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New discoveries of 'missing links.'

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
More and more fossils are being found for critical intermediate period of the evolution of primates from earlier primates to the diversity of sapiens that represent the immediate ancestors of humans. The fossil evidence describes a diverse subspecies and species of Australpithecus, Homo erectus, and Homo Habilis between 250,000 and 4,000,000 years ago.Earlier discoveries described them as two species, but more recent discoveries have found that the represent a diversity of species, subspecies, and varieties that have a range of physical properties such as brain size and development. They also lived in Africa at the same time. Australpithecus lived from ~4.2 million years to 1 million years ago. By the evidence the more advanced Homo Erectus lived from ~2 million to 250,000 years ago and Homo Habilis lived from ~2 million the earliest tool maker.

The following discovery adds to the discoveries of the diversity of our ancestors in this period.

Fossil suggests Homo erectus is 200,000 years older than thought

Fossil suggests Homo erectus is 200,000 years older than thought
By
Brooks Hays
Fossil-suggests-Homo-erectus-is-200000-years-older-than-thought.jpg


Scientists unearthed the world's oldest Homo erectus cranium in South Africa. Photo by Angeline Leece
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April 3 (UPI) -- Paleontologists have unearthed the oldest fossil belonging to the hominin species Homo erectus.

The 2 million-year-old fossil skull, excavated over a five-year period in South Africa, suggests the early human relative emerged between 100,000 and 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.



Scientists described the discovery in a new paper published this week in the journal Science.

"The Homo erectus skull we found, likely aged between 2 and 3 years old when it died, shows its brain was only slightly smaller than other examples of adult Homo erectus," lead study author Andy Herries, research professor and head o the the archaeology and history department at the La Trobe University in Australia, said in a news release.

RELATED Ancient human relative Lucy's brain was surprisingly ape-like


Using high-resolution dating methods, scientists confirmed the fossil cranium is at least 2 million years old, which means Homo erectus shared the African continent with at least two other hominin species, Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus sediba.

"Unlike the situation today, where we are the only human species, 2 million years ago our direct ancestor was not alone," Herries said.

Because the skull predates fossils from other Homo erectus both inside and outside of Africa, scientists suggest the discovery proves Homo erectus emerged and evolved in Africa -- not Asia, as has been previously been suggested.

RELATED 2-million-year-old fossils suggest human ancestor was a tree climber


"Our discovery suggests, though, that Homo erectus likely did not evolve in eastern Africa as so often thought but perhaps somewhere else in Africa, or potentially in South Africa itself," researchers wrote in The Conversation. "More evidence is needed before firm conclusions can be reached, of course."

The dig site that produced the ancient skull, the Drimolen Fossil Hominin site located northeast of Johannesburg, has yielded a variety of significant hominin fossils. Analysis of additional fossils by an international team of scientists is ongoing.

The ongoing research suggests southern Africa presented hominins a variety of challenges, which may explain why each of the three hominin species living in the region evolved very different adaptations.

RELATED Earliest evidence of hominin interbreeding revealed by DNA analysis


The remains recovered from the Drimolen Fossil Hominin site offer a snapshot of the complex experimentation that defined early human evolution. Some of those early experiments were more successful than others.

"One of the questions that interests us is what role changing habitats, resources, and the unique biological adaptations of early Homo erectus may have played in the eventual extinction of Australopithecus sediba in South Africa," said study co-author Justin Adams, researcher at Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute.

"Similar trends are also seen in other mammal species at this time. For example, there are more than one species of false sabre tooth cat, Dinofelis, at the site -- one of which became extinct after two million years," Adams said. "Our data reinforces the fact that South Africa represented a truly unique mixture of evolutionary lineages -- a blended community of ancient and modern mammal species that was transitioning as climates and ecosystems changed."
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
DNA analysis wide diversity and interbreeding of hominins in the past 700,000 yrs

Present evidence in the abundant ideal tropical and subtropical regions demonstrates a great diversity of related species, subspecies, and varieties of plants and animals and fruitful grounds for evolution. Fossil and DNA evidence indicates abundant ideal environments existed in the past since 4-5 million years in Africa. This development of a diversity in hominins promoted the migration of our hominin ancestors across Asia and Europe. Evidence demonstrates that significant interbreeding occurred between the diverse hominin ancestors in this recent period leading to evolution and dominance of homo sapiens. The following research adds to the evidence of this process of evolution. The DNA evidence is supported by the vaste fossil evidence recently discovered of the diverse intermediates in the evolution of our hominin ancestors between our species and our more ancient primitive primates.

