Oldest Neanderthal DNA Found in Italian Skeleton. The calcite-encrusted skeleton of an ancient human, still embedded in rock deep inside a cave in Italy, has yielded the oldest Neanderthal DNA ever found. These molecules, which could be up to 170,000 years old, could one day help yield the most complete picture yet of Neanderthal life, researchers say. Although modern humans are the only remaining human lineage, many others once lived on Earth.
The closest extinct relatives of modern humans were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia until they went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Recent findings revealed that Neanderthals interbred with ancestors of today's Europeans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa — 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa today is Neanderthal in origin. "The Altamura man represents the most complete skeleton of a single nonmodern human ever found," study co-author Fabio Di Vincenzo, a paleoanthropologist at Sapienza University of Rome, told Live Science. Ancient DNA from Siberian boy links Europe and America. 20 November 2013Last updated at 13:00 ET The Mal'ta boy was buried with a variety of artefacts, including a Venus figurine Scientists have mapped the genome of a four-year-old boy who died in south-central Siberia 24,000 years ago.
It is the oldest modern human genome sequenced to date, researchers report in the journal Nature. The results provide a window into the origins of Native Americans, whose ancestors crossed from Siberia into the New World during the last Ice Age. They suggest about a third of Native American ancestry came from an ancient population related to Europeans. Analysing the genes of present-day populations can only tell us so much about the past because traces of ancient movements have been overwritten many times. So studying the DNA from ancient remains is becoming a powerful tool for disentangling the numerous waves of migration that produced the genetic patterns seen in people today. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote DNA was extracted from the boy's arm bone.
Is this the stomach-turning truth about what the Neanderthals ate? | Science | The Observer. It was the tell-tale tartar on the teeth that told the truth. Or at least, that is what it appeared to do. Researchers – after studying calcified plaque on Neanderthal fossil teeth found in El Sidrón cave in Spain – last year concluded that members of this extinct human species cooked vegetables and consumed bitter-tasting medicinal plants such as chamomile and yarrow. These were not brainless carnivores, in other words. These were smart and sensitive people capable of providing themselves with balanced diets and of treating themselves with health-restoring herbs, concluded the researchers, led by Karen Hardy at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Barcelona.
Our vision of these long-extinct people needs adjusting, they argued. But now this tale of ancient tartar has taken a new twist with two researchers at London's Natural History Museum challenging the Barcelona group's conclusions. This point is backed by Stringer. Ape-like feet 'found in study of museum visitors' Scientists have discovered that about one in thirteen people have flexible ape-like feet. A team studied the feet of 398 visitors to the Boston Museum of Science. The results show differences in foot bone structure similar to those seen in fossils of a member of the human lineage from two million years ago.
It is hoped the research, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, will establish how that creature moved. Apes like the chimpanzee spend a lot of their time in trees, so their flexible feet are essential to grip branches and allow them to move around quickly - but how most of us ended up with more rigid feet remains unclear. Jeremy DeSilva from Boston University and a colleague asked the museum visitors to walk barefoot and observed how they walked by using a mechanised carpet that was able to analyse several components of the foot. Most of us have very rigid feet, helpful for stability, with stiff ligaments holding the bones in the foot together. Brontosaurus Not Real? Dino Is Actually Apatosaurus & Other Misconceptions Continue. What happened to the Brontosaurus? The beloved dinosaur has been a part of numerous museum exhibits and a big part of pop culture. But did you know there's no such thing as a Brontosaurus? I had a chance to sit down with Brian Switek, a dinosaur expert and the author of "My Beloved Brontosaurus," who told me about the legacy of Brontosaurus, the Bone Wars, and interesting cases of other common dinosaur misconceptions.
Watch the video above, or click the link below for a full transcript. CARA SANTA MARIA: Hi everyone. BRIAN SWITEK: Once you put up a dinosaur skeleton it’s very, very difficult to take it back down again. CSM: That's Brian Switek. BS: As I was sort of walking by the brontosaurus skeleton, you know myself just sort of knee high to the dinosaur itself at best, I just remember looking up and imagining what it would be like to actually see the animals fleshed out, to hear them breathing, to see it moving.
CSM: It's a classic bone-wars era story. 'Hobbit' Brain Bigger Than Thought, Homo Floresiensis Researchers Say. By: Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor Published: 04/16/2013 07:05 PM EDT on LiveScience The brain of the extinct "hobbit" was bigger than often thought, researchers say. These findings add to evidence that the hobbit was a unique species of humans after all, not a deformed modern human, scientists added. The 18,000-year-old fossils of the extinct type of human officially known as Homo floresiensis were first discovered on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003.
