Fossil Finds

[rogue06]

<SNIP>
More seriously, T. rex was most definitely not the grand-daddy of chickens, as some headlines report. It is the great-greatⁿ-uncle; or better, a cousin. T. rex lived very late in the dinosaur age, when birds were already established.

New Scientist, which is not the most rigourous of science magazines, originally reported this under the headline: T. rex confirmed as great granddaddy of all birds. Thanks to howls of outrage from scientists and even reasonably well informed amateurs, this was quickly fixed, to read "T. rex kinship with chickens confirmed". The article is here. Note the contrast between the url, and the headline as it now appears in text!
</SNIP>

Apparently not everyone got the memo.

From the Guardian: Our feathered friends are descended from T. rex

From the Sun: Dinosaur king became chicken They’ve since changed their title to “Tyrannosaurus pecks” but still left the subtitle of “BE careful who you call chicken – because the bird is actually descended from the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, say scientists.”

[Steviepinhead]

Good points, Sylas, and well laid out!

I suspect that recovering any "useable" collagen from 68 MYA is going to be a really exceptional case of preservation, but exceptional cases do occasionally crop up--as most of us recognize--and the ingenuity of the current crop of paleontologists is exceptional in itself.

Seeing these occasional cases of the genetic evidence and the paleontological evidence not just supporting/informing each other, but essentially merging into one another, is pretty cool...

[rogue06]

Two new studies of Neanderthal (or Neandertal) teeth have given us a better look at these prehistoric hominid’s diet.

The first concerns research published in the Journal of Human Evolution by Richards et al. The team removed some fine powder from an upper right premolar from a Neanderthal whose remains are from 44-to-55,000 years old (late Mousterian)and unearthed from a now-collapsed rock shelter known as Jonzac in southwestern France, in order to conduct an isotopic dietary analysis. They focused on forms of the common chemical elements carbon and nitrogen of the extracted collagen, which are good indicators of an individual’s diet during the tooth development of later childhood. The work was conducted at the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany with the purpose of determining whether the isotopic evidence demonstrates that the primary source of protein was from animals as has been indicated by previous studies. For comparison the researchers also analyzed collagen from the bones of animal remains that had been discovered at Jonzac, including Steppe bison, aurochs, horses, reindeer and hyenas. They found that the Neanderthal’s isotopic values which show that its main source of protein was large herbivores, primarily the cattle and horses. It seems that the hyena consumed primarily the reindeer, which demonstrates distinct niches between the Neanderthal and hyena. This study confirms all earlier research done thus far on the Neanderthals found in Europe which shows they were highly carnivorous and fed primarily on large mammals. It also indicates this juvenile’s diet is similar to that of adult Neanderthals found elsewhere, which may indicate that even fairly young members of a Neanderthal group received a fairly high quality heavily carnivorous diet.

As Teresa Steele, third author of the report and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California at Davis, notes “We assume that Neanderthals were eating some plant foods, but given the present evidence, these plant foods were not significant sources of protein.” But while the results of this isotopic dietary analysis was especially informative, still it can provide data only relevant to one part of their diet. New evidence presented by a team led by Amanda Henry a graduate student in hominid paleobiology at The George Washington University at the very recent Paleoanthropology Society meetings in Vancouver, Canada, is the first evidence that at least some Neanderthals seem to have made extensive use of plant resources whenever they had access to them as well.

The evidence of plant consumption comes in the form of microfossils of plant material that investigators found in the dental plaque of three teeth from an approximately 40 year old Neanderthal dated from 35,000 years ago and discovered half a century ago at the Shanidar cave, in the Zāgros Mountains of northeastern Iraq. “The formation of dental [plaque] traps the plant microfossils from food particles within the matrix of the plaque deposits, so the microfossils are protected and are a unique record of the plant foods put into the mouth,” Henry said. “So we can say with confidence that this individual Neanderthal ate plants.” Specifically she said that grass seeds, or grain were found in the enamel, but still cautions that more works needs to be done before issuing broad statements about Neanderthal diets can be issued. The isotopic study mentioned above wouldn’t detect microfossils in the enamel (it’s not what it’s designed for). I would think the fact of the significant geographic distance could well come into play here as well. And the test can’t determine if the Neanderthal ate plants only a few times or if it was a staple part of his diet. Several different tests on the same samples will have to be conducted in future studies to get a clearer picture.

