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archive: Apr-Jun 2006
Paleo-news archive: April-June 2006
Ancient web spins evolution story
(Jun 22, 2006)
The oldest-known spider web with prey still entrapped has been found
preserved in a chunk of amber in Spain. The mesh of silk strands snaring
the remains of a fly, beetle, mite and wasp, dates back 110 million
years to the time of the dinosaurs. The fossil web appears to have
been designed along the same lines as the round nets woven by modern
spiders.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
China fossils fill out bird story
(Jun 17, 2006)
Exquisite Chinese fossils support the idea that the ancestors of modern
birds may have lived on water. Five 110-million-year-old specimens
of the grebe-like Gansus yumenensis are described in the journal Science.
The detail in their preservation, such as the bone structure and even
foot webbing, indicates the animals were well adapted to an aquatic
existence.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Early web-spinner found in amber
(Jun 14, 2006)
The spiral orb webs, which to many people typify spiders, were catching
insects in their sticky silk while the dinosaurs still walked the
Earth. True orb weavers found trapped in amber from 121-115 million
years ago are the oldest of their type ever discovered.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Ancient rocks 'built by microbes'
(Jun 14, 2006)
Odd-shaped rocks in the Pilbara region of Western Australia offer
compelling evidence they were built by microbes 3.43 billion years
ago, scientists say. The structures, known as stromatolites, could
only have taken the forms they have if bacteria had been present,
a Sydney-led team tells Nature journal.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Mini-dinosaurs emerge from quarry
(Jun 9, 2006)
A new species of mini-dinosaur has been unearthed in northern Germany.
The creature was of the sauropod type – that group of long-necked,
four-footed herbivores that were the largest of all the dinosaurs.
But at just a few metres in length, this animal was considerably smaller
than its huge cousins, scientists report in the journal Nature.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
New twist in 'hobbit' human story
(Jun 1, 2006)
The hobbit-like human was smart enough to make stone tools despite
its small brain, according to research. Sharpened flints found on
the remote Indonesian island where it lived suggest the human "cousin"
inherited tool-making skills from its ancestors. Some have claimed
its brain was too tiny to perform a complex task seen as a hallmark
of human culture. The study in Nature backs the view that the hobbit
is a new species rather than a modern human with a brain disease.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Mammoth skeleton found in Siberia
(May 23, 2006)
Fishermen in Siberia have discovered the complete skeleton of a mammoth
– a find which Russian experts have described as very rare.
The remains appeared when flood waters receded in Russia's Krasnoyarsk
region. The mammoth's backbone, skull, teeth and tusks all survived
intact. It appears to have died aged about 50.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
New research suggests 'hobbit' was not a
new species
(May 19, 2006)
The debate over whether the "hobbit” fossil found on an Indonesian
island is a separate species has reignited, as a new study of dwarfing
in a range of mammals suggests that Homo floresiensis was a modern
human with a pathological condition. The remains of a tiny woman were
found in a limestone cave in Flores, Indonesia. Named H. floresiensis
by the discoverers, she quickly became known as “the hobbit” by everyone
else.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Did humans and chimps once interbreed?
(May 18, 2006)
It goes to the heart of who we are and where we came from. Our human
ancestors were still interbreeding with their chimp cousins long after
first splitting from the chimpanzee lineage, a genetic study suggests.
Early humans and chimps may even have hybridised completely before
diverging a second time. If so, some of the earliest fossils of proto-humans
might represent an abortive first attempt to diverge from chimps,
rather than being our direct ancestors.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Neanderthal yields nuclear DNA
(May 17, 2006)
The first sequences of nuclear DNA to be taken from a Neanderthal
have been reported at a US science meeting. Geneticist Svante Paabo
and his team say they isolated the long segments of genetic material
from a 45,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil from Croatia. The work should
reveal how closely related the Neanderthal species was to modern humans,
Homo sapiens.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Neanderthals and humans: perhaps they never
met
(May 9, 2006)
The number of years that modern humans are thought to have overlapped
with Neanderthals in Europe is shrinking fast, and some scientists
now say that figure could drop to zero. Neanderthals lived in Europe
and western Asia from 230,000 to 29,000 years ago, petering out soon
after the arrival of modern humans from Africa. There is much debate
on exactly how Neanderthals went extinct.
Read
more. Source: LiveScience |
Geologists dredge up dinosaur from the deep
(Apr 27, 2006)
Jørn Hurum has hit a scientific jackpot twice. First by finding a
dinosaur bone in an oil-drill core sample found off the North Sea,
and then by being able to identify the dinosaur from that one tiny
sample. "It really was a lucky draw," says Hurum, a palaeontologist
at the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum in Norway.
Read
more. Source: Nature |
Oldest snake fossil shows a bit of leg
(Apr 20, 2006)
Scientists have found fossils of a legged snake with “hips” – a specimen
that could be the most primitive snake ever unearthed. The find suggests
early snakes were not creatures of the sea and has reignited the debate
over how snakes evolved. Sebastián Apesteguía at the Argentine Museum
of Natural History and his team found the snake fossil in a terrestrial
deposit in the Río Negro province of north Patagonia, Argentina, in
2003.
Read
more. Source: New Scientist |
Fossils fill gap in human lineage
(Apr 13, 2006)
Fossil hunters have found remains of a probable direct ancestor of
humans that lived more than four million years ago. The specimens
of this ancient creature are helping bridge a long gap during a crucial
phase of human evolution. Professor Tim White of the University of
California, Berkeley, and colleagues unearthed the cache of fossils
in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Arctic fossils mark move to land
(Apr 6, 2006)
Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving
into land animals, scientists say. The finds are giving researchers
a fascinating insight into this key stage in the evolution of life
on Earth. US palaeontologists have published details of the fossil
"missing links" in the prestigious journal Nature. The 383 million-year-old
specimens are described as crocodile-like animals with fins instead
of limbs that probably lived in shallow water.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
Doubt cast on 'ancient asexual'
(Apr 3, 2006)
A shrimp-like creature may have to forfeit its claim to be the longest
abstainer from sex in the animal world. The discovery of three living
male specimens casts doubt on the idea that the Darwinulidae family
has been female and asexual for 200 million years. Darwinulids produce
eggs which do not need to be fertilised by sperm. But a team of scientists,
writing in a Royal Society journal, cannot say yet whether the newly
found males actually perform a sexual function.
Read
more. Source: BBC |
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