Earliest evidence of hominin interbreeding revealed by DNA analysis

By
Brooks Hays
Earliest-evidence-of-hominin-interbreeding-revealed-by-DNA-analysis.jpg


Several hundred thousands years before humans and Neanderthals interbred, another pair of hominin populations interbred -- the earliest instance of hominin interbreeding yet discovered. Photo by Wikimedia Commons


Feb. 21 (UPI) -- According to a new study, hominin populations were interbreeding at least 700,000 years ago. The revelation was made possible by statistical models and sophisticated genetic analysis methods developed by researchers at the University of Utah.

In 2017, anthropologist Alan Rogers claimed to have found genetic evidence of an early separation of Neanderthal and Denisovan lineages and a population bottleneck among their ancestors.

When anthropologists Fabrizio Mafessoni and Kay Prüfer analyzed the same DNA data, they arrived at a different interpretation. Rogers agreed that his original analysis was flawed.

"Both of our methods under discussion were missing something, but what?" Rogers asked in a news release.

Rogers returned to the data in search of patterns of mutations or shared genes that he missed the first time. His efforts revealed an interbreeding event.

According to the newest analysis, published this week in the journal Science Advances, the Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor interbred with a separate hominin group, dubbed super-archaics, some 700,000 years ago.

"We've never known about this episode of interbreeding and we've never been able to estimate the size of the super-archaic population," said Rogers, lead author of the new study. "We're just shedding light on an interval on human evolutionary history that was previously completely dark."

By studying patterns of shared genes among modern Africans and Europeans, as well as ancient Neanderthals and Denisovans, Rogers and his research partners realized there were five instances of interbreeding over the course of hominin evolution, one of which was previously unknown.

The most famous instances of interbreeding, between modern Eurasians and Neanderthal and Denisovan predecessors, occurred 50,000 years ago. When they began interbreeding, the lineages of modern humans and those of Neanderthals and Denisovans were separated by 750,000 years.

Prior to the newly discovered interbreeding event, the lineages of super-archaics and Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors were separated by more than a million years.

"These findings about the timing at which interbreeding happened in the human lineage is telling something about how long it takes for reproductive isolation to evolve," said Rogers.

According to the new analysis, super-archaics first emerged as a distinct species 2 million years ago. This early group migrated into Eurasia and expanded to boast a population size of between 20,000 and 50,000 individuals. Around 700,000 years ago, Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestors arrived in Eurasia. The two groups interbred shortly afterwards.

Until now, this period of early human evolution was unknown.

"I've been working for the last couple of years on this different way of analyzing genetic data to find out about history," said Rogers. "It's just gratifying that you come up with a different way of looking at the data and you end up discovering things that people haven't been able to see with other methods."

We are coming to a time in the advancement of the sciences of evolution with fossil discoveries and genetics there are no 'missing links.'
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Interesting fossilized skeleton of mammal from the Age of the Dinosaurs uncovered
A bit of hyperbole in its description, but it certainly is different. It is an example of recent discoveries that there were a diversity of mammals that existed before the event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. nice pictures.

Ancient 'crazy beast' from Madagascar had mismatched body and teeth from 'outer space' | Live Science

"The oldest complete mammal fossil from the Southern Hemisphere is puzzling scientists with its mismatched body, strange skull holes and teeth that look like they're "from outer space."

The new fossil, reported today (April 29) in the journal Nature, is the oldest (and only) nearly complete skeleton from an extinct group of mammals known as Gondwanatherians. This mysterious bunch lived alongside the dinosaurs on the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. They're known from a smattering of teeth and bone fragments, a single skull and the new, remarkable skeleton of an animal whose discoverers have dubbed the "crazy beast."

Cretaceous period. Madagascar was already an island at the time, having drifted away from Africa by 88 million years ago, and the animals that lived there were completely bizarre, said David Krause, the senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, who led the new research.
The full paper with abstract is available at Skeleton of a Cretaceous mammal from Madagascar reflects long-term insularity. Here is the abstract:

The fossil record of mammaliaforms (mammals and their closest relatives) of the Mesozoic era from the southern supercontinent Gondwana is far less extensive than that from its northern counterpart, Laurasia. Among Mesozoic mammaliaforms, Gondwanatheria is one of the most poorly known clades, previously represented by only a single cranium and isolated jaws and teeth. As a result, the anatomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of gondwanatherians remain unclear. Here we report the discovery of an articulated and very well-preserved skeleton of a gondwanatherian of the latest age (72.1–66 million years ago) of the Cretaceous period from Madagascar that we assign to a new genus and species, Adalatherium hui. To our knowledge, the specimen is the most complete skeleton of a Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaform that has been found, and includes the only postcranial material and ascending ramus of the dentary known for any gondwanatherian. A phylogenetic analysis including the new taxon recovers Gondwanatheria as the sister group to Multituberculata. The skeleton, which represents one of the largest of the Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaforms, is particularly notable for exhibiting many unique features in combination with features that are convergent on those of therian mammals. This uniqueness is consistent with a lineage history for A.hui of isolation on Madagascar for more than 20 million years."
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
New discoveries show the evolutionary relationship between reptiles and mammals.

