Saturday, 10 October 2015
SAME FEET.
A ANALYSIS OF 107 PREHISTORIC FOOT BONES HAS SHOWN THAT ANCIENT MAN WERE SIMILAR TO MODERN MAN .THE BONES WERE AMONG HUNDERS DISCOVERED IN A CAVE -JOHANNESBURG,SOUTH AFRICA.
POSSIBLE MASS EXINCTION OF FROGS?
A KILLER FUNGUS MAY LEAD TO MASS EXTINTION IN ALL SPECIES OF FROGS -194-1.3 % ARE BELIEVED TO DIE IN LAST 30 TO 40 YEARS. THIS IS DUE TO THE SPREAD OF AMPHIBIAN CHYRID FUNGUS THAT AFFECTS BREATHING ,FEEDING.
Sand pit' probes walking strategies
By puffing air upwards through a box
of sand, a US laboratory has tested how lizards, crabs and robots cope
with ground that is more or less "fluid".
They say the contraption is like a wind tunnel for studying movement on unstable surfaces.Tests of this kind could help design robots to handle inconsistent terrain - such as might be found on Mars.
For now, the team has identified key aspects of leg shape and movement that help maintain speed on flowing ground.
The results appear in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomechanics.
"The pioneers of flight looked at different wing designs in a wind tunnel, and now we can do this with robotic design," said senior author Daniel Goldman, from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Tread gently
By adjusting the rate at which air is pumped through the sand, Prof Goldman and his team can control precisely how fluid the surface becomes.They used this system to observe the motion of a six-legged "Sandbot", four species-READ MORE - SEE VIDEO -BBC LINK-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34486870
Ancient horse-like foetus discovered in Germany
A fossilised foetus belonging to an early relative of the horse has been described by scientists.
The
unborn foal was identified among the remains of its mother - a
48-million-year-old horse-like animal found in Germany's Messel pit in
2000.The mare probably fell into a lake shortly before birth - which led to outstanding preservation of the soft tissue from the foetus.
Details are published in the open access journal Plos One.
Dr Jens Loren Franzen and colleagues investigated the 12.5cm-long foetus using scanning electronic microscopy and high-resolution micro-X-rays.
Almost all bones are present and connected, except for the skull, which appears to have been crushed.
And this exceptional preservation allowed the researchers to reconstruct the original appearance and position of the foetus.
This corresponded very well with foetuses in living mares, suggesting the horse reproductive system was already highly developed during the Eocene Period.
Beaver or Otter, It Lived in Dinosaurs' Time
In the conventional view, the earliest mammals were small, primitive,
shrewlike creatures that did not begin to explore the world's varied
environments until the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
But scientists are reporting today that they have uncovered fossils
of a swimming, fish-eating mammal that lived in China fully 164 million
years ago, well before it was thought that some mammals could have spent
much of their lives in water.
The extinct species appears to have been an amalgam of animals. It had a broad, scaly tail, flat like a beaver's. Its sharp teeth seemed ideal for eating fish, like an otter's. Its likely lifestyle — burrowing in tunnels on shore and dog-paddling in water — reminds scientists of the modern platypus.
Its skeleton suggests that it was about 20 inches long, from snout to the tip of its tail, about the length of a small house cat.
The surprising discovery, made in 2004 in the abundant fossil beds of Liaoning Province, China, is being reported in the journal Science by an international team led by Ji Qiang of Nanjing University.
In the article, Dr. Ji and other researchers from the Chinese-READ MORE-http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/science/24beaver.html?_r=0
Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Scientists have found a fossil of a mammal — part beaver, part otter,
part platypus — that lived in China 164 million years ago.
The extinct species appears to have been an amalgam of animals. It had a broad, scaly tail, flat like a beaver's. Its sharp teeth seemed ideal for eating fish, like an otter's. Its likely lifestyle — burrowing in tunnels on shore and dog-paddling in water — reminds scientists of the modern platypus.
Its skeleton suggests that it was about 20 inches long, from snout to the tip of its tail, about the length of a small house cat.
The surprising discovery, made in 2004 in the abundant fossil beds of Liaoning Province, China, is being reported in the journal Science by an international team led by Ji Qiang of Nanjing University.
In the article, Dr. Ji and other researchers from the Chinese-READ MORE-http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/science/24beaver.html?_r=0
Ancient DNA reveals 'into Africa' migration
Researchers extracted DNA from a 4,500-year-old skull that was discovered in the highlands of Ethiopia.
A comparison with genetic material from today's Africans reveals how our ancient ancestors mixed and moved around the continents.
The findings, published in the journal Science, suggests that about 3,000 years ago there was a huge wave of migration from Eurasia into Africa.
This has left a genetic legacy, and the scientists believe up to 25% of the DNA of modern Africans can be traced back to this event.
"Every single population for which we have data in Africa has a sizeable component of Eurasian ancestry," said Dr Andrea Manica, from the University of Cambridge, who carried out the research.
Petrous bone
Ancient genomes have been sequenced from around the world, but Africa has proved difficult because hot and humid conditions can destroy fragile DNA.
However, the 4,500-year-old remains of this hunter gatherer, known as Mota man, were found in a cave and were well preserved. READ MORE - BBC LINK-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34479905
A comparison with genetic material from today's Africans reveals how our ancient ancestors mixed and moved around the continents.
The findings, published in the journal Science, suggests that about 3,000 years ago there was a huge wave of migration from Eurasia into Africa.
This has left a genetic legacy, and the scientists believe up to 25% of the DNA of modern Africans can be traced back to this event.
"Every single population for which we have data in Africa has a sizeable component of Eurasian ancestry," said Dr Andrea Manica, from the University of Cambridge, who carried out the research.
Petrous bone
Ancient genomes have been sequenced from around the world, but Africa has proved difficult because hot and humid conditions can destroy fragile DNA.
However, the 4,500-year-old remains of this hunter gatherer, known as Mota man, were found in a cave and were well preserved. READ MORE - BBC LINK-http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34479905
FRIST PLANT.
THIS IS A SEA ALGAE WHICH EVOVLED 45 MILLION YEARS AGO WHICH IS BELIEVED TO SLASH ON TO LAND.A PROTAIN INSIDE REACTED TO A FUNGI ALLOWING IT TO TAKE ROOT ONTO BARREN SURFACE AND SUCK WATER AND NUTRIENTS FROM THE SOIL.THIS EVENT IS BELIEVED TO BROUGHT FUNDAMENTAL CLIMATE CHANGE,SPARKED LAND BASED ECOSYSTEMS PLUS ANIMAL EVOLUTION.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)