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Hephaestion
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Maestro
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 Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:06 am Post subject: |
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A very interesting find, apparently having been dug up seventeen years ago, and studied since then.
I really wish the phrase 'missing link' was consigned to the garbage. It is meaningless in evolution because every intermediate is a link from the past to the future. Thus, every intermediate form as yet undiscovered, is a missing link.
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Raos
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| Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Well, not necessarily. There is a not insignificant amount of evidence in support of punctuated equilibrium, which does in a sense establish long-term "stable" species separated by comparatively short periods of transition. However gradual such speciation may have been in its own time, from our contemporary perspective looking back it can be characterized, not entirely unfairly, as distinct "true" species separated by one or a few links of mere "transitional species", rather than true and distinct species in their own right. And those links, by virtue of their relatively short term of existence, would largely be missing or undiscovered in the fossil record.
The phrase and idea is still certainly misused and misinterpreted, but I don't think it's without merit when understood within modern evolutionary theory. |
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Maestro
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| Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 2:14 am Post subject: |
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Read Richard Dawkins on 'punctuated equilibrium' and I think you'll find yourself agreeing with him. His point is essentially that large changes to an organism are almost always bad. The logic is that if something is working, any large change to it will almost certainly make it unworkable.
It was Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge who presented 'punctuated equilibrium' to the world, mostly as an attempt to explain gaps in the fossil record. Their take was that if some fossil evidence had not been discovered, then it probably didn't exist, and thus evolution proceeded by quick 'jumps' interspersed with long periods of stasis.
I happen to be a huge fan of the late Mr. Gould, but in this particular case, I think he overstated the case. I also think he himself would reject the 'missing link' term for essentially the same reason, that every intermediate is a missing link.
Remember that Gould was a real contrarian ( his own word) and often went out of his way to make a point. This caused him some grief in that he was often quoted by creationists (out of context). Here is an example, and his reply - found in wikipedia:
| Quote: | Stephen Jay Gould on intermediate forms:
The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change. All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.
– Stephen Jay Gould
The context that immediately follows demonstrates that this view is articulated only in order to reject it:
Although I reject this argument (for reasons discussed in ["The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"]), let us grant the traditional escape and ask a different question.
Gould was scathing on such misleading quotations:
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups. |
"Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins takes a very close look at 'punctuated equilibrium', and is a must read for anyone interested in evolution.
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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Roman tombs found in south Lebanon cave
| Quote: | Japanese archaeologists discovered a cave containing frescoed Roman tombs in southern Lebanon's ancient coastal city of Tyre on Monday, an official overseeing the excavation said.
The three-metre by 12-metre (10-foot by 39-foot) cave contains six tombs from a Roman family, archaeologist Nader Siqlawi of the Directorate General of Antiquities told AFP.
"The walls at the entrance are decorated with frescoes of plants, animals and colourful birds, and parts of the floor are covered in mosaic," Siqlawi said.
[...]
Like many coastal cities across Lebanon, Tyre, 85 kilometres (53 miles) south of Beirut, contains relics dating back to the Phoenician and Roman eras. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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Largest ever dinosaur footprints found in France:
| Quote: | | Imprints measuring up to 2 metres (6ft 6in) in diameter and stretching over a vast area of land have been uncovered near the village of Plagne, 30 miles west of Geneva, according to the National Centre of Scientific Research. In a statement, the centre said the significance of the prints could not be overestimated. 'According to the researchers' initial work, these tracks are the biggest ever seen,' it said. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 12:10 am Post subject: |
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New find near Stonehenge could show evidence of riverside funeral complex
| Quote: | The discovery of a small prehistoric circle of stones near Stonehenge may confirm the theory that the famous monument in southwest England was part of a massive funeral complex built around a river, researchers said Tuesday.
The new find shows that the second stone circle - dubbed "Bluehenge" because it was built with bluestones - once stood next to the River Avon, about three kilometres from Stonehenge.
