the eyes to the back of the skull; as well as a low nose and low orbits, the space where the eyes sit.

These facial features are indicative of what Neves calls the 'generalised cranial morphology' - the morphology of anatomically modern humans, who first migrated out of Africa more than 100,000 years ago, and made it as far as Australia some 50,000 years ago, and Melanesia 40,000 years ago.

New finds in seven sites

When Neves first announced his discovery of Luzia in the late 1990s, he faced criticism from a number of archaeologists, who claimed the dating was not accurate. He has since returned to excavate four other sites, and is still cataloguing skeletons from the most recent dig.

In total, there are now hundreds of skeletons with the cranial morphology similar to Australian Aborigines, found in seven sites - as far north as Florida in the United States to Palli Aike in southern Chile.

In 2005, he published a paper in the U.S journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysing the characteristics of a further 81 skeletons he recovered from one of four sites, in which he said strengthened his argument that there were migrations to the Americas from at least two major populations.

Not related to Native Americans

In June 2010 in the journal PLoS ONE, Neves and colleagues Mark Hubbe of Chile's Northern Catholic University and Katerina Harvati from Germany's University of Tübingen, showed that it was not possible for the Aborigine-like skeletons to be the direct ancestors of the Native Americans.

Nor was it possible for the two populations to share a last common ancestor at the time of the first entrance into the continent, they argued, based on the 57 cranial measurements that can be made on a skull.

So far, almost all DNA studies of Native Americans points to a single entry from Siberia. This may mean that the original population died out, or simply that DNA studies have been too narrow, argue a number of archaeologists.

Genetic evidence needed

"The lack of a perfect match between morphological and molecular information can be easily explained by a very frequent event in molecular evolution: loss of DNA lineages throughout time," Neves says.

"At first, I thought there had been a complete replacement of the population [in South America]," just as there was a replacement of a similar population in East Asia during the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary.

However, he now thinks that the original people were, at least partly, absorbed into the colonising groups. "I have not detected anything that could say they interbred [such as skulls exhibiting mixed cranial features].

"But I think we will. It would be unlikely if these people lived side-by-side for 10,000 years and did not interbreed," he added.

Neves is now calling on molecular archaeologists - experts in the recovery and analysis of DNA - to turn their focus to the question of who Luzia's Aborigine-like people were.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3774/did-australian-aborigines-reach-america-first?page=0%2C0
(Submitted by Terry W. Colvin)

Did Australian Aborigines reach America first?

by Jacqui Hayes
Cosmos Online
Thursday, 30 September 2010

SYDNEY: Cranial features distinctive to Australian Aborigines are present in hundreds of skulls that have been uncovered in Central and South America, some dating back to over 11,000 years ago.

Evolutionary biologist Walter Neves of the University of São Paulo, whose findings are reported in a cover story in the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, has examined these skeletons and recovered others, and argues that there is now a mass of evidence indicating that at least two different populations colonised the Americas.

He and colleagues in the United States, Germany and Chile argue that first population was closely related to the Australian Aborigines and arrived more than 11,000 years ago.

Cranial morphology

The second population to arrive was of humans of 'Mongoloid' appearance - a cranial morphology distinctive of people of East and North Asian origin - who entered the Americas from Siberia and founded most (if not all) modern Native American populations, he argues.

"The results suggest a clear biological affinity between the early South Americans and the South Pacific population. This association allowed for the conclusion that the Americas were occupied before the spreading of the classical Mongoloid morphology in Asia," Neves says.

Until about a decade ago, the dominant theory in American archaeology circles was that the 'Clovis people' - whose culture is defined by the stone tools they used to kill megafauna such as mammoths - was the first population to arrive in the Americas.

Clovis culture

They were thought to have crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into Alaska at the end of the last Ice Age, some 10,000 or so years ago, following herds of megafauna across a land bridge created as water was locked up in glaciers and ice sheets.

But in the late 1990s, Neves and his colleagues re-examined a female skeleton that had been excavated in the 1970s in an extensive cave system in Central Brazil known as Lapa Vermelha.

The skeleton - along with a treasure trove of other finds - had been first unearthed by a Brazilian-French archaeological team that disbanded shortly after its leader, Annette Laming-Emperare, died suddenly. A dispute between participants kept the find barely examined for more than a decade.

The oldest female skeleton, dubbed Luzia, is between 11,000 and 11,400 years old. The dating is not exact because the material in the bones used for dating - collagen - has long since degraded; hence, only the layers of charcoal or sediment above and below the skeleton could be dated.

"We believe she is the oldest skeleton in the Americas," Neves said.

Luzia has a very projected face; her chin sits out further than her forehead, and she has a long, narrow brain case, measured from the eyes to the back of the skull; as well as a low nose and low orbits, the space where the eyes sit.

These facial features are indicative of what Neves calls the 'generalised cranial morphology' - the morphology of anatomically modern humans, who first migrated out of Africa more than 100,000 years ago, and made it as far as Australia some 50,000 years ago, and Melanesia 40,000 years ago.

New finds in seven sites

When Neves first announced his discovery of Luzia in the late 1990s, he faced criticism from a number of archaeologists, who claimed the dating was not accurate. He has since returned to excavate four other sites, and is still cataloguing skeletons from the most recent dig.