Ancient reptile had mammal-like tooth enamel, study shows
Ancient reptile had mammal-like tooth enamel, study shows
Priosphenodon specimens found in Argentina show the Late Cretaceous reptile evolved to have tooth enamel that could withstand wear and tear.

Fossilized teeth from the ancient lizard Priosphenodon show that it had durable tooth enamel—a feature much more common in mammals, according to U of A paleontologists. (Photo courtesy of Aaron LeBlanc)

By KATIE WILLIS

A new study by University of Alberta paleontologists shows that one type of ancient reptiles evolved a special type of tooth enamel, similar to that of mammals, with high resistance to wear and tear.

The reptile—known as Priosphenodon—was a herbivore from the Late Cretaceous period that was about one metre long. Part of a group of reptiles called sphenodontians, they had the unique trait of adding new teeth to the back ends of their jaws instead of replacing them where they fell out.

Priosphenodon has the strangest teeth I have personally ever seen,” said Aaron LeBlanc, a post-doctoral fellow in biological sciences and lead author on the study. “Some aspects of their dental anatomy are reminiscent of what happened in the evolution of early mammal teeth.”

The specimens were found in Argentina’s Río Negro province as part of ongoing collaborative fieldwork and research between U of A paleontologist Michael Caldwell and Argentinian paleontologist and fieldwork leader Sebastián Apesteguía.

To look closely at the teeth of Priosphenodon, the researchers cut open pieces of jaw and examined tissue-level detail preserved inside the teeth, and used non-invasive CT scans to examine more complete jaw specimens.

Priosphenodon enamel is not only thicker than that of most other reptiles, the enamel crystals are ‘woven’ into long threads that run through the whole width of the enamel. These threads are called enamel prisms, and they are almost exclusively found in mammals,” said LeBlanc, who is working under Caldwell’s supervision.

“Our results suggest that strong selective pressures can force reptiles to come up with some very innovative solutions to the problems associated with tooth wear and abrasive diets—some of which mirror what happened in our earliest mammal ancestors.”

The scientists also noted there is one kind of lizard alive today that has prismatic enamel like Priosphenodon—the spiny-tailed lizard of Australia. Like Priosphenodon, it mostly eats plants and has lost the ability to replace its worn teeth. However, the two reptiles are not closely related.

Hans Larsson from McGill University also collaborated on the study, which was funded by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica in Argentina, National Geographic and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

The study, “Unique Tooth Morphology and Prismatic Enamel in Late Cretaceous Sphenodontians from Argentina” was published in Current Biology.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Picture of the earl mammal from the Cretaceous previously described in a post.



19393819_G.jpg


"The fossil record of mammaliaforms (mammals and their closest relatives) of the Mesozoic era from the southern supercontinent Gondwana is far less extensive than that from its northern counterpart, Laurasia. Among Mesozoic mammaliaforms, Gondwanatheria is one of the most poorly known clades, previously represented by only a single cranium and isolated jaws and teeth. As a result, the anatomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of gondwanatherians remain unclear. Here we report the discovery of an articulated and very well-preserved skeleton of a gondwanatherian of the latest age (72.1–66 million years ago) of the Cretaceous period from Madagascar that we assign to a new genus and species, Adalatherium hui. To our knowledge, the specimen is the most complete skeleton of a Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaform that has been found, and includes the only postcranial material and ascending ramus of the dentary known for any gondwanatherian. A phylogenetic analysis including the new taxon recovers Gondwanatheria as the sister group to Multituberculata. The skeleton, which represents one of the largest of the Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaforms, is particularly notable for exhibiting many unique features in combination with features that are convergent on those of therian mammals. This uniqueness is consistent with a lineage history for A.hui of isolation on Madagascar for more than 20 million years."
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
As usual, here the notice that a new episode of "Systematic Classification of Life" has been uploaded:


This concludes the series and contains some material that is also interesting for multiple current OPs. (You may see this more than once.)
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
Neat video. I had some minor objections to 'anthropomorphic language like "being forced to . . . " , but other than that well done!
Well, when a natural force like selection pressure acts on your species you are being forced - literally.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Well, when a natural force like selection pressure acts on your species you are being forced - literally.

I disagree, as to the meaning of 'being forced. I do not believe evolution works in this way. It is a more gradual process where populations respond to the environment through genetic diversity and genetic drift over time. They are not forced, though catastrophic events do unfortunately do force extinction.
 
