Humanity's Best Friend: How Dogs May Have Helped Humans Beat the Neanderthals - Megan Garber Over 20,000 years ago, humans won the evolutionary battle against Neanderthals. They may have had some assistance in that from their best friends. One of the most compelling -- and enduring -- mysteries in archaeology concerns the rise of early humans and the decline of Neanderthals. For about 250,000 years, Neanderthals lived and evolved, quite successfully, in the area that is now Europe. Somewhere between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago, early humans came along. They proliferated in their new environment, their population increasing tenfold in the 10,000 years after they arrived; Neanderthals declined and finally died away. What happened? The cause, some theories go, may have been environmental, with Neanderthals' decline a byproduct of -- yikes -- climate change. The Cambridge researchers Paul Mellars and Jennifer French have another theory, though. Yep. There's another intriguing -- if conjecture-filled -- theory here, too. Dogs, however, also recognize the power of the gaze.
Evolution of sight traced back 700m years to jelly-fish which first developed the ability to detect light By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 19:00 GMT, 29 October 2012 | Updated: 19:00 GMT, 29 October 2012 Sight developed 700million years ago, a study found. The exact point in time when ancient species developed the first rudimentary ability to see light has been hotly contested. Scientific opinion was divided over which sponges or jellyfish types species first possessed opsins, a group of light-sensitive protein-coupled receptors in photoreceptor cells of the retina. Fresh faced for 700million years old: The evolution of our sense of sight has been traced back to prehistory Bristol's School of Earth Sciences and colleagues looked at a newly sequenced group of sponges named Oscarella carmela, and the jellyfish type Cnidarians, a group of animals thought to have possessed the world's earliest eyes. Using computer modelling to provide a detailed picture of how and when opsins evolved. Dr Davide Pisani performed a computational analysis to test every hypothesis of opsin evolution proposed to date.
Watch How Life Recovers from Devastation Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter If a portion of Earth underwent a major cataclysm, how long would it take for life to recover? The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens is giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to witness a recovery from devastation, as the eruption leveled the surrounding forest, blasted away hundreds of meters of the mountain’s summit, and claimed 57 human lives. Landsat satellites have tracked the what has happened on the mountain, and how the forest was reclaimed — all on its own. The collapse of the mountain was like uncorking a bottle of champagne. The landslide buried 14 miles (23 kilometers) of the North Fork Toutle River with an average of 150 feet (46 meters) of rocks, dirt and uprooted trees. The squarish beige patches visible in the upper right and lower left of the animation show logging on the mountain both before and after the eruption. Tagged as: Earth, Earth Observation, Natural Disasters
Researcher Explains Mysterious Evolution of Flatfish Eyes CHICAGO _ Some dusty fossil fish spotted by a sharp-eyed University of Chicago doctoral student as he rummaged through forgotten corners of museum collections in Europe have solved a question that has long vexed scientists. The puzzling question was: How did flatfish, a bizarre, highly specialized group of bottom-feeding fish that are some of nature’s most delicious creatures _ sole, plaice, turbot, flounder and halibut among them _ end up with both of their eyes on one side of their faces? Scientists have until now largely assumed the asymmetrical, one-sided eye arrangement was a trait that must have arisen suddenly in flatfish because they could not see a benefit for the fish if it took millions of years for an eye to migrate from one side to the other. Even Charles Darwin had trouble answering critics who used flatfish and their strange eyes as an argument against his evolutionary theory after he published it in 1859. “Matt’s (Nature) article is extremely significant,” said Thomas J.
Buried microbes exist at limit between life and death - life - 17 May 2012 Look and learn, sloths: the microbes deep beneath the Pacific ocean take inactivity to new heights. They are so slow on the uptake of nutrients from their environment that they barely classify as alive. Their very existence could help define the limit between life and death. Paradoxically, though, they may also be among the oldest living organisms on Earth. Everything happens slowly in the North Pacific gyre, one of the five largest ocean gyres in the world. Sand and mud washing off the continents rarely finds its way there, so the seafloor accumulates sediment at a sluggish rate. That clay contains so little energy in the form of nutrients that it should be incapable of supporting a living community. In a bid to hone in on the lower energy limits for life, Hans Røy at Aarhus University in Denmark probed the clays below the North Pacific gyre. "There are only 1000 tiny cells in 1 cubic centimetre of sediment, so finding just one is literally like hunting for a needle in a haystack."