In total, there are now hundreds of skeletons with the cranial morphology similar to Australian Aborigines, found in seven sites - as far north as Florida in the United States to Palli Aike in southern Chile.

In 2005, he published a paper in the U.S journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysing the characteristics of a further 81 skeletons he recovered from one of four sites, in which he said strengthened his argument that there were migrations to the Americas from at least two major populations.

Not related to Native Americans

In June 2010 in the journal PLoS ONE, Neves and colleagues Mark Hubbe of Chile's Northern Catholic University and Katerina Harvati from Germany's University of Tübingen, showed that it was not possible for the Aborigine-like skeletons to be the direct ancestors of the Native Americans.

Nor was it possible for the two populations to share a last common ancestor at the time of the first entrance into the continent, they argued, based on the 57 cranial measurements that can be made on a skull.

So far, almost all DNA studies of Native Americans points to a single entry from Siberia. This may mean that the original population died out, or simply that DNA studies have been too narrow, argue a number of archaeologists.

Genetic evidence needed

"The lack of a perfect match between morphological and molecular information can be easily explained by a very frequent event in molecular evolution: loss of DNA lineages throughout time," Neves says.

"At first, I thought there had been a complete replacement of the population [in South America]," just as there was a replacement of a similar population in East Asia during the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary.

However, he now thinks that the original people were, at least partly, absorbed into the colonising groups. "I have not detected anything that could say they interbred [such as skulls exhibiting mixed cranial features].

"But I think we will. It would be unlikely if these people lived side-by-side for 10,000 years and did not interbreed," he added.

Neves is now calling on molecular archaeologists - experts in the recovery and analysis of DNA - to turn their focus to the question of who Luzia's Aborigine-like people were.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3774/did-australian-aborigines-reach-america-first?page=0%2C0
(Submitted by Terry W. Colvin)

Amazing Horned Dinosaurs Unearthed on 'Lost Continent'; New Discoveries Include Bizarre Beast With 15 Horns

Artist's rendering of two new species of dinosaur -- Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni -- discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of southern Utah.
(Credit: Courtesy of Utah Museum of Natural History)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2010) — Two remarkable new species of horned dinosaurs have been found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the "lost continent" of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period. 

The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced in PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science. 

The study, funded in large part by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Science Foundation, was led by Scott Sampson and Mark Loewen of the Utah Museum of Natural History (UMNH) and Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah. Additional authors include Andrew Farke (Raymond Alf Museum), Eric Roberts (James Cook University), Joshua Smith (University of Utah), Catherine Forster (George Washington University), and Alan Titus (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument). 

The bigger of the two new dinosaurs, with a skull 2.3 meters (about 7 feet) long, is Utahceratops gettyi (U-tah-SARA-tops get-EE-i). The first part of the name combines the state of origin with ceratops, Greek for "horned face." The second part of the name honors Mike Getty, paleontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the discoverer of this animal. In addition to a large horn over the nose, Utahceratops has short and blunt eye horns that project strongly to the side rather than upward, much more like the horns of modern bison than those of Triceratops or other ceratopsians. 

Mark Loewen, one of the authors on the paper, likened Utahceratops to "a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head." 

Second of the new species is Kosmoceratops richardsoni (KOZ-mo-SARA-tops RICH-ard-SON-i). Here, the first part of the name refers to kosmos, Latin for "ornate," and ceratops, once again meaning "horned face." The latter part of the name honors Scott Richardson, the volunteer who discovered two skulls of this animal. Kosmoceratops also has sideways oriented eye horns, although much longer and more pointed than in Utahceratops. In all, Kosmoceratops possesses a total of 15 horns -- one over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and ten across the rear margin of the bony frill -- making it the most ornate-headed dinosaur known. Scott Sampson, the paper's lead author, claimed that, "Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles." 

Although much speculation has ensued about the function of ceratopsian horns and frills -- from fighting off predators to recognizing other members of the same species or controlling body temperature -- the dominant idea today is that these features functioned first and foremost to enhance reproductive success. Sampson added, "Most of these bizarre features would have made lousy weapons to fend off predators. It's far more likely that they were used to intimidate or do battle with rivals of the same sex, as well as to attract individuals of the opposite sex." 

The dinosaurs were discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), which encompasses 1.9 million acres of high desert terrain in south-central Utah. This vast and rugged region, part of the National Landscape Conservation System administered by the Bureau of Land Management, was the last major area in the lower 48 states to be formally mapped by cartographers. Today GSENM is the largest national monument in the United States. Sampson added that, "Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is now one of the country's last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards." 

For most of the Late Cretaceous, exceptionally high sea levels flooded the low-lying portions of several continents around the world. In North America, a warm, shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway extended from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, subdividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses, known as Appalachia and Laramidia, respectively. Whereas little is known of the plants and animals that lived on Appalachia, the rocks of Laramidia exposed in the Western Interior of North America have generated a plethora of dinosaur remains. Laramidia was less than one-third the size of present day North America, approximating the area of Australia. 

Most known Laramidian dinosaurs were concentrated in a narrow belt of plains sandwiched between the seaway to the east and mountains to the west. Today, thanks to an abundant fossil record and more than a century of collecting by paleontologists, Laramidia is the best known major landmass for the entire Age of Dinosaurs, with dig sites spanning from Alaska to Mexico. Utah was located in the southern part of Laramidia, which has yielded far fewer dinosaur remains than the fossil-rich north. The world of dinosaurs was much warmer than the present day; Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops lived in a subtropical swampy environment about 100 km from the seaway. 

