Paleo – Page 113

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Neandertal Promoted to Fully Human

October 1, 2004

The myth of the brutish, subhuman Neandertal is apparently almost dead. Science1 Oct. 1 showed a picture of him in a business suit in an article entitled, “Dressed for Success: Neandertal Culture Wins Respect.” Michael Balter writes, “respect is growing for Neandertals” as evidence mounts that they made jewelry, wore clothing, and survived a variety […]

Early Man

Human Common Ancestor Lived 3500 Years Ago

September 29, 2004

Nature Science Update reported on a surprising find by Joseph Change (Yale) and Douglas Rohde (MIT). They claim, based on computer modeling of human breeding and migration, that we are all related to the same common ancestor, not millions, but just thousands of years ago, possibly just 1500 BC in Asia, and that perhaps a […]

Dumb Ideas

Name-Calling at the Human Evolution Meeting

September 23, 2004

As predicted earlier this month (see 09/03/2004 commentary), Lucy’s lovers were not going to take her demotion lying down. Proponents of Orrorin claim their 6 million year old rival walked upright millions of years before the 2-4 million year old australopithecines, and even had a gait more human-like than Lucy. To Ann Gibbons, reporting in […]

Dumb Ideas

Scientists Try to Read Neandertal Minds

September 21, 2004

If dead men tell no tales, living ones certainly do. Most of us have trouble reading one another’s minds when staring face to face, but some paleoanthropologists, with nothing but skeletons and a few stone tools and burial sites to look at, have no hesitation in reading the Neandertal mind. Bruce Bower writes in Science […]

Fossils

Classifying Eukaryotes Easier than Evolving Them

September 8, 2004

If you like stories with surprise endings, check out an otherwise boring paper by two Canadian evolutionary biologists, Alistair G. B. Simpson and Andrew A. Roger, in the Sept. 7 issue of Current Biology.1 Their subject is the real “kingdoms” of eukaryotes (that’s all creatures with nuclei, including plants, animals, and a host of single-celled […]

Dinosaurs

Inferring Dinosaur Family Life from Bones

September 8, 2004

Observation: a jumble of dinosaur bones in China. Conclusion: some dinosaurs showed tender loving care to their young. This is the gist of a paper in Nature this week (Sept. 9),1 reported also on Nature Science Update. Discerning behavior from bones is an art, but these bones of 34 psittacosaurs from Liaoning, China […]

Early Man

Step Aside, Lucy; Your Distant Ancestor Walked Upright, Researchers Claim

September 3, 2004

Penn State researchers are trying to scoop the coveted title of “discoverers of the first upright-walking hominid” with a CT scan of their champion, Orrorin (see 02/23/2001 headline). They have the ball and socket joint of the specimen (thought to be like a chimpanzee) and a bit of the bony neck that connects the ball […]

Fossils

Genes Fail to Reveal Evolutionary Pattern in European Mammals

August 27, 2004

One would think an examination of DNA from fossils would track the animal’s geographical distribution as they evolved. However, a study reported in PNAS1 failed to find any correlation in European mammals after the last glaciation. Hofreiter et al. report: Here, we analyze mtDNA sequences from cave bears, brown bears, cave hyenas, and Neandertals in […]

Fossils

Extinctions Too Complex for Simple Stories

August 26, 2004

Impact theories of extinction are fighting for their own survival. A commentary in PNAS1 warns that extinction theories are more complex than can be handled by a single event, like a meteor impact. At best, they might be invoked as the coup-de-grace in a series of situations. Hermann Pfefferkorn reveals the complexities in the Permian […]

Dinosaurs

Land Dinosaurs Buried with Fish

August 22, 2004

Since dinosaurs are icons of evolutionary TV shows and even children’s cartoons about prehistoric evolving life, it may come as a surprise to some that evolutionists do not own the dinosaurs; even the name dinosaur was invented by a creationist, Richard Owen. Last month, a creationist dinosaur dig in Montana1 was a monstrous success. Joe […]

Fossils

Watch This Space: What, and When, Was the Ediacaran Biota?

August 19, 2004

Evolutionary paleontologists are understandably very interested in the Ediacaran period (recently added to the geologic column) because, to them, it incorporates “the most ancient complex organisms on Earth.” As classified, this Precambrian period (dated 580 to 543 million years old) precedes the Cambrian explosion by some 20 million years, yet “remains one of the greatest […]

Early Man

British Cave Art Wins Admiration

August 18, 2004

The British are overtaking the French in the ancient cave art competition; National Geographic News reports that “English caves may hold the most elaborate Ice Age cave-art ceiling ever discovered.” Thought to be 12,000 to 13,000 years old based on radiocarbon results and “stylistic comparison.” There was some surprise that the art could have survived […]

Fossils

Plants Found Two Miles Under Greenland Ice

August 16, 2004

According to a press release from University of Colorado,1 remnants of pine needles, bark and grass have been pulled up in an ice core from two miles under the Greenland ice sheet, between the bottom of the ice sheet and bedrock. This is the first time plant material has been found under the Greenland ice, […]

Dinosaurs

T. Rex: I Was a Teenage Monster

August 11, 2004

The news media quickly latched onto a report in Nature1 that Tyrannosaurus rex had a growth spurt in adolescence. Dr. Gregory Erickson of Florida State measured growth lines in leg bones and found faster growth between age 14 and 18 on the famous Rex specimen named Sue, says EurekAlert based on info from Florida State […]

Birds

So Is Archaeopteryx a Transitional Form, Or Not?

August 5, 2004

An international team set out to determine if the skull features of Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil bird, indicated whether it was capable of flight. The answer reported in Nature1 was affirmative: Here we show the reconstruction of the braincase from which we derived endocasts of the brain and inner ear. These suggest that Archaeopteryx closely […]

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