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Digging at Arthur’s Stone commences: probably no kings, but plenty of science

And perhaps some coconuts.

Digging has begun at Arthur’s Stone: an ancient tomb in Herefordshire, UK, linked to the mythical King Arthur.

The tomb is actually some 5000 years old – making it about 3500 years older than the supposed age of the fabled king.

So, while they’re not expecting to find a holy grail, the archaeologists excavating the tomb for the first time hope to learn more about the Neolithic people who built it.

“Arthur’s Stone is one of the country’s most significant Stone Age monuments, and this excavation gives a really rare and exciting chance for members of the public to come and see archaeology in action,” Ginny Slade, volunteer manager at English Heritage, said in a statement.

• More on English archaeology: The Stonehenge dead tell their stories

Arthur’s Stone is a tomb made up of nine upright stones. A 25-tonne capstone sits on top.

Similar tombs have yielded skeletal remains, flint flakes, arrowheads and pottery – but presumably no shrubberies (that’s another one for the Monty Python fans out there).

King Arthur has been linked to Arthur’s Stone since at lease the 13^th Century. Legend has it he killed a giant who elbowed one of the stones and left an impression as he fell. (A flesh wound.)

“Arthur’s Stone is one of this country’s outstanding prehistoric monuments, set in a breathtaking location – yet it remains poorly understood,” said Professor Julian Thomas, an archaeologist at Manchester University, who will co-lead the excavation.

“Our work seeks to restore it to its rightful place in the story of Neolithic Britain.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/arthurs-stone-archaeology/

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Scientists discover new giant water lily species

A new species of giant water lily has been discovered - and it’s been hiding in plain sight for 177 years.

The huge plant had been in the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and was growing in a number of aquatic collections but it was mistakenly identified as another species.

Now a detailed scientific study has revealed that it is new to science.

It also holds the record as the world's largest water lily, with leaves growing more than 3m (10ft) wide.

The plant has been called Victoria boliviana - named after Bolivia, where it grows in a single water basin in part of the Amazon river system.

FULL REPORT

 

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Ancient fossilised brains give insight into the evolution of insects and spiders

These 500 million-year-old arthropods had three eyes and a segmented brain

A cache of new fossils containing the brain and nervous system of a marine predator from half a billion years ago has given evolutionary biologists new insight into the evolution of arthropods – insects, arachnids and crustaceans.

Stanleycaris hirpex belonged to an ancient, extinct offshoot of the arthropod evolutionary tree called Radiodonta. The fossils reveal it was a truly weird animal, with a pair of stalked eyes and a huge third eye in the front of its head – a feature never before seen in a radiodont.

“While fossilised brains from the Cambrian Period aren’t new, this discovery stands out for the astonishing quality of preservation and the large number of specimens,” says lead author Joseph Moysiuk, a PhD candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

“We can even make out fine details such as visual processing centres serving the large eyes and traces of nerves entering the appendages. The details are so clear it’s as if we were looking at an animal that died yesterday.”

The research has been published in Current Biology.

Stanleycaris was a bizarre-looking organism

Animation of Stanleycaris hirpex, including transparency to show internal organs. Credit: animation by Sabrina Cappelli © Royal Ontario

MuseumMoysiuk and PhD supervisor Dr Jean-Bernard Caron – Royal Ontario Museum’s curator of invertebrate palaeontology – studied a previously unpublished collection of 268 exceptionally preserved specimens of Stanleycaris.

They had been collected mostly in the 1980s and ’90s from the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park in Canada.

Stanleycaris was small (for the radiodont group) at no more than 20cm long, but it would have still been an impressive predator at a time when most animals didn’t grow any bigger than a human finger.

It had large, compound eyes, a circular mouth lined with teeth, frontal claws with an array of spines, and a flexible, segmented body with a series of swimming flaps along its sides.

“The presence of a huge third eye in Stanleycaris was unexpected. It emphasises that these animals were even more bizarre-looking than we thought, but also shows us that the earliest arthropods had already evolved a variety of complex visual systems like many of their modern kin,” says Caron.

“Since most radiodonts are only known from scattered bits and pieces, this discovery is a crucial jump forward in understanding what they looked like and how they lived.”

Insights into the evolution of segmented brains in arthropods

In 84 of the fossilised remains, the brain and nerves were still preserved after 506 million years, revealing the Stanleycaris brain was composed of two segments – the protocerebrum and deutocerebrum – that connected with the eyes and frontal claws, respectively.

But today, arthropods have brains composed of three segments including an additional tritocerebrum.