Beginning in the 1960's, paleontologists began to notice that the same major groups of dinosaurs seemed to be present all over this Late Cretaceous landmass, but different species of these groups occurred in the north (for example, Alberta and Montana) than in the south (New Mexico and Texas). This finding of "dinosaur provincialism" was very puzzling, given the giant body sizes of many of the dinosaurs together with the diminutive dimensions of Laramidia. Currently, there are five giant (rhino-to-elephant-sized) mammals on the entire continent of Africa. Seventy-six million years ago, there may have been more than two dozen giant dinosaurs living on a landmass about one-quarter that size. 

Mark Loewen asks, "How could so many different varieties of giant animals have co-existed on such a small chunk of real estate?" One option is that there was a greater abundance of food during the Cretaceous.

Another is that dinosaurs did not need to eat as much, perhaps because of slower metabolic rates more akin to those of modern day lizards and crocodiles than to those of mammals and birds. Whatever the factors permitting the presence of so many dinosaurs, it appears that some kind of barrier near the latitude of northern Utah and Colorado limited the exchange of dinosaur species north and south. Possibilities include physical barriers such as mountains, or climatic barriers that resulted in distinct northern and southern plant communities. Testing of these ideas have been severely hampered by a dearth of dinosaurs from the southern part of Laramidia. The new fossils from GSENM are now filling that major gap. 

During the past decade, crews from the University of Utah and several partner institutions (e.g., the Utah Geologic Survey, the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology, and the Bureau of Land Management) have unearthed a new assemblage of more than a dozen dinosaurs in GSENM. In addition to Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops, the collection includes a variety of other plant-eating dinosaurs -- among them duck-billed hadrosaurs, armored ankylosaurs, and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs -- together with carnivorous dinosaurs great and small, from "raptor-like" predators to mega-sized tyrannosaurs (not T. rex but rather its smaller-bodied relatives). Also recovered have been fossil plants, insect traces, clams, fishes, amphibians, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and mammals, offering a direct glimpse into this entire ancient ecosystem. 

Most remarkable of all is that virtually every identifiable dinosaur variety found in GSENM turns out to be new to science, offering dramatic confirmation of the dinosaur provincialism hypothesis. Many of these animals are still under study, but two have been previously named: the giant duck-billed hadrosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis and the raptor-like theropod Hagryphus giganteus. 

Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops are part of a recent spate of ceratopsian dinosaur discoveries. Andrew Farke, another of the paper's authors, stated, "The past year has been a remarkable one for horned dinosaurs, with several new species named. The new Utah creatures are the icing on the cake, showing anatomy even more bizarre than typically expected for a group of animals known for its weird skulls." 

Clearly many more dinosaurs remain to be unearthed in southern Utah. "It's an exciting time to be a paleontologist," Sampson added. "With many new dinosaurs still discovered each year, we can be quite certain that plenty of surprises still await us out there." 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100922121943.htm

Amazing Horned Dinosaurs Unearthed on 'Lost Continent'; New Discoveries Include Bizarre Beast With 15 Horns

Artist's rendering of two new species of dinosaur -- Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni -- discovered in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument of southern Utah.
(Credit: Courtesy of Utah Museum of Natural History)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 22, 2010) — Two remarkable new species of horned dinosaurs have been found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the "lost continent" of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period. 

The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced in PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science. 

The study, funded in large part by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Science Foundation, was led by Scott Sampson and Mark Loewen of the Utah Museum of Natural History (UMNH) and Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah. Additional authors include Andrew Farke (Raymond Alf Museum), Eric Roberts (James Cook University), Joshua Smith (University of Utah), Catherine Forster (George Washington University), and Alan Titus (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument). 

The bigger of the two new dinosaurs, with a skull 2.3 meters (about 7 feet) long, is Utahceratops gettyi (U-tah-SARA-tops get-EE-i). The first part of the name combines the state of origin with ceratops, Greek for "horned face." The second part of the name honors Mike Getty, paleontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the discoverer of this animal. In addition to a large horn over the nose, Utahceratops has short and blunt eye horns that project strongly to the side rather than upward, much more like the horns of modern bison than those of Triceratops or other ceratopsians. 

Mark Loewen, one of the authors on the paper, likened Utahceratops to "a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head." 

Second of the new species is Kosmoceratops richardsoni (KOZ-mo-SARA-tops RICH-ard-SON-i). Here, the first part of the name refers to kosmos, Latin for "ornate," and ceratops, once again meaning "horned face." The latter part of the name honors Scott Richardson, the volunteer who discovered two skulls of this animal. Kosmoceratops also has sideways oriented eye horns, although much longer and more pointed than in Utahceratops. In all, Kosmoceratops possesses a total of 15 horns -- one over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and ten across the rear margin of the bony frill -- making it the most ornate-headed dinosaur known. Scott Sampson, the paper's lead author, claimed that, "Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles." 