Its squat, 3-foot-tall (1 meter) build led to the hobbit nickname. [Image Gallery: A Real-Life Hobbit] The hobbit, Homo floresiensis, lived on the island of Flores some 18,000 years ago, and now researchers have more evidence (its relatively large brain) the diminutive creature was a unique human species. Scientists had suggested the hobbit was a unique branch of the human lineage Homo. Big brains? Armed with this knowledge, the scientists then compared the hobbit with other groups of humans. Hobbit ancestor alternative. Otzi The Iceman Had Tooth Decay, Cavities & Severe Gum Disease, New Study Shows (IMAGES) Think your last dental check-up was bad?
Pity poor Otzi. The mummified iceman had very severe tooth and gum trouble, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Zurich's Centre for Evolutionary Medicine. Otzi, a well-preserved 5,300-year-old mummy, was discovered in 1991 in the Otztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy. His teeth had never been systematically examined before. But now that researchers have taken a close look, they were surprised to uncover periodontal disease, tooth decay, severe abrasion, and dental trauma.
In a nutshell: “He had everything," study co-author Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich, told Discovery News. This view shows the right side of Otzi's rows of teeth (3D reconstruction). The researchers analyzed CT scans to identify Otzi's various ailments. North America Geologic History Revised In New 'Subduction Zone' Study. By: Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer Published: 04/03/2013 02:18 PM EDT on LiveScience It's time to redraw the map of the world during the reign of the dinosaurs, two scientists say. Picture the U.S. West Coast as a tortured tectonic boundary, similar to Australia and Southeast Asia today.
Erase the giant subduction zone researchers have long nestled against western North America. Drop a vast archipelago into the ancient Panthalassa Ocean, usually drawn as an empty void, the kind on which medieval mapmakers would have depicted fantastical beasts. "Now it fits together," said Karin Sigloch, a seismologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, and lead study author. With a spectacularly clear look at the remnants of ancient subduction zones under North America, Sigloch and her colleague Mitch Mihalynuk have revised 200 million years of geologic history. The old West The story begins 200 million years ago, just before the Atlantic Ocean basin first opened.
What lies beneath. Origin Of Life In RNA? Study Suggests Genetic Molecules May Have Self-Assembled. By Robert F. Service A pair of RNA-like molecules can spontaneously assemble into gene-length chains, chemists in the United States and Spain report. Billions of years ago, related molecules may have created a rudimentary form of genetic information that eventually led to the evolution of RNA and life itself, the researchers say. Although it's likely to be difficult, if not impossible, to prove whether similar proto-RNAs were present at the dawn of life, the researchers are working to see if the proto-RNAs can indeed faithfully encode information and evolve toward RNA. Origin of life researchers have long thought that RNA, the molecular cousin of the DNA that encodes our genes, may have played a starring role in the initial evolution of life from a soup of organic molecules.
RNA has a simpler structure than DNA and is a more adept chemical catalyst. But there are problems with this so-called RNA World hypothesis. ScienceNOW, the daily online news service of the journal Science. Parasitic Nematode, Or Roundworm, Called Most Numerically Abundant Animal On Earth. By Jennifer Frazer The next time you find yourself becoming mosquito chow, remember this video: This is Strelkovimermis spiculatis — a parasitic nematode, or roundworm — casually escaping from an unlucky, soon-to-be-expired mosquito larva. The way this larva twitches as the nematode slithers out is gut-wrenching. You can still see the poor larva’s vitals pumping even after nematode evac is complete and the larva’s torn cuticle gapes, dooming it to die.
It appears nematode-infested mosquito larvae get a bonus microtaste of the Aztec human sacrifice experience. You may also think humans own the planet. Nathan Augustus Cobb, a nematologist working for the U.S. In short, if all the matter in the universe except the nematodes were swept away, our world would still be dimly recognizable, and if, as disembodied spirits, we could then investigate it, we should find its mountains, hills, vales, rivers, lakes, and oceans represented by a film of nematodes.
No organism on Earth is exempt. Dinosaur 'Milk' May Have Sped Hatchlings' Growth. How did baby dinosaurs get enough nutrients to grow into giant beasts? Dinosaur "milk. " At least that's the idea put forth in a new paper by Dr. Paul Else, a professor of health sciences at Australia's University of Wollongong. The "milk" wouldn't have been the same as the white stuff mammals make. “Pigeons, emperor penguins and flamingos all produce ‘milk-like’ substances from crop glands or glands of the oesophagus that they feed to their young through their mouths,” Dr.
