Bruno Escribano and colleagues explain that scientists know surprisingly little about brinicles, which are hollow tubes of ice that can grow to several yards in length around streamers of cold seawater under pack ice. That’s because brinicles are difficult to study. The scientists set out to gather more information on the topic with an analysis of the growth process of brinicles.

They are shown to be analogous to a “chemical garden,” a standby demonstration in chemistry classes and children’s chemistry sets, in which tubes grow upward from metal salts dropped into silicate solution. But brinicles grow downward from the bottom of the ice pack.

The analysis concluded that brinicles provide an environment that could well have fostered the emergence of life on Earth billions of years ago, and could have done so on other planets. “Beyond Earth, the brinicle formation mechanism may be important in the context of planets and moons with ice-covered oceans,” the report states, citing in particular two moons of Jupiter named Ganymede and Callisto. The article appears in ACS’ journal Langmuir.

Source: American Chemical Society [April 24, 2013]

These findings, based on an analysis of functional brain scans, were published in a study by neurophysiologist Wim Vanduffel (KU Leuven and Harvard Medical School) in collaboration with a team of Italian and American researchers.

Our ancestors evolutionarily split from those of rhesus monkeys about 25 million years ago. Since then, brain areas have been added, have disappeared or have changed in function. This raises the question, ‘Has evolution given humans unique brain structures?’. Scientists have entertained the idea before but conclusive evidence was lacking. By combining different research methods, we now have a first piece of evidence that could prove that humans have unique cortical brain networks.

Professor Vanduffel explains: “We did functional brain scans in humans and rhesus monkeys at rest and while watching a movie to compare both the place and the function of cortical brain networks. Even at rest, the brain is very active. Different brain areas that are active simultaneously during rest form so-called ‘resting state’ networks. For the most part, these resting state networks in humans and monkeys are surprisingly similar, but we found two networks unique to humans and one unique network in the monkey.”

Figure A: A scan of the human cortex. The coloured areas represent human-specific brain areas; Figure B: An image from previous research which shows how the human cortex has grown and developed human-specific areas throughout the course of evolution. These areas correspond nicely with the areas identified by Professor Van Duffel’s findings – Credit: KU Leuven

“When watching a movie, the cortex processes an enormous amount of visual and auditory information. The human-specific resting state networks react to this stimulation in a totally different way than any part of the monkey brain. This means that they also have a different function than any of the resting state networks found in the monkey. In other words, brain structures that are unique in humans are anatomically absent in the monkey and there no other brain structures in the monkey that have an analogous function. Our unique brain areas are primarily located high at the back and at the front of the cortex and are probably related to specific human cognitive abilities, such as human-specific intelligence.”

The study used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans to visualise brain activity. fMRI scans map functional activity in the brain by detecting changes in blood flow. The oxygen content and the amount of blood in a given brain area vary according to a particular task, thus allowing activity to be tracked.

Source: KU Leuven [February 22, 2013]

A study conducted at Michigan State University and published in the current issue of The American Naturalist investigates the evolutionary reasons why organisms go through developmental stages that appear unnecessary.

“Many animals build tissues and structures they don’t appear to use, and then they disappear,” said Jeff Clune, lead author and former doctoral student at MSU’s BEACON Center of Evolution in Action. “It’s comparable to building a roller coaster, razing it and building a skyscraper on the same ground. Why not just skip ahead to building the skyscraper?”

Why humans and other organisms retain seemingly unnecessary stages in their development has been debated between biologists since 1866. This study explains that organisms jump through these extra hoops to avoid disrupting a developmental process that works. Clune’s team called this concept the “developmental disruption force.” But Clune says it also could be described as “if the shoe fits, don’t change a thing.”

“In a developing embryo, each new structure is built in a delicate environment that consists of everything that has already developed,” said Clune, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. “Mutations that alter that environment, such as by eliminating a structure, can thus disrupt later stages of development. Even if a structure is not actually used, it may set the stage for other functional tissues to grow properly.”

Going back to the roller coaster metaphor, even though the roller coaster gets torn down, the organism needs the parts from that teardown to build the skyscraper, he added.

“An engineer would simply skip the roller coaster step, but evolution is more of a tinkerer and less of an engineer,” Clune said. “It uses whatever parts that are lying around, even if the process that generates those parts is inefficient.”

