These Are the Earliest Human Paintings Ever

According to new dating tests, these are the first paintings ever made by humans. They are seals painted more than 42,000 years ago, located in the Cave of Nerja, in Málaga, Spain. And they may change our ideas about humanity's evolution.

Until now, archeologists thought that the oldest art was created during the Aurignacian period, by modern humans. But these are way older, way more primitive than the ones in Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave,the 32,000-year-old paintings featured in Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

According to the latest dating of the charcoal found next to the paintings—used either to make the paintings or illuminate them—these seals may have been made more than 42,300 years ago. In fact, they may be as old as 43,500 years.

It's a mindblowing academic discovery, according to project leader José Luis Sanchidrián, professor at the University of Córdoba, one that can revolutionize our understanding of our history, culture and evolution:

Our latest discoveries show that neanderthals decorated their bodies with paint and had an aesthetic sense, and that's a scientific revolutions because, until now, [we] homo sapiens have attributed our selves every achievement, showing [the neanderthals] almost like monkeys.

We thought art history was exclusive to evolved humans, that our sensibility was "an intimate part of ourselves, the sapiens, because we think we are the thinkers." This discovery, if confirmed with further testing, proves this sapiens-centric idea wrong.

According to Sanchidrían, all the available scientific data shows that these pictures could only have been made by Homo Neanderthalensis instead of Homo Sapiens Sapiens, something completely unthinkable until this finding. "The charcoals were next to the seals, which doesn't have any parallelism in paleolithic art" said the professor, "and we knew that neanderthals ate seals." And there is no proof of homo sapiens in this part of the Iberian Peninsula.

Researchers think that this cave was one of the last points in Europe in which neanderthals—who lived from 120,000 to 35,000 years ago—sought refuge, escaping the push of the Cro-Magnon, the first earliest homo sapiens to reach Europe. [Cueva de Nerja via Diario de Córdoba—In Spanish]

http://gizmodo.com/5883082/this-is-the-first-painting-humanity-ever-made

Picture: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2012/02/12aaab88ad4552df38d611842cc3a4d3.jpg

Spain opens the public process to designate 41 marine Special Protection Areas (SPAs), totalling almost 50,000 km2

On 18 October, the Spanish Ministry of the Environment and Rural and Marine Affairs (MARM), published a proposal designating 41 marine Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Spain.


This proposal mirrors the marine IBAs inventory elaborated by SEO/BirdLife in Spain within two LIFE projects, ‘Marine IBAs in Spain’ (2004-2009), complemented by the project “INDEMARES” (2009-2013), both funded by the European Commission.

Only three of the 44 areas proposed by SEO/BirdLife have been left aside by the MARM proposal: the Gibraltar Strait, the Concepción Bank and the Chafarinas islands, because their limits extended beyond Spanish waters.
Once formally designated, these 41 protected sites will be the first complete national network of marine SPAs in Europe, and will represent a model for other countries.

The proposal, based on the results of two LIFE projects and supported by BirdLife, is guaranteed to be credible and serious, and will be, for sure, automatically endorsed by the European Commission.

“This achievement would have not been possible without the support of the whole BirdLife community”, said Asunción Ruiz, CEO in SEO/BirdLife. “We want to highlight the support from the beginning from the BirdLife International Secretariat, the European Division and several partners, in particular SPEA/BirdLife in Portugal”.

SEO/BirdLife congratulates the MARM and encourages the new government to speed up the process of designation, as well as to add the three remaining areas to this process.

The following step will be the elaboration of the management plans. SEO/BirdLife is already working on it through two projects funded by the European Union programmes LIFE+ and Interreg IV, and has already started to involve the relevant stakeholders to the process.


http://www.birdlife.org/community/2011/12/spain-opens-the-public-process-to-designate-41-marine-special-protection-areas-spas-totalling-almost-50000-km2/

Man withdraws snake from cash machine

A Spanish man had a shock when he went to withdraw some money - and a snake came slithering out of the cash machine.

The man had stopped to get some cash from a branch of the Caja Madrid bank in Llodio, Alava, at 8am on his way to work.

The middle-aged man managed to grab hold of his money despite the snake attempting to attack him, reports Euro Weekly News.

He then alerted the police, who arrived on the scene, and with the help of the bank manager, discovered that the snake was trapped by the mechanism of the cash point.

The manager activated it from the inside, freeing the snake, which was put in a box and taken to a shelter.

Police say they have not ruled out the possibility that someone may have put it there for a prank.

