Tag Archives | natural history

Could Humanity Have Descended From Aquatic Apes?

By JacobSloan on April 29, 2013 in News 0

aquatic apes Are we all on team aqua ape? The admittedly far-fetched theory posits that certain key traits hint that humanity’s ape ancestors spent significant time in the water. Complete Genomics writes:

A controversial theory that humans evolved from amphibious apes has won new support. The aquatic ape theory, whose supporters include David Attenborough, suggests that apes emerged from the water, lost their fur, started to walk upright and then developed big brains.

While it has been treated with scorn by some scientists since it first emerged 50 years ago, it is backed by a committed group of academics, including Sir David. The group will hold a major London conference next week.

One of the organizers, Peter Rhys Evans told the Observer that humans are very different from other apes, as we lack fur, walk upright, have big brains and subcutaneous fat and have a descended larynx – which is common among aquatic animals.

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A Gamma Ray Blast Irradiated The Earth In The Eighth Century

By JacobSloan on January 27, 2013 in News 1

Radiation in centuries-old tree rings reveals what occurred. If the event were to repeat itself today, it could wreak havoc on humankind’s technology. Phys.org writes:

A nearby short duration gamma-ray burst may be the cause of an intense blast of high-energy radiation that hit the Earth in the 8th century, according to new research led by astronomers Valeri Hambaryan and Ralph Neuhӓuser, based at the Astrophysics Institute of the University of Jena in Germany.

In 2012 scientist Fusa Miyake announced the detection of high levels of the isotope Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 in tree rings formed in 775 CE, suggesting that a burst of radiation struck the Earth in the year 774 or 775.

Drs. Hambaryan and Neuhӓuser suggest that two compact stellar remnants, i.e. black holes, neutron stars or white dwarfs, collided and merged together. When this happens, some energy is released in the form of gamma rays. If they are right, then this would explain why no records exist of a supernova or auroral display.

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More Evidence Of Existence Of Ancient Hobbit People

By JacobSloan on January 14, 2013 in News 1

Via Popular Science, the newest research suggests that the three-foot-tall beings who lived in prehistoric Indonesia were not merely short or deformed humans, but a distinct species:

In 2003, researchers uncovered 18,000-year-old bones of a woman with a skull a third of the size of a human’s on the island of Flores, Indonesia. They subsequently found more remains belonging to up to nine similarly pint-sized prehistoric creatures. Nicknamed after the the J.R.R. Tolkien characters, they stood some 3 and a half feet tall.

A study published in Journal of Human Evolution last week shows hobbit wrists were markedly different from humans’, lending credence to the theory that they were a separate species from Homo sapiens. After studying the differences between the carpal bones of the Homo floresiensis remains discovered in 2004 and modern human and Neanderthal wrists, scientists says that hobbits weren’t just abnormally small humans.

Hobbits reached Indonesia by 1 million years ago, and went extinct 17,000 years ago.

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Louisiana Middle School Textbooks On Dinosaurs, Earth, Creation

By JacobSloan on November 21, 2012 in News 86

Buzzfeed has a selection of jaw-dropping excerpts from a 5th grade science textbook currently in use in state-sponsored schools in Louisiana. Included are the birth of the world thousands of years ago, dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, the sham of carbon dating, and, as an added bonus, the constant and exclusive use of only male pronouns in reference to human reasoning, judgement, and knowledge:

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Mysterious 450-Million-Year-Old Sea Monster Fossil Baffles Scientists

By JacobSloan on April 26, 2012 in News 7

King of the jellyfish? Or a giant, living, underwater doormat? Whatever your worst nightmare is, this ancient sea-bound entity could be it. LiveScience reports:

A mysterious fossil that has evoked images of a sea monster roaming the shallow waters of prehistoric Ohio [has] scientists stumped as to what kind of creature it was. One thing is sure: The enigmatic “blob” — discovered in elliptical pieces that, when fitted together, extended about 7 feet long, was once alive.

The team, along with the fossil hunter who discovered the 450-million-year-old specimen, suggest a range of possibilities: a type of huge algae or microbial mat, or even a member of the cnidarian family, which includes jellyfish (though scientists concede the jellyfish idea is highly unlikely).

