Global Warming Cycles Threaten Endangered Primate Species

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2009) — Two Penn State University researchers have carried out one of the first-ever analyses of the effects of global warming on endangered primates. This innovative work by Graduate Student Ruscena Wiederholt and Associate Professor of Biology Eric Post examined how El Niño warming affected the abundance of four New World monkeys over decades.

Wiederholt and Post decided to concentrate on the way the oscillating weather patterns directly and indirectly influence plants and animals in the tropics. Until the research by Wiederholt and Post, this intricate network of interacting factors had rarely been analyzed as a single system. "We know very little about how climate change and global warming are affecting primate species," explains Wiederholt. "Up to one third of primates species are threatened with extinction, so it is really crucial to understand how these changes in climate may be affecting their populations."

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Fossils of North America's smallest dinosaur identified

By John Johnson Jr.

October 21, 2009

Scientists have found the fossilized remains of the smallest dinosaur yet discovered in North America, a house-pet sized creature that would have scurried between the legs of its larger relatives.

The new species, Fruitadens haagarorum, weighed less than 2 pounds and was about 28 inches long, scientists say.

The tiny dinosaur would have been an agile and fast runner, said study coauthor Luis Chiappe, director of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Institute. It had to be nimble to survive the hazardous time in which it lived, the late Jurassic period 150 million years ago, which was ruled by giant meat-eaters such as the allosaurus.
 

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It's all in the wrist: Humans lack a knuckle-walking ancestor (EARTH Magazine)

October 1, 2009
Zahra Hirji


Though counterintuitive, scientists have turned their attention away from the feet and to the wrist and forearm to better understand how humans evolved upright walking, or bipedalism. African apes are humans’ closest living relatives, and because these apes knuckle-walk, some paleoanthropologists have suggested that African apes and humans share a knuckle-walking ancestor. A new study, however, reveals that lumping the locomotion of all African apes together is a mistake: Knuckle-walking may have evolved more than once in the ape lineage. Therefore, the researchers say, humans probably did not evolve from a knuckle-walker but instead from a more general tree-dweller.

All African apes — gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos — knuckle-walk. The scientists who think that humans have a knuckle-walking heritage bolster the claim by pointing to the fact that modern and ancient humans, or hominins, such as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), retain several wrist and forearm features that are supposedly knuckle-walking adaptations, says Tracy Kivell, a paleoanthropologist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and co-author of the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found (Ardipithecus ramidus)

Another article on Ardi, from National Geographic

Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found

Amie Shreeve
Science editor, National Geographic magazine
October 1, 2009

Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye.

Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy, the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago.

The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus.)

The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

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Fossil finds extend human story - Meet Ardipithecus ramidus

BBC NEWS | Science + Environment | Fossil finds extend human story

An ancient human-like creature that may be a direct ancestor to our species has been described by researchers.

The assessment of the 4.4-million-year-old animal called Ardipithecus ramidus is reported in the journal Science.

Even if it is not on the direct line to us, it offers new insights into how we evolved from the common ancestor we share with chimps, the team says.

Fossils of A. ramidus were first found in Ethiopia in 1992, but it has taken 17 years to assess their significance.

The most important specimen is a partial skeleton of a female nicknamed "Ardi".

The international team has recovered key bones, including the skull with teeth, arms, hands, pelvis, legs, and feet.

But the researchers have other fragments that may represent perhaps at least 36 different individuals, including youngsters, males, and females.

One of the lead scientists on the project, Professor Tim White from the University of California, Berkeley, said the investigation had been painstaking.

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Baby mammoth yields secrets after 40,000 years in Siberian tundra - Times Online

Baby mammoth yields secrets after 40,000 years in Siberian tundra - Times Online

A baby woolly mammoth that died after being sucked into a muddy river bed 40,000 years ago has revealed more prehistoric secrets of how the species survived in its icy habitat.

The mammoth, known as Lyuba, was about a month old when she died in the Siberian tundra, where she remained until she was discovered by reindeer herders three years ago. Her body was so well preserved in the permafrost that her stomach retained traces of her mother’s milk, and scientists identified sediment in her mouth, trunk and throat — suggesting that she suffocated while struggling to free herself from the mud.

The mammoth has taught researchers much about the species that they had been unable to glean from fossils and other less well-preserved finds, including how brown fat cells on the humped back of the head helped to maintain body temperature. The calf, found in the Arctic Yamal peninsula of Russia, weighed about 110lb, and was about the size of a large dog.

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Man digging potatoes finds axe belonging to Ireland's first farmers

Man digging potatoes finds axe belonging to Ireland's first farmers
Published Date: 06 October 2009
Kilkenny People
By Staff Reporter

A RARE archaeological find, dating back 6,000 years has been made in South Kilkenny. A Stone Age neolithic axe head was found in Ballygorey, Mooncoin last week by a man out digging potatoes.

The axe was found in a field by Pat Dunphy, a Fine Gael councillor who was picking spuds for the evening dinner. “I thought when it came up first that it was piece off a combine harvester but when I turned it over, I knew it was something different,” he said.

It is the second axe found in Ballygorey. another local found one in the 1970s and it is now with the National Museum in Dublin. The land in this area is fertile and close to the River Suir and probably was an ideal area for early human settlements.

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Rare Evidence Of Dinosaur Cannibalism

Rare Evidence Of Dinosaur Cannibalism: Meat-Eater Tooth Found In Gorgosaurus Jawbone

ScienceDaily (2009-10-07) -- A Canadian researcher has found 70 million year old evidence of dinosaur cannibalism. The jawbone of what appears to be a Gorgosaurus was found in 1996 in southern Alberta. A technician at the Royal Tyrell Museum in Alberta found something unusual embedded in the jaw. It was the tip of a tooth from another meat-eating dinosaur. ...  
 
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