Mystery Of The Flatfish Head Solved June 25, 2012 Image Caption: This is a skull of the primitive flatfish Heteronectes, with views of the left- and right-hand sides. The left-hand side shows an eye that has migrated toward the top of the skull, but not reached the other side, in this adult specimen. Credit: Image by M. Those delicious flatfishes, like halibut and sole, are also evolutionary puzzles. A new fossil discovery described in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Oxford University researcher Dr Matt Friedman finally solves the mystery. “This fossil comes from Bolca in northern Italy, a site that has literally been mined for hundreds of years for its fossil fishes. Friedman noted that “The specimen itself was discovered–with no identification–in a museum collection in Vienna. On The Net: Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Coyotes Are the New Top Dogs By Sharon Levy of Nature magazine Near the dawn of time, the story goes, Coyote saved the creatures of Earth. According to the mythology of Idaho's Nez Perce people, the monster Kamiah had stalked into the region and was gobbling up the animals one by one. The crafty Coyote evaded Kamiah but didn't want to lose his friends, so he let himself be swallowed. European colonists took a very different view of the coyote (Canis latrans) and other predators native to North America. Researchers have long known the coyote as a master of adaptation, but studies over the past few years are now revealing how these unimposing relatives of wolves and dogs have managed to succeed where many other creatures have suffered. The lessons learned from coyotes can help researchers to understand how other mid-sized predators respond when larger carnivores are wiped out. Yet even among such opportunists, coyotes stand out as the champions of change. At a fast rate, too.
Fish Fossil May Resolve Questions On Natural Selection A researcher from the University of Chicago said newly identified fish fossils discovered in several European museums might resolve a long-standing question about evolutionary theory. The 50 million-year-old fossils fill in a “missing link” in the evolution of flatfishes and explain one of nature’s most extraordinary phenomena, namely how flatfish such as sole, flounder halibut developed the bizarre but useful trait of having both eyes on one side of their head. Even more extraordinary is the fact that every flatfish is born symmetrical, with one eye on each side of its skull. But as the flatfish develops from a larva to a juvenile, one eye gradually “migrates” up and over the top of the head, coming to rest in its adult position on the opposite side of the skull. For flatfish, which lie on their sides at the bottom of the sea, unique specialization provides a clear survival advantage in allowing the fish to use both of their eyes to look up.
A Rose is a Rose, Until it Isn’t: Five Reasons Plant DNA is Totally Crazy Credit: SP Veres/sxc.hu You may not give your houseplants enough credit. What looks like an innocent philodendron gathering dust may actually be a riddle wrapped in a mystery shrouded in potting soil…at least genetically. Turns out plants have some interesting genetic quirks that keep geneticists guessing. 1- Enter the Cell: One unique feature of a plant cell is the chloroplast, the engine of photosynthesis. 2- Tangled Family Trees: “A lot of plants are so long lived that they can do things we don’t typically see in animals,” says plant geneticist Damon Little of the New York Botanical Garden. 3- Two Genomes Are Better Than One: Plants have to withstand stressful conditions without the option of relocating. 4- Sometimes, One Genome Is Better Than Two: Given the stresses plants endure, they have all—at some point in their history—been polyploids. 5- The Fungus among Us: “You don’t often think about this, but all of life as you know it is covered with fungi,” Little says.
Humanizing Animals With the Most Human Eyes - Blog People place incredible importance on their eyes. They’re arguably our default tool for perceiving the world, and one of the primary ways we remember and describe one another. Your eye color is on your birth certificate, driver’s license, and online dating profile. Those who make eye contact are considered more competent, friendlier, and more professional. Online commenters forced to make eye contact with others while writing leave nicer comments. Audiences favor musicians who look at the crowd, and children who don’t make eye contact are flagged as troubled. Eye contact is so important to humans that when we look at our animals we often find the same kind of connection. In Nautilus’ first issue, the primatologist Frans de Waal says that eye contact can turn an ape-curious person into a professional primatologist. But what are these powerful little marbles in our heads, and why do they look the way they do? Answer key:
Dogs, But Not Wolves, Use Humans As Tools | The Thoughtful Animal Sometime between fifteen and thirty thousand years ago, probably in the Middle East, the long, protracted process of domestication began to alter the genetic code of the wolf, eventually leaving us with the animals we know and love as domestic dogs. While there are several different theories as to exactly how dog domestication began, what is clear is that there were some wolves who were less fearful of humans than others. Over time, those wolves were incorporated into early human settlements. Perhaps humans and early dogs learned to hunt cooperatively – both species hunt primarily by outrunning their prey – or perhaps early dogs instead learned that they could avoid hunting by scavenging on the leftovers of human hunting parties. Whatever the initial reason for the incorporation of wolves into human society, there their descendents still remain. By sharing an environment with humans, dogs left behind their ancestral environment and found a place in a new one.