Although much speculation has ensued about the function of ceratopsian horns and frills -- from fighting off predators to recognizing other members of the same species or controlling body temperature -- the dominant idea today is that these features functioned first and foremost to enhance reproductive success. Sampson added, "Most of these bizarre features would have made lousy weapons to fend off predators. It's far more likely that they were used to intimidate or do battle with rivals of the same sex, as well as to attract individuals of the opposite sex." 

The dinosaurs were discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), which encompasses 1.9 million acres of high desert terrain in south-central Utah. This vast and rugged region, part of the National Landscape Conservation System administered by the Bureau of Land Management, was the last major area in the lower 48 states to be formally mapped by cartographers. Today GSENM is the largest national monument in the United States. Sampson added that, "Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is now one of the country's last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards." 

For most of the Late Cretaceous, exceptionally high sea levels flooded the low-lying portions of several continents around the world. In North America, a warm, shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway extended from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, subdividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses, known as Appalachia and Laramidia, respectively. Whereas little is known of the plants and animals that lived on Appalachia, the rocks of Laramidia exposed in the Western Interior of North America have generated a plethora of dinosaur remains. Laramidia was less than one-third the size of present day North America, approximating the area of Australia. 

Most known Laramidian dinosaurs were concentrated in a narrow belt of plains sandwiched between the seaway to the east and mountains to the west. Today, thanks to an abundant fossil record and more than a century of collecting by paleontologists, Laramidia is the best known major landmass for the entire Age of Dinosaurs, with dig sites spanning from Alaska to Mexico. Utah was located in the southern part of Laramidia, which has yielded far fewer dinosaur remains than the fossil-rich north. The world of dinosaurs was much warmer than the present day; Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops lived in a subtropical swampy environment about 100 km from the seaway. 

Beginning in the 1960's, paleontologists began to notice that the same major groups of dinosaurs seemed to be present all over this Late Cretaceous landmass, but different species of these groups occurred in the north (for example, Alberta and Montana) than in the south (New Mexico and Texas). This finding of "dinosaur provincialism" was very puzzling, given the giant body sizes of many of the dinosaurs together with the diminutive dimensions of Laramidia. Currently, there are five giant (rhino-to-elephant-sized) mammals on the entire continent of Africa. Seventy-six million years ago, there may have been more than two dozen giant dinosaurs living on a landmass about one-quarter that size. 

Mark Loewen asks, "How could so many different varieties of giant animals have co-existed on such a small chunk of real estate?" One option is that there was a greater abundance of food during the Cretaceous.

Another is that dinosaurs did not need to eat as much, perhaps because of slower metabolic rates more akin to those of modern day lizards and crocodiles than to those of mammals and birds. Whatever the factors permitting the presence of so many dinosaurs, it appears that some kind of barrier near the latitude of northern Utah and Colorado limited the exchange of dinosaur species north and south. Possibilities include physical barriers such as mountains, or climatic barriers that resulted in distinct northern and southern plant communities. Testing of these ideas have been severely hampered by a dearth of dinosaurs from the southern part of Laramidia. The new fossils from GSENM are now filling that major gap. 

During the past decade, crews from the University of Utah and several partner institutions (e.g., the Utah Geologic Survey, the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology, and the Bureau of Land Management) have unearthed a new assemblage of more than a dozen dinosaurs in GSENM. In addition to Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops, the collection includes a variety of other plant-eating dinosaurs -- among them duck-billed hadrosaurs, armored ankylosaurs, and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs -- together with carnivorous dinosaurs great and small, from "raptor-like" predators to mega-sized tyrannosaurs (not T. rex but rather its smaller-bodied relatives). Also recovered have been fossil plants, insect traces, clams, fishes, amphibians, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and mammals, offering a direct glimpse into this entire ancient ecosystem. 

Most remarkable of all is that virtually every identifiable dinosaur variety found in GSENM turns out to be new to science, offering dramatic confirmation of the dinosaur provincialism hypothesis. Many of these animals are still under study, but two have been previously named: the giant duck-billed hadrosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis and the raptor-like theropod Hagryphus giganteus. 

Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops are part of a recent spate of ceratopsian dinosaur discoveries. Andrew Farke, another of the paper's authors, stated, "The past year has been a remarkable one for horned dinosaurs, with several new species named. The new Utah creatures are the icing on the cake, showing anatomy even more bizarre than typically expected for a group of animals known for its weird skulls." 

Clearly many more dinosaurs remain to be unearthed in southern Utah. "It's an exciting time to be a paleontologist," Sampson added. "With many new dinosaurs still discovered each year, we can be quite certain that plenty of surprises still await us out there." 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100922121943.htm

Workers unearth huge fossil cache in California

21 September 2010

Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.

The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.

Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.

The bones will go on display next year.

The find is a million years older than the famous haul from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, said Rick Greenwood, a microbiologist and also director of corporate environment health and safety for Southern California Edison.

"If you step back, this is just a huge find," he said. "Everyone talks about the La Brea Tar Pits, but I think this is going to be much larger in terms of its scientific value to the research community."

The number of skeletons found at the site may be explained by a marsh or lake bed that trapped animals looking for water, leaving them victim to predators, palaeontologists think.

Tom Demere, a San Diego Museum of Natural History palaeontologist, said the find was not directly comparable to La Brea, as it comprised different species from another era.

But he said it would be valuable.