An interesting consequence is that newly evolved traits tend to get added at the end of development, because there is less risk of disrupting anything important. That, in turn, means that there is a similarity between the order things evolve and the order they develop.

A new technology called computational evolution allowed the team to conduct experiments that would be impossible to reproduce in nature.

Rather than observe embryos grow, the team of computer scientists and biologists used BEACON’s Avida software to perform experiments with evolution inside a computer. The Avidians – self-replicating computer programs – mutate, compete for resources and evolve, mimicking natural selection in real-life organisms. Using this software, Clune’s team observed as Avidians evolved to perform logic tasks. They recorded the order that those tasks evolved in a variety of lineages, and then looked at the order those tasks developed in the final, evolved organism.

They were able to help settle an age-old debate that developmental order does resemble evolutionary order, at least in this computationally evolving system. Because in a computer thousands of generations can happen overnight, the team was able to repeat this experiment many times to document that this similarity repeatedly occurs.

Source: Michigan State University [August 10, 2012]

Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”

“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it’s solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive,” Leakey says, “then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”

Credit: AP/Turkana Basin Institute, Bob Campbell

His friend, Paul Simon, performed at a May 2 fundraiser for the institute in Manhattan that collected more than $2 million. A National Geographic documentary on his work at Turkana aired this month on public television.

Now 67, Leakey is the son of the late Louis and Mary Leakey and conducts research with his wife, Meave, and daughter, Louise. The family claims to have unearthed “much of the existing fossil evidence for human evolution.”

On the eve of his return to Africa earlier this week, Leakey spoke to The Associated Press in New York City about the past and the future.

“If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that the future is by no means a very rosy one.”

Any hope for mankind’s future, he insists, rests on accepting existing scientific evidence of its past.

“If we’re spreading out across the world from centers like Europe and America that evolution is nonsense and science is nonsense, how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?” he asked.

“If you don’t like the word evolution, I don’t care what you call it, but life has changed. You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It’s not covered by Genesis. There’s no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I’ve read from the lips of any God.”

Leakey insists he has no animosity toward religion.

“If you tell me, well, people really need a faith … I understand that,” he said.

“I see no reason why you shouldn’t go through your life thinking if you’re a good citizen, you’ll get a better future in the afterlife ….”

Leakey began his work searching for fossils in the mid-1960s. His team unearthed a nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton in 1984 that became known as “Turkana Boy,” the first known early human with long legs, short arms and a tall stature.

In the late 1980s, Leakey began a career in government service in Kenya, heading the Kenya Wildlife Service. He led the quest to protect elephants from poachers who were killing the animals at an alarming rate in order to harvest their valuable ivory tusks. He gathered 12 tons of confiscated ivory in Nairobi National Park and set it afire in a 1989 demonstration that attracted worldwide headlines.

In 1993, Leakey crashed a small propeller-driven plane; his lower legs were later amputated and he now gets around on artificial limbs. There were suspicions the plane had been sabotaged by his political enemies, but it was never proven.

About a decade ago, he visited Stony Brook University on eastern Long Island, a part of the State University of New York, as a guest lecturer. Then-President Shirley Strum Kenny began lobbying Leakey to join the faculty. It was a process that took about two years; he relented after returning to the campus to accept an honorary degree.

Kenny convinced him that he could remain in Kenya most of the time, where Stony Brook anthropology students could visit and learn about his work. And the college founded in 1957 would benefit from the gravitas of such a noted professor on its faculty.

“It was much easier to work with a new university that didn’t have a 200-year-old image where it was so set in its ways like some of the Ivy League schools that you couldn’t really change what they did and what they thought,” he said.

Earlier this month, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and his wife, Peggy Bonapace Gelfond, and billionaire hedge fund investor Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn, were among those attending the exclusive show in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

Simon agreed to allow his music to be performed on the National Geographic documentary airing on PBS and donated an autographed guitar at the fundraiser that sold for nearly $20,000.

Leakey, who clearly cherishes investigating the past, is less optimistic about the future.

“We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive.”

Author: Frank Eltman | Source: Associated Press [May 26, 2012]

It was there – hundreds of thousands of years later – that they evolved into modern humans and embarked on a second mass migration, researchers say.

