Past Extinction Visiting the Present

"This fossil is a unique example of a group of extinct animals known as temnospondyls, which lived before and during the time of the dinosaurs."

"The last of the temnospondyls were in Australia 120 million years after Arenaerpeton, and some grew to massive sizes."

"The fossil record of temnospondyls spans across two mass extinction events, so perhaps this evolution of increased size aided in their longevity."

"I was obsessed with dinosaurs ... and so twelve-year-old me saw that fossil on display back in 1997. And then 25 years later it became part of my PhD., which is insane."

Paleontoloist Lachlan Hart, Australian Museum, Sydney

Arenaepeton Supinatus "supine sand creeper"

In the 1990s a retired farmer in Australia ordered a sandstone slab from a local quarry. Mihail Mihaildis meant to use the slab in the repair of his garden's broken retaining wall. After slicing through the stone, he discovered the presence of an outline that looked like a large salamander-type creature. That revelation moved him to contact the Australian Museum in Sydney and to hand it over to the museum for identification. The sandstone block with its intriguing display was displayed in 1997 at the museum.

 

The fossil, measuring 1.2 metres end to end, entirely intact from tail to head, boasts the entire skeleton of the creature. There are also outlines of its soft tissue, long gone but memorized by the sand it lay in when it died, that eventually was transformed to sandstone. While it was on display a 12-year-old boy saw it at the museum and was deeply impressed. Like most young people intrigued by impressions and remains of ancient creatures that once roamed Earth, this boy was fascinated, and his initial exposure was never forgotten.

 

And it was that very young boy, grown to become a paleontologist that finally identified the 240-million-year-old amphibian fossil that still lay in what remained of the 1.6-tonne sandstone slab. Formally named Arenaepeton supinatus, (supine sand creeper), the study identifying and describing the ancient creature was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

 

"Some pretty gnarly teeth"

 

The Arenaepeton supinatus most likely was hunted by ancient fish such as Cleithrolepis while inhabiting freshwater rivers during the Triassic period, waterways now known as the Sydney Basin. There are some characteristics that the modern Chinese Giant Salamander shares with the Arenaerpeton, though the latter was quite considerably larger, featuring "some pretty gnarly teeth, including a pair of fang-like tusks on the roof of its mouth", described Paleontoloist Hart.

Its size also made the Arenaerpeton stand out as much larger than other closely related animals that existed during that era. According to Hart, it was "dumb luck" he became part of the team tasked with identifying the very fossil he first saw 26 years earlier. He is pursuing and completing his PhD at the Australian Museum and at the University of New South Wales. 

24-million-year-old fossil identified, Australia Museum

Tyrannosaurus rex : King of the Dinosaurs

"In the last thirty years, the number of tyrannosaurs has increased threefold."
"The golden age of paleontology is right now."
"We have as much evidence that T.rex had feathers as we do that Neanderthals had hair."
Mark Norell, curator, fossil amphibians, reptiles and birds, American Museum of Natural History, New York

"It took evolution a long time to make T.rex."
"For most of the time they [early tyrannosaurs] were second- or even third-tier predators."
"People who study non-dinosaurs say dinosaurs get all the attention. People who study dinosaurs say theropods get all the attention."
"People who study theropods, say, oh, tyrannosaurs get all the attention."
Stephen Brusatte, paleontologist, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Tyrannosaurus rex, by the very indisputable fact that it is the largest land predator that has ever existed, does, quite, 'get all the attention', focusing peoples' minds on their incredible size, ferocity, temperament and appetite. It was named the world's most charismatic megafossil, after T.rex was described in 1905. That first fossil, and its monumental size was thought to be an anomaly, that another would likely never be disinterred.

Yet for over a century, T.rex has added extraordinarily to the study of dinosaurs with the pace of discovery recently ramped up with many of the new findings about T.rex along with other tyrannosaurs recognized as its relatives. Now, T.Rex: The Ultimate Predator, a new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History is slated to showcase that ancient monster of size and appetite. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington is set to reopen its hall of fossils with its own T.rex in a new stance, in June.

According to Dr. Mark Norell, curator at the American Museum of Natural History, T.rex has been an enormous assist in fostering a surge of interest in dinosaur paleontology given the rising number of researchers and new fossil discoveries thanks to the increase in the sophistication of new study techniques. "The golden age of paleontology is right now", stated his co-curator of the new show, Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University.

"There were probably only six of us in the world who were paid" to study dinosaurs exclusively, explained Phillip J. Currie, paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. "Right now, there's maybe 150", he said, in light of the explosion in the field. The first discovery of T.rex created a sensation, and now each new skeleton or partial skeleton find has been met with the same kind of enthusiasm. The Field Museum in Chicago attracts international attention with its T.rex skeleton.

That skeleton, discovered in 1990, turned out to be the largest, most complete T.rex ever, which the museum paid $8.3 million for. Another giant skeleton discovered shortly afterward is set to be unveiled at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, in May. Few finds are 90 percent intact as was the Chicago skeleton. Studies, with the use of CT scans, chemical analyses and new microscopic techniques illuminate behaviour, evolution and sensory capacities of T.rex.