The find last month could help prove that the Avon linked a "domain of the dead" - made up of Stonehenge and Bluehenge - with an upstream "domain of the living" known as Durrington Wells, a monument where extensive signs of feasting and other human activity were found, said Professor Julian Thomas, co-director of the Stonehenge Riverside Project.
Project director Mike Parker Pearson said it is possible that Bluehenge was the starting point of a processional walk that began at the river and ended at Stonehenge, the site of a large prehistoric cemetery.
"Not many people know that Stonehenge was Britain's largest burial ground at that time," he said. "Maybe the bluestone circle is where people were cremated before their ashes were buried at Stonehenge itself." |
more @ link
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TS.
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| Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2009 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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It seems that the Louvre has been bad, knowingly buying stolen Egyptian artifacts.
[quote]France's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient Egyptian fresco fragments at the centre of a row with Egyptian officials.
Earlier, Egypt's head of antiquities Zahi Hawass told the AFP news agency that the Louvre had bought the fragments knowing they were stolen.
Egypt had severed co-operation with the Louvre, pending their return, he said.
The Pharaonic steles, on display in the Louvre, are reported to be from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor.[quote]
BBC
Other countries (like Greece and Italy) should start looking into whether the Louvre is knowingly buying artifacts stolen from them.
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:15 pm Post subject: |
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US sues to return stolen sarcophagus to Egypt; 3,000-year-old artifact turned up in Florida
| Quote: | The U.S. has taken legal steps to have a stolen, 3,000-year-old sarcophagus returned to Egypt.
Federal prosecutors filed court papers Thursday seeking forfeiture of the artifact. It wound up in Miami last year following a series of transactions that began at an antique dealership in Barcelona, Spain.
Egyptian authorities say the sarcophagus was probably illegally excavated years ago. It's made out of wood and is yellow in colour, covered by elaborate hieroglyphics and symbols. Prosecutors say it was constructed between 1070 and 946 B.C. for the mummified remains of an unknown person.
The court case would allow for the sarcophagus to be returned to Egypt. |
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Raos
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| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:29 am Post subject: |
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| Maestro wrote: | | Read Richard Dawkins on 'punctuated equilibrium' and I think you'll find [. . .] |
I'm just going to quote that much, but this is intended to be a response to the whole post.
I think it's important to recognize that when we're talking about biology at the level of species our perspective is necessarily simplified. Yah species are constantly in flux and any form is in reality transitional, but the term species itself doesn't entirely clearly delineate a biological reality. Humans undoubtedly are genetically not quite the same as we were a few hundred years ago. The same would be true for humans from a few thousand years ago. If you had fossils of humans from a few thousand years ago and the present, though, you wouldn't really be too concerned with missing the evidence of any links between the two periods in same way you'd feel like you're missing an important section of the story if you were comparing fossils of modern humans with our most recent common ancestor with gorillas, even though every intervening generation in both comparisons would technically be missing link, transitional forms.
But neither 'species' nor 'missing link' can really be taken as a literal and uncompromising representation of full biology. In the string of human evolution from slime floating in the ocean to the present there's been practically infinite, literally unfathomable, distinct organisms in biological reality. Even if we had complete and total knowledge of every facet of that reality our species-level representation of it would be entirely finite and quantifiable. I think that missing link as a term is an appropriate simplification of reality in the same sense that species is.
And in a sense I think the same thing is true for punctuated equilibrium. By no means does biological reality operate such that species X is in a stable phase and doesn't change at all over 10 million years, followed by a transitional period of 10k years until another 10 million years of no change now that it's species Y. Absolutely it can be overstated. But haven't crocodiles been around in at least some forms remarkable similar to our crocodiles today since before the first mammals evolved, never mind primates and humans? It might not be a stark biological truth, but it's an effective and (I'd say) reasonable means of describing that evolution is changing species around at some uniform rate of progression.