Astonishing discovery: Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia

Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia which threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution.

The Georgian bones – which include incredibly well preserved skulls and teeth – are the earliest humans ever found outside Africa.

Professor David Lordkipanidze with one of the skulls from the Georgia site

Archaeologists now believe that our ancestors left for Europe at least 1.8million years ago, before returning to Africa and developing into Homo Sapiens

The remains belong to a race of short early humans with small primitive brains who walked and ran like modern people.

They were found alongside stone tools, animal remains and plants – suggesting that they hunted and butchered meat.

Prof David Lordkipanidze, the direct of the Georgian National Museum, said: ‘Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different’

He said Africa was still the unchallenged cradle of mankind. But he added: ‘Georgia may have been the cradle of the first Europeans.’

Their discovery muddies the already complicated history of mankind.

Archaeologists believe that the first true humans – a race of squat people called Homo habilis – evolved in Africa around 2.5 million years ago. The were followed by a taller athletic species called Homo erectus who migrated out of Africa to colonise Europe and Asia.

Outside Africa their descendents are thought to have died out. But in Africa, they turned into modern man who began a second wave of migration around 120,000 years ago.

The new finds suggest Homo erectus left Africa far earlier than was previously estimated and lived for a while in Eurasia.

Three skulls all found at the Dmanisi site

The new ancestors – found in Dmanisi – were around 150cm tall, and had brains half the size of modern people’s.

‘While the Dmanisi people were almost modern in their body proportions, and were highly efficient walkers and runners, their arms moved in a different way and their brains were tiny compared to ours,’ he told the British Science Festival at Surrey University.

‘Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimetres. The prevailing view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimetres.

‘Nevertheless they were sophisticated tool makers with high social and cognitive skills.’

The first Dmanisi fossils were found in 2001. The most recent has only just been unearthed and its details have yet to be published in a scientific journal.

Prof Lordkipanidze said the Dmanisi bones may have belonged to an early Homo erectus which lived in Georgia before moving on to the rest of Europe.

Or the early humans may then have returned to Africa, eventually giving rise to our own species, Homoe sapiens, he said.

‘The question is whether Homo erectus orginated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migrations? This idea looked very stupid a few years ago, but not today,’ he told the British Science Festival.

Source: Daily Mail

They criticised it for being short on evidence and long on assertion and Darwin, being the honest scientist that he was, agreed with them. He knew that his theory was riddled with ‘difficulties’, but he entrusted future generations to complete his work and prove the essential truth of his vision, which is what scientists have been doing for the past 150 years.

Evolutionary biologist Professor Armand Marie Leroi charts the scientific endeavour that brought about the triumphant renaissance of Darwin’s theory. He argues that, with the new science of evolutionary developmental biology (evo devo), it may be possible to take that theory to a new level to do more than explain what has evolved in the past, and start to predict what might evolve in the future.

An international team of primatologists from the University of Cambridge and Kyoto University, led by Dr Kathelijne Koops, studied the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) population in the Nimba Mountains in Guinea, West Africa. All species of great ape build nests to sleep in each night. Construction of these shelters takes minutes as the apes bend, break and interweave branches into a circular frame, followed by tucking in smaller branches to form a sturdy but comfortable sleeping platform.

“We believe that, like modern apes, the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans also slept in the trees 6 million years ago,” said Dr Koops. “However, these nests are not preserved in the fossil or archaeological record, so it is impossible to study directly the ancient transition from sleeping in trees to building shelters on the ground. Recording this rare behaviour in the chimpanzee, our closest relative, may provide vital clues.”

Chimpanzees on ground - Credit: National Geographic

As the Nimba chimpanzees do not yet tolerate human presence at close range, the team used new molecular genetic techniques to analyse hairs collected from the nests. This allowed the team to establish the sex of chimpanzees displaying the behaviour and to identify individuals in the group.

The team showed that as chimpanzees sleep both on the ground and in the trees, the transition from trees to the ground did not require a special evolutionary adaptation. This suggests that early hominins may have slept on the ground before the emergence of Homo erectus (‘upright man’), the first species which was fully adapted to living on the ground. “This is intriguing as it has long been believed that coming down from the trees was a crucial evolutionary shift,” said Koops. “However, this chimpanzees’ behaviour suggests a more deep-seated, gradual transition from tree-to-ground sleep.”