The skull's musculature indicated that T.rex had a bite strength of 3,540 kilograms, deemed sufficient to cleave bones of other massive dinosaurs. Bone growth rings' studies led to a determination of how old individuals dinosaurs were and how swiftly they grew to maturity. T.rex, it appears, gained over two kilograms daily in its teenage years, living to age 30, at most. Judging by fossilized footprints of a dinosaur grouping, T.rex was held to be a social animal, one that likely hunted in groups.

Its brain was large even for its size, leading to the conclusion that its intelligence level was higher than other dinosaurs'. T.rex had excellent vision, with ears adapted for hearing low-frequency sounds and its brain case suggests that T.rex's olfactory capacity was superb. Feathers? It had feathers, more in its younger years, but likely had a tail plume at maturity though no T.rex fossil has been found indicating the presence of feathers.

According to Dr. Norell, considering what is known about other tyrannosaurs, related dinosaurs and the course of evolution, scientists are confident in asserting that T.rex had feathers growing out of parts of its hide.

There are over two dozen other dinosaurs dating back 100 million years before T.rex came on the scene, included in its superfamily of tyrannosaurs. The early tyrannosaurs for the most part were small; some chicken-sized while many were the size or dogs or deer. They were not the top predators for most of the 100 million years of their existence.

Then came the emergence of T.rex close to the end of the age of dinosaurs, swiftly becoming the dominant predator in North America. A reputation that draws some irritation from researchers of other early creatures that evolved aeons ago.

Visitors to T. rex: The Ultimate Predator will encounter a massive life-sized model of T. rex with patches of feathers—the most scientifically accurate representation of T. rex to date.
D. Finnin/© AMNH

Ancient Primitive Funerary Rites

"[The] zig-zagging incisions were undoubtedly engraving marks, produced with no utilitarian purpose but purely for artistic or symbolic representation."
Researchers, Natural History Museum, University College London, Britain

Bones with markings  Credit: Natural History Museum

"The engraved motif on the Gough's Cave bone is similar to engravings observed in other Magdalenian [later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic age] European sites."
"However, what is exceptional in this case is the choice of human bone and the cannibalistic context in which it was produced."
"The sequence of modifications performed on this bone suggests that the engraving was a purposeful component of the cannibalistic practice, rich in symbolistic connotations."
"Although in previous analyses we have been able to suggest that cannibalism at Gough's Cave was practised as a symbolic ritual, this study provides the strongest evidence for this yet."
Silvia Bello, Calleva researcher, Natural History Museum, London

A prehistoric forearm bone appears to have been disarticulated, filleted, chewed, and then engraved with a zig-zag design before being broken to extract bone marrow, said scientists from Britain's Natural History Museum. (Trustees of the Natural History Museum via Reuters)

When survival hangs in the balance, desperate people in our modern age resort to the unthinkable; with sadness and distaste but obeying nature's endowed irresistible urge to continue existing, they will make the decision to carve away the flesh of their companions who have died. These are castaways whose ships have met with disaster awaiting rescue, or survivors of plane crashes, or explorers of centuries past who turned to the desperate mode of survival through cannibalism. There are few who would fault them.

In some primitive societies it was part of the mourning ritual on the death of a loved one to wish to retain their spirit within the living, and to do this it was thought that eating their vital organs represented the ritualized manoeuvre that would ensure that the dead one's spirit was not lost, living on within the corpus and spirit of others. In other societies cannibalism was practised for other reasons, the taste of human flesh acquired a religious connotation, perhaps tinged with symbolically vanquishing an enemy, in death as in life.

So it should hardly be surprising to discover, as British paleontologists recently affirmed through their published research in the journal PLOS ONE, that some 15,000 years ago, unearthed ancient bones show evidence of having been cannibalized. That early cave dwellers ate their dead relatives, perhaps ritualistically; filleting their flesh and cracking their bones to extract the marrow, then scribbling markings on the bones, perhaps leaving a message relating to the departed.

Cheddar Gorge in Somerset  Credit: Joe Daniel Price

Hundreds of incised marks discovered on human and animal bones out of Gough's Cave were being studied by researchers in the field. The field happened to be in the Mendip Hills of Somerset, at Cheddar Gorge, a natural geological site of great beauty complete with limestone cliffs and vast rocky chambers. The discovery lends itself to the opinion that it represents the first Paleolithic age -- dating from 2.5 million years ago to around 12,000 BC -- evidence of ritualized cannibalism.

At Gough's Cave, an impressive cavern at Cheddar Gorge, researchers discovered one human bone that had been disarticulated, filleted, chewed and finally a zigzag design was tooled onto it -- and then it was cracked to extract the bone marrow. The marks appear not to have been produced through the process of butchery, evidently. The speculation is that they may represent details of the dceased's life, perhaps alternately memorializing the manner in which death arrived.

People are seen inside Gough's Cave in April 1934. Discovered in the 1880's, Gough's Cave in Somerset, southern England, was excavated over several decades ending in 1992. (Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Frequent excavations at Gough's Cave have unearthed evidence that humans had lived there for thousands of years, with human bones discovered in the cave, along with the remains of butchered mammals. Scientists from the Natural History Museum and University College in London found ample bones with carefully incised patterns marked on them to understand that the patterns are not random cuts but deliberate patterning for some obviously important purpose in mourning the dead.