"We have a fuzzy view of what this time period was like in terms of mammal evolution," Mr Demere said. "A discovery like this - when they're all found together and in a whole range of sizes - could really be an important contribution."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11383757

Workers unearth huge fossil cache in California

21 September 2010

Workers building a substation in California have discovered 1,500 bone fragments from about 1.4 million years ago.

The fossil haul includes remains from an ancestor of the sabre-toothed tiger, large ground sloths, deer, horses, camels and numerous small rodents.

Plant matter found at the site in the arid San Timoteo Canyon, 85 miles (137km) south-east of Los Angeles, showed it was once much greener.

The bones will go on display next year.

The find is a million years older than the famous haul from the tar pits at Rancho La Brea in Los Angeles, said Rick Greenwood, a microbiologist and also director of corporate environment health and safety for Southern California Edison.

"If you step back, this is just a huge find," he said. "Everyone talks about the La Brea Tar Pits, but I think this is going to be much larger in terms of its scientific value to the research community."

The number of skeletons found at the site may be explained by a marsh or lake bed that trapped animals looking for water, leaving them victim to predators, palaeontologists think.

Tom Demere, a San Diego Museum of Natural History palaeontologist, said the find was not directly comparable to La Brea, as it comprised different species from another era.

But he said it would be valuable.

"We have a fuzzy view of what this time period was like in terms of mammal evolution," Mr Demere said. "A discovery like this - when they're all found together and in a whole range of sizes - could really be an important contribution."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11383757

Construction crews unearth fossil 'treasure trove'

A Riverside County site yields camels, llamas, horses and saber-toothed cats, some well over 1 million years old.

By Thomas H. Maugh II and Amina Khan Los Angeles Times

September 21, 2010

It happened more than a million years ago, but the fossilized evidence preserved the scene. A horse not much different from modern horses was enjoying a cool drink at a watering hole in what is now San Timoteo Canyon when a saber-toothed cat sneaked up and grabbed it by the haunch.

After finishing its meal, the cat left the skeleton to be buried in mud from flash floods. That cat, or one very like it, eventually also ended up dead and its skeleton joined the horse's in the accumulating sediment.

And then, 1.4 million years later, Southern California Edison crews constructing a new substation for the growing population of Riverside County unearthed the horse — tooth marks still distinct on its leg — the cat and a "treasure trove" of fossils.

Get important science news and discoveries delivered to your inbox with our Science & Environment newsletter. Sign up »

Excavation at the site has so far revealed what may be California's oldest example of the saber-toothed cat Smilodon gracilis, a specimen more than a million years older than the Smilodon fatalis from the La Brea tar pits, which carry an array of fossils dating to as recently as 9,000 years ago.

Scientists so far have identified more than 1,450 specimens, including about 250 large vertebrate fossils and more than 1,220 fossils that are rabbit-size or smaller.

"And we're still counting," said paleontologist Robert Reynolds of LSA Associates of Riverside, the consulting paleontologists who are handling the dig for Southern California Edison.

Other specimens include llamas, horses and deer and more saber-toothed cats, some rare and others previously unknown. There is one of the earliest examples of a giant ground sloth and many of the fossils are in a remarkably well-preserved state, Reynolds said.

Smaller animals include meadow mice, gophers and kangaroo rats. Some of the remains are found in fossilized excreta, indicating that owls or hawks were hunting in nearby areas, then flying in and depositing the remains of their dinner on the site.

Researchers have also found remains of birch, pine, sycamore, oak, willows and cottonwoods, as well as cattails and horsetails.

"I've been working in this area for more than 40 years and have never seen concentrations of fossils like this," Reynolds said. So far, he said, the team has found more than 30 different species.

The fossils sharply increase the number of specimens available from what is known as the Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age, which stretches from about 1.9 million years ago to 250,000 years ago.

The find is also of great interest to geologists who have been attempting to deduce the history of the San Jacinto fault, a major fault that parallels the better-known San Andreas. Because the fossils were located in once-flat land that has been formed into a hill by a succession of earthquakes along the San Jacinto fault, the age of the fossils found there provides a measure of when activity on that fault began, said geologist Jonathan C. Matti of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Comparison of the fossils with those from other sites revealed their age. That allowed scientists to deduce that the earthquakes caused by the San Jacinto fault that raised the land into hills had to be more recent than 1.4 million years ago.

"Anytime you get indicators … of how old rocks are, a geologist is filled with joy," Matti said. The new find suggests that the average slip rate along the fault is substantially greater than geologists had previously believed. That, in turn, suggests a potential for larger earthquakes linked to it.

"I'm really glad" that state law requires companies to perform such studies at construction sites, Matti added.

Southern California Edison has a team of 70 biologists, paleontologists and other scientists who monitor construction sites specifically for artifacts. The team suspected that fossils might be present because paleontologist L. Barry Albright III, formerly a graduate student at UC Riverside and now on the faculty of the University of North Florida, had discovered fossils of the same age in similar rock formation elsewhere in the San Timoteo badlands. He found only a few species, however.

Doug Morton, a UC Riverside geologist who has mapped the area, said the find surprised him. "If somebody had asked me ahead of time what they would encounter, I would have said 'damn little,' " he said.

Reynolds said few people know about the find and the team will probably not begin publishing its results until next April.