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Heyo

Veteran Member
I disagree, as to the meaning of 'being forced. I do not believe evolution works in this way. It is a more gradual process where populations respond to the environment through genetic diversity and genetic drift.. They are not forced, though catastrophic events do unfortunately do force extinction.
I wasn't (fully) serious with the nitpicking. I think we agree about the danger of anthropomorphising and Aron would probably also agree.
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
Picture of the earl mammal from the Cretaceous previously described in a post.



19393819_G.jpg


"The fossil record of mammaliaforms (mammals and their closest relatives) of the Mesozoic era from the southern supercontinent Gondwana is far less extensive than that from its northern counterpart, Laurasia. Among Mesozoic mammaliaforms, Gondwanatheria is one of the most poorly known clades, previously represented by only a single cranium and isolated jaws and teeth. As a result, the anatomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of gondwanatherians remain unclear. Here we report the discovery of an articulated and very well-preserved skeleton of a gondwanatherian of the latest age (72.1–66 million years ago) of the Cretaceous period from Madagascar that we assign to a new genus and species, Adalatherium hui. To our knowledge, the specimen is the most complete skeleton of a Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaform that has been found, and includes the only postcranial material and ascending ramus of the dentary known for any gondwanatherian. A phylogenetic analysis including the new taxon recovers Gondwanatheria as the sister group to Multituberculata. The skeleton, which represents one of the largest of the Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaforms, is particularly notable for exhibiting many unique features in combination with features that are convergent on those of therian mammals. This uniqueness is consistent with a lineage history for A.hui of isolation on Madagascar for more than 20 million years."

Just want to say thank you for all you post. It is always wonderful to learn.
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
Picture of the earl mammal from the Cretaceous previously described in a post.



19393819_G.jpg


"The fossil record of mammaliaforms (mammals and their closest relatives) of the Mesozoic era from the southern supercontinent Gondwana is far less extensive than that from its northern counterpart, Laurasia. Among Mesozoic mammaliaforms, Gondwanatheria is one of the most poorly known clades, previously represented by only a single cranium and isolated jaws and teeth. As a result, the anatomy, palaeobiology and phylogenetic relationships of gondwanatherians remain unclear. Here we report the discovery of an articulated and very well-preserved skeleton of a gondwanatherian of the latest age (72.1–66 million years ago) of the Cretaceous period from Madagascar that we assign to a new genus and species, Adalatherium hui. To our knowledge, the specimen is the most complete skeleton of a Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaform that has been found, and includes the only postcranial material and ascending ramus of the dentary known for any gondwanatherian. A phylogenetic analysis including the new taxon recovers Gondwanatheria as the sister group to Multituberculata. The skeleton, which represents one of the largest of the Gondwanan Mesozoic mammaliaforms, is particularly notable for exhibiting many unique features in combination with features that are convergent on those of therian mammals. This uniqueness is consistent with a lineage history for A.hui of isolation on Madagascar for more than 20 million years."

Just want to say thank you for all you posts. It is always interesting.
 

rational experiences

Veteran Member
If science says in archaeology, a choice of his human consciousness, to find evidence to prove to his Destroyer brother mentality the occult UFO sciences that he has destroyed life on Earth before, mutated it....and then we returned after gas cooling by ICED conditions.

Then he did.

If a scientist says, it seems that creatures living in the water developed and then walked out onto the land....would he not be discussing today, the relative aware advice, of the recording memory of the past, as seen in visions. Proven in science to be real, the gain of, claiming I saw whales mutate in the sea....the water mass was UFO removed and so the animal that mutated the life of a whale in a formation process was then put on land.

And in radiation conditions no longer supported by water mass developed changed bone mass?

For that is how the ancient memory describes how dinosaurs came to be in ancient UFO science attacked life.

One of the reasons I know, when I was unnaturally irradiated by bone skull began to deform....in the painful conditions, cause and effect of irradiated gases.

I once had a dream vision that said my Mother fell....and as I looked into the water the vision said that I was the only one that knew about the whale.

Not really knowing what that information meant.

But I believe that as the UFO infiltrates the old tunnel bored out sink holes beneath the sea and then irradiates changes the nature of corals that bleach and become bone like in qualities of change....that this history, science machine reasoning, to try to shift time, caused the presence GIANT nature real.

Why it disappeared in gas cooling effects as a radiation removal cause....for dinosaurs were just a mutation of the life of sea creatures.

God materials time shift into the past and then are returned to the present by water cooling of molten metal mineral particles...so that is the science advised male designer of time shifting God.