Descendants of the early humans who lived in that far-off early era are known through DNA analysis of "Cheddar Man" the earliest complete human skeleton dating to 7150 B.C. to be living today in the area.

Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge

Serendipity and Dinosaurs

"At that point [of discovery] I kind of started freaking out because I knew what it was right away and it was one of these exceptionally rare animals."
"It's the only one of the more advanced troodontids that do this [the pubis bone rotated backwards]. Every other one, it's directly pointing straight down."
"We knew right away that it was something different. It represented something we had never seen before."
"That's when everything fell together and we were able to confirm that there were in fact two different species in the Dinosaur Park Formation, instead of just one."
Aaron van der Reest, paleontology student, University of Alberta

Hip bones of Latenivenatrix mcmasterae, unearthed by a University of Alberta paleontology student, are shaking up the family tree of a group of small meat-eaters that lived 75 million years ago. (Julius Csotonyi/University of Alberta)

Two new dinosaur classifications have now emerged, taking the place of Troodon formosus, no longer considered by paleontology study as a unique and valid species. The new classifications are Stenonychosaurus inequalis, and Latenivenatrix mcmasterae. Both mouthfuls of pronunciation, the latter representing a tribute to the late mother of paleontology student Aaron van der Reest. As the discoverer of a rare, intact dinosaur bone, the unearthing of which revealed that an hitherto-unknown species was represented by it, he had the honour of naming the two new classifications.

And how better to honour the mother whose support for her son's ambitions from childhood forward to become a paleontologist hastened his dream? "She looked at me [before her untimely death of cancer] and just told me if it was the last thing that she could do for me, that would be [his financial inheritance at her death] what she would choose." The reason being that he had been unable to complete funding his university studies, due to a lack of income.

As a teen-ager he was given an especial gift from his mother in the form of tickets to attend a University of Alberta lecture by paleontologist Philip Currie. On arrival at the lecture theatre, he discovered that it had been arranged for his seating to be at the head table, alongside his childhood hero. The very same man who many years later was to become his undergraduate supervisor. "Having brought my first find full circle, from discovery to publishing my research three years later, has been really incredible. I can't think of a better way to honour her memory."

Moving forward a few years, Aaron van der Reest was in Dinosaur Provincial Park, southeast of Calgary, as part of his undergraduate studies doing field work in 2014 when he and his partner saw a bone prominently sticking out of the ground close to a collection of other, smaller, bone fragments. The one that had drawn their attention turned out to be the pelvis of what was initially believed to be a Troodon formosus. Such a well-preserved bone was rare to come across.

But van der Reest's attention was riveted disbelievingly on the bone, for the fact that it, a pubis bone was rotated backward. This highly unlikely hip bone discovery spurred him to more closely examine cranial bones that had been collected previously, in southern Alberta. What he discerned from his investigations into both the cranial and the newly-discovered hip bone was a mismatch, leading to the conclusion that Troodon formosus does not represent a species at all.

This research was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, which also elucidates on the two new classifications taking the place of the now-defunct species classification.
"Troodon formosus has been found from Mexico all the way to Alaska, spanning a 15 million year period -- a fantastic and unlikely feat."

"The hips we found could ultimately open the door for dozens of new species to be discovered. Researchers with other specimens now have two new species for comparison, widening our ability to understand the Troodontid family tree in North America."
"This new species is the largest of the troodontids ever found anywhere in the world, standing nearly two metres at the head and close to 3.5 metres long. It's about fifty per cent larger than any other troodontids previously known, making it one of the largest deinonychosaurs (raptor like dinosaurs) we currently recognize."

Journal Reference:

1. Aaron J. van der Reest, Philip J. Currie. Troodontids (Theropoda) from the Dinosaur Park Formation, Alberta, with a description of a unique new taxon: implications for deinonychosaur diversity in North America. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 2017; 919 DOI: 10.1139/cjes-2017-0031

Life reconstruction of the newly discovered Latenivenatrix mcmasterae by Julius Csotonyi.

"Troodon formosus has been found from Mexico all the way to Alaska, spanning a 15 million year period—a fantastic and unlikely feat," explained van der Reest, a graduate student of renowned paleontologist Philip Currie.
"The hips we found could ultimately open the door for dozens of new species to be discovered," said van der Reest. "Researchers with other specimens now have two new species for comparison, widening our ability to understand the Troodontid family tree in North America."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-dino-hips-discovery-unravels-species.html#jCp

"Troodon formosus has been found from Mexico all the way to Alaska, spanning a 15 million year period—a fantastic and unlikely feat," explained van der Reest, a graduate student of renowned paleontologist Philip Currie.
"The hips we found could ultimately open the door for dozens of new species to be discovered," said van der Reest. "Researchers with other specimens now have two new species for comparison, widening our ability to understand the Troodontid family tree in North America."


