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Fossils
The missing link
Issue Date: May 31, 1999
scientists working in a remote part of Ethiopia have unearthed the remains of a new species of an ape-like animal that lived around 2.5 million years ago, and some stone tools. They say the tools were possibly used by the first human ancestor to prepare meat , a dramatic evidence of butchery being one of the oldest professions.
Human evolution and tubers
Issue Date: May 31, 1999
Anthropologist Richard Wrangham and his colleagues at the Harvard University in the US have found that tubers and the ability to cook them prompted the evolution of large brains, smaller teeth, modern limb proportions and the male-female bonding in humans. The observations challenge the current belief that eating meat spurred the evolution of Homo Erectus , the 1.8-million-year-old species that was the first to possess many human-like traits, say some anthropologists.
Old worms
Issue Date: Mar 15, 1999
The ancestors of major animal groups may have existed 700 million years earlier than biologists realised. The fossil record suggests an "explosion" of animal life 530 million years ago, when many groups appeared. But a team led by Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University has traced the origins of nematode worms to as astonishing 1.2 million years ago ( Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B , Vol 266, p163).
FOSSIL FUND
Issue Date: Feb 28, 1999
An American researcher and a Fulbright scholar Nina Jablonski, has claimed to have found a fossil of a hippopotami in Nepal, which is said to be around a millionof years old. Hippopotamus is a large mammal which is now only found in Africa. "We found the fossils in the east-Koshi river zone, as well as in the west Karnali river zone of Nepal," said Jablonski. "This shows that the hippos survived all over South Asia," said Jablonski.
Dinomites were here
Issue Date: Feb 15, 1999
Dinosaurs were
tormented by parasitic mites, new
research suggests.
Dave Martill of the
University of
Portsmouth and his
colleague Paul
Davis used an
electron microscope
to study a
well-preserved, 120
mil-
lion-year-old fossil
feather. The
feather was found in
Brazil and
looks like a tail
feather from
Archaeopteryx, a
prehistoric bird
that evolved from the
Jurassic
giants. The feather
was covered with
more than 200-odd
hollow spheres
about seven
millimetres in
diameter
- the right size for
mite eggs. "Birds
not only inherited
their feathers
from the dinosaurs,
but inherited
Fossil find
Issue Date: Jan 15, 1999
scientists at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany ( bsip ), Lucknow, have discovered a 3.2 billion-year-old fossil of blue-green algae in Singhbhum, north Orissa. They say that this could be the oldest life form in Indian geological history.
For want of iodine
Issue Date: Jan 15, 1999
THE fossil record of Neanderthals
abruptly ends about 30,000 years ago.
Why Neanderthals suddenly went
extinct is a topic of much debate even
today. Some experts suggest that they
may have lost a "fight" with the more
tech nologically- advanced Homo sapiens sapiens, while others say interbreeding with them diluted their characteristics. Over the ages, there have been
many more explanations.
Stoned immaculate
Issue Date: Dec 31, 1998
GREEK mythology can boast of some
truly weird creatures. Centaurs - the
furious half- man- half- horse warring
class, Hydra, a three-headed monster
and many more. But none is as frightening as the three snake-haired Medusa,
one look from whom could turn people
into stone. Well, as Mother Nature
would have it, there actually is a biological version of these femme fatales.
Bacteria that can turn mud to rock do
exist. These Medusa bacteria quickly
Dinosaur nesting site
Issue Date: Dec 31, 1998
IN A major discovery, paleontologists
have found a vast dinosaur nesting site
in Argentina. Thousands of fossil eggs
were found at the site. Inside the egg
fragments, the scientists found the first
embryo remains from a major class of
large dinosaurs, and first definite fossils of embryo skin from any of these
Juffasic giants. According to Luis
Chiappe of the American Museumof
Natural History in New York, USA, the
discoveries should shed light on the
early development of sauropods. They
am a class of plant-eaters with long
opits and tails, small head and four elephant-ike legs.
Hanging around
Issue Date: Dec 15, 1998
A NEW look at a fossil discovered over a decade ago has strengthened the theory that bats evolved from flightless creatures that hung from tree branches by all four legs. Most paleontologists now believe that birds evolved from small ground-dwelling dinosaurs that had developed feathers for another purpose. The origins of bats, however, have always been puzzling.