“We conclude that a two-segmented head and brain has deep roots in the arthropod lineage and that its evolution likely preceded the three-segmented brain that characterises all living members of this diverse animal phylum,” explains Moysiuk.

While this might not sound game-changing, it has important scientific implications for understanding how these structures diversified across the group.

“These fossils are like a Rosetta Stone, helping to link traits in radiodonts and other early fossil arthropods with their counterparts in surviving groups.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/stanleycaris-hirpex-fossilised-brains/

 

Edited July 10, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Dinosaur dentures: as rare as sauropod teeth

Fossil dinosaur teeth found in Queensland are putting the smile back on the sauropod

Extremely rare sauropod dinosaur teeth found in Queensland have enabled researchers “to put the smile back on the sauropod”, says palaeontologist Dr Stephen Poropat.

Poropat is the lead author of a paper published in the Royal Society Open Science this week, and a researcher at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum in Winton, Queensland.

Sauropods were long-necked dinosaurs, the largest Australian land animals of all time. The fossilised sauropod teeth were found in the Winton Formation in western Queensland. 

And while such teeth are commonly found in fossil deposits elsewhere in the world, in Australia, sauropod teeth are as rare as … well, sauropod teeth. 

Poropat told Cosmos this might be because there aren’t many rocks of Jurassic or Cretaceous age exposed at the surface in Australia, and those that are haven’t been extensively explored. Even the Winton Formation, which has produced several sauropod skeletons including baby Sauropod “Ollie”, examples of teeth and head fragments have been extremely rare. 

That changed in 2019 and 2021 when palaeontologists excavated 17 sauropod teeth at the “Mitchell” site on a sheep station located 60 kilometres west-northwest of Winton. These were analysed together with a dental fragment and tooth from the nearby “Matilda” site, and a single tooth from the “Alex” site, 60km northeast of Winton.

Poropat says that while people might expect a plant-eating animal to have molars for grinding, the sauropod teeth “couldn’t be further from that”.

“The simple fact is that sauropods didn’t chew their food.” 

The teeth from the Winton Formation were all very similar – sort of conical, then curved and pointed at the end; perfect for snipping plants. 

“Then they would use what was presumably a pretty long and muscular tongue […] to then pull the food straight down the gullet,” says Poropat. “Essentially, once they had swallowed their food – basically no processing in the mouth at all, no chewing – they would pass it through to the rest of the digestive system. And it would basically act as giant fermenting vats.

“It’s been hypothesised that sauropods might have actually kept any given meal within their bodies for up to two weeks before excreting.”

Wear markings on five of the teeth allowed the researchers to infer that the dinosaur’s teeth would have been a bit offset. Scratches and pits on the teeth indicated that sauropods probably fed on plants from at least one metre above the ground, up to as much as 10m. That’s as high as a sauropod could reach if it reared on its hind legs, stretched out its neck and reached far up into the canopy.

Its lunch might have included conifers, gingkos and flowering plants given plant fossils found in the area. 

Poropat says horsetails, a plant which is extinct in Australia today but still exist in the northern hemisphere, would have made a “good, nutritious and easily accessible meal”. He thinks these would have been a favourite food for sauropods.

To analyse the wear patterns on the sauropod teeth, the paper’s second author Timothy Frauenfelder made casts of the teeth which were coated in a very thin layer of gold, enabling them to be scanned using an electron microscope.

The researchers have since found even more teeth at the Mitchell site, too late to be included in this paper, but likely to be the focus of further research.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/dinosaur-dentures-as-rare-as-sauropod-teeth/

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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Ears burning? Mammal fossils suggest it could be the Late Triassic calling

A study of the inner ears of mammalian ancestors may pinpoint when they evolved to be warm-blooded.

A study of the inner ears of mammalian ancestors may pinpoint when they evolved to be warm-blooded.

Why are reptiles cold-blooded, and mammals warm-blooded? And when did these attributes emerge? Ectotherms – which include amphibians, reptiles, most fish and invertebrates – rely on external sources of heat to regulate their internal body temperatures, whilst endotherms (primarily birds and mammals, although there are some fish that have this capability) have biological processes that provide them with warmth and regulate their body temperatures.

Exactly when mammals evolved to produce internal heat and regulate body temperature has been “one of the great mysteries of palaeontology”, says Kenneth Angielczyk, palaeobiologist at the Field Museum, Chicago, US, and one of the authors of a new Nature paper detailing how fossils of the inner ear structure of mammalian ancestors may provide a crucial clue.