Which makes sense logically as well. Especially in stable environmental conditions an excessive rate of change in a species is inherently unstable. If you hit a winning genetic combination for taking advantage of a niche, there's going to be an evolutionary advantage to not changing, because you might lose the ability to exploit that niche. More stable lines of a populations at those points are going to outperform more changing lines and potentially lead to apparently stable forms in the fossil record. |
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Maestro
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| Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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However, the term 'species' has a very definite meaning in biology, that is, it defines organisms that can interbreed. I'll grant that can be a bit slippery in that it doesn't always hold true (some members of the same species may not be able to have viable offspring), but at least it has a definition that is used in biology.
'Missing link' has no such definition. 'Intermediate' would be the closest term, and even that means only some fossil evidence looks to be transitional from some ancient form to a more modern one.
I guess my biggest problem with the term 'missing link' is that it was a favourite term of the creationists, used to point out the lack of fossil record of transitional forms.
Here's a great story of separate species and transitional forms from Richard Dawkins:
| Quote: | ...it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: usually, but not always. The lawyer would be surprised and, I hope, intrigued by so-called 'ring species'.
The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls.
At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world.
The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must have lived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead. |
Now, we use the term species to define the two gulls in the UK, but which of the intermediates is the 'missing link'?
We know that all organisms on earth are related. In the grand scheme of things there are no 'missing links' between us, and the blue-green algae that was the first life on earth. There are, however, a zillion intermediate forms.
At the same time, there will be no offspring from a liaison between a human and any blue-green algae that exists today. We are different species.
So while it's pretty easy to see what we mean by the word 'species' (even though there are exceptions), the term 'missing link' could mean any one of a enormous number of intermediates.
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Raos
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| Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:15 am Post subject: |
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Um, well, a somewhat definite meaning. Heck, the glossary in my textbook from when I took evolutionary biology out right calls species "a complex concept". The full definition it gives is:
| Quote: | | In the sense of biological species, the members of a group of populations that interbreed or potentially interbreed with one another under natural conditions; a complex concept (see Chapter 15). Also, a fundamental taxonomic category to which individual specimens are assigned, which often but not always corresponds to the biological species. See also biological species, phylogenetic species concept. |
My point, though, is that while species may have a specific meaning within our understanding of biology, biological reality doesn't conform to operating under quite so strict of guidelines.
Ring species like the gulls are actually a great example of that. Our conceptualization of biological species doesn't actually explain what exists in reality. I'm actually going to go back to the textbook I quoted earlier, and also give the glossary definition of biological species, which the definition for species referred to.
| Quote: | | A population or group of populations within which genes are actually or potentially exchanged by interbreeding, and which are reproductively isolated from other such groups. |
Under that definition you can't really necessarily make the claim that the two gulls aren't one contiguous species. Genes are able to travel west from herring gulls, through interbreeding, and without ever leaving a reproductively contiguous population end up in the black-backed gulls. The same is true for genes from black-backed gulls travelling east.
But that's even beyond the point. Which of the gulls is the 'missing link'? None of them. For the simple fact none of those intermediates is in any way "missing". We can clearly see a full spectrum of gradation between the two gulls, no matter how many species you'd like to split that ring into.
Is 'missing link' somewhat subjective? Absolutely, but biologists get into huge arguments about where a species begins and ends, and whether one species has become a new species and whether this population is the same species as that population and every other potential aspect of the concept of species that could be disagreed over. What we mean by species may generally be pretty easy to see for what's still around in a contemporary context, but looking at the infinite gradations of intermediates betweens humans and every other living thing around now and the blue-green algae at the beginning, and it's not at a clear what we might mean by species. They're both (species and missing link) subjective, and they're both only useful in regards to our understanding of biological reality, rather than directly relevant to that reality.
And sure it's a term that creationists like to throw around. They like to throw around whatever they can. They throw around irreducible complexity like it's common as sand, despite nothing irreducibly complex every having been shown to exist. But for that matter we actually have a not insignificant amount of fossil evidence of transitional forms. Fish with feet, feathered dinosaurs, fish with lungs. For anybody interested in honestly appraising the fossil evidence for transitional forms (not that this excludes the creationists) we already have enough to make a strong case for transitional forms. |
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Hephaestion
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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Ardi, In-Depth
| Quote: | You'll recall (hopefully) Ardi, the Ardipithecus ramidus, an ancient human ancestor that's recently gotten a whole lot of media attention. Excellently pseudo-named blogger Zinjanthropus (actually a mild-mannered biological anthropology grad student) is doing a series of posts that take a close-up look at some of the biological quirks that make Ardi such a surprise.