"This sounds like a very nice, diverse assemblage that has the potential to provide some very interesting information," said Dr. John Harris, chief curator of the Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits, who has not seen the fossils. "They will be an important addition" to existing collections, he added.

On Monday afternoon, researchers at LSA were gathered around a long table cleaning up some of the finds. Paleontologist Carl Bennett, a tattooed, mustachioed paleontologist, was hunched over a sloth skull as long as his forearm, using a whining needle-like tool to clear away a layer of dirt. The skull is "the best ground sloth west of Texas of this age," Reynolds said.

Nearby, Reynolds was washing down sandstone particles removed from larger bones to look for smaller rodents' teeth, insects and other tiny artifacts that can provide valuable insight into climate at the site. He pointed to pinkish, fingertip-size fossils of sloth skin armor among the detritus.

Michael Stokes, a preparator, gestured at the stone-encased remains of a horse that he said "looked like somebody had walked right through it." Many people believe skeletons like those of dinosaurs are laid out the way they died, he said, "but that's not the way we find them in real life."

Once the scientists have finished with them, the fossils will be transferred to the Western Science Center in Hemet for public display. That will probably happen late next year.

Excavation is complete at the site and the substation will open by the middle of next year. Paleontologists suspect there may be more fossils in undisturbed areas adjacent to the site, but so far, no one is looking.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

amina.khan@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fossils-20100921,0,3128425.story
(Submitted by Leslie Jones)

Construction crews unearth fossil 'treasure trove'

A Riverside County site yields camels, llamas, horses and saber-toothed cats, some well over 1 million years old.

By Thomas H. Maugh II and Amina Khan Los Angeles Times

September 21, 2010

It happened more than a million years ago, but the fossilized evidence preserved the scene. A horse not much different from modern horses was enjoying a cool drink at a watering hole in what is now San Timoteo Canyon when a saber-toothed cat sneaked up and grabbed it by the haunch.

After finishing its meal, the cat left the skeleton to be buried in mud from flash floods. That cat, or one very like it, eventually also ended up dead and its skeleton joined the horse's in the accumulating sediment.

And then, 1.4 million years later, Southern California Edison crews constructing a new substation for the growing population of Riverside County unearthed the horse — tooth marks still distinct on its leg — the cat and a "treasure trove" of fossils.

Get important science news and discoveries delivered to your inbox with our Science & Environment newsletter. Sign up »

Excavation at the site has so far revealed what may be California's oldest example of the saber-toothed cat Smilodon gracilis, a specimen more than a million years older than the Smilodon fatalis from the La Brea tar pits, which carry an array of fossils dating to as recently as 9,000 years ago.

Scientists so far have identified more than 1,450 specimens, including about 250 large vertebrate fossils and more than 1,220 fossils that are rabbit-size or smaller.

"And we're still counting," said paleontologist Robert Reynolds of LSA Associates of Riverside, the consulting paleontologists who are handling the dig for Southern California Edison.

Other specimens include llamas, horses and deer and more saber-toothed cats, some rare and others previously unknown. There is one of the earliest examples of a giant ground sloth and many of the fossils are in a remarkably well-preserved state, Reynolds said.

Smaller animals include meadow mice, gophers and kangaroo rats. Some of the remains are found in fossilized excreta, indicating that owls or hawks were hunting in nearby areas, then flying in and depositing the remains of their dinner on the site.

Researchers have also found remains of birch, pine, sycamore, oak, willows and cottonwoods, as well as cattails and horsetails.

"I've been working in this area for more than 40 years and have never seen concentrations of fossils like this," Reynolds said. So far, he said, the team has found more than 30 different species.

The fossils sharply increase the number of specimens available from what is known as the Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age, which stretches from about 1.9 million years ago to 250,000 years ago.

The find is also of great interest to geologists who have been attempting to deduce the history of the San Jacinto fault, a major fault that parallels the better-known San Andreas. Because the fossils were located in once-flat land that has been formed into a hill by a succession of earthquakes along the San Jacinto fault, the age of the fossils found there provides a measure of when activity on that fault began, said geologist Jonathan C. Matti of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Comparison of the fossils with those from other sites revealed their age. That allowed scientists to deduce that the earthquakes caused by the San Jacinto fault that raised the land into hills had to be more recent than 1.4 million years ago.

"Anytime you get indicators … of how old rocks are, a geologist is filled with joy," Matti said. The new find suggests that the average slip rate along the fault is substantially greater than geologists had previously believed. That, in turn, suggests a potential for larger earthquakes linked to it.

"I'm really glad" that state law requires companies to perform such studies at construction sites, Matti added.

Southern California Edison has a team of 70 biologists, paleontologists and other scientists who monitor construction sites specifically for artifacts. The team suspected that fossils might be present because paleontologist L. Barry Albright III, formerly a graduate student at UC Riverside and now on the faculty of the University of North Florida, had discovered fossils of the same age in similar rock formation elsewhere in the San Timoteo badlands. He found only a few species, however.

Doug Morton, a UC Riverside geologist who has mapped the area, said the find surprised him. "If somebody had asked me ahead of time what they would encounter, I would have said 'damn little,' " he said.

Reynolds said few people know about the find and the team will probably not begin publishing its results until next April.

"This sounds like a very nice, diverse assemblage that has the potential to provide some very interesting information," said Dr. John Harris, chief curator of the Page Museum at the La Brea tar pits, who has not seen the fossils. "They will be an important addition" to existing collections, he added.

