Paleontology news

Adventurers who conquered Mount Everest successfully launched a replica of an ancient Philippine boat Saturday that they will use to sail around Southeast Asia and possibly to Africa to promote Filipino pride and unity.

The replica of the balangay — a wooden-hulled boat used in the archipelago about 1,700 years ago — was built in 44 days by native Badjao boat-builders from the southernmost Philippine province of Tawi Tawi using traditional skills handed down through the generations.

About 300 spectators counted down to the launch, cheering and applauding as the bow hit the water in Manila Bay.

Jubail Muyong, a teacher who belongs to the Badjao seafaring tribe, said he and nine Badjao craftsmen were flown to Manila to construct the 50-foot (15-meter) boat according to ancient traditions. Not a single nail was used, he said.

Expedition leader Art Valdez said the boat was a symbol of what Filipinos can achieve.

"(Since) more than a thousand years ago, this is the first time that a boat of this kind appeared in these waters, built by our people," Valdez said. "The boat is a time capsule that carries the history of our people."

Valdez said the 20-member expedition includes five coast guard personnel who were the first Filipinos to reach Everest's summit.

The boat will leave Manila in mid-July after training at Sangley Point, a former U.S. naval base in Cavite province, he said.

The expedition is expected to make 75 port calls from the northern to southern Philippines in seven and a half months, covering a distance of more than 2,000 nautical miles (3,900 kilometers), he said.

The boat will then begin a yearlong voyage to other Southeast Asian countries before the group decides whether to continue to Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa, Valdez said.

Dr. Ted Esguerra, the group's medical officer, said the expedition will conduct medical missions in poor coastal communities during its stops. The group will also teach disaster preparedness, help protect endangered coral reefs, and plant mangrove trees to protect fragile marine life.

Valdez said coast guard and navy vessels will monitor their trip and come to their assistance if needed.

credited to msnbc.msn.com

Archaeologists have found a group of water wells in western Cyprus believed to be among the oldest in the world.

The skeleton of a young woman was among items found at the bottom of one shaft.

Radiocarbon dating indicates the wells are 9,000 to 10,500 years old, putting them in the Stone Age, the Cypriot Antiquities Department says.

A team from Edinburgh University has found six such wells, near the coastal town of Paphos. They are said to show the sophistication of early settlers.

According to Thomas Davis, director of the Nicosia-based Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, "the fact that they were using wells and that they tapped into the island's water table shows heightened appreciation for the environment".

The latest five-metre (16-foot) shaft to be discovered had small natural channels in the bedrock at the bottom, confirming it was a water well.

In addition to a poorly preserved young woman's skeleton the silted-up well contained animal bone fragments, worked flints and some stone jewellery.

The wells were unearthed by an excavator at a construction site.

They date from the time that permanent settlements first appeared in Cyprus, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Good old-fashioned detective work has turned up the first conclusive explanation for the origin of a massive bonebed in southern California, according to a new study led by a UBC paleontologist. The Sharktooth Hill bonebed is exposed over approximately 100 sq. kilometres of land, located at the southern end of the Central Valley of California. It is one of the largest concentrations of marine vertebrate fossils in the world, containing an average of 200 fossils per square-metre, including the skeletal remains of whales, seals, sea turtles, sharks and land mammals.

What caused the collection of millions of fossils in a layer of only 10 to 50 centimetres of sediment has puzzled scientists since the bonebed's discovery in the 1850s.

"Scientists have proposed two kinds of explanations based on the accumulation of fossils," says Nick Pyenson, a post-doctoral fellow in the UBC Dept. of Zoology. "One group of ideas suggests a catastrophic incident such as a volcano eruption, a toxic algal bloom or even 12 metre-long relatives of the great white shark. Another kind of explanation is that the bonebed simply formed over a long period of time."

Conducting the paleontological equivalent of crime scene investigations on the bonebed, its fossil specimens and the surrounding geological data, Pyenson and his colleagues Randall Irmis and Jere Lipps (Pyenson and Irmis were graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley at the time) were able to disprove the one-time catastrophe theory.

"Our evidence suggests that the bonebed formed over a 700,000 year time-span approximately 15 million years ago," says Pyenson. Details of the investigation are published in the June issue of the journal Geology.

The team, which included paleontologists from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, examined the size, wear and abrasion of more than 3,000 specimens of bones and teeth at local museums and found only five indicating shark bites. A lack of volcanic sediments and presence of land mammal remains further support the deposit-over-time theory.