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-dino-hips-discovery-unravels-species.html#jCp

An Ancient Aquatic Raptor

"This new species would have been an efficient predator and a terrifying sight to many of the smallest marine creatures that lived during that time."
"This new species was well adapted to capturing prey with the numerous, claw-like spines surrounding its mouth. Darting from the water depths, the spines would have been a terrifying sight to many of the smallest marine creatures that lived during that time.”
Jean-Bernard Caron, senior curator, invertebrate paleontology, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

"If you imagine putting your two hands together at the wrist and opening your fingers in a sort of curved manner and bringing them together, you get the idea of what these grasping spines might look like."
"This is quite a good apparatus for grasping prey and bringing it towards the mouth."
"Predators tend to be key to developing the structure of marine communities, in that the predators evolved to capture prey and the prey in turn evolves to avoid being predated on."
"So in that sense they indicate that those kinds of predator-prey interactions were important right back in the Cambrian (Period)."
"The specimens preserve evidence of features such as the gut and muscles, which normally decay away, as well as the more decay-resistant grasping spines. They show that chaetognath predators evolved during the explosion of marine diversity during the Cambrian Period, and were an important component of some of the earliest marine ecosystems."
Derek Briggs, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, Connecticut

Illustration of Capinatator praetermissus. (Drawing by Marianne Collins. Copyright Royal Ontario Museum.)

In British Columbia's Yoho and Kootenay national parks, registered as UNESCO World Heritage sites, new well-preserved specimens of ancient aquatic worms have been found, leading paleontologists to celebrate the discovery of 50 specimens of a newly-identified marine creature so different from what exists today that it presents as an entirely new genus of creatures. They were discovered in the Burgess Shale fossil beds, a repository rich in fossils representing some of Earth's oldest creatures dating back 500-million years in prehistory.

The newly discovered found fossils of a spiky-headed worm ten centimetres long, equipped with 25 spines on either side of its head, has been named Capinatator praetermissus, from the Latin words for 'to grasp', 'swimmer', and 'overlooked'. Researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum and Yale University co- authored a study published in the journal Current Biology, describing these creatures encased in sediment, preserved in admirable detail.

Of the specimens studied, many preserve the feeding apparatus attached to the head, with some showing evidence of the rest of the body. Forty-eight specimens are held by the Royal Ontario Museum and one, with an isolated set of grasping appendages, is from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Specimen from the Collins Quarry, Mount Stephen (Yoho National Park, BC). (Photo by J.B. Caron/Royal Ontario Museum)

Capinatator is believed by these scientists to represent an ancestor of worms abundant as aquatic creatures to the present day within plankton, populating the oceans of the world. Those living at the present time are smaller worms, equipped with fewer head spines than the specimens discovered in fossil form, giving paleontologists a bird's-eye view of how life on Earth exploded  roughly 541 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period.

Proto Human Emotions

"Murder is an ancient feature of humanity."
"Other humans went to the top of this vertical shaft and deposited dead members of their social group down into the site, and in this way formed a kind of primitive cemetery or kind of an early manifestation of funerary practices."
"Clearly this is an intentional human disposal of the dead."
Rolf Quam, Binghamton University, New York

"Unfortunately, the intentions do not fossilize, so it is impossible to interpret the motivation of the killing."
"Not even Sherlock Holmes could help us in that."
Nohemi Sala, Archaeological study, lead author

An early Neanderthal skull uncovered from the Sima de los Huesos cave. Seventeen skulls have been discovered there. Photograph by Javier Trueba, Madrid Scientific Films

Proto human communities existed almost half a million years ago, according to archaeological paleontologists. A study published in the journal PLOS One reveals that scientists have hypothesized the reason for the presence of one fractured skull among at least 28 others whose skulls have been found intact. The remains of early proto human species , lying in a mass grave known as the Pit of Bones have brought a mystery to scientists who have deciphered that mystery as a murder.

The Pit of Bones or as it is called, the Sima de los Heusos pit, since it is located in Spain, is a deep depression over fourteen meters below a surface shaft. Under which a layer of dirt exists and it is replete with cave bear bones. But the pit also contains a collection of human fossils, In fact, 6,500 bones representing 28 individual bodies' skeletal structures of ancient remains have been discovered through excavating the pit since 1976.


Fragments of one fractured skull found alongside the remains of 27 others northern Spain have been interpreted through reconstruction as having resulted from a primitive murder. The violence done to the skull has convinced the examining scientists that the holes in the forehead of this skull represent a deliberate murder, given the shape, size and location of the holes. A face-to-face conflict, they theorize, was responsible for the head-on trauma leading to immediate death.

That the fractures indicate no signs that healing took place before death indicates to the scientists that death occurred immediately; no healing process of recovery from the injuries sustained took place. Judging from the location and the size of the holes scientists theorize a single instrument was used to strike the victim twice, in a face-to-face conflict that represented a deadly, frontal attack.

The bone pit remains are not those of modern humans, but members of Homo heidelbergensis, who were the first to live in colder climates, and routinely hunted large animals, and were able to alter their environment by building shelters. The existence of the Pit of Bones also suggests that they cared for their dead. The 28 skeletons discovered in the pit appear to indicate their placement was intentional.

Paleontologists unearth fossils at the Spanish cave site. Photograph by Javier Trueba, Madrid Scientific Films

The pit, on the evidence, represents the oldest evidence of ritual burial. Leaving the impression that those early humans mourned the death of those they cared for. An emotion of sorrow that lies deep in the emotional psyche of present-day humans representing the attachments of love and concern. Emotions that are generally shared by all humans, along with the emotions of hatred, suspicion and rage leading to violence.

