Discovery of 47-Million-Year-Old Primate Fossil Set to Revolutionize Understanding of Human Evolution

Scientists are announcing the discovery of a 47-million-year-old human ancestor. Discovered in the Messel Pit, Germany, the fossil is twenty times older than most fossils that explain human evolution. Known as "Ida," the fossil is a transitional species, showing characteristics of the very primitive nonhuman evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but even more closely those of the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes, and humans).

This places Ida at the very root of anthropoid evolution -- when primates were first developing the features that would evolve into our own. The scientists' findings are published by PLoS One, the open-access journal of the Public Library of Science.

Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, will publish THE LINK, by Colin Tudge, on Wednesday, May 20. The book will reveal the entire story of the discovery, excavation, and preservation, and the revolutionary significance of Ida. THE LINK begins with a foreword by Norwegian fossil scientist Jorn Hurum of the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum, who for the past two years has led an international team of scientists as they secretly conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the extraordinary fossil, studying the data to decode humankind's ancient origins. At 95 percent complete, Ida is set to revolutionize our understanding of human evolution.

Unlike Lucy and other famous primate fossils found in Africa's Cradle of Mankind, Ida is a European fossil, preserved in Germany's Messel Pit, a mile-wide crater whose oil-rich shale is a significant site for fossils of the Eocene Epoch. Fossil analysis reveals that the prehistoric primate was a young female. Opposable big toes and nails rather than claws confirm that the fossil is a primate, and the presence of a talus bone in the foot links Ida directly to humans.

The fossil also features the complete soft body outline as well as the gut contents. A herbivore, Ida feasted on fruits, seeds, and leaves. X-rays reveal both baby and adult teeth, and the lack of a "toothcomb," which is an attribute of lemurs. The scientists estimate Ida's age when she died to be approximately nine months, and she measured approximately two feet in length.

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:



Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

100 Million Years AD

Jan Zalasiewicz, a lecturer in geology at the University of Leicester, has published a new study looking at the lasting impression made by mankind -- 100 million years hence.

He takes the perspective of alien explorers arriving on Earth -- their geologists study the layers of rock, using the many clues to piece together its history over several billion years

A story unfolds of moving and changing continents, rising and falling oceans, ice ages, and evidence of life going back many millions of years. They grow familiar with its phases of change, the rise of great new ecosystems, and occasional catastrophic collapses of life, according to an announcement of the project.

But then they stumble on something quite different in a thin layer of rock: a striking signal of climate changes, extinctions and strange movements of wildlife across the planet. Following this trail, decoding clues in the rocks takes them to the petrified remains of cities, and finally to the fossilized bones of those, long dead, who built them.

Zalasiewicz says: "From the perspective of 100 million years in the future–a geologist's view–the reign of humans on Earth would seem very short: we would almost certainly have died out long before then. What footprint will we leave in the rocks? What would have become of our great cities, our roads and tunnels, our cars, our plastic cups in the far distant future? What fossils would we leave behind?

"My study shows how scientists put together clues from the rocks to understand the past, its landscapes and climate, and the nature of the creatures that inhabited it," he adds. "A thin layer of silt here, a trace formed by a crawling worm there–the clues are often subtle and difficult to read. But by such clues would future geologists–whether hyper-evolved rat or alien visitor–work out our story. My study explores which of our structures are likely to leave traces, and what future explorers might make of us and the impact we made on our environment.

"Looking to the distant future gives us a warning for the present: our activities have already left a significant footprint on the planet, and not a flattering one. It is not too late to limit it. We would not wish to be dubbed by future explorers the 'amazingly clever and utterly foolish two-legged ape'."

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:



Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

The Biggest Bug Known

The gigantic fossil claw of an 390 million-year-old sea scorpion, recently found in Germany, shows that ancient arthropods — spiders, insects, crabs and the like — were surprisingly larger than their modern-day counterparts.

“Imagine an eight-foot-long scorpion,” says O. Erik Tetlie, postdoctoral associate in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale, and an author of the report online in Royal Society Biology Letters. “The claw itself is a foot-and-a-half long — indicating that these ancient arthropods were much larger than previous estimates — and certainly the largest seen to date.”

Colleague and co-author Markus Poschmann discovered the fossil claw from this ancient sea scorpion, Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, in a quarry near Prüm in Germany. This creature, which lived between 460 and 255 million years ago is of a group that have been known for some time to be among the largest extinct arthropods, based on both body fossils and trace fossils.

According to the authors, it is believed that these extinct aquatic creatures are the ancestors of modern scorpions and spiders.

Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.