"The bonebed formed during the Middle Miocene, which coincides with a prolonged period of exceptionally warm global temperatures," says Pyenson. "The associated changes in sea levels played an important role in forming the Sharktooth Hill bonebed, which explain its marvelous richness and expanse.

"More importantly, we now have a better handle on the kinds of factors - both geologic and biologic - that bias our interpretation of this snapshot of the ocean life from the Middle Miocene," says Pyenson.

credited to esciencenews.com

Indonesian scientists are reconstructing the largest, most complete skeleton of a prehistoric giant elephant ever found in the tropics, a finding that may offer new clues into the largely mysterious origins of its modern Asian cousin.

The prehistoric elephant is believed to have been submerged in quicksand shortly after dying on a riverbed in Java around 200,000 years ago. Its bones — almost perfectly preserved — were discovered by chance in March when an old sand quarry collapsed during monsoon rains.

The animal stood four meters (13-feet) tall, five meters (16-feet) long and weighed more than 10 tons — closer in size to the woolly mammoth of the same period than to the great Asian mammals now on Earth.

Animal fossils are rare in the humid, hot climate of the equator because decomposition occurs extremely quickly.

Following a monthlong excavation, a team of seven paleontologists from the Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java, set the bones in plaster for the trip back to their office where they will be laboriously pieced back together.

"We believe from the shape of its teeth that it was a very primitive elephant," but little else has been verified, said paleontologist Fachroel Aziz, who is heading a 12-strong skeletal reconstruction team.

Scientists agree it is the first time an entire prehistoric elephant skeleton has been unearthed since vertebrate fossil findings began to be recorded in Indonesia in 1863.

"It is very uncommon to discover a fossil like this in a tropical region like Indonesia," said Edi Sunardi, an independent expert at Indonesia's Pajajaran University in Bandung, West Java. "It apparently was covered by volcanic sediment that protected it from high temperatures, erosion and decay."

The next challenge will be removing the delicate bones from their molds and joining them into a stable, upright structure, a process that experts said is already being hampered by a lack of funding, inadequate tools and poor expertise.

Indonesia, an emerging and impoverished democracy of 235 million people, cannot afford to allocate more than a token sum to its aging museums, even for projects that have the potential to advance knowledge about the origin of key native species.

Gert van den Berg, a researcher at Australia's Wollongong University who helped dig up the skeleton, said tests are under way to determine its precise age and species, and that they will help provide details "about when the modern elephants evolved into what they are now."

About 2,000 old elephant remains have been found across the island nation over the past 150 years, but never in such good condition, Aziz said.

"We want to exhibit it publicly because this is a spectacular discovery," he said.

credited to newsvine.com

DNA analysis shows that Indonesian zebu cattle have a unique origin with banteng (Bos javanicus) as part of their ancestry. Throughout the world, cattle inhabit a range of climatically diverse environments: common taurine cattle, for example, are kept in temperate zones, zebus in hot, dry climates and yaks at the high altitudes of Tibet. A report published by the online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE shows that another bovine species, the banteng, also made a genetic contribution to the ancestry of Indonesian cattle.

The study, conducted by an international team of researchers, was led by Bambang Purwantara from the Bogor Agricultural University, Hans Lenstra and Ben Colenbrander from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, and Göran Andersson from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala.

Cattle from Bali were already known to be a domestic form of the banteng, a species which can remain very fertile in the tropical conditions it inhabits. On the sporadic occasions when a banteng mates with a zebu, the offspring are usually reproductively viable.

In the PLoS ONE study, DNA analysis now shows that many of the famous 'racing bulls' from Madura descended from banteng cows, while the ancient Galekan cattle on East Java originally emerged from crosses between zebu bulls and banteng cows. The DNA of zebus on Sumatra also carries clear traces of banteng DNA. Banteng cows have therefore played an important role in the genetic ancestry of many Indonesian cattle. This shows the ingenuity of local breeders, who have made the best use of the available genetic resources and accomplished an adaptation of the Indian zebu to Indonesian conditions.

The history and breeding of Indonesian cattle has resulted in a unique genetic resource that combines the general tolerance of zebu to tropical and dry climates with the adaptation of domestic banteng to Indonesian conditions and husbandry. The researchers report that the information in their study about the history and species composition could be of great use when making strategic choices regarding breed management and conservation. They also suggest that the adaptation of Indonesian cattle to different modes of management under tropical conditions may very well be exploited outside Indonesia, especially if the world's high temperature zones expand, as expected from current global climate trends.

credited to esciencenews.com

The fossil hand of a long-necked, ostrich-like dinosaur recently found in China may help solve the mystery of how bird wings evolved from dinosaur limbs, according to a new study.