What was once representative of an emerging species given to reacting to their genetic inheritance of emotions motivating them to preserve their genetic code through procreation and caring, is also representative of the species that since evolved, carrying with it down through endless time those other all-too-human emotions related to territoriality and advantaging survival of the fittest, advancing evolutionary traits not much different from those of our predecessors.

Nature and Prehistoric Extinction

"It's not human nature just to see everything in your path and want to kill it."
"To think of scattered populations of Ice Age people with primitive technology driving huge animals to extinction, to me is almost silly."
"You can't just hold up a flag and say it was one thing that led to the extinction of all these species. It wasn't like they all collapsed in one instant across the continent."
"They migrated northward; 'Let's come up to Alaska and the Yukon on a vacation to see what it's like', but then when conditions got cold again they were immediately wiped out."
Grant Zazula, chief paleontologist, Yukon Territory

Both Colombian mammoths and mastodons once roamed North America.  - Velizar Simeonovski, The Field Museum, Chicago

We can empathize, we certainly can, as fellow mammals exposed to the dread certainties of the dead of a Canadian winter in this northern hemisphere. And being of the supposed higher order of mammalian existence, we have been gifted extraordinarily by nature in the ability to manipulate our environment, which has led over thousands of years to the kind of technology that enables us to shelter from extreme cold and the exigencies of misery brought down by winter conditions.

Those great, ponderous beasts known as mastodons that once lived on the Earth, died out 65,000 years earlier than did their near relations who existed in warmer atmospheres to the south of the Canadian Yukon and American Alaska. Mastodons, living in the far, frozen North that early man in fact had no knowledge of, since they died out long before early humans came on the scene.

American mastodons were among the largest living land animals during the ice age. They ranged from Alaska and Yukon to central Mexico, and from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts.
Compared to living elephants and mammoths, American mastodons were squatter—from 2 to 3 m (7 to 10 ft.) in shoulder height—and longer—about 4.5 m (15 ft.).
Their upper tusks extended 2 m (7 ft.) or more beyond the sockets, and some mastodons had vestigial tusks in their lower jaws. The tusks were probably used for breaking off branches of conifer trees to eat.
Their cheek teeth consisted of paired, blunt cones covered with thick enamel—useful for browsing on trees and shrubs. Coarse, reddish hair has been found on the best-preserved specimens.
Their preferred habitat was open spruce woodlands, spruce forests and marsh. Their diet included conifer twigs and cones, leaves, coarse grasses, mosses and swamp plants.
In Canada, most mastodon remains (more than 60 specimens by 2008) have been found in deposits that postdate the last glaciation in southern Ontario. Fossils have been found in every province and territory except Nunavut, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.

A new Canadian-led study claims that the fate of the prehistoric beasts was dictated by nature herself, which is to say her elements of extreme cold, wind and icy conditions for which mastodons were unprepared to adapt themselves. They hadn't been imbued by nature to survive those elements, although human beings were, with their larger brains, their ability to learn how to reason and extrapolate from experience, and to manipulate with their opposable thumbs.

But this is not a story about humankind. It is a study whose claim is that those great beasts gave up the collective ghost in a flurry of chill-ill-will. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 36 mastodon bones derived from across Canada and the United States were carbon dated to extract the data that led to that conclusion. Research discovered that the beasts perished before we came long.

Therefore, early man could not conceivably have led, through hunting, which is to say over-hunting, to their catastrophic extinction. That credit goes entirely to an excess of nature. Paleontological wisdom has clung to the theory that many North American Ice Age mammals ranging from mammoths to giant sloths to mastodons met their fate at the end of "Paleo-Indians" spears.

The new research holds, contrary-wise, that mastodons, experiencing shifting environmental conditions were unable to survive in the new colder climate. Their appearance on what now is the Canadian North seems to have been brief, occurring during an interglacial period of temperature and conditions similar to the present day's. As colder temperatures intruded, mastodon herds in the south joined their cousins' extinction, about 10,500 years ago.

According to Ross Phee, a researcher at the American Museum of National History, co-author of the Yukon study, a small population of mastodons might have survived around the Great Lakes where humans indeed may have dealt the final blow to their existence. "That's a very different scenario from saying the human depredations caused universal loss of mastodons across their entire range within the space of few hundred years, which is the conventional view."

Mammoths, unlike mastodons, were able to survive in the frozen North, living there until some ten thousand years ago. Mammoth bones are regularly dug up around Yukon gold mines. Much of the area had been unaffected by the last Ice Age glaciers, leaving the soil frozen with the intact bones, skin and footprints of prehistoric creatures long-extinct. Mastodon bones, however, represent rare finds in the otherwise fossil-rich Yukon.

