Excavators have unearthed the largest known cache of fossils from the last ice age. In it, a Colombian mammoth, which researchers have named Zed, has become the first nearly intact mammoth to be found near the La Brea tar pits, where an estimated 34 mammoths have been found previously, but only in bits and pieces.
Zed was found in good company: among other finds were the skeletons of a complete saber-toothed cat, a giant ground sloth, and a North American lion, as well as smaller fossils including pieces of tree trunks, turtles, snails, and gophers. Even these smaller findings are exciting for paleontologists, because the first excavators at La Brea in the 1900s discarded such items as they searched for larger ones; crucial information was lost in the process. The new discovery, which was found at a site beneath the demolished May department store in Los Angeles, “gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago” in the Los Angeles Basin, said John Harris, chief curator at the [nearby George C. Page Museum]. The find will make the museum “the major library of life in the Pleistocene ice age” [Los Angeles Times]. (more…)
Anthropologists have conducted a new analysis of skulls from the so-called “hobbit” fossils found in an Indonesian cave in 2003, and say their results add more evidence that the fossils come from a hitherto unknown race of tiny people. The researchers compared the hobbit skulls to those of modern humans and apes, as well as the fossil brain cases of early human ancestors. “The shape of the skull is consistent with what we would expect for a small archaic Homo,” said Karen Baab [National Geographic News], lead author of the new study.
When paleontologists unearthed a cluster of strange, hominid skeletons on the island of Flores, they had little idea that they were about to start a fierce debate that would divide the field of anthropology. But soon the researchers declared that the 18,000-year-old fossils came from people who were only three feet tall, and who were actually a different species of hominid, which researchers called Homo floresiensis. “These hobbits – hominids – appear to have survived when modern humans were all over the Earth at this time,” Baab said [The Guardian]. Since then, debate has raged over whether the hobbits were indeed an unknown species, or whether the individuals found in the cave were just modern humans with a disease that stunted their growth and gave them small brains, a condition called microcephaly.
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When the first bands of early humans made their intrepid journey into the Americas, they found plenty of room to spread out, according to a new study. Researchers who conducted a genetic analysis of Native Americans say that they can trace their ancestry back to two groups of migrants who arrived in America around the same time, between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago, but took distinctly different routes. The researchers argue that one group moved down the Pacific coastline all the way to the tip of South America, and the other group crossed into North America through an open land corridor between ice sheets and settled near the Great Lakes.
Along the Pacific coastal route, travelers in skin boats are presumed to have hunted marine mammals and found shelter in shoreline refuges beyond the reach of the retreating glaciers…. Movements along the inland route – where big-game hunters originally from Siberia are believed to have migrated through a gap in the glaciers in present-day Northwest Territories and Alberta – led to the earliest mid-continental settlements in the New World, scientists believe [Canwest News Service].
Paleoanthropologists generally accept that the original colonizers of North and South America came from eastern Asia and migrated to the Americas after spending some time–perhaps several thousand years–in a region called Beringia, which included parts of Siberia and Alaska and the land bridge that once connected them [ScienceNOW Daily News]. But the question of where they went next has been a subject of considerable controversy, with some researchers arguing that harsh climate conditions didn’t allow humans to settle in North America until long after the crossing of the land bridge. While the new study isn’t likely to settle the argument, it supports the theory that humans quickly spread out over both continents.
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Minuscule diamond fragments found in a sediment layer dating from thousands of years ago are bolstering the theory that a catastrophic comet impact wiped out many forms of life in North America, including what are thought to have been the first human settlers of the continent, the so-called Clovis people. The nano-diamonds are buried at a level that corresponds to the beginning 12,900 years ago of the Younger Dryas, a 1,300-year-long cold spell during which North American mammoths, saber-toothed cats, camels and giant sloths became extinct. The Clovis culture of American Indians also appears to have fallen apart during this time [Reuters].
The new study adds evidence to the controversial theory, but some skeptics are not convinced. “The whole thing still does not make sense, and there are lots of contradictions,” said Christian Koeberl, a professor of geological sciences…. His chief reservation is that there is no crater. “A body of this size does not just blow up without a trace in the atmosphere,” Dr. Koeberl said. “Physics won’t have it” [The New York Times]. In reply, supporters of the theory say that some of the comet fragments may have exploded in midair, while others may have hit an ice sheet that was several miles thick, lessening the possibility of a crater forming.