On Monday afternoon, researchers at LSA were gathered around a long table cleaning up some of the finds. Paleontologist Carl Bennett, a tattooed, mustachioed paleontologist, was hunched over a sloth skull as long as his forearm, using a whining needle-like tool to clear away a layer of dirt. The skull is "the best ground sloth west of Texas of this age," Reynolds said.

Nearby, Reynolds was washing down sandstone particles removed from larger bones to look for smaller rodents' teeth, insects and other tiny artifacts that can provide valuable insight into climate at the site. He pointed to pinkish, fingertip-size fossils of sloth skin armor among the detritus.

Michael Stokes, a preparator, gestured at the stone-encased remains of a horse that he said "looked like somebody had walked right through it." Many people believe skeletons like those of dinosaurs are laid out the way they died, he said, "but that's not the way we find them in real life."

Once the scientists have finished with them, the fossils will be transferred to the Western Science Center in Hemet for public display. That will probably happen late next year.

Excavation is complete at the site and the substation will open by the middle of next year. Paleontologists suspect there may be more fossils in undisturbed areas adjacent to the site, but so far, no one is looking.

thomas.maugh@latimes.com

amina.khan@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-fossils-20100921,0,3128425.story
(Submitted by Leslie Jones)

Toothy bird had a record-breaking 17ft wingspan

September 17, 2010 1:00 PM

Researchers have discovered the fossil of a scary-looking bird which had a monster 17ft wingspan and was the biggest bird to ever fly.

The winged giant - which lived 5-10 million years ago in Chile - was twice the size of the biggest modern-day birds like the albatross.

Experts say the Pelagornis chilensis also had bony-teeth which would have been useful for catching slippery prey in the open ocean such as fish and squid.

The newly discovered and largely complete Pelagornis chilensis skeleton now said to be important for understanding the physics behind how birds fly.

However, given the bird could have coexisted with the earliest humans it may also explain why some people always paranoid about being attacked by birds.

Dr Gerald Mayr of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in Germany said: "Bird watching in Chile would be thrilling if birds with more than five meter wingspans and huge pseudoteeth were still alive.

"Although these animals would have looked like creatures from Jurassic Park, they are true birds, and their last representatives may have coexisted with the earliest humans in North Africa."

LINKS
Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg

http://newslite.tv/2010/09/17/toothy-bird-had-a-recordbreaki.html

Toothy bird had a record-breaking 17ft wingspan

September 17, 2010 1:00 PM

Researchers have discovered the fossil of a scary-looking bird which had a monster 17ft wingspan and was the biggest bird to ever fly.

The winged giant - which lived 5-10 million years ago in Chile - was twice the size of the biggest modern-day birds like the albatross.

Experts say the Pelagornis chilensis also had bony-teeth which would have been useful for catching slippery prey in the open ocean such as fish and squid.

The newly discovered and largely complete Pelagornis chilensis skeleton now said to be important for understanding the physics behind how birds fly.

However, given the bird could have coexisted with the earliest humans it may also explain why some people always paranoid about being attacked by birds.

Dr Gerald Mayr of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in Germany said: "Bird watching in Chile would be thrilling if birds with more than five meter wingspans and huge pseudoteeth were still alive.

"Although these animals would have looked like creatures from Jurassic Park, they are true birds, and their last representatives may have coexisted with the earliest humans in North Africa."

LINKS
Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg

http://newslite.tv/2010/09/17/toothy-bird-had-a-recordbreaki.html

Scientists find 'oldest' dog remains

Published: 2 Aug 10 17:44 CET

German scientists have found that fragments of a dog's skull and teeth discovered in a cave in Switzerland date back more than 14,000 years in what could be the oldest known remains of man's best friend.

The fossils were among a haul of archaeological finds uncovered in 1873 in the Kesslerloch cave in northern Switzerland, Swiss news agency ATS said Monday. But it was only last year that researchers at Germany's Tübingen University took a closer look at them, it said.

"During a recent re-analysis of the faunal remains, we identified a cranial fragment and teeth of the domestic dog," the researchers said in an article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

"The large maxillar fragment was directly dated to ...14,100-14,600 BP (Before Present)," it said.

"We argue that the maxilla fragment must now be considered the earliest indisputable directly dated evidence of a domestic dog," they said.

Belgian archaeologists have claimed to have found the cranium of a dog dating back 30,000 years, but researcher Hannes Napierala told ATS: "We are sceptical because the teeth are very similar to those of a wolf."

The fragment found in the cave in Switzerland's Schaffhausen canton, however, was clearly distinct from remains of wolves, the scientists said.

http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100802-28901.html

The cave of bones: A story of solenodon survival

Tuesday, 1 June 2010
By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News, Sierra de Bahoruco, Dominican Republic

Conservationists are in the Dominican Republic attempting to save one of the world's most strange and ancient mammals - the Hispaniolan solenodon.

While trying to track down one of these creatures, The Last Survivors team is also trying to find out exactly how this animal has been able to survive for a remarkable 76 million years.

It is pitch black.

Splashes of light from our torches illuminate patches of the vast cavern we are standing in, every now and then highlighting bats as they swoop above.

Fine dust swirls, coating everything.