In May 2013, scientists from the Siberian Northeastern Federal University  heard that mammoth tusks were sticking out of the permafrost on Maly Lyakhovsky Island in nothern Siberia. Researchers crossed miles of ice to see for themselves, and soon found the tusks belonged to a mammoth that had been exceptionally preserved beneath the permafrost. Mammoth experts performed a thorough autopsy on the animal, revealing intimate details of its life and grisly death. The carcass, which oozed fresh blood when it was first dislodged from the permafrost, is perhaps the best hope of cloning a mammoth yet.

livescience: While the entire team hopes to find enough DNA to clone a mammoth from scratch, that could be tricky. For one, DNA is delicate and must be stored at cold, constant humidity in order to be preserved. Harvard University researcher George Church hopes to overcome those challenges one way or another. (Photo credit: Renegade Pictures)

Linking Genes

"The researchers also find parts of the human genome that are deficient in Neanderthal alleles (bits of DNA), implying active removal during evolution."
"This result suggests that Neanderthal DNA reduced male fertility when transferred to a modern human genetic background, and these incompatibility alleles were therefore eliminated."
Harvard Medical School study, published in journal Nature

Pierre Andrieu/AFP/Getty Images    Most people whose ancestors are from Europe or Asia inherit 1% to 3% of their genes from Neanderthals — heavy-set, early humans that have been extinct for roughly 30,000 years.

 

So, one can suppose that the hypothesis that held sway decades ago that female Homo sapiens could never carry Neanderthal-fathered babies to full term because of the size of the baby's cranium -- causing death in childbirth to both mother and child -- and that Neanderthal females had no problems carrying to full term resulting in birth babies fathered by Homo sapiens males since no such difficulty arose as they were physically broader (and Homo sapiens' cranium was smaller), is not the issue here.

Although the article does speak of issue, as it happens. The issue being the minuscule provenance of modern humankind with its three percent of genes inherited from those primitives called Neanderthals, early human prototypes who lived in the last Ice Age in Central Asia and Europe, and who haven't been seen anywhere since, for the past 30,000 years. But for the minuscule remnants that remain within populations whose ancestors were originally from Europe or Asia.

A new genetic analysis produced by scientists with the Harvard Medical School, has produced a study hypothesizing that no active genes were left in modern men in two areas, resulting from Neanderthal primitive heritage. No genes were passed down expressing themselves (seen to be present) in the testes. The modern male reproductive mechanism is absent Neanderthal presence. Which, they point out, owes its presence to Homo sapiens' genetic influence.

The study authors consider this to be a classic instance of "hybrid sterility", seen most clearly and popularly in horse-donkey matings producing mules, very nice animals, but incapable of reproducing. Cross-breeding leading to sterility. And so it is with the breeding cross between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals away back when, according to these geneticists. Evolution, they point out, halts carriers of specific genes from reproducing.

According to Earl Brown, a geneticist with the University of Ottawa, the Neanderthal inheritance would have meant random gene selection scattered across human chromosomes. Some offspring might have the capacity to reproduce and some would not, eventually causing an editing-out of sex-related male genes. What did we inherit then from Neanderthal forefathers/mothers? A sharing of some hair and skin genes.

Interpreted by geneticists as an evolutionary advantage -- to avoid having African hair and skin in the cool climate of a Europe that is sun-deprived, unlike the Continent of Africa, where dark skin was an evolutionary protection against the ravages of human skin exposed to hot, relentless sun. It's still up in the air how much cerebral grey matter was inherited through the Neanderthal link, though. Once thought to be mulishly dull, they've since been brain-washed, so to speak.

New findings have been discovered to rehabilitate their image, so forget about calling your brutish neighbour a Neanderthal; the insult no longer works within the scientific community where cave paintings and tools were discovered to have been the work of Neanderthals.

'Ancient humans' used toothpicks

By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News  -- 8 October 2013

"Ancient humans" used toothpicks nearly 1.8 million years ago, a study of their teeth has revealed.

A team studied hominid jaws from the Dmanisi Republic of Georgia - the earliest evidence of primitive humans outside Africa.

They also found evidence of gum disease caused by repeated use of what must have been a basic toothpick.

Writing in PNAS, the team says its findings help to explain the diversity found in hominid teeth.
The researchers used a new forensic approach to look at variations on the teeth of hominids thought by some to be early European ancestors.

Teeth can shed light on what the individuals ate and how old they may have been, but until now it was not clear why there was so much diversity in the Georgian hominid mandibles, or jaws.

Ani Margvelashvili, lead author of the study at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, said that scientists dealing with fossil hominid mandibles should pay close attention to tooth wear and the fossil individual's age.

The Dmanisi hominids

• The Georgian hominids lived about 1.77 million years ago and represent an early expansion of human ancestors outside Africa
• They are believed to be the most complete collection of a Homo species from any site older than 300,000 years old
• They had human-like spines and lower limbs that would have been well suited for long distance travel
• The male of the species was much larger than the female
• They also had relatively small brains and primitive upper limbs, traits which they shared with the earlier Homo habilis, and even with the more primitive Australopithecus

"Progressive tooth wear triggers bone remodelling processes that substantially modify the shape of the jaw during an individual's lifetime. These effects are typically underestimated when attributing fossil hominid jaws to different species," she told BBC News. 

"The individual who was using a toothpick was young, as his or her teeth were not worn down. We also discovered a damaged area between the tooth area and the gum. There was a small cylinder-shaped lesion - in this area, if you place a toothpick it goes through."

The researchers analysed four mandibles from one of the biggest collections of well-preserved early human remnants known anywhere in the world.

The Dmanisi site has been valued as an important place to look at how hominids migrated from Africa.

"It's not very often you have one site with four mandibles. It has allowed us to see special features that have not been seen before," explained David Lordkipanidze of the Georgian National Museum.
This included horizontal scratches on a lesion, visible on the root surface of one of the teeth.