There might not be an immediately obvious connection between warm-bloodedness and inner ear structure, but according to Angielczyk: “The canals in our inner ear are sensors that give the brain information about the position and movement of the head. They work by having a fluid [endolymph] in them that sloshes around when we move our heads, which is detected by cells in the canals and the information is transmitted to the brain for interpretation.”

Warmer temperatures make for sloshier, or less viscous, endolymph fluid. (A highly viscous fluid is thick and doesn’t flow well – think jelly, for instance.) In modern mammals the ear canals are smaller and rounder – better for this less viscous fluid. In contrast, cold-blooded animals’ ear canals are semi-circular and larger to better suit a less runny, more viscous, endolymph fluid.

In the fossil record there’s a sudden [in geologic terms] evolution of the ear canals of animals from the Mammaliamorpha group. According to Angielczyk, there would “be no evolutionary advantage for changes in canal size and shape if there were no changes in body temperature and endolymph viscosity”

The mammaliamorph group “includes mammals, as well as some fairly close extinct relatives that fall outside of Mammalia proper”, says Angielczyk, and it looks like “mammal-like canals (suggestive of endothermy) appear rather abruptly in the Late Triassic Period”, with an indicated increase in body temperature of the mammalian samples of between 5°C and 9°C.

The Late Triassic period is characterised by climatic instability and a time of global environmental changes, including extinction events and climate warming. Although the period marks the extinction of a number of species, it also led to diversification of land and ocean plant and animal life, including the development of many of the characteristic features of mammals today.

Unlike other research in this area – such as studies on bone tissue structure and radioactive isotope ratios – Angielczyk says the shape and sizes of ear canals are a fairly direct indicator of body temperature evolution in mammals, rather than proxies or indirect indicators.

The research team plan to widen the sample of to better pinpoint the exact transition time.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/ears-burning-mammal-fossils-triassic/

 

 

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While our ancestors went from sea to land, this 400 million-year old fishapod high-tailed it back into the water

Fossils of the fishapod show it began the transition but was more adapted to water life.

Our ancient ancestors, as with all land-based life on Earth, evolved in our planet’s primordial seas before taking their first steps onto land. For vertebrates like us, the animal commonly associated with this evolutionary stride is the 375 million-year-old Tiktaalik roseae.

For its leap of faith into the Darwinian bible, Tiktaalik has received some tongue-in-cheek flak from internet memesters who blame the amphibious trailblazer for all life’s modern problems.

Memes circulated in the last couple of years bemoan the prehistoric critter’s adventurousness and articulate the not insincere desire to time-travel and coax Tiktaalik back into the water.

FULL REPORT

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by CaaC (John)

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Mayan city collapse over 500 years ago linked to drought and social instability

This interdisciplinary research holds lessons for today amid an ongoing climate crisis.

The Mayan civilisation was among the most advanced on Earth, based in Central America. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing even before the arrival of Europeans in the 16^th century.

Mayapán, 40km to the south-east of the modern city of Merida, in Mexico, was the political and cultural capital of the Maya in the Yucatán peninsula with thousands of buildings and a population of 15,000-17,000 during the city’s peak. Emerging in 1200CE, the city was eventually abandoned in 1450CE after its despotic rulers from the house of Cocom were overthrown.

New research published in Nature Communications suggests that the civil unrest which led to the collapse of Mayapán emerged as a result of climatic changes.

The interdisciplinary team included researchers from Australia’s University of New South Wales, the University of California in the US and the University of Cambridge in the UK. Their findings shed light on the impact of changes in the climate on societies, making use of records from the city from before the Colonial Period.

A prolonged drought, the authors suggest, lasting between 1400 and 1450CE escalated existing social tensions in the city. The effects of the drought on food availability in particular provided the impetus for the civil conflict which eventually led to the city’s abandonment.

“Our data indicate that institutional collapse occurred in the environmental context of drought and conflict within the city,” the authors explain. “Vulnerabilities of this coupled natural-social system existed because of the strong reliance on rain-fed maize agriculture, lack of centralised long-term grain storage, minimal opportunities for irrigation, and a sociopolitical system led by elite families with competing political interests, from different parts of the Yucatán Peninsula. We argue that long-term, climate-caused hardships provoked restive tensions that were fanned by political actors whose actions ultimately culminated in political violence more than once at Mayapán.”

In addition to looking at the climate (political and environmental) during the collapse of Mayapán, the researchers also looked directly at human remains found in the ancient city.

“Direct radiocarbon dates and mitochrondrial DNA sequences from the remains of individuals in the city’s final mass grave suggest they were family members of the heads of state (the Cocoms), ironically and meaningfully laid to rest at the base of the Temple of K’uk’ulkan, the iconic principal temple and ritual centtr of Mayapán.”