Further Reading:

Isotopic dietary analysis of a Neanderthal and associated fauna from the site of Jonzac (Charente-Maritime), France Abstract

Neanderthals at Mealtime: Pass the Meat

Neandertals Ate Their Veggies, Tooth Study Shows

[rogue06]

While exploring the Paisley 5 Mile Point Caves in the Cascade Range of central Oregon, archaeologists may have found the earliest confirmed evidence for human habitation in North America, namely fourteen pieces of 14,300 year old human excrement. That’s right. Poop. The fossilized feces, or coprolites, are extraordinary in that besides probably being older than any artifacts thus far discovered on the continent, six of them appear to contain human protein and DNA. All of this provides a strong indication that humans were in North America at least a thousand years before the so-called Clovis people (named after the New Mexico site where distinctively-shaped rock spear points that gave the name to the prehistoric paleo-Indians were first found), who for years were thought to be the first humans to live here.

We’ve been aware of these shallow arid caves for 60 years, which had been carved into a hillside by a prehistoric lake, and have previously uncovered a variety of animal bones and several stone tools there. But in 2002, a team led by Dennis L. Jenkins, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon dug deeper into cave No. 5 and found the coprolites in question. They noted that few artifacts were found in the cave which implies that the occupant’s visits were somewhat brief and that the cave may have even served as a latrine of some sort.

In many ways, coprolites are ideal human remains for archaeologists. First, because indigenous people often are upset when their ancestors bones are excavated, but nobody gets upset to examining their feces. Second, since because bones calcify over time this makes it difficult to extract any viable DNA, while coprolites are full of cellular material that comes from the colon.

Jenkins says that studying the coprolites has allowed them to determine what these early Americans ate. “They certainly ate sage grouse and smaller animals," he noted. "I think we recovered some chipmunk bones from one of the coprolites.” Furthermore, there are residues from plant types that are still found close to the caves that have also been found in the coprolites. And with hundreds of more coprolites to be tested, there is still more information that can be uncovered, possibly including what sort of diversity was there in the first people entering America, such as how many different people and the ratio of males to females.

But to first verify that the coprolites were indeed from humans, Jenkins recruited some DNA experts to carry out multiple tests on the samples. The primary DNA analysis was carried out by Eske Willerslev and M. Thomas P. Gilbert of the Center for Ancient Genetics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Besides confirming their human origin, Willerlev and Gilbert were also able to determine that the DNA found were from the founding genetic groups, or haplogroups, of present-day Native Americans. These same genetic patterns are also found among certain groups in eastern Asia and increase support for the theory that the first people came here by crossing the Bering Sea land bridge that at one time connected North America and Asia.

Yet the findings aren’t without their detractors. Noting that there were also non-human coprolites at the cave bottom, Vanderbilt University archeologist Thomas Dillehay (known for his excavations at Monte Verde in Chile, which indicate humans may have inhabited that region as long as 14,500 years ago) urges caution. He argues that since several of the fossilized feces “did not have human DNA, and some of them had canine, perhaps fox, DNA,” that the coprolites might have been contaminated by them. Jenkins dismisses this by noting that some of the coprolites contained human hair and human proteins, in addition to human DNA, so that if they had been left by canines, then they must have been canines that were eating humans (or humans eating the canines), which doesn't change the conclusion that people lived there 14,300 years ago.

A more serious challenge has been raised by one of the researchers who did the DNA testing of the coprolites, Dr. Gilbert, who worries that the coprolites could have been contaminated with younger human DNA by being urinated on by later Native Americans inhabitants. He also pointed out that not all the coprolites contain Native American DNA, and that this may be because they are all non-human and have been only identified as such because of contamination from being urinated on. His colleague, Dr. Willerslev, quickly rejects at least the latter possibility by observing that human proteins found in the samples rule out any contamination or leeching as the cause because it couldn’t provide enough human protein for the type of testing that was employed to have detected. Willerslev also mentioned that since only one Native American DNA sequence was associated with each coprolite, and that the sediment samples and animal bones (primarily horse and camel) only tested positive for animal DNA and negative for human DNA, indicates that contamination is an unlikely source for the Native American DNA found in the coprolites identified as coming from humans. Still, the results remain controversial until more testing can be done.

