Archive for the ‘Paleontology’ Category
Shortly after the discovery of a possible unicellular ancestor of all animals known in rocks 570 million years old located in southern China, we now speak of another discovery that immediately and just as spectacular: the discovery of what appear to be the remains of the first animal that existed on the planet, or at least the oldest known.
This important discovery, made by an international team of experts during a geological survey in the desert of Namibia, Africa, could roll back many tens of millions of years the date of appearance of animal life on Earth.
The discovery appears to be the oldest animal fossils found to date was conducted by the Bob Brain, Ditsong Museum in South Africa, along with Tony Prave from the University of St Andrews in the UK, and Karl-Heinz Hoffmann of the Geological Survey of Namibia. The finding did in ancient rocks of the Etosha National Park. Read the rest of this entry »
A study at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC) reveals new aspects of brain anatomy in the Neanderthals from the analysis of three skulls found at the site of the Sidron, Asturian.
The fossil remains of Homo neanderthalensis found at the site of the Sidron (Asturias) are helping to understand more deeply the population of this species that settled on the Cantabrian coast about 50,000 years ago.
The team led by Antonio Rosas from the National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, and which brought together researchers from the University of Madrid and University of Oviedo, examined the skulls of three copies of this site. Read the rest of this entry »
Rocks of 570 million years old, in the South of China, found what appears to be a set of evidence for the most recent known unicellular ancestor of all animals. This being existed shortly before multicellular animals arose.
All life on Earth evolved from a universal common ancestor was unicellular. On several occasions in the history of our planet, unicellular organisms collaborated closely to become large multicellular organisms. The results of this include, for example, the great diversity in the animal kingdom. However, fossil evidence of these key evolutionary transitions is extremely sparse.
The fossils of those rocks in China, analyzed by researchers at the Bristol University in the UK, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland, and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS) Read the rest of this entry »
Detailed analysis of an old nest that contains the fossilized remains of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaur has revealed new information on the postnatal development of these animals and the care they received from their parents.
It is the first nest found in this genre and the first indication that Protoceratops hatchlings remained on it for an extended period. The bowl-shaped nest is about 70 centimeters in diameter and was found in Djadochta Formation at Tugrikinshire, Mongolia. Read the rest of this entry »
For fossil hunters, always, or at least has been until now, have to rely solely on conjecture, more or less based on evidence, when challenged to find them. This way of working, which relies heavily on luck, is comparable to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, with the help of hard work and careful planning.
However, thanks to a system based on a digital model, developed and tested by the team of paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues at the Western Michigan University, the two institutions in United States, fossil hunters probably will not have to depend so much on luck from now on.
Using artificial neural networks (computer networks that mimic the functioning of the human brain) Conroy and his colleagues Robert Anemone and Charles Emerson developed the system, which can accurately determine the points most likely to harbor fossils in the Great Divide Basin, a large portion of rocky desert in Wyoming, United States. Read the rest of this entry »
Human beings living 126,000 years ago already reached their hands in their discussions. This seems to reveal an investigation that has found a lesion in the skull of a man of East Asia from the late Middle Pleistocene, known as Maba. Experts point out that the mark of 14 millimeters intentionally provoked a strong attack.
This new finding, published in this week’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may be an example of human aggression earlier than has been documented.
“The most probable is that the wound was caused by another human being attacking early in the head with a blunt object. Maba was wounded in the head region where today we commonly see these type injuries”, said study researcher Lynne Schepartz at the University of Witwatersrand Read the rest of this entry »
An international study demonstrates that hyperthermic events of global warming from the Eocene (between 34 and 53 million years ago) had a shorter duration and a faster recovery than was thought. The investigators suggest that the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the ocean influenced in the events. The findings will help to understand global carbonic cycles during events of extreme heat.
During the Eocene there were six events, promotions hyperthermic global temperature within a period of warm-alone, which had a shorter duration and a faster recovery than the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), 53 million years ago, the most extreme case of global warming history.
Among the Paleocene-do between 53 and 65 million years, and the Eocene, the PETM caused a temperature rise of up to 7 ºC. Scientists attribute these climate changes to a massive release of greenhouse gases stored in carbon deposits in the ocean. Read the rest of this entry »
Speaking at a conference last summer in Cadiz, the great paleontologist and weighted Perhaps Poorly Said Juan Luis Arsuaga, with Some solemnity, that after 2009, the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the sesquicentennial of the publication of his seminal work The Origin of species, we entered 2010, another very important year because it would be the year in 201 years to be fulfilled in the birth of the great scientific and 151 of the publication of historical book, but not less than 2011 when the current and historical Meet 202 152 anniversary respectively.
Thus, each coming year will be an occasion to celebrate these two events, leading anniversaries in the history of human knowledge. The commentary is no less appropriate when the recognition of the evolutionary process in the planet’s biological evolution has been one of the great achievements of science, but unfortunately not going to be relegated to the overall consideration to the category of questionable validity hypothesis subject to opinion, when it is fiercely attacked by certain fundamentalist religious movements cutting and damaging impact.
Evolution, moved about the basic mechanisms of genetic modification and the subsequent scrutiny of natural selection has shaped the life forms present members of the biosphere from their common origin, but also is not a phenomenon occurred circumstantially to life on our planet after its emergence, it is one of its inherent properties, and not just known life, but of life considered in the abstract, and is within the ambit be primarily in the concept. Not surprisingly, the definition developed to serve as a reference in any missions to search for extraterrestrial life to be developed by NASA, is incorporated as a feature of the alleged biological structures are where the “ability to evolve”. Read the rest of this entry »
A fossil of a pterosaur adult with one of his perfectly preserved eggs. This unique discovery was made in China by a team of British and Chinese paleontologists. The work is published in an article in the journal Science.
The presence of eggs indicates that this winged reptile that lived about 160 million years, was female, allowing researchers to make comparisons between the sexes of the species, Darwinopterus.
The details of the egg imply that the pterosaur reproductive strategies were not as bird, belies what they believed most of the researchers, but more like those of crocodiles and other reptiles. Read the rest of this entry »
About four million years, The female of the genus Australopithecus, one of our human ancestors (hominids) and larger babies and cared for had apes as “human”. So says an article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), thus marking the onset of these unique aspects of human beings before the evolution of the genus Homo.
The current human babies weigh about 6% of maternal body mass, whereas chimpanzees newborns weigh about 3% of the mass of the mother. However, it is not clear at what point in human evolution began to give birth to large babies.
Because older children are more difficult to maintain in the womb and giving birth, some researchers have argued that the human characteristics of parenting, such as participation of parents and other family members, would emerged in parallel with technological adaptation of Homo erectus. Read the rest of this entry »