The winds of revolution, the authors argue, were fanned by political actors while conditions were worsening for the city’s inhabitants. Chief leaders of the change in political power were the members of the Xiu family house.

“Our results suggest that rivalry among governing elites at Mayapán materialised into action in the context of more frequent and/or severe droughts. Comparatively, such climate challenges present a range of opportunities for human actors, from the development of innovative adaptations to the stoking of revolution. These climate hardships and ensuing food shortages would have undermined the city’s economic base and enabled the Xiu-led usurpation. The unifying and resilient institutions that held the Mayapán state together until approximately 1450CE were ultimately eroded, the confederation dissolved, and the city largely abandoned,” they explain.

But the researchers also note the ability of the Maya to persist despite their difficulties. Those that abandoned Mayapan went to other cities, towns and villages. “Yet economic, social, and religious traditions persevered until the onset of Spanish rule, despite the reduced scale of political units, attesting to a resilient system of human-environmental adaptations.”

Such stories from human history provide food for thought as we face our own self-inflicted climate crisis which is exacerbating hardship for many millions around the world.

The authors conclude: “Our transdisciplinary work highlights the importance of understanding the complex relationships between natural and social systems, especially when evaluating the role of climate change in exacerbating internal political tensions and factionalism in areas where drought leads to food insecurity.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/mayan-city-collapse-drought/

 

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King of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex might be one species, not three, after all

New research refutes claims that T. rex was three distinct species.

Is the world’s most famous dinosaur really one species? This question is becoming one of the most hotly debated topics in palaeontology.

Earlier this year, research suggested that Tyrannosaurus rex fossils might actually come from three different species. Now, a new study published by palaeontologists from the American Museum of Natural History and Carthage Collge in Evolutionary Biology refutes this claim.

It is not surprising that classifying animals that lived over 65 million years ago from just their fossilised bones is not that easy. Even animals today can throw up some skeletal doozies. It takes a real expert, to tell the skeleton of a lion apart from that of a tiger, for example (the distinguishing feature, by the way, is the slightly flatter, more upturned skull in lions).

“Tyrannosaurus rex remains the one true king of the dinosaurs,” says co-author Steve Brusatte, paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. “Recently, a bold theory was announced to much fanfare: what we call T. rex was actually multiple species. It is true that the fossils we have are somewhat variable in size and shape, but as we show in our new study, that variation is minor and cannot be used to neatly separate the fossils into easily defined clusters. Based on all the fossil evidence we currently have, T. rex stands alone as the single giant apex predator from the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America.”

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Authors of the March paper suggesting T. rex is actually three separate species reclassified the animal based on the leg bones and teeth of 38 specimens. They believe it is more accurate to group these individuals into the species: the standard T. rex, the bulkier “T. imperator,” and the slimmer “T. regina.”

The new study’s authors revisited the data and added information gathered from 112 bird species (also known as living dinosaurs) and four non-avian extinct theropod (two-legged) dinosaur.

They argue that the multiple species argument breaks down due to limited comparative samples, non-comparative measurements and inadequate statistical techniques.

“Their study claimed that the variation in T. rex specimens was so high that they were probably from multiple closely related species of giant meat-eating dinosaur,” says James Napoli, co-lead author of the rebuttal study. “But this claim was based on a very small comparative sample. When compared to data from hundreds of living birds, we actually found that T. rex is less variable than most living theropod dinosaurs. This line of evidence for proposed multiple species doesn’t hold up.”

“Pinning down variation in long-extinct animals is a major challenge for paleontologists,” adds co-lead author Thomas Carr from Carthage College. “Our study shows that rigorous statistical analyses that are grounded in our knowledge of living animals is the best way to clarify the boundaries of extinct species. In practical terms, the three-species model is so poorly defined that many excellent specimens can’t be identified. That’s a clear warning sign of a hypothesis that doesn’t map onto the real world.”

According to the March paper, variation in the size of the second tooth in the lower jaw and femur robustness indicated multiple species. The new study, however, could not replicate these findings and revealed differing measurements, as well as noting issues in the statistical methods of the study published in March which made assumptions about the number of T. rex groups before running tests.

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“The boundaries of even living species are very hard to define: for instance, zoologists disagree over the number of living species of giraffe,” explains co-author Thomas Holtz, from the University of Maryland and the National Museum of Natural History. “It becomes much more difficult when the species involved are ancient and only known from a fairly small number of specimens. Other sources of variation—changes with growth, with region, with sex, and with good old-fashioned individual differences—have to be rejected before one accepts the hypothesis that two sets of specimens are in fact separate species. In our view, that hypothesis is not yet the best explanation.”