Further Reading:

Pre-Clovis Human DNA Found In 14,300-year-old Feces In Oregon Cave Is Oldest In New World

Fossilized Feces Tell Tale of Earliest Americans

Fossil Feces Is Earliest Evidence of N. America Humans

Fossilized feces found in Oregon suggest earliest human presence in North America

Evidence Supports Earlier Date for People in North America

A bit of news that seems to go with the above…

Another study has come forth making the view that the so-called Clovis people were the first settlers in the Americas increasingly less tenable. A team led by Dr. Tom Dillehay, archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has added further confirmation of the ancient age of the Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile about 800km (approximately 500mi.) south of the capital of Santiago, after carbon dating seaweed and marine algae samples of nine separate species (approximately 27 liters, or a tad over 7 gallons, worth) from the site at somewhere between 13,980 and 14,220 years old, confirming that the site was occupied some 1,000 years earlier than any other known human settlements in the Americas. Dillehay thinks that the seaweeds were used as both a food source and as medicine. Some of it was found in the remains of ancient hearths and some had been chewed into clumps, or "cuds," which may have been used for medicinal purposes. The types of seaweed samples recovered at Monte Verde are all good sources of iodine, iron, zinc and other nutrients as well as promoting cholesterol metabolism, bone strength and the body’s ability to fight infection. Indigenous people still use the same species to treat common health problems.

Interestingly, while some types of seaweeds found came from the coast, several others derived from a rocky inland bay located around 6-15km south of the settlement. The choice of seaweeds, and local land plants (primarily nuts and vegetables) also identified at the site, along with Monte Verde’s riverside location, indicate that the inhabitants had lived there long enough to develop a good understanding of both coastal resources and foods from the interior which allowed them to stay in the region year-round. This might imply that the early settlers moved south far more slowly than has been suggested by some – coming to terms with their current location, exploiting the interior resources of the hundreds of river basins descending from near-coast mountain ranges, before moving to another one. And as the discovery of human feces in the Oregon cave dated the same time testifies, people were moving much further inland than previously thought as well. Further, besides providing more evidence for the age of the Monte Verde site these new findings also support the coastal migration theory currently ascribed to by most scholars, which hypothesizes that people first entered the New World through the Bering land bridge more than 16,000 years ago and moved slowly down the Pacific Coast, exploiting a range of resources from kelp forests just off the coast.

Further Reading:

SLOWPOKE SETTLERS

First Americans thrived on seaweed

New Evidence From Earliest Known Human Settlement In The Americas

CHILE OR BUST: TRACING THE PATH OF THE FIRST AMERICANS

Earliest Known American Settlers Harvested Seaweed

Ancient seaweed chews confirm age of Chilean site

[lao tzu]

I love this line!

... so that if they had been left by canines, then they must have been canines that were eating humans (or humans eating the canines), which doesn't change the conclusion that people lived there 14,300 years ago.

[blackapologist]

Have you heard the discoveries of human and dinosaur bones in the same sedimentary layer? This is good evidence for creation.

[sylas]

Have you heard the discoveries of human and dinosaur bones in the same sedimentary layer? This is good evidence for creation.

No, I haven't. If true, this would be strong evidence against the timelines conventionally used by scientists.

Can you tell us what you heard, and where? A reference, perhaps?

Thanks -- Sylas

[lao tzu]

Have you heard the discoveries of human and dinosaur bones in the same sedimentary layer? This is good evidence for creation.

Calaveras man in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

Sorry, blackapologist, but even AiG acknowledges these are frauds. Check out their page:

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

“The Castenedolo and Calaveras human remains in ‘old’ strata invalidate the geologic column.”