If you wanted to physically shift natural orders, which machine reactions try to cause, then the UFO is that body rationally. That comes as unnatural metal mass...sucks up our Earth gases and water and then shifts it elsewhere where it is not meant to be shifted to...as rational self advice of being the Destroyer of natural life.

For if PHI is first just a human thought upon condition....and rationalised as a formula and then you change/mutate the origin of the Nature, then PHI is the science applied reasoning to make that claim as a human....as identified ancient causation.

To remove a cold ground radiation spatial cold gas history that held stone....removal of ground water used by the ground living Nature and then allow extra radiation, that is seen. When natural order owns radiation presence that is not seen as natural levels of radiation....as gas is clear.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Recent discoveries and paleontological research have established the dominant descent of modern homo sapiens from the region around South Africa., beginning about ~79,000 to 80,000, centering on the well dated Tubo eruption about 74,000 years ago.

First reference:

The origin of humanity in South Africa I
This is not new discoveries as such, but the description of the paleontological research of the earliest known beginnings of humanity in South Africa. There are two articles related to the sites in South Africa. This is the first article:

Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-05-lost-world-extinct-ecosystem.html


A lost world and extinct ecosystem

by Arizona State University

Archaeological sites on the far southern shores of South Africa hold the world's richest records for the behavioral and cultural origins of our species. At this location, scientists have discovered the earliest evidence for symbolic behavior, complex pyrotechnology, projectile weapons and the first use of foods from the sea.

The Arizona State University Institute of Human Origins (IHO) field study site of Pinnacle Point sits at the center of this record, both geographically and scientifically, having contributed much of the evidence for these milestones on the evolutionary road to being a modern human.

The scientists working on these sites, led by IHO Associate Director Curtis Marean, have always faced a dilemma in understanding the context of these evolutionary milestones—much of the landscape used by these ancient people is now submerged undersea and thus poorly known to us. Marean is a Foundation Professor with the ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change and Honorary Professor with Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

The archaeological records come from caves and rockshelters that now look out on to the sea, and in fact, walking to many of the sites today involves dodging high tides and waves. However, through most of the last 200,000 years, lowered sea levels during glacial phases, when the ice sucks up the water, exposed a vast plain. The coast was sometimes as much as 90 km distant! Our archaeological data shows that this was the prime foraging habitat for these early modern humans, and until recently, we knew nothing about.

That has now changed with the publication of 22 articles in a special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews titled "The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain: A lost world and extinct ecosystem." About ten years ago, Marean began building a transdisciplinary international team to tackle the problem of building an ecology of this ancient landscape. ASU, Nelson Mandela University, the University of Cape Town, and the University of California at Riverside anchored the research team. Funded primarily by a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to Marean, with significant funding and resources from the Hyde Family Foundations, the John Templeton Foundation, ASU, IHO, and XSEDE, they developed an entirely new way to reconstruct "paleoecologies" or ancient ecosystems.

This began with using the high-resolution South African regional climate model—running on U.S. and South African supercomputers—to simulate glacial climate conditions. The researchers used this climate output to drive a new vegetation model developed by project scientists to recreate the vegetation on this paleoscape. They then used a wide variety of studies such as marine geophysics, deep-water diving for sample collection, isotopic studies of stalagmites and many other transdisciplinary avenues of research to validate and adjust this model output. They also created a human "agent-based model" through modern studies of human foraging of plants, animals, and seafoods, simulating how ancient people lived on this now extinct paleoscape.

"Pulling the threads of all this research into one special issue illustrates all of this science," said Curtis Marean. "It represents a unique example of a truly transdisciplinary paleoscience effort, and a new model for going forward with our search to recreate the nature of past ecosystems. Importantly, our results help us understand why the archaeological records from these South African sites consistently reveal early and complex levels of human behavior and culture. The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, when exposed, was a 'Serengeti of the South"' positioned next to some of the richest coastlines in the world. This unique confluence of food from the land and sea cultivated the complex cultures revealed by the archaeology and provided safe harbor for humans during the glacial cycles that revealed that plain and made much of the rest of the world unwelcoming to human life."
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The orign of humanity in South Africa II

The second post goes into more detail into the effect of the Volcanic Tobu eruption 74,000 years ago the caused a decades long catastrophic winter based on research of the South African sites. The first culturally advanced humans known that lesd to populate the world. The genetic evidence also traces modern human origins to this region of Africa.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-early-humans-volcanic-winter.html

Researchers study how early humans thrived through volcanic winter

UTA researcher Naomi Cleghorn has participated in a Nature paper that describes how humans thrived in South Africa through the Toba volcanic eruption about 74,000 years ago, which created a decades-long volcanic winter.