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Human Arrival Blamed For Extinction Of Australia’s Giant Creatures

By JacobSloan on March 29, 2012 in News 23

Imagine if our ancestors hadn’t stumbled upon Australia, and the continent were still populated with its magically large fauna of thousands of years ago. UPI writes:

Human hunting caused the extinction of ancient giant animals, or “megafauna,” in Australia about 40,000 years ago, scientists say. A study has put the blame for the extinction of 600-pound kangaroos and birds twice the size of modern emus on humans rather than on climate change as was once thought.

“The debate really should be over now,” John Alroy, from Macquarie University in Sydney, said. “Hunting did it, end of story.” The researchers studied fungi found in the dung of large herbivores in cores of sediment from a fossilized swamp in Queensland dating back 130,000 years.

The study shows numbers of megafauna species were stable until 40,000 years ago despite two periods of climate change, the researchers said, suggesting newly arrived humans hunted the animals to extinction.

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NASA: Building Blocks Of DNA Come From Space

By JacobSloan on August 10, 2011 in News 11

Will Mormonism’s creation theory of the seed of humanity arriving on Earth from a distant planet turn out to be proved totally true? Geekosystem writes:

NASA researchers studying meteorites have found that they contain several of the components needed to make DNA on Earth. The discovery provides support for the idea that the building blocks for DNA were likely created in space, and carried to Earth on objects, like meteorites, that crashed into the planet’s surface. According to the theory, the ready-made DNA parts could have then assembled under Earth’s early conditions to create the first DNA.

The researchers, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, found adenine and guanine — two of the nucleobases needed to make DNA (the other two are thymine and cytosine, which were not found) — on meteorite samples. Additionally, the samples showed the presence of three molecules that are similar to nucleobases, but do not have a biological role on Earth: Purine, 2.6-diaminopurine, and 6.8-diaminopurine.

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New Zealand’s Lost ‘Eighth Wonder Of The World’ Found Deep Underwater

By JacobSloan on February 9, 2011 in News 0

Kiwi scientists have discovered portions of the Pink and White Terraces, a natural wonder which was ravaged by a 19th century volcanic blast. Sadly, the remnants are buried at the bottom of a lake, meaning they will remain hidden away from the eyes of humans. Science Daily reveals:

They were called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Until the late 19th century, New Zealand’s Pink and White Terraces along Lake Rotomahana on the North Island, attracted tourists from around the world, interested in seeing the beautiful natural formations created by a large geothermal system. But the eruption of Mt. Tarawera on June 10, 1886, buried the terraces in sediment and caused the lake basin to enlarge, engulfing the land where the terraces stood. For more than a century, people have speculated whether any part of the Pink and White Terraces survived the eruption.

This week, scientists from New Zealand’s GNS Science, in collaboration with engineers and scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and NOAA-PMEL, located portions of the long-lost Pink Terraces.

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A Third Of Texans Say Dinosaurs And Humans Coexisted

By JacobSloan on February 24, 2010 in News 18

Does a third of the population believe that “The Flinstones was a documentary”? In a poll, one out of three Texans say that humans and dinosaurs lived together at one point. Oh, and, the majority say that humanity did not develop from an earlier species. The Texas Tribune reports:

Nearly a third of Texans believe humans and dinosaurs roamed the earth at the same time, and more than half disagree with the theory that humans developed from earlier species of animals, according to the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

[Professor David] Prindle recall[s] a line from comedian Lewis Black. “He did a routine a few years back in which he said that a significant proportion of the American people think that the ‘The Flintstones’ is a documentary,” Prindle says. “Turns out he was right.”

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Did All Life Originate From A Proton-Powered Rock?

By JacobSloan on November 18, 2009 in News 0

New Scientist writes on the possible origin of life on Earth:

The most counter-intuitive trait of life could be one of the best clues to its origin. At one time everyone assumed that cells got their energy using straightforward chemical reactions. However, Nobel Prize-winning biologist Peter Mitchell argued, correctly, that life is powered not by the kind of chemistry that goes on in a test tube but by a kind of electricity; the energy from food is used to pump positively charged hydrogen ions, or protons, creating an electrochemical gradient.

Proton power drives not only cell respiration, but photosynthesis too: energy from the sun is converted into a proton gradient in essentially the same way as the energy of food. This suggests that proton power is no late innovation but evolved early in the history of life, an idea supported by the tree of life. The obvious explanation is that both inherited this machinery from a common ancestor – the progenitor of all life on Earth…