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In a muddy pit near the town of York in northern England, archaeologists have found a skull holding what they believe is the preserved remains of an “Iron Age brain.” Here’s how the noggin was first noticed: York Archaeological Trust dig team member Rachel Cubitt reached in [to the ditch] and, while she cleaned the soil-covered skull’s outer surface, “she felt something move inside the cranium. Peering through the base of the skull, she spotted an unusual yellow substance” [LiveScience]. Scans later showed that the yellow mass was in the shape of a shrunken brain, according to a press release from the University of York.
The skull was discovered in an area of extensive prehistoric farming landscape of fields, trackways and buildings dating back to at least 300 BC. The archaeologists believe the skull, which was found on its own in a muddy pit, may have been a ritual offering [BBC News]. Researchers declared it the oldest brain ever found in Britain, although it can’t touch the record for the oldest brain ever discovered: That honor belongs to the roughly 8,000-year-old scraps of brain tissue that were found in skeletons buried in a Florida peat bog. In the Florida case, the absence of bacteria in the acidic peat bogs allowed the organic tissue to be preserved; researchers still aren’t sure how the York brain was preserved or whether the yellow substance has any organic matter in it.
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A cooling climate, not human hunters, were at fault for the extinction of the prehistoric cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), according to a new study. Researchers examining cave bear remains now say the giant vegetarians died from starvation and much earlier than previously thought. “The disappearance of the cave bear around 27,500 years ago was probably due to the significant decline in quantity and quality of plant food, which in turn was the result of marked climatic cooling,” [Telegraph] said researcher Anthony J. Stuart.
Previous radiocarbon dating of cave bear remains incorrectly placed their apocalypse at 14,000 years ago because some of the remains were actually those of brown bears, still alive today, that were mistakenly identified. The new study excludes previous errors and includes new data taken from remains found in ancient hibernation sites in the Alps. The new extinction date, 27,800 years ago, coincides with a period of significant climate change, known as the Last Glacial Maximum [or Ice Age], when a marked cooling in temperature resulted in a reduction or total loss of the vegetation that the cave bears ate (today’s brown bears are omnivores) [LiveScience.com].
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About 4,600 years ago in Germany’s fertile farm country a group of stone age people met a violent end, but the arrangement of their skeletons in four graves tells a story of love and family bonds. One particularly well-preserved grave holds what researchers say is the first known nuclear family, with an adult male and female cradling the bodies of their two sons. A DNA analysis of the skeletons’ bones and teeth confirmed their blood ties: “The two kids have her mitochondrial DNA, and his Y chromosome – that’s a nuclear family,” says molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp [New Scientist].
The group of 13 individuals includes adults aged 25 to 60 and children under the age of 9, and researchers believe that they were massacred. Says study coauthor Alistair Pike: “They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken.” At least five of the individuals show the effects of a violent attack, one even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra [BBC News].
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The fossilized pelvis of a Homo erectus woman who lived 1.2 million years ago on the banks of an Ethiopian river has been discovered, and while researchers say it casts new light on human evolution, some of their conclusions are challenging previous theories about these early human ancestors. The pelvis reveals a short, squat woman who wasn’t built for long-distance running, but also a woman with a wide birth canal to accommodate big-brained infants.
Study coauthor Scott Simpson says the pelvis’s wide birth canal indicates that hominds’ increasing brain size was a driving factor in human evolution. Getting through the birth canal is “the most gymnastic thing we ever do,” he says. To accommodate big-brained babies, humans must have developed larger and wider birth canals over time, but with few pelvic fossils, researchers had little idea when these changes began. The Busidima pelvis shows that a wide birth canal was already in place 1.2 million years ago [New Scientist].
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In a dusty cave in Israel, archaeologists have unearthed a 12,000-year-old grave that they say may be the resting spot of one of the earliest known shamans. The grave contains the artfully arranged bones of a roughly 45-year-old woman as well as a collection of animal and human body parts, including a complete human foot, 50 tortoise shells, and bones from a wild boar, an eagle, and a leopard.
“What was unusual here was there were so many different parts of different animals that were unusual, that were clearly put there on purpose,” said researcher Natalie Munro…. This care along with the animal parts point to the grave belonging to both an important member of the society and possibly a healer called a shaman…. Such healers mediate between the human and spirit worlds, often summoning the help of animal spirits along their quests, according to the researchers [LiveScience].
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Researchers have long debated whether human migration out of Africa was spurred by climate changes that forced the early humans to move along or by technological innovation that let them take advantage of new possibilities; now a new analysis of stone tools from southern Africa is lending support to the latter camp. Researchers determined that two types of tools were developed during the crucial age from 60,000 to 80,000 years ago when modern humans began to move towards new regions of the globe.