“T. rex is an iconic species and an incredibly important one for both paleontological research and communicating to the public about science, so it’s important that we get this right,” says co-author David Hone, from Queen Mary University of London. “There is still a good chance that there is more than one species of Tyrannosaurus out there, but we need strong evidence to make that kind of decision.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/tyrannosaurus-rex-not-three/

 

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by CaaC (John)

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Bloody Wimpys.

 

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Plesiosaur fossil found in Morocco shows the marine animals also lived in freshwater

Some have said the find makes the Loch Ness monster myth “plausible”.

If you’re like me, you are a facts-based science nerd with a penchant for the fun and mystery that surrounds cryptozoology and mythology. Even better is when the two worlds of science fact and mythology cross over. A new fossil discovery in Morocco has sent imaginations racing once again.

One of the most famous cryptids (animals unknown to science but said to exist by those who claim to have seen them, or signs of them) is the fabled Loch Ness monster, or “Nessie”. Nessie is believed by some to live in the Scottish Highlands lake called Loch Ness.

We could throw into the mix the animal known as “Champ” which is said to live in Lake Champlain which crosses the border between Canada and the north-eastern United States.

While proof of Nessie and Champ’s existence remains elusive, for hundreds of years, visitors to the lakes have insisted they have seen the animals.

Attempts to give scientific credence to the myths have included suggestions that Nessie and Champ may be the last vestiges of a by-gone age.

First found and described in 1823 by palaeontologist Mary Anning, plesiosaurs are long-necked, small-headed, flippered marine reptiles which lived during the time of the dinosaurs. Their body shape matches the long neck, smooth, scaly skin, and undulating serpentine body ascribed to Nessie and Champ by alleged witnesses.

It is extremely unlikely that a population of animals would have gone unnoticed and left no trace for 66 million years to the point of making this theory simply untenable. But, putting that to one side, there is another major problem: Both Lake Champlain and Loch Ness are freshwater lakes.

See, plesiosaurs were marine reptiles, meaning that they lived exclusively in saltwater. That is, we thought they did. Until now.

Scientists from the University of Bath and University of Portsmouth in the UK have published their findings of a new extinct plesiosaur in the journal Cretaceous Research.

The plesiosaur fossils were discovered in the Kem Kem Geological Group in eastern Morocco near the border with Algeria. The Kem Kem is home to many famous discoveries including the massive carnivorous dinosaurs Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus.

One specimen is that of a 1.5-metre-long baby which lived 100 million years ago. The animal was found in what is now dry Morocco but would have been a river during the Cretaceous period. The fossils hint that the creatures lived and fed in freshwater alongside giant crocodiles and Spinosaurus which is thought to be aquatic.

Not only does the find suggest that the plesiosaurs could tolerate freshwater, but that they may even have spent their lives there, the researchers say.

Included among the fossils are neck, back and tail vertebrae, teeth, and a piece of the juvenile’s forelimb.

“It’s scrappy stuff, but isolated bones actually tell us a lot about ancient ecosystems and animals in them. They’re so much more common than skeletons, they give you more information to work with” says corresponding author Dr Nick Longrich, a University of Bath palaeontologist. “The bones and teeth were found scattered and in different localities, not as a skeleton. So each bone and each tooth is a different animal. We have over a dozen animals in this collection.”

Bones tell us where the animals died. But the heavily worn teeth were shed while the animals were still alive, hinting at the fact that the site is not just where they died, but where they lived as well.

Modern marine animals like whales and dolphins sometimes wander into rivers to feed or because they are lost. But the number of plesiosaur fossils makes this an unlikely scenario for the Cretaceous animals.

It is more likely that the plesiosaurs, more like beluga whales, are able to tolerate both fresh and salt water. The animals could even have been permanent freshwater inhabitants like some modern dolphins which have evolved to be freshwater specialists four times – in the Ganges River, the Yangtze River and twice in the Amazon.

“We don’t really know why the plesiosaurs are in freshwater,” adds Longrich. “It’s a bit controversial, but who’s to say that because we palaeontologists have always called them ‘marine reptiles’, they had to live in the sea? Lots of marine lineages invaded freshwater.”

The Moroccan plesiosaurs belong to the family Leptocleididae. These smaller plesiosaurs have been found around the world including in England, Africa and Australia.