The first post is on Ardi's hands...
| Quote: | The extant African apes are knuckle-walkers, they have stiff, inflexible hands and wrists that allow them to support their body weight in sort of a weird position. Because they also have to climb trees for food and protection, their hands are very long and powerful. Humans, on the other hand, have pretty mobile hands and wrists which allows us what we call a "power grip." We are very good graspers, and this has allowed us to become the dexterous tool-wielders that we are. Because of our close genetic similarity to chimps, and the close morphological similarity between chimps and gorillas, it has been argued that certain features of the Australopithecine wrist- and even the human wrist- were "hold overs" from the period of time when we, too were knuckle-walkers who required a stiff wrist and hand.
However, Ardi's hand more closely approximates the human hand than the knuckle-walker hand. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:36 pm Post subject: |
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'Earliest ancestor' Ida not related to humans: scientists
| Quote: | ... In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.
He and his colleagues compared 360 specific anatomical features of 117 living and extinct primate species to draw up a family tree. They report the results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
Ida is a skeleton of a 47 million-year-old cat-sized creature found in Germany. It starred in a book, "The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor."
Ida represents a previously unknown primate species called Darwinius. The scientists who formally announced the finding said they weren't claiming Darwinius was a direct ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans. But they did argue that it belongs in the same major evolutionary grouping, and that it showed what an actual ancestor of that era might have looked like.
The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Emperor Hadrian's auditorium unveiled at digs for subway in downtown Rome
| Quote: | Archaeologists on Wednesday unveiled the remains of an ancient auditorium where scholars, politicians and poets held debates and lectures, a site discovered during excavations of a bustling downtown piazza in preparation for a new subway line.
The partially dug complex, dating back to the 2nd century A.D., is believed to have been funded by Emperor Hadrian as a school to promote liberal arts and culture. Known as the "Athenaeum" and named after the city of Athens, which was considered the centre of culture at the time, the auditorium could accommodate up to 200 people, experts said.
"Hadrian, who was a cultured emperor, wanted to re-establish the tradition of public recitation, conferences and poetry contests, as it used to happen in classic Greece," Roberto Egidi, an archaeologist overseeing the digs, said during a tour.
[...]
Archaeologists have been probing the depths of the Eternal City for months to pave the way for some of the 30 stations of the city's planned third subway line. Many of the digs are near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares and several archaeological remains - including Roman taverns and 16th-century palace foundations - have already turned up at Piazza Venezia.
Francesco Giro, a top official with Italy's culture ministry, said the entrance to the subway would be close to the auditorium, but in an area where digs turned up only ancient sewers.
[...]
Rome's 2.8 million inhabitants rely on just two subway lines, which only skirt the city centre, leaving it clogged with traffic and tourists. Plans for a third line that would serve the history-rich heart of Rome have been put off for decades amid funding shortages and fears that a wealth of archaeological discoveries would halt work. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 10:12 pm Post subject: |
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Fossilized skull of giant "sea monster" found off south coast of England
| Quote: | A local council says the fossilized skull of a giant sea monster has been found off the southern coast of England.
The fossil came from a pliosaur, a ferocious predator that lived in the oceans 150 million years ago. The skull was discovered in Dorset by a collector and measures 2.4 metres (8 feet) in length. The discovery was announced Tuesday.