However, they say that it is a rural area so it's possible the snake got there of its own accord.



http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Man_withdraws_snake_from_cash_machine

Millions of birds migrating to Spain face painful deaths in glue-filled traps

Up to four million migrating birds will be killed by illegal Spanish hunters this year, with many dying a slow, sticky death in traps that literally glue the animals to the ground, according to campaigners.
Thrushes flying south for a warm Mediterranean winter this week will, as usual, run a gauntlet of illegal hunters who kill some two million birds in their peak hunting season: the six late autumn weeks in which Spanish skies fill with migrating birds.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters in Castellón, eastern Spain, and neighbouring areas will have already set their so-called parany traps – copses filled with glue-covered twigs and spikes.

Most of the illegally trapped birds will end up as tapas in Spanish bars, fried tidbits that locals claim are part of a cultural heritage stretching back to Roman times. "There are pictures of parany traps in the mosaics of Pompeii," said Miguel Angel Bayarri of the trappers' Apaval association. "This is a tradition that has existed for centuries and that we will continue to fight for."

Hunting of song and mistle thrushes and their cousin the redwing is not illegal, but the methods used are, despite attempts by legislators to introduce exceptions.

Campaigners say the painful deaths suffered by the birds, whose wings are glued together before their necks are broken or their heads squashed, contravene European wildlife laws.

"There have been sentences against this in the courts in Madrid and at the European court in Luxembourg," said Mario Giménez, head of SEO/Birdlife in the eastern region of Valencia.
Up to two of every five birds that fall into the parany traps will not be thrushes. Hundreds of thousands of other migrating insectivores such as robins, blackcaps, chiffchaffs and black redstarts will die. Local birds, including warblers and owls, also fall prey to the parany trick.

"That only happens if the trap is badly operated," said Bayarri. "Our members only catch thrushes. This is just banning for banning's sake."

But Giménez said few parany operators went through the laborious process of cleaning glue off birds that may not be hunted.

"Even those cleaned up with dissolvent often don't survive," he said.

Campaigners say it is time politicians, whose attempts at legalising the traps in Valencia's regional parliament have been stymied by Spain's higher courts, publicly disavow a tradition that contravenes EU law. But protecting local traditions wins votes in rural areas where setting and emptying traps may also involve evenings or weekends of food, drink and partying.

Hunting continues, even though Apaval has this year asked its members not to set the traps, where recordings of birdsong are used to lure passing birds into thickets of trees. Unable to use their glued wings, the birds fall to the ground and are killed by hand.


Read on ...

First Ebola-Like Virus Native to Europe Discovered

ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2011) — A team of international researchers has discovered a new Ebola-like virus -- Lloviu virus -- in bats from northern Spain. Lloviu virus is the first known filovirus native to Europe, they report in a study published in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

The study was a collaboration among scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII) in Spain, Roche Life Sciences, Centro de Investigación Príncipe Felipe, Grupo Asturiano para el Estudio y Conservación de los Murciélagos, Consejo Suerior de Investigaciones Científicas and the Complutense University in Spain.

Filoviruses, which include well-known viruses like Ebola and Marburg, are among the deadliest pathogens in humans and non-human primates, and are generally found in East Africa and the Philippines. The findings thus expand the natural geographical distribution of filoviruses.

"The study is an opportunity to advance the knowledge of filoviruses' natural cycle," said Ana Negredo, one of the first authors of the study.

Scientists at ISCIII analyzed lung, liver, spleen, throat, brain and rectal samples from 34 bats found in caves in Asturias and Cantabria, Spain, following bat die-offs in France, Spain and Portugal in 2002 affecting mainly one bat species.

They screened these samples for a wide range of viruses using the polymerase chain reaction, a molecular technique that allows scientists to amplify genetic material, and. detected a filovirus. Filoviruses include ebolaviruses and marburgviruses, two viruses associated with severe disease in humans and other primates.

CII scientists used high-throughput sequencing to characterize the virus' genome. When they compared it to other well-known filovirus genomes, they found that Lloviu virus represents a class of viruses distantly related to all ebolaviruses and that it may have diverged from ebolaviruses about 68,000 years ago.

"The detection of this novel filovirus in Spain is intriguing because it is completely outside of its previously described range. We need to ascertain whether other filoviruses native to Europe exist, and more importantly, if and how it causes disease," said Gustavo Palacios, the other first author of the study.

Filoviruses typically do not make bats sick, but because the team of researchers only detected Lloviu virus in bats that had died and whose tissues showed signs of an immune response, they think Lloviu may be a cause for concern. They also did not detect Lloviu virus in samples of almost 1,300 healthy bats.

Bats have important roles in plant pollination, spreading plant seeds and controlling insect populations, and pathogens that attack bat populations could have dramatic ecological and health-related consequences.

"The Lloviu virus discovery highlights how much we still need to learn about the world of emerging infectious diseases and the importance of global collaboration and the One Health initiative in addressing the challenge," said CII Director Dr. Ian Lipkin.