"We have demonstrated that in two sites along the south coast of South Africa that may have housed the origin population for all modern humans, our ancestors thrived through this volcanic event," Cleghorn, a UTA associate professor of sociology and anthropology, said.

"This may have been the combined result of the uniquely rich resource base of the region and a highly resilient adaptation - a hunting and gathering economy wielded by a modern human with an advanced cognition and high levels of cooperation," she added.

The scientific team found microscopic glass shards that had travelled nearly 9,000 kilometers from the eruption site and landed in the archeological sediments of two sites on the south coast of South Africa. One was a rockshelter at Pinnacle Point where people lived - sleeping at night, cooking food and sharing stories around the campfire. The others were at an open-air site just nine kilometers away, a location where humans collected stone and processed it for future tool manufacture.

"Finding the shards from Toba at these two sites means that we can link the sites at a temporal precision of about two weeks and say that the people at the sites were almost certainly of the same social group, and link activities at one site to the other," Cleghorn said. "For archaeologists, that is an extraordinary result."

Cleghorn began working with the Pinnacle Point archeological project directed by Dr. Curtis Marean of Arizona State University in 2011 and was invited to collaborate on the Toba project in 2012. After working on Pinnacle Point for four years she began research at her current site at Knysna, about 80 kilometers east of Pinnacle Point.

"We know that shortly after Toba, modern humans left Africa and conquered the planet," Cleghorn added. "My work at Pinnacle Point and now at Knysna aims to develop a high-resolution chronology of human evolution and social adaptation during that time."

The Toba shards provide a very reliable and precise means to date sites and could help tie together the chronologies of many sites across Southern Africa. Once two sites were identified, the process is extending to other sites, including Knysna, Cleghorn's current dig.

Naomi Cleghorn running the total station at the Pinnacle Point 5/6 site. Credit: UTA
UTA's support was instrumental in getting Cleghorn's project started at Knysna. Cleghorn used a Research Enhancement Program grant to run the initial test excavation, which provided the evidence needed to attract external funding for the project over several years from the Leakey Foundation, National Science Foundation, Templeton Foundation and Hyde Family Foundation. The College of Liberal Arts also supported research into mineral pigment use at the Knysna site.

So far, some dozen UTA students have participated in the Knysna field project, and this year Cleghorn is taking five current or former UTA students info the field with significant funding support.

"Naomi Cleghorn's work is foundational to paleosciences and her significant funding also demonstrates the value that leading foundations give to her work," said Elizabeth Cawthon, dean of UTA's College of Liberal Arts. "It is also cross-disciplinary work linking UTA's strategic themes of global environmental impact and sustainable urban communities."

© Copyright Original Sourc
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The origin of humanity in South Africa III

The genetic evidence supports the paleontological evidence for 'Out of Africa' origins of modern Homo Sapiens from South Africa. This is where the paleontological evidence correlates independently with the genetic evidence for the origin of modern humanity.

Source: New light on origins of modern humans

New light on origins of modern humans

Date: March 20, 2019
Source:
University of Huddersfield
Summary: The work confirms a dispersal of Homo sapiens from southern to eastern Africa immediately preceded the out-of-Africa migration.

The Huddersfield-Minho team of geneticists, led by Professor Martin Richards at Huddersfield and Dr Pedro Soares in Braga, along with the eminent Cambridge archaeologist Professor Sir Paul Mellars, have studied the maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA from Africans in unprecedented detail, and have identified a clear signal of a small-scale migration from South Africa to East Africa that took place at just that time, around 65,000 years ago. The signal is only evident today in the mitochondrial DNA. In the rest of the genome, it seems to have been eroded away to nothing by recombination -- the reshuffling of chromosomal genes between parents every generation, which doesn't affect the mitochondrial DNA -- in the intervening millennia.

The migration signal makes good sense in terms of climate. For most of the last few hundred years, different parts of Africa have been out of step with each other in terms of the aridity of the climate. Only for a brief period at 60,000-70,000 years ago was there a window during which the continent as a whole experienced sufficient moisture to open up a corridor between the south and the east. And intriguingly, it was around 65,000 years ago that some of the signs of symbolism and technological complexity seen earlier in South Africa start to appear in the east.

The identification of this signal opens up the possibility that a migration of a small group of people from South Africa towards the east around 65,000 years ago transmitted aspects of their sophisticated modern human culture to people in East Africa. Those East African people were biologically little different from the South Africans -- they were all modern Homo sapiens, their brains were just as advanced and they were undoubtedly cognitively ready to receive the benefits of the new ideas and upgrade. But the way it happened might not have been so very different from a modern isolated stone-age culture encountering and embracing western civilization today.