The last few remains of a human skeleton sit ominously close to the entrance - but that is not why the scientists are here.

It is the piles of tiny bones poking out, here and there, on the sediment and bat dropping caked floor that are attracting all the attention.

We are in a cave nestled in a cliff face in the Dominican Republic's tropical forests. It is reached by a startlingly steep ascent, then a deep drop into darkness.

Scientists think it could hold one of the keys to finding out how the Hispaniolan solenodon has been able to survive for so long, while nearly all other life around it has died out.

'Living fossil'

But before we get to the cave, we need to rewind a little.

Seventy-six million years, in fact. To the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

This is when a hunk of land attached to the great landmass that today forms North America broke away, taking with it some insectivorous mammals - the ancestors of the solenodon.

These creatures might not have looked much different to the animal we are hoping to spot on this expedition.

Conservation palaeontologist Sam Turvey, from the Zoological Society of London who is working on The Last Survivors project and the Edge of Existence Programme, says: "There is this concept of the solenodon being a 'living fossil', because it does seem to have retained certain, potentially ancient, features."

One of these is the groove in its teeth, which allows it to inject venom into passing insect prey - a unique feature, among today's mammals.

Dino-disaster

This lump of land carrying these strange animals, would later, after a few more breaks and fractures, become the island of Hispaniola, which contains the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

But just 11 million years after it slowly began to drift away from the supercontinent, devastation hit nearby.

A colossal space rock, 10-15km across, smashed into the Earth at the northern edge of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, wiping out the dinosaurs that had dominated the world until that point.

Dr Turvey says: "The Caribbean islands were much closer to the mainland then, and this would have been close to 'ground zero'."

In the immediate aftermath, the impact would have caused massive rises in temperature and giant tsumamis. Later, the planet would have been shrouded in darkness, casting a devastating shadow over any animal hoping to survive.

Yet, while the dinosaurs and much other prehistoric life perished, somehow - and theories abound that it might have been because it burrowed - the solenodon survived.

Skip forward a few more tens of millions of years, and the solenodon proves itself a champion survivor once again. First, by coping with the super-hot "greenhouse Earth" of the Eocene Period, then major changes in global ecosystems, and later, the Ice Age.

But stop the clock at 6,000 years ago, and suddenly the plucky mammal had to contend with one of the biggest threats to Caribbean fauna to date - humans.

Before humans arrived, there were about 25 land mammals on the island. But one by one they died out, leaving only the solenodon and a rodent called the The Last Survivors Hispaniolan hutia as the last mammals standing.

What had happened?

Dr Turvey says: "If you want to find the smoking gun responsible for these extinctions, you need to find out exactly when these animals actually disappeared."

And so, back to the cave.

Within just a few moments of entering the dusty tomb, hidden away in a dark corner, we stumble across a fossil treasure trove.

As the layers of dust are carefully swept away, tiny bones begin to emerge.

"A giant hutia… That's a pygmy sloth… Here's a spiny rat," exclaims Dr Turvey

All several thousand years old. And all now extinct.

Finds like this provide a window into the past: through carbon dating, the researchers can find out exactly when the different species died out.

And then they can see whether the extinctions can be linked to humans or other changes on the island.

No bones?

In his extensive trawls through caves like this one, Dr Turvey has noticed a strange anomaly - a lack of solenodon bones.

He has only found a couple of tiny fragments of ancient solenodons, despite months and months of searching. But fossil finds of now-extinct species have been much more common.

Dr Turvey says: "This raises a lot of important questions - and rightfully so.

"Why did these species die out while the solenodons survived? What were the key ecological differences between these species?"

In their more recent history, solenodons have faced greater threats still.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in Hispaniola in 1492, rats began to leap off his ships onto the island, causing havoc.

But, while others perished, the solenodon survived the rat onslaught.

Dr Turvey thinks the venomous beasts may have been so resilient thanks to what he describes as the "Goldilocks hypothesis".

Very small mammals, such as the now-extinct pygmy shrew, could have easily have become the victims of the black rats.

Whereas the solenodon, which is close to rabbit-sized, probably had fewer problems with rats thanks to its heftier bulk.

But while the solenodon is bigger, it is not too big, which according to Dr Turvey, means it probably escaped the attention of hungry humans.

He explains: "If you are hunting something for dinner, you're more likely to go for something like a sloth or a monkey."

So, he says, it is possible that solenodon is a sort of "halfway house" - not too small and not too big.

He adds: "Like in Goldilocks, they're just right."

Ultimate survivors

Whatever happened to make the solenodon the ultimate survivor, allowing it to hang on against all the odds, the researchers fear that more modern problems like deforestation and the threats from very recent introductions, such as mongoose and dogs, could put a stop to its 76-million-year story.

But researchers say that delving into the solenodon's history could help to ensure its future.

As we emerge from the darkness of the cave and begin to prepare for our next night-trek into the forest, where we will try to come face to face with one of these fanged furballs, Dr Turvey takes a last look back into the cave.

Trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened to Hispaniola's mammals in the past, he says, might just help us to figure out how to save these last survivors today.

The Last Survivors project involves Jersey's Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the Hispaniolan Ornithological Society (SOH) and the Dominican Republic's national zoo and environment ministry. It is funded by a grant from the UK Government's Darwin Initiative.

See video and illustrations at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10147688.stm
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)