Scientists believe the creature would have been some 16 metres (52 feet) long. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 9:03 am Post subject: |
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Archaeologists May Have Found Remains of Lost Persian Army
| Quote: | 2,500 years ago, an army of 50,000 men left an oasis in western Egypt and were never heard from again. Now, archaeologists think they may have uncovered the missing troops, who were probably killed in a sandstorm.
| Quote: | | ...the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area. Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls. "We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold to American tourists," Castiglioni said. |
And now, unless popular film and novels have lied to us all, every last one of those skeletons will struggle to its feet and--enraged at the disruption of a centuries' long slumber--visit destruction upon archaeologist and Bedouin alike. |
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bshmr
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| Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| The hot-linked MSNBC write-up was a decent, informative read. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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Witch bottle from the 18th century
| Quote: | Above is an 18th century "witch bottle," used to fend off evil spirits. Discovered at a construction site in the London borough of Greenwich, this example is particularly rare because it's still corked. Retired chemistry professor Dr. Alan Massey analyzed the bottle and its curious contents. From Fortean Times:
| Quote: | | (The bottle) contained 12 bent iron nails (one of which pierced a small leather heart), eight brass pins, 10 adult fingernail pairings (sic) (not from a manual worker, but a person "of some social standing"), a quantity of hair and urine with traces of nicotine, indicating it had come from a smoker. There were also traces of sulphur, then known as brimstone, and what is thought to be navel fluff. The brimstone recalled the passage in Revelation where the beast and the false prophet were "cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone". |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Nov 26, 2009 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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Anglo-Saxon treasure worth over 3 mlllion pounds
| Quote: | A record hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure found in a field in Staffordshire was valued Thursday at more than three million pounds, to be split equally between the man who found it and the owner of the land.
Experts on the government's independent valuation committee said the 1,400-year-old treasure, the largest and most valuable such hoard ever found, was worth 3,285,000 million pounds.
Unemployed metal detector enthusiast Terry Herbert made the find in July in Staffordshire, central England, uncovering the first of more than 1,500 gold and silver objects and some of the finest Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship ever seen.
[...]
The farmer who owns the field, Fred Johnson, told the BBC that he had yet to decide how to spend his half of the money. He said he was unlikely to move house -- although this was not because he expected anything else to come out of his field.
"I am confident there's nothing else there now. But then again I was sure there wasn't anything there in the first place -- so who knows?" he said.
Johnson had previously said the find had soured his relationship with Herbert, 55, who has been metal detecting for the last 18 years and was using his trusty 14-year-old detector when he made the life-changing find. "I'm not happy with Terry," Johnson was quoted as saying by The Times newspaper at the time, saying he had hoped to keep the find more low key. "I think it is more about the money for him," he added. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 4:01 pm Post subject: |
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File this under "cultural anthopology"...
WWI images from Library and Archives Canada
| Quote: | | Library and Archives Canada has released a whole ton of WWI images to Flickr, including some stunning color paintings of Vimy Ridge and related places. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 2:55 pm Post subject: |
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Best archaeological finds of 2009
| Quote: | National Geographic rounds up its favorite archaeological finds of 2009, from vampire corpses to pirate booty:
| Quote: | 8. Blackbeard Pirate Relics, Gold Found
A sword guard, tiny gold pieces, and a coin are among newfound artifacts from a shipwreck off North Carolina--shown in exclusive pictures. The discoveries, announced in March, add to evidence that the ship belonged to the pirate Blackbeard.
7. World War II "Samurai Subs" Found--Carried Aircraft
Two advanced Japanese "samurai subs" were found off Pearl Harbor in February and announced in November--including a stealth aircraft-carrying submarine and a supersleek vessel engineered for utmost speed. |
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also in the list:
10. "Extraordinary" Ancient Skeletons Found
9. "Vampire" Exorcism Skull Found in Italy
6. Huge Pre-Stonehenge Complex Found via "Crop Circles"
5. Mysterious Inscribed Slate Discovered at Jamestown
4. Ancient "King of Bling" Tomb Revealed in Peru
3. Ancient Gem-Studded Teeth Show Skill of Early Dentists
2. Gold Hoard Found: Largest Known Anglo-Saxon Treasure
1. Gold Rush-Era "Ghost Ship" Wreck Found
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:19 am Post subject: |
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First dwelling from Jesus' time found in Nazareth
| Quote: | Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus - a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.