A diverse and adaptable group of animals, plesiosaurs swam Earth’s ancient oceans for over 100 million years. The scientists believe they may even have invaded freshwater to different degrees multiple times.

“We don’t really know, honestly. That’s how paleontology works. People ask, how can paleontologists know anything for certain about the lives of animals that went extinct millions of years ago? The reality is, we can’t always. All we can do is make educated guesses based on the information we have. We’ll find more fossils. Maybe they’ll confirm those guesses. Maybe not,” says Longrich.

The researchers say that the new discovery increases the diversity of Cretaceous Morroco. “This is another sensational discovery that adds to the many discoveries we have made in the Kem Kem over the past fifteen years of work in this region of Morocco,” explains team member and co-author Samir Zouhri of the Moroccan Hassan II University of Casablanca. “Kem Kem was truly an incredible biodiversity hotspot in the Cretaceous.”

“What amazes me” says co-author Dave Martill, “is that the ancient Moroccan river contained so many carnivores all living alongside each other. This was no place to go for a swim.”

So, it is plausible that Nessie and Champ are real and that they are freshwater plesiosaurs. But don’t hold your breath. As much as we want to believe, this fact-hardened author agrees with scientific consensus that plesiosaurs died out with large dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/morocco-plesiosaur-fossil-loch-ness/

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Eye-popping fossil fish found in cattle field

A ferocious-looking fossil fish has been unearthed from a remarkable new Jurassic dig site just outside Stroud, in Gloucestershire.

Pachycormus: It looks like it is going to jump out at you

The creature - a tuna-like predator called Pachycormus - is beautifully persevered in three dimensions.

With its big teeth and eyes, it gives the impression it is about to launch an attack.

The specimen was identified by prolific West Country fossil-hunters Neville and Sally Hollingworth.

"It was a real surprise because, when you find fossils, most of the time they've been pressed flat through pressure over time," Neville told BBC News.

"But when we prepared this one, to reveal its bones bit by bit, it was amazing because we suddenly realised its skull was uncrushed.

"Its mouth is open - and it looks like it's coming out at you from the rock."

• Ancient fossil is earliest known animal predator
• Huge fossilised ‘sea dragon’ found in UK reservoir

The couple found the fish head in a grassy bank behind a cow shed in the village of Kings Stanley.

It had been encased in one of the many limestone nodules that were falling out from an exposed clay layer.

The landowner, Adam Knight, had no idea his English longhorn cattle were grazing on top of a rich fossil seam, recalling a time, 183 million years ago, when his farm would have been lying under warm tropical ocean waters.

Mr Knight gave permission to Neville and Sally, and a team led from the University of Manchester, to investigate the bank further.

https://www.msn.com/ru-xl/news/other/eye-popping-fossil-fish-found-in-cattle-field/ar-AA105gdB#:~:text=Eye-popping fossil fish found in cattle field Palaeontologists,new Jurassic site just outside Stroud%2C in Gloucestershire.

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[Coma+]

 

[CaaC (John)]

5 minutes ago, Coma said:

 

Bloody amazing that.

[Coma+]

Just now, CaaC (John) said:

Bloody amazing that.

I know.  I wonder how long it took to build that house.  The intricacy of the pieces is mind-blowing.

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Neanderthal vs. modern humans: Slow and steady wins the brain game

Small genetic changes separate modern humans from ancestral brain development.

Our closest human relatives are Neanderthals (split from modern humans at least 500,000 years ago) and their Asian relatives the Denisovans (split from modern humans around 800,000 years ago). The differences between Homo sapiens and these other groups are encoded in changes to the amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins in our cells and tissues.

About 100 amino acids changed in modern humans after these splits and spread throughout almost all of us. The biological significance of these changes, however, is largely unknown.

Researchers in Germany looked at changes to six of these amino acids occurring in three proteins. These amino acids play key roles in the distribution of chromosomes to the two daughter cells during cell division.

Since the remarkable work done in sequencing the Neanderthal genome this study furthers our understanding of the subtle differences between these ancient humans and modern humans. It may also shed some light on the evolutionary advantages that eventually saw modern humans outlive Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Authored by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in, the results are published in Science Advances.

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To investigate how these six changes impact brain development, the scientists introduced the amino acids from modern human variants into mice. Interestingly, in those six amino acid positions, mice are identical to Neanderthals. That makes mice brains perfect for testing what happens when these amino acids are changed.