Researchers examined tools from nine sites in South Africa, Namibia, and Lesotho. The sophisticated Still Bay tools were made from hard, fine-grained rock called silcrete, and were fashioned between 71,000 and 71,900 years ago. The Howieson’s Poort implements were made between 59,500 and 64,800 years ago, and were composed of chipped silcrete rock attached to wood shafts to form weapons. Comparing these dates with palaeoenvironmental records failed to turn up a close correlation between the industries and dramatic climatic changes, [lead researcher Zenobia] Jacobs says. “We see no consistent pattern between the timing of these industries and major climatic changes” [Nature News].
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The first migration of Homo sapiens, when they left the East African landscapes where they evolved and began a long trek across the Sahara, may have followed a different route than previously believed. A new study shows that prehistoric river channels fed by monsoons once traced a path north through the desert and argues that the modern humans may have followed those channels, going from oasis to oasis until they reached the sea.
The Sahara has had several periods of increased rainfall that made it a wetter and greener place, including one interlude between 130,000 to 170,000 years ago when the researchers believe these river channels flowed with water. Now only visible with satellite radar, the channels flowed intermittently from present-day Libya and Chad to the Mediterranean Sea, says [lead researcher] Anne Osborne…. Up to five kilometres wide, the channels would have provided a lush route from East Africa – where modern humans first evolved – to the Middle East, a likely second stop on Homo sapiens‘ world tour [New Scientist].
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Neanderthals living in coastal caves in Gibraltar hunted and feasted on seafood, researchers say, adding another piece of evidence to the argument that Neanderthals weren’t outmatched and driven to extinction by more skilled and sophisticated Homo sapiens. “I don’t think that the success of one or the other had to do with subsistence, with the way they hunted or fed,” [researcher Clive] Finlayson said. “There may be other factors coming into this, or it may just have been a question of luck” [National Geographic News].
The discovery of seal, dolphin and fish remains in the caves dating from 60,000 to 30,000 years ago provides the first evidence that Neanderthals ate sea mammals as well as land grub. Archaeologists found the mammals’ remains among Neanderthal hearth sites in Vanguard and Gorham’s Caves on the Rock of Gibraltar. The bones of some of the animals have cut marks that were likely made by Neanderthals using flint knives, also found on site, to cut the meat off [LiveScience].
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A new analysis of the skulls of three Neanderthal babies shows that the cranium of a newborn Neanderthal was about the same size as that of a newborn Homo sapiens, and that the Neanderthal children grew faster than modern humans in the first few years of life. The report on the young skeletons, which date from between 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, adds fuel to the debate over how similar Neanderthal culture was to that of our early Homo sapiens ancestors.
A big-headed infant skeleton found in Russia suggests that childbirth was no easy task for for Neanderthal women. Neanderthal mothers had slightly larger birth canals, but the prominent face of Neanderthal babies made it just as hard to push out as a modern human. This suggests that both groups had the social structures needed to help with childbirth [New Scientist].
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Archaeologists have recreated the stone tools made by Neanderthals, and found them to be as useful and efficient as those made by the earliest Homo sapiens, who survived while the Neanderthal line died off. The new research is one of many recent studies claiming that Neanderthals weren’t just dumb brutes that were out-competed by early humans. Says lead researcher Metin Eren: “When we think of Neanderthals we need to stop thinking in terms of ‘stupid’ or ‘less advanced’ and more in terms of ‘different’” [Guardian].
Other recent studies have argued that Neanderthals hunted and communicated as well as the early Homo sapiens who arrived in Europe, where the Neanderthals already lived, about 45,000 years ago. But some archaeologists still believed that Homo sapiens had a technological advantage, because they used long stone tools called blades, as opposed to the Neanderthals’ disk-shaped flakes. In the new study, Eren’s team spent spent three years recreating blades and flakes, then measured their cutting power, durability and the amount of effort needed to produce them [Wired News]. In the end, Eren determined that the Neanderthals’ tools may have even had a slight edge over Homo sapiens tools.
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In an arid and lifeless stretch of the Sahara, archaeologists have discovered a massive graveyard and remnants of early settlements that hark back to Stone Age days when the desert was wet, green, and habitable. Researchers say the find is a striking reminder that climates and environments can shift drastically over the geologically short time period of 10,000 years.
In an area of Sahara that’s known to nomads as the “desert within a desert,” researchers found evidence of thriving prehistoric cultures and rich ecosystems on the edge of a lake. There were also hundreds of animal bones. In addition to antelope and giraffe, [lead researcher Paul] Sereno quickly recognized the remains of water-adapted creatures like crocodiles and hippos, then turtles, fish, and clams. “Everywhere you turned, there were bones belonging to animals that don’t live in the desert,” said Sereno. “I realized we were in the Green Sahara” [National Geographic].
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