The mode and tempo of extinctions and extirpations after the first contact phase of human settlements is a widely debated topic. As the last major landmass to be settled by humans, New Zealand offers a unique lens through which to study interactions of people and biota. By analyzing ancient DNA …
A FOSSIL jawbone, which was discovered in March near Inverloch, about 150 kilometres southeast of Melbourne, Australia, might change all that we know about the evolution of mammals. The established view is that almost all mammals - including humans - are placentals which originated in the northern hemisphere more than …
Lee Schiel, an amateur palaeontologist and a dealer in rare fossils in Los Angeles, USA, has claimed to have discovered a dinosaur egg containing an embryo of the prehistoric creature. His find is yet to be studied by experts. Schiel released a CAT scan image at a press conference on …
Scientists in Australia have claimed to have found the fossilised skeleton of what might have been the biggest bird that ever lived. The existence of the ostrich-like Dromornis stritone has been known for years, but the specimen found at Alcoota near Alice Springs, Australia, would be as heavy as a …
have we descended from cannibals? A bioarchaeologist and a paleoanthropologist through independent research studies have both established that cannibalism was practised intensively from the early days of human evolution ( Science , Vol 227, No 5326). In 1967, when bioarchaeologist Christy G Turner II of the Arizona State University found …
THE last common ancestor of modern humans and their extinct cousins, the Neanderthals, may have been found. The claim was made by Spanish palaeontologists after they found 800,000-year-old fossils, in May, in an ancient lime- stone cave in Spain, which they say represent an entirely new species. Other scientists are, …
Norman MacLeod of the Natural History Museum in London and his team suggest that most dinosaurs died due to changes in the earthly environment some 65 million years ago than due to exotic visitors like asteroids. They studied the fossil record of extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous period
scientists in Britain and Germany studying fossilised protozoans in the Southern Atlantic believe that ocean currents in Antarctica may have triggered regular growth spurts in Arctic ice sheets over the past 14,0000 years. This finding may lead to better predictions of the rate of global warming (New Scientist, Vol 154, …
Dinosaurs in Maharashtra? Hundreds of dinosaur eggs found buried just below the surface in Pisdura town in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra, provide strong evidence for this conjecture. Bone fragments and faecal matter of the reptiles have also been found. This evidence lends strength to the contention that all the dinosaurs …
the possibility of life on Mars has been given a jolt by two new analyses, one published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta and the other accepted for publication by the same journal. This could well end claims made by nasa scientist David McKay and his team in August 1996, of …
stromatolites, considered to be the most abundant fossils in rocks representing the first two to three billion years of Earth's history, may not be fossils at all. Instead, they could very well be just fossil-like structures, as revealed by the recent findings of John Grotzinger and Daniel Rothman of the …
A 2.33 millioan-year-old human jaw was discovered late last year on a barren slope at Hadar in northern Ethiopia. An international team of American, Ethiopian and Israeli scientists which found the new maxilla, announced that it is possibly the "oldest securely dated Homo'. But the team said that more fossils …
it was a troika of human species which inhabited the expanse of earth, together, as recently as 30,000 years ago. New research findings suggest that Homo sapiens, Homo erectus and Neanderthals did not occupy different rungs of the ladder of evolution as was believed; instead, they could have coexisted. Led …
after the Jurassic park, it is now the turn of a Triassic insect park. Unlike the make-belief Jurassic park which re-created the age of the dinosaurs, the Triassic insect park is real and original in that it existed millions of years ago. What remains of the park now is an …
according to a new study by William Thomas, a geologist at the University of Kentucky, us , a large chunk of the eastern foothills of the Argentine Andes was once a part of North America. About 535 million years ago, a piece roughly the combined size of Portugal and Spain …
A recent discovery of the 26 million year old fossil of Eomys quercyi , in Enspel, Germany, has revealed that it was a four-inch long gliding animal with a membrane, similar to that of flying squirrels. The elbow on the E quercyi's forelimb had a bony spur which is common …
New findings by scientists at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, US, and the University of GuizhouinChina, have indicated that a collection of fossils known as Peking Man, is at least 100,000 years older than believed. These discoveries could further explairi the evolutioll of humans in Asia. They …
A fossilised jaw discovered last year in the Yuanqu river basin, in the southern part of China's Shanxi province is probably an early ancestor of the modern monkey, ape and even humans. Scientists at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, US, and the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and …
British scientist Chris Hill discovered the world's oldest flower recently in 130-million-year-old clay rocks in the south of England. Christened Bevhalstia pebja and belonging to the Cretaceous period, this plant fossil is a 25-cm high herb and has aquatic roots. It combines a primitive fern-like anatomy and leaves with more …
The Denakil desert of Eritrea in Africa has turned out to be another exploration site for human fossils. In December last year, a team of Eritrean and Italian scientists led by Ernesto Abbate from the University of Florence in Italy, recovered well- preserved parts of a two-million- year-old human fossil …
A RECENT expedition to New Jersey organised by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US, returned with a sizable haul from the fossilised world. The team led by David Grimaldi uncovered one of the richest deposits of amber ever found. The deposits found in central New Jersey …