Lead author of the study, Felipe Mora-Bermúdez, says the changes result in more accurate transfer of genetic data in cell division. “We found that three modern human amino acids in two of the proteins cause a longer metaphase, a phase where chromosomes are prepared for cell division, and this results in fewer errors when the chromosomes are distributed to the daughter cells of the neural stem cells, just like in modern humans.”

The team also checked to see if the opposite would be true. If they replaced the modern human amino acids with those present in Neanderthals, would they see faster and less accurate mitosis?

They introduced the ancestral amino acids in human brain organoids. Organoids are miniature organ-like structures that can be grown from human stem cells in the lab which mimic aspects of early human brain development.

“In this case, the metaphase became shorter and we found more chromosome distribution errors.” According to Mora-Bermúdez, this shows that those three modern human amino acid changes in the proteins are responsible for the fewer chromosome distribution mistakes seen in modern humans compared to Neanderthal and chimpanzees. He adds that “having mistakes in the number of chromosomes is usually not a good idea for cells, as can be seen in disorders like trisomies and cancer.”

“Our study implies that some aspects of modern human brain evolution and function may be independent of brain size since Neanderthals and modern humans have similar-sized brains. The findings also suggest that brain function in Neanderthals may have been more affected by chromosome errors than that of modern humans,” adds co-author Wieland Huttner.

Svante Pääbo, who also co-supervised the study, adds that “future studies are needed to investigate whether the decreased error rate affects modern human traits related to brain function.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/neanderthal-human-brain-development/

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[CaaC (John)]

21 hours ago, Coma said:

I know.  I wonder how long it took to build that house.  The intricacy of the pieces is mind-blowing.

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by CaaC (John)

[MUFC]

 

[Spike]

On 15/07/2022 at 12:43, CaaC (John) said:

 

Winton is so remote, but it is literally a dinosaur graveyard. They just keep finding stuff out there

[CaaC (John)]

Quote

Ancient insect calls for update to Jurassic Park soundtrack

Scientists reconstruct the singing tones of a long-extinct katydid from a single specimen.

For the past 150 years, the single known specimen of a species of katydid-like insect known as Prophalangopsis obscura has sat quietly in the London Natural History Museum but now some scientists have worked out what it would have sounded like.

A British/Austrian team, used some seriously fancy equipment and an understanding of the physics of insect acoustics to work out what this species would have sounded like when it sang for a mate, giving insight into the ancient insect soundscape of the Jurassic period.

Katydids are grasshoppers and crickets.

This holotype, or single known specimen, is one of only eight remaining species from the 90 or so which were abundant during the Jurassic period.

The research team has shown the sounds produced by this particular insect would have been similar to, although distinguishable from, other related species around this period.

 

The chirp produced by P. obscura is a pure tone, emitted at around 4.7 kHz — well-within the range of human hearing.

Aside from helping researchers understand what the insect world sounded like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth some 145 to 201 million years ago, the findings also suggest that early insects of this type were limited to frequencies below 20 kHz.

This is important because the other species of Prophalangopsis known today have evolved to be flightless, using their wings exclusively for sound production and attracting a mate. These evolved species have also developed ultrasonic sound production organs to assist in deterring ground-based predators.

Adult Angle-winged Katydid. Katydids in existence today tend to be flightless and capable of ultrasound. Credit: ViniSouza128/GettyBut, how do you hear an insect that has been dead for 150 years?

Like katydids and their relatives, P. obscura, produced sound by scraping one of its wings with a ‘file’ (or row of teeth). These vibrations would then by amplified by special structures within the insect’s wing and radiated out into the surrounding environment.

Scientists at the University of Lincoln, the Natural History Museum, London, UK and Karl-Franzens-University, Graz, Austria used a technique called micro-scanning Laser-Doppler Vibrometry (LDV) to scan and then reconstruct the wings and sound-producing organs of the holotype. They then applied knowledge of close relatives of the species, they were then able to infer the “carrier frequency” (the central frequency at which the overall sound reaches its maximum energy).

Due to its low frequency and pure tone, the song P. obscura sang may have reverberated far and wide across the Jurassic landscape.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/ancient-insect-jurassic-sound/

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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[MUFC]

Crazy!!!

 

[CaaC (John)]

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Breathe in, breathe out and thank your lucky… rocks?

Geological processes responsible for life-giving oxygen came a billion years before photosynthesis.

The Earth’s atmosphere is relatively rich in oxygen but the prevailing wisdom that much of it came from plants and bacteria, might not be entirely correct.

The advent of photosynthesis — the production of energy and oxygen from carbon dioxide and light — by cyanobacteria had a big influence on the evolution of life and multi-cellular organisms in particular.