The dwelling and older discoveries of nearby tombs in burial caves suggest that Nazareth was an out-of-the-way hamlet of around 50 houses on a patch of about 1.6 hectares. It was evidently populated by Jews of modest means who kept camouflaged grottos to hide from Roman invaders, said archaeologist Yardena Alexandre, excavations director at the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Based on clay and chalk shards found at the site, the dwelling appeared to house a "simple Jewish family," Alexandre added, as workers at the site carefully chipped away at mud with small pickaxes to reveal stone walls.
[...]
Alexandre said workers uncovered the first signs of the dwelling in the summer, but it became clear only this month that it was a structure from the era of Jesus.
Alexandre's team found remains of a wall, a hideout, a courtyard and a water system that appeared to collect water from the roof and supply it to the home. The discovery was made when builders dug up the courtyard of a former convent to make room for a new Christian centre, just meters away from the Basilica.
It is not clear how big the dwelling is - Alexandre's team have uncovered about 85 square metres of the house, but it may have been for an extended family and could be much larger, she said. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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Fossil footprints show 4-legged animals conquered land millions of years earlier than thought
| Quote: | The water-dwelling ancestors of modern-day mammals, reptiles and birds emerged onto land millions of years earlier than previously believed, researchers report.
A set of fossilized footprints show that the first tetrapods - a term applied to any four-footed animal with a spine - were treading open ground 397 million years ago, well before scientists thought they existed.
An expert unconnected with the research said the find would force experts to reconsider a critical period in evolution when sea-based vertebrates took their first steps toward becoming dinosaurs, mammals, and - eventually - human beings.
"It blows the whole story out of the water, so to speak," said Jenny Clack, a paleontologist at Cambridge University.
The work appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:34 pm Post subject: |
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Amazon Basin:
| Quote: | | Researchers used Google Earth satellite images to find the remains of an ancient city in the Amazon basin—including 200+ earthworks laid out in geometric shapes in the middle of the jungle near the border of Brazil and Bolivia. This is a fantastic find, sure to be a game-changer in our understanding of the history of Amazonian peoples. But, despite Times Online speculation, it will probably not turn out to be a City of Gold. |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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Palestinians find ancient coin hoard in Gaza
| Quote: | The Hamas-run ministry of tourism and antiquities in Gaza on Monday announced the discovery of ancient artifacts near the Egyptian border town of Rafah.
"The most important of the findings are 1,300 antique silver coins, both large and small," said Mohammed al-Agha, tourism and antiquities minister in the Islamist-run government.
He said archaeologists had also uncovered a black basalt grinder, a coin with a cross etched on it, and the remains of walls and arches believed to have been built in 320 BC.
They also discovered a "mysterious" underground compartment with a blocked entrance that appeared to be a tomb, Agha said. |
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| Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:43 pm Post subject: |
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The original "cat lady": temple sacred to ancient cat goddess found in Egypt
| Quote: | Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Egyptian cat goddess Bastet in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the antiquities department said Tuesday.
The mission led by Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of Antiquities of Lower Egypt, discovered the remains of a temple of Queen Berenike, the wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt between 246 and 222 BC, in the Kom al-Dikka area in Alexandria.
[...]
A cachette of 600 Ptolemaic statues were also unearthed during the routine excavations, including a large collection of icons depicting Bastet, goddess of protection and motherhood.
The discovery in Kom al-Dikka is the first Ptolemaic temple discovered in Alexandria to be dedicated to the goddess Bastet, Abdel Maqsoud was quoted as saying in the statement.
"It indicates that the worship of the goddess Bastet continued in Egypt after the decline of the ancient Egyptian era," he said. |
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| Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 11:45 pm Post subject: |
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Egypt set to unveil Tutankhamun DNA results
| Quote: | One of the great remaining mysteries from ancient Egypt, the ancestry of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, may soon be solved, the country's antiquities supremo hinted on Sunday.