Other theories for the tree-to-ground transition have included the use of fire and the scarcity of trees in open habitats. The team demonstrated that neither is a prerequisite for ground sleeping, as the chimpanzees live in a plentiful evergreen rainforest and do not create fire.

“These chimpanzees offer a rare opportunity to investigate why a population of wild apes chooses to sleep on the ground,” concluded Koops. “We showed that ground-nesting was not caused by male mate-guarding behaviour, a lack of trees in which to nest, or because of fire. This suggests that our direct ancestors were neither the only, nor the first, species to come down from the trees.”

Source: Wiley-Blackwell [April 16, 2012]

Author: Natalie Wolchover | Source:huffingtonpost [February 3, 2012]

Professor Madelaine Bohme and geologist Philipe Havlik at the archeological site in a sand quarry in Bulgaria. The seven-million-year-old tooth could rewrite our understanding of human evolution - Credit: Daily Mail

But researchers from the University of Tubingen in Germany believe that our ancestry might be more complicated – and significant parts of human evolution might have happened in Europe and Western Asia.

The new theory comes after the discovery of an ape’s tooth in Bulgaria – dating two million years after the ‘pre-humans’ were thought to have died out in Europe.

The seven-million-year-old tooth shows that the pre-human had evolved to eat a European diet of grasses, seeds and nuts, rather than fruit.

The discovery of the seven million year old tooth has caused scientists to question previous theories about when our simian ancestors disappeared.

It suggests a ‘significant’ part of human evolution happened in Europe.

Prior to the discovery, the ‘youngest’ hominid remains found in Europe was a 9.2 million year old fossil unearthed in Greece, which led scientists to conclude that the apes had died out nine million years ago.

This was backed up by climate data showing European had changed from lush green forests to arid savannahs, causing a severe drop in the levels of fruit that formed the bulk of the great apes’ diet.

However, a closer look at the Bulgarian pre-human hominid molar revealed that the ape had eaten hard, abrasive objects such as grasses, seeds and nuts.

This suggested that it adapted to a change in its surroundings in order to survive.

The Bulgarian pre-human molar revealed that the ape had eaten hard, abrasive objects such as grasses, seeds and nuts. This suggested that it adapted to a change in its surroundings in order to survive - Credit: Daily Mail

Researchers from the University of Tubingen in Germany said the ape’s diet was similar to that of African hominids, which only disappeared four million years ago.

Study author Professor Madelaine Bohme, whose findings were published in the Journal of Human Evolution said: ‘We now also need to rethink where the origin of humans took place.

‘So far, most scientists believe that human evolution happened exclusively in Africa and that humans migrated from Africa to other continents.

‘There is increasing evidence, however, that a significant part of human evolution happened outside Africa, in Europe and western Asia.’

She added: ‘Until now, the most recent fossil was that of a 9.2 million year old specimen of Ouranopithecus macedonensis from Greece.

‘Hominids therefore were thought to have disappeared from Europe prior to 9 million years ago.

‘At this time, European terrestrial ecosystems had been changed from mostly evergreen and lush forests to savannah-like landscapes with a seasonal climate.’

‘It had been thought that great apes, which typically consume fruits, were unable to survive this change due to a seasonal deficiency of fruits.’

‘We found animals typical of a savannah in the fossil-bearing layer: several species of elephants, giraffes, gazelles, antelopes, rhinos, and sabre-toothed cats.

‘This discovery suggests that European hominids were able to adapt to the seasonal climate of a savannah-like ecosystem.’

‘This conclusion is further corroborated by electron microscope analysis of the tooth’s masticatory surface, which reveals that the Bulgarian hominid had consumed hard and abrasive objects like grass, seeds, and nuts.

‘In this respect, the feeding behavior of this animal resembles that of later African hominids from about 4 million years ago, such as australopithecids like ‘Lucy’

Author: Rob Waugh | Source: Daily Mail/UK [January 12, 2012]

The world is greeted this morning with the first living photograph of one of the world’s newest primates, Rhinopithecus strykeri.

