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10000-Year-Old Bison Mummy Could Provide Clues to Species Extinction

November 9, 2014 By Brian Galloway Leave a Comment

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Stashed under frozen ground for pretty much 10,000 years, a very well-maintained bison mummy is finally ready to reveal its secrets.

Way back in 2011, people from the Yukagir tribe in northern Siberia discovered the remains of the steppe bison (Bison priscus), an extinct ancestor from the modern bison that also roam the flatlands of The United States and northern Europe. The perfectly maintained bison was moved to the Yakutian Academy of Sciences in Siberia, where scientists aims to perform an autopsy on the animal.

Olga Potapova, the collections curator and manager at the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs in South Dakota, who helped study the ancient mammal said, “Over the years, several other steppe bison mummies have been discovered but none was as well-maintained as the Yukagir bison mummy, that was discovered with its organs almost completely intact.”

Potapova told Live Science, “Usually, which you find with the mummies of megafauna in The United States or Siberia is partial carcasses. They are partially eaten or destroyed because they are lying within the permafrost from 1000’s of years. Though, the mummy was maintained very well it [achieved] an archive for the level of its upkeep.”

Potapova stated that the Yukagir bison died at the young age, at approximately four years old. The bison’s abdomen reveals that the animal died of starvation.

The researcher stated, “Apart from that missing layer of body fat, the bison was perfectly-maintained, with its heart, bloodstream ships and digestive tract found relatively intact, however a few of the organs had shrunk considerably.” The specimen is so well-maintained that we could get tissue samples from each organ, Potapova added.

Albert Protopopov, chief of the mammoth fauna research department at the Yakutian Academy of Sciences said, the bison mummy’s brain seemed to be perfectly-maintained and this for the first time ever that the steppe bison’s brain tissue has been discovered intact, Protopopov told Live Science via Potapova, who translated his statements.

The bison’s brain was taken off the animal’s skull for more study, and the preliminary histology – or study of the brain tissue – is still in progress, Protopopov added.

Natalia Serduk, a senior investigator in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, who’s also active in the study said, “Additionally to removing the bison’s brain, the scientists also took off its internal organs, to review the tissue. The aim of the study would be to gather data relating to this ancient bison that may then be utilized to compare it to modern bison species.”

The scientists will also be particularly thinking about the ancient parasites that once plagued this mammal, Serduk told Live Science via Potapova. As the steppe bison’s DNA wasn’t maintained, the scientists took tissue from the animal’s lungs, liver and digestive tract to discover the mitochondrial DNA of parasites that once fed on the bison. Serduk said, “This mitochondrial DNA may then accustomed to determine more exactly how long ago the animal lived.”

Potapova stated, “Anatomy, physiology, genetics – these provide us with excellent information to create the bison’s habitat, behavior and elegance of existence. When we get all of this information, we’ll have the ability to pin down the actual causes of the extinction of the species.”

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Berlin and will be published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology soon.

Bizarre ‘Fish Lizard,’ The Oldest Of Its Kind, Unearthed by Paleontologists

November 6, 2014 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

Recently, the researchers found a 248 million year old fossil of an ancient reptile in China, which is believed to be the oldest known member of a well-known group of marine reptiles, and might have lived both on land and in the sea.

The researchers revealed that the specimen is an ancient type of ichthyopterygian, a group related to ichthyosaurs, which are large marine reptiles that dominated the world’s oceans after the Permian-Triassic extinction. At that time, approximately 252 million years ago, around 96% of marine animals and 70% of land animals went extinct. Researchers said, the recently discovered fossil provides new evidence that ichthyosaurs evolved from creatures that lived on land. The study is published in the Nature journal on 5^th Nov.

The lead-author of the study and a geologist at Peking University in China, Da-yong Jiang said, “This new animal is a link between the terrestrial ancestor and the ichthyosaurs fully adapted to a life in the sea.”

Ichthyosaurs, which is a Greek name for “fish lizard,” lived from about 248 million to 95 million years ago. The group was extremely diverse, with body lengths ranging from less than 3.3 feet (1 meter) to more than 66 feet (20 m).

Jiang told Live Science in an email, “So far, all known ichthyosaur fossils came from animals that lived exclusively in the ocean, and there was a huge gap in the fossil record between them and their ancestors. Scientists didn’t know whether their ancestors were reptiles or amphibians, and if they lived on land or not.”