The ancient digits belonged to a 159-million-year-old theropod dinosaur dubbed Limusaurus inextricabilis. Theropods are two-legged dinos thought to have given rise to modern birds.

Although it was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the newfound dinosaur was a small herbivore, said study co-author James Clark, a biologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The animal was about 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) long and had relatively short, clawless forearms.

"Its head is [also] unusual because it doesn't have any teeth, so it would have had a beak of some sort, although not a sharp one," Clark said.

Primitive feathers may have covered the dinosaur's body, but there is no direct evidence for that, noted Clark, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society.

The 60,000-year-old Neanderthal is the first confirmed specimen to be found undersea anywhere in the world, the BBC reported Monday. The fossil was found by Luc Anthonis, a private collector from Belgium, among animal remains and stone artifacts recovered several miles off the coast of the Netherlands in 2001.

A chemical analysis revealed the humanoid probably was carnivorous, linking it to other Neanderthal specimens found, the British network said.

"Even with this rather limited fragment of skull, it is possible to securely identify this as Neanderthal," said Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Researchers note that sea levels are much higher now than they were during much of the past 500,000 years, meaning large swathes of the North Sea seabed were once dry land inhabited by many species of mammals.

credited to upi.com

Researchers have confirmed that the sculptures on the triangular gables of the Parthenon temple in Athens were originally brightly painted.

Conservation scientists at the British Museum in London used a non-invasive technique to reveal invisible traces of an ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue. The team says that this is the first definitive evidence that the two-metre-high sculptures were not pristine white, as they appear today, but were precisely painted — as most sculptures from antiquity once were.

The pigment, which was widely used until 800 AD, was identified on sculptures that formed parts of the decorated east and west ends of the Parthenon temple. Together with other parts of the temple, such as the frieze from within the building, they are sometimes collectively referred to as the Elgin marbles — removed by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799–1803, and then transferred to the British Museum in 1816.

The scientists announced their findings just as the long-running feud over the ownership of the marbles has once again boiled over. The Acropolis Museum in Athens is due to be inaugurated on 20 June and was, in part, designed to house the marbles. Top delegates from the United Kingdom — including the Queen, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum — have declined to attend the opening.

The British Museum has also reiterated its standpoint on Greece's request to repatriate the marbles, saying that it will not return any of them except on a short-term loan — and then only if Greece acknowledges the British Museum's rightful ownership.

Antique paint

It has been known for more than two centuries that the Ancient Greeks and Romans painted their statues. That paint has almost completely disappeared over time, although tiny flecks can be found on most statues on close inspection. Unusually, no trace of paint has ever been found on the Parthenon sculptures, despite thorough analysis — including a full investigation by the renowned British physicist Michael Faraday in the 1830s.

Giovanni Verri, a physicist in the museum's department of conservation and scientific research, developed a technique to exploit the fact that Egyptian blue emits near-infrared radiation when excited by visible light. His portable detector comprises a light-emitting diode that beams red light onto the surface being examined, and a camera that can detect the infrared light emitted by the pigment particles.

The distribution of the pigment is also a key issue in proving that the sculptures were painted, says Verri. For example, the pigment found on the winged messenger goddess Iris traces just the belt restraining her billowing tunic (see picture, above), and nowhere else on the figure.

Greek conservators have recently observed greenish flecks on remnants of the Parthenon frieze that are in Athens, but have not reported analyses of them. "We informed our Greek colleagues of what we found," says Verri, "and they responded warmly, saying they are interested to examine these flecks themselves."

"I always believed the frieze must have been painted," adds Ian Jenkins, senior curator in the British Museum's Department of Greece and Rome. "This new method leaves no room for doubt."

Verri thinks these frieze flecks could also be Egyptian blue, and is keen to examine them with his portable detector. But he adds that as diplomatic tensions have flared up again, now might be an insensitive time to offer.

credited to nature.com

The Americas' oldest known artist may have been an Ice Age hunter in what is now Florida, according to an anthropologist who has examined a 13,000-year-old bone etching.

The carved bone, which depicts a walking mammoth (detail of the bone at top), was found near Vero Beach in east-central Florida.

The now exclusive area once hosted giant beasts and nomadic bands of Ice Age hunters, said Barbara Purdy, a professor emerita at the University of Florida.

"I literally went on the assumption that [the carving] was a fake," said Purdy, who was later convinced of its authenticity after the bone had passed a barrage of tests by University of Florida forensic scientists.

The examinations revealed that the light etching is not recent, and that it was made a short time after the animal died, according to Purdy.