Dr. As Discover magazine notes, pigeon milk researchers "compared levels of gene expression between 'lactating' and non-milk-producing cells, finding a high level of activation in genes involved with antioxidant synthesis and cell growth. If Dr. “Although I work at the molecular level, I’m basically a comparative physiologist," Dr. Specifically, Dr. “Hadrosaurs were herd, site breeders with nest bound young fed by parents," he said. Have scientists uncovered any hard evidence for dino milk? Did overhunting lead to domestication? Article created on Monday, February 11, 2013 A new study on the populations of wild cattle and boars in the Levant Valley by Nimrod Marom, Guy Bar-OzLaboratory of Archaeozoology, University of Haifa, Israel has been published in PLOSone online Journal.
The research helps reshape our present understanding on the beginning of agriculture and domestication of animals. The faunal assemblage from the 9th-8th millennium BP site at Sha’ar Hagolan, was used to study human interaction with wild suids (pigs) and cattle in a time period just before the appearance of domesticated animals of these species in the Jordan Valley. Sha`ar Hagolan: A Neolithic transition Sha’ar Hagolan Goddess figurines. The early Neolithic village was occupied ca. 8000-7500 years during what is known in the region as the Yarmukian Culture. At the centre of the village stood a large, well-constructed building, serving what may be assumed to be a communal function. Crossing into domestication Sus scrofa. Source: PLOSone. Dinosaur extinction: Scientists estimate 'most accurate' date.
8 February 2013Last updated at 05:10 ET The study revealed a more accurate date for dinosaur extinction Scientists believe they have determined the most precise date yet for the extinction of dinosaurs. Researchers from Glasgow University were part of an international team that has been investigating the demise of the dinosaur. By using dating techniques on rock and ash samples, they established the creatures died out about 66,038,000 years ago - give or take 11,000 years. That date appears to coincide with the impact of a comet or asteroid. Debate has raged as to whether the giant impact was the sole cause of a quick demise of the dinosaurs, whether they were already in decline at the time of the impact, or whether the impact in fact happened as much as 300,000 years after they were gone. The extinction of the dinosaurs was first linked to a comet or asteroid impact in 1980. 'Final straw' The researchers looked at samples from Montana, where exceptional dinosaur fossils have been found.
Stubby-Tailed Dinosaurs Shook Their Thing. Evidence contradicts idea that starvation caused saber-tooth cat extinction. In the period just before they went extinct, the American lions and saber-toothed cats that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene were living well off the fat of the land. That is the conclusion of the latest study of the microscopic wear patterns on the teeth of these great cats recovered from the La Brea tar pits in southern California.
Contrary to previous studies, the analysis did not find any indications that the giant carnivores were having increased trouble finding prey in the period before they went extinct 12,000 years ago. The results, published on Dec. 26 in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, contradicts previous dental studies and presents a problem for the most popular explanations for the Megafaunal (or Quaternary) extinction when the great cats, mammoths and a number of the largest mammals that existed around the world disappeared. In 1993, Blaire Van Valkenburgh at UCLA published a paper on tooth breakage in large carnivores in the late Pleistocene. Ups and downs of biodiversity after mass extinction. The climate after the largest mass extinction so far 252 million years ago was cool, later very warm and then cool again. Thanks to the cooler temperatures, the diversity of marine fauna ballooned, as paleontologists from the University of Zurich have reconstructed.
The warmer climate, coupled with a high CO2 level in the atmosphere, initially gave rise to new, short-lived species. In the longer term, however, this climate change had an adverse effect on biodiversity and caused species to become extinct. Until now, it was always assumed that it took flora and fauna a long time to recover from the vast mass extinction at the end of the Permian geological period 252 million years ago. According to the scientific consensus, complex ecological communities only began to reappear in the Middle Triassic, so 247 million years ago. Alternate cooler and very warm phases Climate and carbon cycle influence biodiversity Species emerge and die out. Fossil raindrops probe ancient atmosphere.
For some feathered dinosaurs, bigger not always better. Small lethal tools have big implications for early modern human complexity. Giant pterosaur needed cliffs, downward-sloping runways to taxi, awkwardly take off into air. Fossils and genes brought together to piece together evolutionary history.