This research was funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, USAID PREDICT, the RICET Network on Tropical Diseases and the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia in Spain.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020191850.htm

Bullfighting in Barcelona to end with Catalonia ban

Bullfighting fans in Catalonia are set to see the last fights before a ban on the age-old tradition comes into effect in Spain's north-eastern region. About 20,000 spectators are expected to fill Barcelona's Monumental arena, where top matadors will be performing.

Catalonia's lawmakers voted for the ban - the first in Spain - last year after 180,000 people signed a petition. They say the bullfighting is barbaric, but opponents say they will challenge the ban in Spain's top court.

Read on...

Banyoles, where Nessie's Spanish cousin lives

According to legend, hundreds of years ago, in the dark waters of the Banyoles Lake in Girona, north eastern Spain, there lived a great monster who terrorised the local people. Then, in the eighth century, the French monk St Emeterio coaxed the beast from the lake with prayers, and transformed it into a peaceful herbivore. It's said the creature still lives in the depths today. Why not pay it a visit?

http://www.hellomagazine.com/travel/201102014869/banyoles-lake/girona/spain/1/

'Mythical' extinct fly rediscovered after 160 years (via Chad Arment)

A 'mythical' fly has been rediscovered after 160 years.

Thought to be the first fly driven to extinction by humans, it was also considered one of Europe's few endemic animals to have disappeared for good.

The bizarre fly was considered 'mythical' due to its orange head, its preference for living on dead animal carcasses, and the fact it was rarely sighted even in the 19th Century.

The discovery of the fly living in Spain is "sensational", say scientists.

The colourful, strange-looking fly goes by the scientific name of Thyreophora cynophila and belongs to the cheese and bone-skipper family of flies.

"T. cynophila has acquired almost mythical status among the entomological community due to several reasons which makes it a very unusual species," says Dr Daniel Martín-Vega of the University of Alcalá, to the east of Madrid in Spain.

Dead of night
It preferred to live in the cool season, whereas most flies like warmer temperatures.

It lived on the carcasses of dead animals that are in the advanced stages of decay, whereas most carrion flies prefer less rotten flesh.

The fly was also said to have had an orange head that would glow in the dark, with some 19th Century scientists writing about how it could be found at night due to its luminous shine.

And 50 years after being described, the fly suddenly disappeared, supposedly for good, with the last sighting in 1849.

Many aspects of its biology remained unknown, but the fly's niche lifestyle was thought to have contributed to its extinction, as some experts speculated that it had a preference for crushed bones, in which it would lay eggs that turned into maggots.

Changes in livestock management in central Europe, improved carrion disposal following the Industrial Revolution, as well as the eradication of wolves and other big bone-crushing carnivores could have helped eliminate the fly.

"Because of that, T. cynophila was claimed as the first case of a fly species eradicated by man," says Dr Martín-Vega.

"Consequently, T. cynophila was included, as the only dipteran [true fly], in a recent list of European animals considered globally extinct."

Double discovery
However, Dr Martín-Vega and colleagues have found the fly living in two separate regions in Spain.

Dr Martín-Vega's team were researching carrion flies in the country in a bid to help police forensic teams.

They use the appearance of flies on corpses to help determine where and when a body may have died and how long it has been decomposing.

Around Madrid, the researchers use carrion-baited traps to catch more than 50,000 flies which have been studied and catalogued.

"I noticed the presence of six specimens of a strange-looking fly," which turned out to be the long-lost T. cynophila, Dr Martín-Vega told the BBC.

He and his colleagues have published details of this new discovery in the journal Systematic Entomology.

While they were waiting for the paper to be published, another group of researchers also found the fly living in La Rioja Province, in northern Spain.

Treasure collectors
Dr Martín-Vega's team have also discovered an old museum specimen of the fly which they believe originated in Algeria.

"This specimen, together with the present captures in Spain, suggest that probably the species is also present in more countries of the Mediterranean Basin," he says.

The researchers want to ensure the fly is listed as a protected species, until more is known about where it lives.

"The protection of T. cynophila is essential since one of the major threats for rediscovered insects is the indiscriminate capture by insect collectors, who consider these insects species a 'treasure' for their collections," says Dr Martín-Vega.

"In the case of T. cynophila, its colourful appearance is an extra handicap, indeed some authors called this species the 'Holy Grail' of Dipterology, [the study of flies]".

Matt Walker

Editor, Earth News
17 September 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9008000/9008585.stm

'Mythical' extinct fly rediscovered after 160 years (via Chad Arment)

A 'mythical' fly has been rediscovered after 160 years.

Thought to be the first fly driven to extinction by humans, it was also considered one of Europe's few endemic animals to have disappeared for good.

The bizarre fly was considered 'mythical' due to its orange head, its preference for living on dead animal carcasses, and the fact it was rarely sighted even in the 19th Century.

The discovery of the fly living in Spain is "sensational", say scientists.

The colourful, strange-looking fly goes by the scientific name of Thyreophora cynophila and belongs to the cheese and bone-skipper family of flies.