"Scientists often describe groups with new characters as different species. Here we show in one group you can see many characteristics. It shows once more how complicated the story of human evolution is," Prof Lordkipanidze, co-author of the work, told BBC News.

A toothpick perfectly fit through a cylinder shaped lesion

 

It is still unclear what species the Dmanisi hominids were. Experts once believed it was Homo erectus who first ventured out of Africa.

But the Dmanisi hominids were not typical of the tall-standing and big-brained H. erectus. Instead, the Dmanisi individuals were short, long-armed, small-brained and thin browed. The fossils are therefore now sometimes referred to as Homo georgicus.

Louise Humphrey from the Natural History Museum, London, said there had been a longstanding interest in the causes and implications of the high degree of variation in their mandibles and crania.
"This paper demonstrates that remodelling of the mandible associated with heavy tooth wear and continuous tooth eruption could contribute to that variation."

Peter Ungar from the University of Arkansas, US, said the study could provide a new way of looking at fossils.

"Tooth pick markings are not uncommon in fossil hominids from this time period, but this clinical, forensic approach is new and potentially useful.

"Analyses of tooth movements due to wear have been more-or-less limited to anatomically modern humans, and this paper introduces the approach to paleoanthropology," Prof Ungar added.

The mandibles that showed the least wear were from younger individuals

Team reconstructs 'human ancestor'

BBC News online - 12 April 2013

The researchers were able reconstruct the species using bones from three different individuals

The most complete view yet of a possible human ancestor uncovered in South Africa has revealed an intriguing mix of human and ape traits.

The two-million-year-old remains of several partial skeletons belonging to a previously unknown humanlike species were found in 2008 near Johannesburg.

The new analysis shows this species - Australopithecus sediba - had a human-like pelvis, hands and teeth, and a chimpanzee-like foot.
The findings appear in Science journal.

In six separate research reports, scientists probed further into the anatomy of a juvenile male skeleton, commonly referred to as MH1, a female skeleton, known as MH2, and an isolated adult tibia or shinbone, known as MH4.

The specimens were found at Malapa in the famous Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, just to the northwest of Johannesburg.

They were pulled from a pit - a depression left in the ground by a cave complex that lost its roof through erosion.
Scientists think the female and male could well have been mother and son.

It seems they died together in some tragic accident that saw them either fall into the cave complex or become stuck in it. After death, their bodies were washed into a pool and cemented in time along with the skeletons of many other animals - sabre-tooth cats, hyenas, antelope, even birds and mice.
The individuals from Malapa fall within a broad group known as the australopithecines, upright-walking humanlike creatures that roamed Africa between four million and two million years ago.

An analysis of Au. sediba's lower limb anatomy by Jeremy DeSilva from Boston University and colleagues suggests that the species walked in a unique way.

Its small heel resembles that of a chimpanzee more than it does a human. This suggests it likely walked with an inward rotation of the knee and hip, with its feet slightly twisted.

This primitive way of walking might have been a compromise between upright walking and tree climbing, the researchers suggest, since Au. sediba seems to have had more adaptations for tree-climbing than other australopithecines.

The findings suggest that some species of australopithecine climbed trees, some walked on the ground, and some did both.

Here. Au. sediba is compared with a modern human (L) and a chimp (R)

 

Meanwhile, Joel Irish from Liverpool John Moores University and colleagues investigated Au sediba's teeth. Like other parts of the skeleton, the teeth are a collage of primitive and human-like features.

They bear many resemblances to the teeth of another South African australopithecine, known as Au. africanus, suggesting these two species formed a southern group, distinct from East African forms such as Au. afarensis, represented by the famous "Lucy" skeleton.

Lead investigator Lee Berger, from the University of Witwatersrand, has been investigating whether thinly layered material excavated with the specimens represents fossilised skin from the creatures. Prof Berger submitted preliminary findings to the recent Paleoanthropology Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Rare Find of Temple Era Artifacts near Jerusalem

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu - Arutz Sheva 7



The discovery, like may others, was made during road excavation, this time at a new section of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway, known as Highway 1. The archaeological site is known as Tel Motza, at the Motza turnoff less than five miles west of Jerusalem.

A ritual building and a cache of sacred vessels date back approximately 2,750 years.

"The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judae at the time of the First Temple," according to Anna Eirikh, Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz, directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

“The uniqueness of the structure is even more remarkable because of the vicinity of the site's proximity to the capital city of Jerusalem, which acted as the Kingdom's main sacred center at the time,” they added. According to the archaeologists, "Among other finds, the site has yielded pottery figurines of men, one of them bearded, whose significance is still unknown."

Tel Motza and the surrounding region are renowned for their prime archaeological importance. Many finds have previously been uncovered at the site, from a variety of different periods. From the 1990s to the beginning of the present millennium, the site was excavated in preparation for the new route taken by Highway 1.

At the time, the site's archaeologists proposed once more identifying the site with the Biblical settlement "Mozah" mentioned in the Book of Joshua – a town in the tribal lands of Benjamin bordering on Judaea (Joshua 18: 26). The proposal was based, among other things, on the discovery at the site of a public building, a large structure with storehouses, and a considerable number of silos.