However, a new study in Nature Communications suggests that hydrogen peroxide (an easy source of oxygen to microbes) was produced in substantial quantities much earlier in the Earth’s history, raising interesting questions about the early evolution of life (and perhaps the origins of life, more generally).

Earth’s surface is not static and in particularly active tectonic regions, stresses build in the crust which are released through earthquakes and faulting activity. This produces defects or imperfections in the rocks below the surface which are then exposed to water filtering down from above.

Jordan Stone, a master’s student at Newcastle University, simulated early rock defect conditions in the Earth’s oceanic and continental crust by crushing granite, basalt and peridotite, and then he exposed them to water in an oxygen-free environment. At temperatures close to the boiling point of water, Stone found that a substantial amount of hydrogen peroxide was produced from the crushed rocks.

The high temperature range is a key discovery, says Stone. “While previous research has suggested small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and other oxidants can be formed by stressing or crushing rocks in the absence of oxygen, this is the first study to show the vital importance of hot temperatures in maximising hydrogen peroxide generation.”

Heat-loving microbes, or hyperthermophiles, are incredibly resilient, growing best in temperatures above 80°C and surviving in temperatures beyond the boiling point of water (100°C). What’s more, they have ancient origins, lying near the root of the Universal Tree of Life and predating the emergence of photosynthesis.

This is interesting to note as these oxygen-loving hyperthermophiles thrive in temperatures across the range of optimal hydrogen peroxide production and Stone’s research suggests that oxygen may have played a far more important role in the evolution of life before photosynthesis came along.

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https://cosmosmagazine.com/earth/oxygen-thank-your-lucky-rocks/

 

[MUFC]

 

[CaaC (John)]

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A dino feat: How Littlefoot’s feet could have supported such massive dinosaur bodies

New research into the biomechanics of sauropod feet answers a prehistoric question.

As a child, any millennial remotely interested in dinosaurs (how many of us weren’t, really?) would have grown up with “longneck” Littlefoot and his friends in The Land Before Time. Sidestepping for a moment the years of emotional trauma caused by that scene (if you know, you know), Littlefoot’s name leads to a very apposite question. How did Littlefoot’s Apatosaurus family and other massive sauropod dinosaurs carry their colossal weight on their feet?

Sauropods were not only the largest of the dinosaurs, the long-necked, small-headed behemoths were the largest land animals of all time. The largest like Dreadnoughtus and Argentinosaurus are estimated to have grown to 30 or 40 metres in length and weighed in at anywhere between 50-100 tonnes.

The biomechanics of lugging all that weight around on land is no mean feat and palaeontologists have been scratching their heads about it for years.

In fact, it has led many palaeontologists in the past to suggest that the only way sauropods could have carried their own weight around is if they were semi-aquatic animals with their weight supported by water. This theory was disproved in the mid-20^th century by the discovery of fossilised sauropod tracks that were laid down on prehistoric land.

Research from University of Queensland (UQ) and Monash University might have cracked the case using 3D modelling and engineering methods to reconstruct and test the foot structures of different sauropods. The team’s findings are published in Science Advances.

Leading the research as part of his PhD at UQ, Dr Andreas Jannel says the results show sauropods evolved a soft tissue “pad” beneath the heels on their hind feet. This pad would have cushioned the foot to absorb their immense weight.

The difference between elephant and sauropod feet is dueto their very different evolutionary paths according to the researchers.

“Elephants belong to an ancient order of mammals called proboscideans, which first appeared in Africa roughly 60 million years ago as small, nondescript herbivores,” says co-author Steve Salisbury, associate professor at UQ. “In contrast, sauropods – whose ancestors first appeared 230 million years ago – are more closely related to birds. They were agile, two-legged herbivores and it was only later in their evolution that they walked on all fours. Crucially, the transition to becoming the largest land animals to walk the earth seems to have involved the adaptation of a heel pad.”

As technology develops, a lot more palaeontology is being done through scans and computer simulations. This allows scientists to not only look at the fossilised remains of animals which lived tens of millions of years ago, but also make even more discoveries about how they lived.

The 3D-modelling techniques used in the sauropod foot study are applicable to other areas of palaeontological research.

“I’m keen to apply a similar method to an entire limb and to include additional soft tissue such as muscles, which are rarely preserved in fossils,” Jannel says. “We’re also excited to study the limbs and feet of other prehistoric animals. This should allow us to answer different questions about the biomechanics of extinct animals and better understand their environmental adaptations, movement and lifestyle.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/sauropod-feet-3d-model/

 

Edited August 14, 2022 by CaaC (John)
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