Scientists also determined the 15-inch-long (38-centimeter-long) bone fragment (pictured in full at bottom) belonged to one of three animals: a mammoth, a mastodon, or a giant sloth—all of which died out at the end of the last ice age, between about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Discoverer and local fossil hunter James Kennedy only recently noticed the image after dusting off the bone, which had sat under his sink for a few years.

"I had no idea it was this big of a fuss. [When I heard] there was nothing else like it in the Western Hemisphere, that's when my heart kind of stopped."

Purdy, the anthropologist, said, "This is the first glimpse of real art in the Western Hemisphere, and I think that's our starting point for something that might be found in the future if we start looking closely at these old bones."

John Gifford, an underwater archaeologist at the University of Miami, has studied Ice Age peoples in Florida.

Gifford has not examined the newfound artifact, "so the only comment I can make is that I am very, very skeptical and look forward to reading the first article about this discovery in a journal [that has been reviewed by several scientists]," he said by email.

But it is "certainly possible" that such an artwork could be found, added Gifford, who has received funding from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

Rushing to salvage fossils from the Panama Canal earthworks, Aldo Rincon, paleontology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, unearthed a set of fossil teeth. Bruce J. MacFadden, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida in Gainesville, describes the fossil as Anchitherium clarencei, a three-toed browsing horse, in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of Paleontology. By far the most complete fossil of a horse collected at the site in excavations spanning the last century, characteristics such as the shape of the teeth confirm the identity of two earlier finds and indicate that this horse was primarily a forest-dwelling browser living in the area between 15 and 18 million years ago. This evidence supports MacFadden's earlier proposal that the habitat was probably a mosaic of relatively dense forest and open woodlands. The presence of this browsing horse in Panama significantly extends the southern tip of its range from previous finds from roughly the same period in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Expanding the Panama Canal waterway to make way for supersized ships is a dream come true for geologists and paleontologists, according to Carlos Jaramillo, senior scientist at the institute, who, in collaboration with the University of Florida and the Panama Canal Authority, has organized a team of researchers and students who move in following dynamite blasts to map and collect exposed fossils.

"This is one of very few places in the tropics where we have access to fresh outcrops before they are washed away by torrential rains or overgrown by vegetation, and we expect the fossils that we have been salvaging to resolve some major scientific mysteries," said Jaramillo. "What geological forces combined to create the Panama land bridge? Was the flora and fauna in Panama before the land bridge closed similar to that in North America, or did it include other elements?"

credited to esciencenews.com

Scientists from the University of California-Berkeley said the Sharktooth Hill site could be seen as the richest fossil site in the entire world -- a layer of fossils offers clues to animal species dating back to 15 million years ago, The San Francisco Chronicle said Saturday.

Scientists said the area was once home to ancient animal species that during a period of up to 700,000 years would die by the millions.

Evolutionary biologist Jere Lipps, UC Museum of Paleontology curator and co-author of a report on the Sharktooth Hill site, said the wealth of fossils at the now-inland California location makes it invaluable to the science world.

"It's as important to science and the public as the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Colorado, and the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles," he told the Chronicle.

credited to upi.com

Researchers at an archeological site in northern Peru have made an unusually large discovery of nearly three dozen people sacrificed some 600 years ago by the Incan civilization.

The bodies, some of which show signs of having been cut along their necks and collarbones, were otherwise found in good condition, said Carlos Webster, who is leading excavations at the Chotuna-Chornancap camp.

The sprawling 235-acre (95-hectare) archeological site is 12 miles outside the coastal city of Chiclayo, near the ancient tomb of Sipan, which was one of the great finds of the last century. The sacrifices were made just decades before Spanish explorers arrived in what is now Peru.

Although archeologists regularly find evidence of human sacrifice from Incan and pre-Incan cultures, it is rare to find the remains of 33 people in one place, researchers said.

Scientists say human sacrifice was common within the Incan culture, which flourished immediately before the arrival of the Spanish in what is now parts of Peru, Chile and Ecuador between 1400 and the mid-1500s.

"Most of the remains belong to young women, around 15 years of age. One of them appears to have been pregnant because in her abdomen, the collarbone of a fetus, probably around 4 months, was found," Webster said of the latest find, made over the past year and a half.

"The majority (of the bodies) are in good condition -- skin tissues and hair have been preserved. They were found in a dry area more than 7 feet underground," he said.

Incan civilization is best known for its capital city, Machu Picchu, the ruins of which are Peru's top tourist destination and considered one of the new seven wonders of the world.

credited to reuters.com