These are not sound examples—the Castenedolo skeletal material shows evidence of being an intrusive burial, that is, a recent burial into older strata, since all the fossils apart from the human ones had time to be impregnated with salt. The Calaveras skull was probably a hoax planted into a mine by miners.

[rogue06]

Calaveras man in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ...

Sorry, blackapologist, but even AiG acknowledges these are frauds. Check out their page:

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use

“The Castenedolo and Calaveras human remains in ‘old’ strata invalidate the geologic column.”

These are not sound examples—the Castenedolo skeletal material shows evidence of being an intrusive burial, that is, a recent burial into older strata, since all the fossils apart from the human ones had time to be impregnated with salt. The Calaveras skull was probably a hoax planted into a mine by miners.

Perhaps it is the so-called Moabite Man or Malachite Man which by every indication was Native American burials in soft sand rather than embedded in the sandstone sediment, yet they occasionally still pop up on some YEC websites. They’re described as being Cretaceous. Or perhaps the supposed mantracks at Paluxy?

[Steviepinhead]

Lao tzu:

I love this line!

... so that if they had been left by canines, then they must have been canines that were eating humans (or humans eating the canines), which doesn't change the conclusion that people lived there 14,300 years ago.

I guess "Man bites dog!" is still news, no matter how long ago it took place...

[Steviepinhead]

Beyond the fact that I've been persuaded (by Evo-Devo types like Sean Carroll) that, in some ways, genomes are (or contain, or may be usefully analogized to) fossils, there may be no good reason to place this here.

And several good reasons not to...

Nonetheless, and just because I'm too lazy to hunt up or start a more-appropriate thread, I'll note that some University of Washington researchers have further refined and extended work on the human genome:

A nationwide consortium led by the University of Washington in Seattle has completed the first sequence-based map of structural variations in the human genome, giving scientists an overall picture of the large-scale differences in DNA between individuals. The project gives researchers a guide for further research into these structural differences, which are believed to play an important role in human health and disease. The results appear in the May 1 issue of the journal Nature.


The project involved sequencing the genomes of eight people from a diverse set of ethnic backgrounds: four individuals of African descent, two of Asian descent, and two of European background. The researchers created what's called a clone map, taking multiple copies of each of the eight genomes and breaking them into numerous segments of about 40,000 base pairs, which they then fit back together based on the human reference genome. They searched for structural differences that ranged in size from a few thousand to a few million base pairs. Base pairs are one of the basic units of information on the human genome.

"There is a perception that the human genome is essentially completely understood," explained the project's leader, Dr. Evan Eichler, UW associate professor of genome sciences and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "The sequences we have identified range in size from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of base pairs, and are not part of the published human genome reference sequence. We found that many of these are highly variable in copy and content between individuals. This represents uncharted territory that can now be examined in more detail to determine the function of these new segments of the human genome with respect to disease and gene activity."

(My bolding.)
Cool stuff.

[rogue06]

In another thread sylas made reference to a fossilized jaw from an ancient type of platypus, Steropodon galmani, being made of opal. That reminded me of the amoeba-like organisms called agglutinated foraminifera uncovered in the Umbria-Marche basin in eastern Italy which covered themselves with microscopic diamonds no more than 10 micrometers or microns (0.0003937”) across made as a result of the asteroid impact off of present-day Mexico which is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs approximately 65 mya. The extreme pressure and temperatures resulting from the impact at Chicxulub caused the formation of the tiny diamonds as it crushed and heated graphite rock, though some of the jewels were created from the carbon carried in the asteroid itself. Such impact diamonds aren’t all that rare and have been found in the vicinity of several craters.

The single-celled creatures made their own body armor by attaching grains of sediment from the ocean floor. The lead researcher of the team that collected the fossils, geologist Michael Kaminski of University College London declared that “the foraminifera were deliberately using extraterrestrial diamonds in their shells” because they are the most dense. Besides providing protection the heavier diamond grains allow the organisms to sink and stay on the bottom of the ocean. Scientists have no idea how these creatures were able to pick out the densest grains, an ability they share with their modern descendants.


