Category Archives: News

Neanderthals in your jeans, and Bjorn Kurten was right…

A Nature/Science pair of papers on Neanderthal genetics!

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/29/fifth-neanderthals-genetic-code-lives-on-humans

Links in there to the papers, but the summary is:

– One paper suggests that while modern humans have few Neanderthal genes individually, up to 20% of the species genome collectively is actually composed of Neanderthal genes.

– The second looks instead at different regions of the modern human genome and the relative Neanderthal influence on these. This is highly variable, with some areas heavily influenced and others not at all. Keratin is one of the heavily influenced areas, so links to skin, hair etc. The X chromosome is almost devoid of Neanderthal influence, suggesting that hybrid males would have been partly or wholly infertile – only some 36 years after Bjorn Kurten suggested exactly this with his ‘Children of the Gods’!

– Ian

Mammoths of the Ice Age

Walk in the footsteps of the woolly mammoths at the National Museum of Scotland

http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/national_museum/exhibitions/mammoths_of_the_ice_age.aspx

Journey back in time hundreds of thousands of years and discover the animals of the ice age at the first UK showing of this interactive, family-friendly exhibition. Joust with mammoth tusks, find out what mammoth fur feels like and touch the replica teeth of a colossal mastodon. Then meet Lyuba, an exact replica of a 42,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth, and learn why early humans both hunted and honoured these majestic animals.

A bit far to go to physically, but the webpage is very nice and interactive, especially this game:

http://www.nms.ac.uk/our_museums/national_museum/exhibitions/mammoths_of_the_ice_age/mammoths_of_the_ice_age_game.aspx

-Laura

The correspondence of O.C. Marsh

Palaeophiles and historians of science—Yale just made all of OC Marsh’s correspondence available free online. Spoiler alert: “only” 50 pages of correspondence with chief rival Cope. Less than a dozen with Charles “He lets me call him Chuck” Darwin.

http://peabody.yale.edu/collections/vertebrate-paleontology/correspondence-o-c-marsh

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Laura

Palaeontology for dummies, Part 1

“I’m a palaeontologist.”

“Oh cool, I love Time Team/Indiana Jones/history*.” / “You’re not dashing enough to do what Indiana Jones does.” / “Nice, National Treasure was awesome and I love Nicolas Cage.” / “You’re like Lara Croft?”

http://www.palaeontologyonline.com/articles/2013/life-palaeontologist-palaeontology-dummies-part-1/

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Laura

Darwin online

Yesterday was the anniversary of the first publication of “On the Origin of Species”, by Charles Darwin.

You can read this book, and all Darwin’s other writings, completely free online

http://darwin-online.org.uk/

__________________________________

Laura

Ancient DNA offers clues to Native American ancestry

Draft genome sequences of two individuals from Siberia dating to 24,000 and 17,000 years ago add to our understanding of Native American ancestry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/science/two-surprises-in-dna-of-boy-found-buried-in-siberia.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.z_sma=SC_2YO_20131120&_r=1&

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12736.html
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Laura

The oldest known pantherine establish ancient origin of big cats

Himalayan fossils of the oldest known pantherine establish ancient origin of big cats

Tseng, Wang, Slater5, Takeuchi, Li, Liu & Xie

Pantherine felids (‘big cats’) include the largest living cats, apex predators in their respective ecosystems. They are also the earliest diverging living cat lineage, and thus are important for understanding the evolution of all subsequent felid groups. Although the oldest pantherine fossils occur in Africa, molecular phylogenies point to Asia as their region of origin. This paradox cannot be reconciled using current knowledge, mainly because early big cat fossils are exceedingly rare and fragmentary. Here, we report the discovery of a fossil pantherine from the Tibetan Himalaya, with an age of Late Miocene–Early Pliocene, replacing African records as the oldest pantherine. A ‘total evidence’ phylogenetic analysis of pantherines indicates that the new cat is closely related to the snow leopard and exhibits intermediate characteristics on the evolutionary line to the largest cats. Historical biogeographic models provide robust support for the Asian origin of pantherines. The combined analyses indicate that 75% of the divergence events in the pantherine lineage extended back to the Miocene, up to 7 Myr earlier than previously estimated. The deeper evolutionary origin of big cats revealed by the new fossils and analyses indicate a close association between Tibetan Plateau uplift and diversification of the earliest living cats.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1774/20132686.full

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/13/big-cats-oldest-ancestor-found-tibet

__________________________________

Laura

Ancient carbon from a melting glacier gives high 14C age in living pioneer invertebrates

Glaciers are retreating and predatory invertebrates rapidly colonize deglaciated, barren ground. The paradox of establishing predators before plants and herbivores has been explained by wind-driven input of invertebrate prey. Here we present an alternative explanation and a novel glacier foreland food web by showing that pioneer predators eat locally produced midges containing 21,000 years old ancient carbon released by the melting glacier. Ancient carbon was assimilated by aquatic midge larvae, and terrestrial adults achieved a radiocarbon age of 1040 years. Terrestrial spiders, harvestmen and beetles feeding on adult midges had radiocarbon ages of 340–1100 years. Water beetles assumed to eat midge larvae reached radiocarbon ages of 1100–1200 years. Because both aquatic and terrestrial pioneer communities use ancient carbon, the term “primary succession” is questionable in glacier forelands. If our “old” invertebrates had been collected as subfossils and radiocarbon dated, their age would have been overestimated by up to 1100 years.

 

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131002/srep02820/full/srep02820.html