rhamphotheca:

Shift to shore: New model shows extinct tetrapod Ichthyostega couldn’t walk

by Kate Trinajstic, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Chem. at Curtin Univ.

Palaeontology has gone high-tech: no more wax and plaster-cast models. Instead, 3D data from computed tomography (CT) scans is overturning long-held views of how the earliest land animals moved.

Research published today (May 23, 2012) in Nature reveals how a famous , the early four-legged vertebrate (tetrapod) called Ichthyostega, moved on land 360m years ago.

One major problem in putting together fossil skeletons is actually getting the fossil out of the rock, but now palaeontologists don’t have to! Instead, the CT scans allow the virtual preparation of the fossil so delicate bones can be fully isolated and then fitted together so the anatomy can be better understood.

It was this process that has allowed scientists (Stephanie E. Pierce and Professor John R. Hutchinson from the UK’s Royal Veterinary College and Professor Jennifer A. Clack from the University of Cambridge) to overturn long held assumptions on how one of the earliest tetrapods moved from the water on to land…

(read more: PhysOrg)       (image: T - Julia Molnar, B - Stephanie Pierce)

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Journal reference: Nature

Source: The Conversation - This story is published courtesy of the The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives).

(Reblogged from dendroica)

Spectacular Tomb Containing More Than 80 Individuals Discovered in Peru

archaeologicalnews:

A team of archaeologists from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) has discovered a spectacular tomb containing more than eighty individuals of different ages. This discovery — provisionally dated to around 1000 years ago — was made at the site of Pachacamac, which is currently under review for UNESCO World Heritage status.

Pachacamac, situated on the Pacific coast about thirty kilometres from Lima, is one of the largest Prehispanic sites in South America. Professor Peter Eeckhout — under the auspices of the ULB — has been carrying out fieldwork at the site for the past 20 years. The 2012 season resulted in some particularly remarkable discoveries.

The Ychsma Project team undertook to record and excavate a series of Inca storage facilities (15th-16th c. AD), as well as a more ancient cemetery which had been detected during exploratory work in 2004. Read more.

(Reblogged from archaeologicalnews)

thedailyfeed:

Turns out the Easter Island heads have bodies, too! Archeologists discovered bodies beneath the 887 stoic faces after 12 years excavating and studying the statues.

“They’re buried up to mid-torso level. So it’s understandable that the general public didn’t have a clue that those statues had bodies,” Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, told Fox News this week.

While experts have known for some time that much of the stone figures has been partially buried due to centuries of exposure to the elements, “this is the first time that one has been excavated in such a way that the documentation was complete and scientific,” said Van Tilburg.

(Reblogged from randomactsofchaos)

We are up-to-date!

scienceon:

Hey, everyone. I just thought I’d let you know that all submissions have now been published!

So far I feel “Science On!” has been a great success! Overall, we have around 150 bloggers who have submitted to scienceon.

As of right now, we have no submissions in the queue, but there are many more science bloggers out there! With that in mind, we’re going to need some help continuing to spread the word about scienceon. Without new submissions, this blog will stay at a stand still.

If you’d like to help spread the word around, you can reblog all types of posts - admin posts or submissions.

This is the main post you can reblog about ”Science On!”

Let’s keep those submissions coming, everyone! Thank you to all who have submitted so far and help reblog posts!

Extra Links:

(Reblogged from scienceon)

The Foreign-Language Effect

Would you make the same decisions in a foreign language as you would in your native tongue? It may be intuitive that people would make the same choices regardless of the language they are using, or that the difficulty of using a foreign language would make decisions less systematic. We discovered, however, that the opposite is true: Using a foreign language reduces decision-making biases. Four experiments show that the framing effect disappears when choices are presented in a foreign tongue. Whereas people were risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses when choices were presented in their native tongue, they were not influenced by this framing manipulation in a foreign language. Two additional experiments show that using a foreign language reduces loss aversion, increasing the acceptance of both hypothetical and real bets with positive expected value. We propose that these effects arise because a foreign language provides greater cognitive and emotional distance than a native tongue does.

(Source: abbyjean)

(Reblogged from abbyjean)

Ancient skulls found in Winter Garden puzzle experts

archaeologicalnews:

At first, it appeared to be a discovery with sinister implications: Two skulls unearthed by a swimming pool contractor in a Winter Garden neighborhood.

Now, the human remains are the focus of an archaeological mystery.

The skulls, about a dozen pottery shards and textiles were discovered in the sand in January— a finding that left a team of anthropologists and archaeologists scrambling to figure out how the items came to rest there.