"T. cynophila has acquired almost mythical status among the entomological community due to several reasons which makes it a very unusual species," says Dr Daniel Martín-Vega of the University of Alcalá, to the east of Madrid in Spain.

Dead of night
It preferred to live in the cool season, whereas most flies like warmer temperatures.

It lived on the carcasses of dead animals that are in the advanced stages of decay, whereas most carrion flies prefer less rotten flesh.

The fly was also said to have had an orange head that would glow in the dark, with some 19th Century scientists writing about how it could be found at night due to its luminous shine.

And 50 years after being described, the fly suddenly disappeared, supposedly for good, with the last sighting in 1849.

Many aspects of its biology remained unknown, but the fly's niche lifestyle was thought to have contributed to its extinction, as some experts speculated that it had a preference for crushed bones, in which it would lay eggs that turned into maggots.

Changes in livestock management in central Europe, improved carrion disposal following the Industrial Revolution, as well as the eradication of wolves and other big bone-crushing carnivores could have helped eliminate the fly.

"Because of that, T. cynophila was claimed as the first case of a fly species eradicated by man," says Dr Martín-Vega.

"Consequently, T. cynophila was included, as the only dipteran [true fly], in a recent list of European animals considered globally extinct."

Double discovery
However, Dr Martín-Vega and colleagues have found the fly living in two separate regions in Spain.

Dr Martín-Vega's team were researching carrion flies in the country in a bid to help police forensic teams.

They use the appearance of flies on corpses to help determine where and when a body may have died and how long it has been decomposing.

Around Madrid, the researchers use carrion-baited traps to catch more than 50,000 flies which have been studied and catalogued.

"I noticed the presence of six specimens of a strange-looking fly," which turned out to be the long-lost T. cynophila, Dr Martín-Vega told the BBC.

He and his colleagues have published details of this new discovery in the journal Systematic Entomology.

While they were waiting for the paper to be published, another group of researchers also found the fly living in La Rioja Province, in northern Spain.

Treasure collectors
Dr Martín-Vega's team have also discovered an old museum specimen of the fly which they believe originated in Algeria.

"This specimen, together with the present captures in Spain, suggest that probably the species is also present in more countries of the Mediterranean Basin," he says.

The researchers want to ensure the fly is listed as a protected species, until more is known about where it lives.

"The protection of T. cynophila is essential since one of the major threats for rediscovered insects is the indiscriminate capture by insect collectors, who consider these insects species a 'treasure' for their collections," says Dr Martín-Vega.

"In the case of T. cynophila, its colourful appearance is an extra handicap, indeed some authors called this species the 'Holy Grail' of Dipterology, [the study of flies]".

Matt Walker

Editor, Earth News
17 September 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9008000/9008585.stm

Spain anti-bullfighting groups protest in Bilbao

Sunday August 22, 06:43 AM

MADRID (Reuters) - About 100 almost naked anti-bullfighting campaigners lay down outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao on Saturday in a protest coinciding with the start of the northern Spanish city's annual bullfight festival.

The demonstration followed the Catalan parliament's decision last month to ban bullfighting in that region from 2012, outlawing the centuries-old spectacle for the first time in mainland Spain.

The activists from the animal welfare groups AnimaNaturalis, Equanimal and CAS International lay down in the shape of a bull, their bodies smeared with black or red paint to simulate blood.

"Catalonia has been the first Spanish region to ban bullfighting and will be an example for others," said Aida Gascon, director of AnimaNaturalis in Spain.

The Catalan move was seen as partly driven by separatist sentiment in a region which is keen to differentiate itself from Spain.

Bilbao is the main city in Spain's Basque Country, which also has a fervent separatist movement but a strong bullfighting tradition. Over the nine-day Bilbao festival, Spain's top matadors will kill 54 bulls.

The bulllight debate was enlivened this week at a festival in the small Navarran town of Tafalla, when a bull vaulted over the ring's barrier into the crowd and hurt about 40 spectators before it was brought under control.

(Reporting by Judy MacInnes and Jesus Buitrago; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

http://nz.entertainment.yahoo.com/100821/5/l2wo.html

Flotilla of stinging jellyfish hit Spanish beaches

MADRID — Spain says a vast flotilla of jellyfish has stung hundreds of swimmers on Mediterranean beaches in recent days.

Juan Carlos Castellanos, an official in the town hall of Elche on the Costa Blanca, said 700 people were attacked over three days starting Sunday at three nearby beaches, where normally just a handful get stung daily. He said the beaches were free of the blobby creatures Wednesday, however.

Castellanos said this particular invasion involved a small, almost transparent species that most swimmers probably could not even detect as it floated in a large but dispersed group along three beaches.

Spanish marine biologists say that in general they are seeing fewer jellyfish this summer than in other years.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.