Zahi Hawass told AFP he has scheduled a news conference for February 17 in the Cairo Museum. The announcement will be "about the secrets of the family and the affiliation of Tutankhamun, based on the results of the scientific examination of the Tutankhamun mummy following DNA analysis," Hawass said.
[...]
Egypt's antiquities authorities said in August 2008 that they had taken DNA samples from Tutankhamun's mummy and from two foetuses found in his tomb, to determine whether the still-born children had been fathered by the boy king. |
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| Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 7:00 pm Post subject: |
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First study of mummy DNA leads to all sorts of discoveries
| Quote: | King Tut—plus 10 other royal mummies—recently became the first ancient Egyptians to get their DNA analyzed. The results, published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, turned up a treasure trove of new information about the famous boy king, his family and Egyptian royalty in general. Among the discoveries:
| Quote: | • Tut had a bone disorder that would have forced him to walk with a cane, and which may have been a result of royal inbreeding.
• A mummy known as KV55 has turned out to be Tut's father, Akhenaten, a controversial pharaoh best known for his failed attempt at converting Egypt to monotheism. Based on sculptures and art that depict a feminized Akhenaten, researchers had long suspected that he suffered from a genetic hormone disorder called gynecomastia. But the DNA evidence says otherwise. Instead, Akhenaten's feminine features are likely to have been an artistic conceit, added for symbolic, religious reasons.
• Other previously unidentified mummies are now known to be Tut's grandfather, grandmother and mother.
• Contrary to speculation, Tut's mother probably wasn't his father's chief wife, Nefertiti. She and Akhenaten are never described as being related, and Tut is definitely the product of brother/sister incest.
• King Tut had malaria. He likely died from a combination of that disease and complications of his bone disorder. The malarial DNA found in Tut's body is the oldest genetic evidence of the disease ever found. |
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| Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 3:55 am Post subject: |
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Possible new human ancestor found in Siberia
| Quote: | Genetic material pulled from a pinky finger bone found in a Siberian cave shows a new and unknown type of pre-human lived alongside modern humans and Neanderthals, scientists reported on Wednesday.
The creature, nicknamed "Woman X" for the time being, could have lived as recently as 30,000 years ago and appears only distantly related to modern humans or Neanderthals, the researchers reported.
"It really just looked like something we had never seen before," Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told a telephone briefing. "It was a sequence that looked something like humans but really quite different."
[...]
Krause and Paabo are careful not to name the creature a new species just yet. They are now working to sequence nuclear DNA -- the DNA that makes up most of the genetic code, which will tell a great deal more about "Woman X". |
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Hephaestion
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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Humans and neanderthals: Getting it on, after all?
| Quote: | New genetic data suggests that, at at least two points in history, Homo sapiens were interbreeding with other species, most likely Homo neanderthalensis or heidelbergensis.
This is pretty damn interesting, because it's a reversal on previous research. A couple of years ago, I got a chance to see Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary anthropologist with the Max Planck Institute, and kind of a big deal in the world of ancient hominid genetics, talk about this very topic. He and his team studied bits and pieces of the neanderthal genome and came to the conclusion that hanky panky hadn't happened between that species and ours. And, because it was Svante Pääbo (again, kind of a big deal) everybody trusted his results. So much so, in fact, the the University of New Mexico researchers who did this new study were surprised that their data said differently.
This is a really fun moment in science, when accepted information gets legitimately challenged. And now the ball is back in Pääbo's court. Remember, his previous neanderthal analysis was based on bits and pieces of the genome. Recently, he wrapped up a rough draft sequence of the entire genome, and, as Nature points out, what he finds there will probably be the first test of this new theory. Of course, it's also possible that both groups are right, and it's really H. heidelbergensis who was knocking boots with ancient sapiens. We'll just have to wait and find out. |
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Hephaestion
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| Posted: Sun May 30, 2010 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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Ancient mayor's 'lost tomb' found south of Cairo
| Quote: | Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital's mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.
Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.
The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solves a riddle dating back to 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb, whose location was soon after forgotten.
"Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it," said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. "It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb." |
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