Archaeologists identified the site as a storehouse, run by high-ranking officials, for Jerusalem's grain supplies.

The current excavations have revealed evidence that provides another aspect to our understanding of the site. "The current excavation has revealed part of a large structure, from the early days of the monarchic period (Iron Age IIA),” the archaeologists said. “The walls of the structure are massive, and it includes a wide, east-facing entrance, conforming to the tradition of temple construction in the ancient Near East: the rays of the sun rising in the east would have illuminated the object placed inside the temple first, symbolizing the divine presence within.

“A square structure which was probably an altar was exposed in the temple courtyard, and the cache of sacred vessels was found near the structure. The assemblage includes ritual pottery vessels, with fragments of chalices (bowls on a high base which were used in sacred rituals), decorated ritual pedestals, and a number of pottery figurines of two kinds: the first, small heads in human form (anthropomorphic) with a flat headdress and curling hair; the second, figurines of animals (zoomorphic) – mainly of harnessed animals.”

The archeologists stress that "The find of the sacred structure together with the accompanying cache of sacred vessels, and especially the significant coastal influence evident in the anthropomorphic figurines, still require extensive research."

Ritual elements in the Kingdom of Judah are recorded in archaeological research, especially from the numerous finds of pottery figurines and other sacred objects found at many sites in Israel, and these are usually attributed to domestic rituals.

However, the remains of ritual platforms and temples used for ritual ceremonies have only been found at a few sites of this period.

According to the site's directors, "The finds recently discovered at Tel Motza provide rare archaeological evidence for the existence of temples and ritual enclosures in the Kingdom of Judah in general, and in the Jerusalem region in particular, prior to the religious reforms throughout the kingdom at the end of the monarchic period (at the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah), which abolished all ritual sites, concentrating ritual practices solely at the Temple in Jerusalem."

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Fossil raindrops probe ancient atmosphere

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco

The work hinges on the effects of atmospheric composition on drops' flights

The imprints of raindrops preserved in 2.7bn-year-old rock are being used to figure out what the atmosphere was like on the early Earth.

Scientists have used the depressions drops left to calculate how fast they were going as they impacted the ground.

This has allowed them to determine the density of air in ancient times.

This "palaeobarometry" approach, revealed at the AGU Fall Meeting, will help constrain the models that try to simulate conditions in Archaean times.

Earth 2.7 billion years ago was very different from the planet we know today.

It spun much faster, the Moon was closer and the Sun was much weaker. And there were no animals or plants in existence back then; the air was simply not breathable.

"There was probably quite a bit of nitrogen in the atmosphere, like today, but there was no oxygen," explained Sanjoy Som from Nasa's Ames Research Center.

"The oxygen was likely replaced by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

"My palaeobarometry work cannot tell you precisely what the gases were, but it will assist modellers of atmospheric composition by giving them a constraint," he told BBC News.

Dr Som told the AGU meeting - the largest annual gathering of Earth scientists - that the "fossil raindrops" were discovered in Ventersdorp in the North West Province of South Africa in the 1980s.
They consist of lots of pits in the surface of a rock that started out as volcanic ash-fall.

Rain tumbling on to the ash would have dug out small depressions, which were then subsequently covered over by further ash deposits and lithified, or turned to stone.

We only see the imprints today because the top layers of the rock have now been eroded back.
Dr Som's and colleagues' thinking is that the pits should tell us something about ancient air pressure.
Gathering momentum
 
Their starting point is that the diameters of the imprints are controlled ultimately by the top speed of the raindrops as they hit the ground.

This number - the terminal velocity - is dependent on air density. In the modern atmosphere it is about 9m/s.

"The rationale here is that if the air back then was thicker, the raindrops would fall slower, and the craters in the ash would be smaller; and conversely, if the air was thinner, the drops would fall faster and the craters would be larger," said Dr Som, who is also affiliated to the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, Seattle.

The confounding factor would be if raindrops were somehow much bigger in Archaean times. Fortunately, it turns out the maximum size a raindrop can reach is independent of air density; it is controlled by aerodynamic forces that are unrelated to the thickness of the air.

The pits were created in ash at a time when the Earth looked very different from today

 

The fattest drops 2.7bn years ago would have been the same as they are today - about 7mm.
Dr Som's team conducted experiments in which, using a pipette, they dripped small, carefully controlled volumes of water into a tray of volcanic ash from a height of about 25m.

This allowed the group to relate the momentum of a raindrop to the size of the imprints made; and then, using theory, to calculate the momentum of a drop of a known size at any air density.

The team concluded that if the biggest imprints in the Ventersdorp rock were formed by the largest raindrops, air pressure in the Archaean could have been no more than twice what it is today.

"But knowing what we do about the spread of raindrop sizes, we know the largest possible size is actually quite rare.

"So if it was smaller raindrops that formed the largest imprints at Ventersdorp then the atmospheric density was probably similar to ours, if not less."

The study supports the idea therefore that the ancient atmosphere must have had a strong concentration of greenhouse gases.

If air pressure were the same or even lower than it is today, there is no other way to explain why Earth was not thrown into snowball conditions by a substantially weaker Sun.

Without extra thickness in the atmosphere to trap heat, the properties of the gases themselves had to provide the blanket.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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