The recent specimen named “Cartorhynchus lenticarpus” discovered by Jiang and his team is the smallest known ichthyosaur-type creature — only about 1.3 feet (0.4 m) long. “We think the animal is fully grown, but cannot rule out the possibility that the fossil is the remains of an immature form of a larger creature,” researchers say.

In contrast to other ichthyosaurs, the new specimen has oddly large flippers that perhaps limited its ability to get around on land, making it similar to a modern seal. It also has a short muzzle and body trunk, like other land reptiles, the researchers said.

Jiang said, “The animal was probably a suction feeder on the seafloor, and may have eaten worms or eel-like creatures called conodonts. The fossil is quite complete and well-preserved; just part of the animal’s tail is missing.”

The fossil is discovered during an excavation in Chaohu, South China, in 2011. During the dig, researchers found several skeletons of ancient ichthyosaurs and extinct aquatic reptiles called sauropterygians, as well as fishes and other creatures.

Sine 2002, Jiang and his colleagues have been doing excavations in South China, looking for the first ichthyosaur that “jumped into the sea,” he said, so the new discovery “is a milestone after our hard work for more than 10 years.”

Oldest Human Genome- 45,000 Year Old Neanderthals Femur Bone

October 24, 2014 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

A thigh bone nearly 45,000 years old brings up several unanswered questions in the researchers’ minds. It compels experts to think the degree of intimation between modern man and Stone Age ancestors.

The leg bone was discovered from the banks of the Irtysh River of Siberia in 2008. A Russian artist accidently got hold of the oldest bone of the human species that passed it to a native paleontologist. After several months paleontologist l supplied it to another group in Leipzig.

It amazed researchers to know the original age of the bone. The DNA informed that the man is approximately 43,000 to 47,000 years old. Bence Viola, co-author of the study reported that the bone was so pretty fossilized.

Moreover, the bone pointed out numerous things related to the interaction of Neanderthals with Africans and other people. It indicated the time period at which modern humans and Neanderthals first matted.

The most interesting thing is that the bone contains nearly two percent of the genome of Neanderthals. The ratio is almost similar to the amount of genome found in modern Africans.

Live Science stated that Neanderthals DNA piece means that the H.sapiens started matting with Neanderthals almost 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.

However, the connection between this pre-historic species and modern man are still in the dark. Merely the human migration of Africa to Eurasia supports the relationship of the two species. Eurasia came across Neanderthals nearly 60,000 years ago. The two groups matted because of which Neanderthals DNA was transferred in the modern human being.

This report signifies that every person on this Earth has 1 or 4 percent of Neanderthals DNA in his body.

Hawaii Might Be At Risk for Massive Tsunami, Researchers Revealed!

October 21, 2014 By Deborah Nielsen 2 Comments

Hawaii, a benign place considered by many as “paradise,” unveils a dark past. A buried debris pile uncovered by researchers revealed that the destructive earthquake, which brought a tsunami on the Hawaii’s Kauai Island about 500 years ago, hinting a similar event might hit Hawaii’s shores in the near future.

“The earthquake with the magnitude of 9.0 happened in Alaska and brought 30-foot tall waves to Hawaii between 1425 and 1665. In contrast, the resulting tsunami was at least 3 times the size of a tsunami that caused damage in Hawaii in 1946,” LiveScience reported.

David Burney, a paleoecologist at the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kalaheo, discovered the site back in the late 1990s, but his theory that a massive tsunami left the ocean debris found in the sinkhole was not verified until now.

In a recent study, Honolulu officials have modified their tsunami evacuation maps in case a destructive tsunami hits the region of around a million residents. As per the American Geophysical Union press release, the evacuation areas will be more than double in some locations on the new maps. A tsunami, to the size of the one in the study is projected to happen once every 1000 years, making the odds that it will happen in any given year quite small at 1%.

The sinkhole left by the tsunami that struck 500 years ago holds a layer of sediment with distinct traces of the ocean: coral fragments, mollusk shells and beach sand. The sediment remained a mystery until the 2011 Tohoku earthquake hit Japan and pulled tall, damaging waves inland to flood the island nation.

“The Japan’s earthquake was bigger than almost any seismologist ever thought. The live coverage showed the devastation it caused, I wonder, did we get it right in Hawaii? Are our evacuation zones the correct size?” he added.

Gerald Fryer, a geophysicist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center but not participated in the study said, “I have seen the deposit and I’m absolutely convinced it’s a tsunami, and it had to be a monster tsunami.”

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