In any case, it looks as if something happened when the groups from the South encountered the East, with the upshot being the greatest diaspora of Homo sapiens ever known -- both throughout Africa and out of Africa to settle much of Eurasia and as far as Australia within the space of only a few thousand years.

Professor Mellars commented: "This work shows that the combination of genetics and archaeology working together can lead to significant advances in our understanding of the origins of Homo sapiens."

© Copyright Original Source
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
A new fossil discovery reveals the earliest known orign of mammals.

A fossil discovery reveals the earliest relative of modern mammals

A fossil discovery reveals the earliest relative of modern mammals

Over 300 million years ago, our ancestors diverged from the ancestors of reptiles and began the evolutionary journey towards becoming mammals.

What were these earliest ancestors like? For one, they looked nothing like modern mammals. The group known as synapsids — described as “mammal-like reptiles” — looked much more like reptiles but could be distinguished by a single large opening in the cheek, likely for jaw muscles. Synapsids slowly ascended to the top of the food chain, but we still know very little about the first 10 million years of synapsid evolution.

As PhD candidates in paleontology, we were all working on different aspects of early tetrapod — four-footed animals — evolution. The three of us led a diverse research team that revisited some fossils which had been described as an early reptile named Asaphestera, collected in Nova Scotia. Our study led to a number of surprising results, the most significant of which is our identification of Asaphestera as the earliest definitive synapsid fossil.

Joggins, a UNESCO World Heritage site
Originally named Chegoggin by the Mi’kmaq people, the fossil cliffs at Joggins, N.S., preserve the remains of a vast fossil forest that — 318 million years ago — would have been situated at the equator. Among the fossilized tree stumps and trunks, many of which are preserved in upright positions, is one of the richest fossil records of early tetrapods.

The significance of these expansive fossil beds was recognized centuries ago by some of the leading geologists and paleontologists of the 19th century, when Darwin’s theory of evolution was revolutionizing the field of biology. It was at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs that geologist Charles Lyell developed his foundational theory regarding the formation of coal and where Lyell and geologist Sir John William Dawson discovered what were, at the time, the earliest known fossils of land animals.

These animal fossils have since been periodically revisited, first by Irish paleontologist Margaret Steen in the 1920s and later by Canadian paleontologist Bob L. Carroll, the father of Canadian vertebrate paleontology and longtime professor at McGill University.



Photograph of an excavation team led by Hillary Maddin and Arjan Mann at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. (Hillary Maddin), Author provided
The mystery of mammalian origins
The earliest ancestors of mammals appeared more than 300 million years ago. However, just like the ancestors of other groups of living animals, like amphibians and birds, early synapsids looked nothing like modern mammals. In particular, distinguishing early synapsids from early reptiles can be a real challenge.



Photograph (A) and interpretive illustration (B) of the new Joggins synapsid, Asaphestera playtris. (Arjan Mann)
Although we thought we were studying only one animal, Asaphestera intermedia, one of our major findings was recognizing that what previous paleontologists had thought was a single animal was actually a composite of multiple fossils of at least three very different animals! We could only be certain of two of them: a new reptile we named Steenerpeton silvae and an early synapsid, Asaphestera platyris, with evidence of a single temporal opening in the skull.

The original convolution of these species highlights how subtle the differences were between early mammal ancestors and early reptiles, and the value of re-evaluating historic fossil collections to appraise their identity in light of more recent work. Asaphestera platyris provides the oldest evidence of mammal-like reptiles in the fossil record, establishing a firm date for their diversification around 315 million years ago.



Photograph (A) and interpretive drawing of the new Joggins reptile, Steenerpeton silvae. Letter abbreviations refer to different anatomical elements. (Arjan Mann)
Climate change and rainforest collapse
The fossil cliffs at Joggins preserve a time right before a period of drastic climate change. The period between 370 to 300 million years ago was a cold period in Earth’s history, with extensive ice sheets covering much of the Southern Hemisphere. Around 307 million years ago, the Earth began a process of global warming. This culminated in the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history approximately 50 million years later.

At the time, much of the equatorial region was covered in rainforests and tropical swamps, which were later fossilized as extensive coal layers across North America and Europe. When the warming began, these habitats dried up in an event called the Carboniferous rainforest collapse, which triggered a minor mass extinction in these biodiversity hot spots.

The survivors were all early representatives of modern animal groups, such as modern amphibians and modern reptiles, and showed adaptations for surviving in drier environments.

Joggins is unique in preserving an early glimpse of some of these modern groups before the Carboniferous rainforest collapse. What we find are animals that survived the rainforest collapse were living alongside many of the animals that went extinct, but were rarer, smaller and harder to identify, like Asaphestera. This flies in the face of some ideas about the origin of these later groups, which suggest that these more advanced animals originated at higher elevations or outside the tropics.