Further Reading:

Sea creatures had a thing for bling

Fossils found coated in diamonds

[rogue06]

A couple of small fossil fragments found after a kindergarten was demolished in Germany has created a bit of a buzz because it helps to fill a 70 million year gap in the evolutionary history in the phylum of marine animals known as echinoderms, known for their protective spiny skin. The fossil is that of a carpoid, the common name for several extinct classes of unusual primitive echinoderms that lack any radial symmetry (modern echinoderms include sea lilies, sea urchins and starfish), and is dated at about 360 myo. Before its chance discovery by an amateur paleontologist no carpoids had been found which lived between 320 to 390 mya. The pieces of the creature’s shell and fore end measure up to 1.2cm (0.47”) and were uncovered in the city of Wuppertal, in the North Rhine-Westphalia, the western-most state in Germany bordering the Netherlands and Belgium. A geologist with the Rhineland local authority, Hans Martin Weber, identified the fragments and said that he believes that the rock they were found in was once silt at the bottom of a tropical sea in which the dead creature became embedded. Weber added that the site had been familiar to fossil hunters for a century and was surprised that nobody had seen the echinoderm before.

Further Reading:

Missing Link Found in German Rock Alters Fossil Record

[rogue06]

In a museum on the Isle of Mors in Jutland, Denmark, paleontologists have uncovered the 55 myo fossil remains of parrots dug up from a nearby quarry a couple of years earlier. Reported in the current issue of the journal Palaeontology, the fossils indicate that parrots once lived at what is now Norway and Denmark. Presently parrots live only in the tropics and southern hemisphere, but this new research, indicates that they first evolved in the North, much earlier than previously thought. Indeed, it represents the oldest and most northerly convincing remains of a parrot ever to have been discovered. No fossil parrot older than 15 myo has been found in the Southern Hemisphere, so this new evidence suggests that parrots evolved in the Northern Hemisphere before diversifying further South in the tropics at a later date.

The parrot is a new species with the official name of Mopsitta tanta, but it had already been nicknamed the “Danish Blue Parrot,” after a famous sketch by Monty Python in 1969 about a “Norwegian Blue Parrot.” This connection has been what has caught the media’s attention – primarily the British press.

As Dr. David Waterhouse, who made the discovery in 2005 while he was a PhD student at University College Dublin and is currently Assistant Curator of Natural History at Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, and the paper’s lead author, explains: “Obviously, we are dealing with a bird that is bereft of life, but the tricky bit is establishing that it was a parrot. As with many fragile bird fossils, it is a wonder that anything remains at all, and all that remains of this early Danish parrot is a single upper wing bone (humerus). But, this small bone contains characteristic features that show that it is clearly from a member of the parrot family, about the size of a Yellow-crested Cockatoo.” The humerus is 6cm (2.36”) long. Waterhouse continues: “It isn’t as unbelievable as you might at first think that a parrot was found so far north. When Mopsitta was alive, most of Northern Europe was experiencing a warm period, with a large shallow tropical lagoon covering much of Germany, South East England and Denmark. We have to remember that this was only 10 million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out, and some strange things were happening with animal life all over the planet.”

This particular parrot, however, would never have “pined for the fjords”, as Michael Palin’s indignant shopkeeper insisted in the Python skit being that the fjords of Norway were formed during the last Ice Age making them less than a million years old, whereas Mopsitta was from 55 mya.

Further Reading:

Parrot Fossil 55 Million Years Old Discovered In Scandinavia

Monty Python’s ‘dead parrot’ once lived after all

Monty Python's dead parrot did exist

NORWEGIAN BLUE PARROT REALLY DID EXIST - BUT NOW THEY ARE ALL 'STIFF, BEREFT OF LIFE AND EX-PARROTS'

Norway once had parrots.. and they may even have been blue


Dead parrot skit by Monty Python on You-tube

[sylas]

NORWEGIAN BLUE PARROT REALLY DID EXIST - BUT NOW THEY ARE ALL 'STIFF, BEREFT OF LIFE AND EX-PARROTS'

I love it.

Seriously... I love it. It's great when some odd association like this can get a a bit of wider interest in such discoveries.

Cheers -- Sylas