It will be recalled that the October 26, 2010 issue of the American Journal of Primatology announced the discovery of a new primate species, a previously unknown type of snub-nosed monkey, Rhinopithecus strykeri. It was unique in having a nose so upturned that the animals sneeze loudly when it rains. To avoid inhaling water, the monkeys supposedly sit with their heads tucked between their knees on drizzly days, according to local hunters. After interviewing locals, scientists discovered the monkey via those killed for food.

The find was made by biologists from the Myanmar Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association and primatologists from Fauna and Flora International and the People Resources and Biodiversity Foundation.

Primatologist Ngwe Lwin took a photograph of the Rhinopithecus strykeri, snub-nosed monkey, in early 2010, that had been harvested for food in Myanmar.

Jeremy Holden of the Flora & Fauna International has shared with me, for release on Cryptomundo, the first photographs of the new primate now known as the Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

Researchers working in Northern Myanmar have recently made the first photographs of the recently discovered Myanmar snub-nosed monkey.

A joint team from Fauna & Flora International (FFI), Biodiversity And Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) and People Resources and Conservation Foundation (PRCF), caught the monkey on camera traps placed in the high, forested mountains of Kachin state bordering China.

“The Myanmar snub-nosed monkey was described by science in 2010 from a dead specimen collected from a local hunter,” said Frank Momberg of FFI, who organized the initial expeditions that lead to the monkey’s discovery. “As yet no scientist has seen a live individual”, he added.

“These images are the first record of the animal in its natural habitat,” said Ngwe Lwin, the Burmese national who first recognized the monkey as a possible new species. “It is great to finally have photographs because they show us something about how and where it actually lives.”

Heavy snows in January and constant rain in April, 2011, made expeditions to set the camera traps difficult.

“We were dealing with very tough conditions in a remote and rugged area that contained perhaps fewer than 200 monkeys,” said photographer Jeremy Holden, who lead the camera trapping team. “We didn’t know exactly where they lived, and had to rely on information gathered from hunters; I didn’t hold out much hope of a short term success with this work.”

But in May 2011, a small group of snub-nosed monkeys walked through one of the cameras and into history.

“We were very surprised to get these pictures,” said Saw Soe Aung, a field biologist who set the cameras. “It was exciting to see that some of the females were carrying babies – a new generation of our rarest primate.”

“The images are poor quality compared to what we are now used to seeing from wildlife photographers, but this somehow examplifies the fact that these monkeys are rare, mysterious, and on the brink,” added Holden.

As with most of Asia’s rare mammals, the snub-nosed monkeys are threatened by habitat loss and hunting. The team are now working together with the Ministry for Environmental Conservation and Forest (MOECAF), local authorities and local communities to help safeguard the future of this species. In February 2012, FFI and MOECAF are planning to hold an international workshop in Yangon aiming to create an conservation action plan for the Myanmar Snub-nosed monkey.

The Fauna & Flora International (FFI) protects threatened species and ecosystems worldwide, choosing solutions that are sustainable, based on sound science and take account of human needs. Operating in more than 40 countries worldwide – mainly in the developing world – FFI saves species from extinction and habitats from destruction, while improving the livelihoods of local people. Founded in 1903, FFI is the world’s longest established international conservation body and a registered charity. (The Fauna & Flora International is the group supporting serious research in pursuit of evidence of Orang Pendek in Sumatra.)

Original article on the discovery:
“A new species of snub-nosed monkey, genus Rhinopithecus Milne-Edwards, 1872 (Primates, Colobinae), from northern Kachin state, northeastern Myanmar” by Thomas Geissmann, Ngwe Lwin, Saw Soe Aung, Thet Naing Aung, Zin Myo Aung, Tony Htin Hla, Mark Grindley, Frank Momberg. Article first published online: 27 OCT 2010; American Journal of Primatology.

The following video is found on YouTube and is incorrected labeled as being of this new monkey.

But this is only a relative of Rhinopithecus strykeri that was posted in news articles in 2010, about the new discovery. Since then an Asian site on YouTube has wrongly posted this as being the new Myanmar monkey. They actually appear to be black snub-nosed monkeys found in the Baima Snow Mountain State Nature Reserve in Weixi, southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

Author: Loren Coleman| Source:Cryptomundo [January 12,2012]