Experts have learned a lot about the artifacts since they were found, but a key question remains: How did they get there?

“This is definitely a secondary burial site,” said Orange-Osceola Medical Examiner Dr. Jan Garavaglia.

Pieces of shredded English-language newspaper, dated March 16, 1978, were found alongside the artifacts and added to the mystery.

“We know that they were not placed in that location until after that date,” said Dr. John Schultz, a University of Central Florida anthropology professor who assisted Garavaglia with the remains.

Garavaglia and Schultz examined the skulls a day after they were discovered and knew almost immediately they were not dealing with forensic remains, but something much older. Read more.

(Reblogged from archaeologicalnews)

Infrared Imaging Helps Save Yellowstone’s Wolves

fyeahtechnology:

Wired Science: Scientists are using thermal imaging to track Yellowstone’s wolves, which are facing a vicious new predator: sarcoptic mange. http://adf.ly/8NvJ6

(Reblogged from fyeahtechnology)
Mini mammoth once roamed Crete Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed — which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant. Previously, the ancient pint-sized pachyderm was known only from fossilized teeth unearthed in Crete in the early twentieth century. Even though those molars had some features that were characteristic of mammoths, the scientist who described the species at the time placed it on the elephant branch of the tree of life, mistakenly thinking that a mammoth couldn’t have co-existed on the tiny island with another known species of elephant. But reanalysing those teeth and another fossil molar found at the same site last summer revealed a distinctive pattern of ridges and loops in tooth enamel that is seen only in mammoths, says Victoria Herridge, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. (via Nature News & Comment) View high resolution

Mini mammoth once roamed Crete

Studies of fossils discovered last year on the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea reveal that an extinct species once thought to be a diminutive elephant was actually the smallest mammoth known to have existed — which, as an adult, stood no taller than a modern newborn elephant.

Previously, the ancient pint-sized pachyderm was known only from fossilized teeth unearthed in Crete in the early twentieth century. Even though those molars had some features that were characteristic of mammoths, the scientist who described the species at the time placed it on the elephant branch of the tree of life, mistakenly thinking that a mammoth couldn’t have co-existed on the tiny island with another known species of elephant. But reanalysing those teeth and another fossil molar found at the same site last summer revealed a distinctive pattern of ridges and loops in tooth enamel that is seen only in mammoths, says Victoria Herridge, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

(via Nature News & Comment)

mothernaturenetwork: Dinosaurs put eggs in wrong evolutionary basket, scientists sayThe fact that land-bound dinosaurs laid eggs is what sealed their fate of mass extinction while live birthing mammals went on to thrive. View high resolution

mothernaturenetwork:

Dinosaurs put eggs in wrong evolutionary basket, scientists say
The fact that land-bound dinosaurs laid eggs is what sealed their fate of mass extinction while live birthing mammals went on to thrive.

(Reblogged from sarahlee310)

dailyfossil:

Ambulocetus

Reconstructions by Carl Buell 

When: Eocene (~50 to 48 million years ago)

Where: Pakistan 

What: Ambulocetus is fossil whale relative. This beast was about 10 feet (~3 meters) long, and not very agile in either the land or the water. It was capable of movement on land, but it would have been rather slow and lumbering, as its forelimbs were shortened compared to its fully terrestrial ancestors. In the water it would have been capable of swimming with some speed, but it would not have been able to make quick turns as it chased its prey. Therefore, it has been reconstructed as an ambush-style predator, in the same niche as the modern crocodile. It would have laid in wait in the water, with its relatively dorsal eyes and nose peeking above the sufrace, able to see and smell approaching prey. Once a prey animal got close enough, Ambulocetus would launch itself from the water and try to catch the animal in its powerful jaws, such as is shown above. I think it is some form of basal horse that is trying to avoid the snapping jaws of Ambulocetus. This ambush style strategy could have also worked with aquatic prey, such as schools of fish. Ambush predation is seen in some species of whales today, Orcas (the killer whales) have been recorded ambushing seals on ice flows. 

Ambulocetus lived on the edge of the Tethys Sea (a body of water between India and Asia) in what is now Pakistan. At the time this region was one of many islands off the shore of the island continent of India, which had not yet collided with Asia (this would not happen for tens of millions of years). This warm seaway was full of mammals starting to return to the seas, including other lineages of whale relatives. In the cetacean family tree, Ambulocetus falls between Indohyus and modern whales; it was carnivorous - as all modern whales are-, and far more adapted for aquatic locomotion than Indohyus was, with shortened legs and a much more powerful tail. 

(Reblogged from dendroica)