We still have a way to go to fully understand these earliest members of our own lineage, but these important fossils from Nova Scotia are pointing the way.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The earliest bug found on land, a millipede. Insects evolved on land with the beginning of land plants

https://phys.org/news/2020-05-world-oldest-bug-fossil-millipede.html

World's oldest bug is fossil millipede from Scotland
by University of Texas at Austin

T Austin scientists found that the fossil millipede Kampecaris obanensis was 425 million years old. Credit: British Geological Survey
A 425-million-year-old millipede fossil from the Scottish island of Kerrera is the world's oldest "bug"—older than any known fossil of an insect, arachnid or other related creepy-crawly, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

The findings offer new evidence about the origin and evolution of bugs and plants, suggesting that they evolved much more rapidly than some scientists believe, going from lake-hugging communities to complex forest ecosystems in just 40 million years.

"It's a big jump from these tiny guys to very complex forest communities, and in the scheme of things, it didn't take that long," said Michael Brookfield, a research associate at UT Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences and adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. "It seems to be a rapid radiation of evolution from these mountain valleys, down to the lowlands, and then worldwide after that."

"Who is right, us or them?" Catlos said. "We're setting up testable hypotheses—and this is where we are at in the research right now."

2-worldsoldest.jpg

When she was an undergraduate student at UT Austin, Stephanie Suarez developed a method for extracting minerals used in fossil dating. She is now a doctoral student at the University of Houston. Credit: Chris Watts, University of Houston

Given their potential evolutionary significance, Brookfield said that he was surprised that this study was the first to address the age of the ancient millipedes.

Suarez said a reason could be the difficulty of extracting zircons—a microscopic mineral needed to precisely date the fossils—from the ashy rock sediment in which the fossil was preserved. As an undergraduate researcher at the Jackson School, Suarez developed a technique for separating the zircon grain from this type of sediment. It's a process that takes practice to master. The zircons are easily flushed away when trying to loosen their grip on the sediment. And once they are successfully released from the surrounding rock, retrieving the zircons involves an eagle-eyed hunt with a pin glued to the tip of a pencil.

"That kind of work trained me for the work that I do here in Houston," Suarez said. "It's delicate work."

As an undergraduate, Suarez used the technique to find that a different millipede specimen, thought to be the oldest bug specimen at the time, was about 14 million years younger than estimated—a discovery that stripped it of the title of oldest bug. Using the same technique, this study passes the distinction along to a new specimen.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
Ken Ham is still a Young Earth creationist, regardless that he think evolution took place post-Flood, because he still believe in Genesis 1 & 2 creation myths.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
Does evolution produce evidence for beginning of life?
That’s Abiogenesis.

Evolution is about diversity, not about first life.

Diversity, such as speciation can occurred at any point in evolutionary history.

The earliest fossils are microfossils of microbes belonging to Bacteria. Most often these primitive bacteria are found fossilized in stromatolites, found in all eras and periods of Precambrian, EXCEPT the Hadean Era.

The Hadean Era is time that included pre-crust, pre-water and pre-oxygen.

Life only started in the Archean Era, which began roughly around 4 billion years ago. The oldest evidence of such fossils have been dated to about 3.5 billion years ago. Early bacteria were anaerobic organism - organisms that don’t require oxygen to live.

Free oxygen still didn’t exist in the Earth’s, until cyanobacteria became abundant around 2.6 billion years ago. Cyanobacteria with photosynthesis capability - using energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. Cyanobacteria existed for billions of years, before plants and vegetation exist on land (primitive land vegetation didn’t until after the Cambrian period, but I don’t know which period when first plants appear).

When the atmosphere became saturated with oxygen - known as the Great Oxygenated Event (GOE) - it led to the oldest and longest Ice Age (Huronian Glaciation) in Earth’s history, as well as the first mass extinction event. Almost all anaerobic bacteria became extinct.

So families and species of (domains) Bacteria and Archaea predated all Eukaryota (domain) from what we called animals (kingdom Animalia, which would include fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, insects, etc), plants (kingdom Plantae), fungi, and algae.

From what I understand about the Cambrian, even the famous trilobites predated plant life. And primitive jellyfish-like also predated land vegetation.

Which would mean that Genesis order of creation vegetation (3rd day) created before marine life (5th day) is wrong.

And land vegetation (3rd day) created before the sun, moon and stars (4th day), this order in Genesis is very wrong.

How life began is still a mystery, which different models of Abiogenesis are trying to work out, so unlike Evolution (which is “scientific theory”), Abiogenesis is still a work-in-progress “hypothesis”.
 
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