Ancestors

A comprehensive new study has examined the diets of the earliest dinosaurs and found that, unsurprisingly, they included carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. But what is surprising is that the ancestors of many of the most famous herbivores – like Triceratops and Brachiosaurus – originally ate meat.When you picture dinosaurs, most people think of the classic giants – the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, the horned Triceratops, or the long-necked Brachiosaurus. But these iconic species all arose fairly late in the game,…

On a Sabbath Saturday in March 1349, the Jewish community of Erfurt was wiped out in a pogrom. The archbishop of Mainz, who had granted Jews the right to live and work in the medieval German city, tried the pogrom’s ringleaders, local merchants and city council members who owed money to Jewish money lenders. One was executed and the rest exiled. The city’s Christian population, meanwhile, was forced to pay restitution. Five years later, a…

The scientists believe there are at least three wild ‘mystery ancestors’.Scientists are peeling back ancient layers of banana DNA in order to find the “mystery ancestors” before they go extinct.It is believed that humans domesticated bananas for the first time 7,000 years ago on the island of New Guinea. However, the history of banana domestication is complicated, and the distinction between species and subspecies is often unclear.A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science reveals that this history is…

Overview of the variation in color for charred (A) and combusted (B) bone exposed to pH 3 and pH 12 conditions. Credit: Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-21622-5 The use of fire can tell us a lot about human evolution. Archaeologist Femke Reidsma has developed a more accurate technique to identify how our ancestors used fire, implying that existing archaeological studies may need to be revised. Reidsma's study…

Credit: PLOS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273984 The interior of Central Asia has been identified as a key route for some of the earliest hominin migrations across Asia in a new study led by Dr. Emma Finestone, Assistant Curator of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Research Affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.…

The oldest chambered hearts have been discovered in fossils from Western Australia. The two-chambered organs, which date back about 380 million years, are preserved within remarkable three-dimensional fossils of ancient, armored fish called placoderms, which were the first vertebrates to develop jaws more than 400 million years ago. These jawed fish represent an evolutionary leap toward the body plan present in most animals with a backbone today—including humans. The fossils reveal that it didn’t take long for evolution…

We have two books for you this week in the Small Press Spotlight. HighWater Press is set to release Books 3 and 4 of their Sk’ad’a Stories Series this week, Returning to the Yakoun River and Dancing With My Ancestors. A father-daughter collaboration between internationally renowned contemporary artist Robert Davidson and educator Sara Florence Davidson, the first two installments in the series have received critical acclaim nationwide for their showcasing of the importance of intergenerational learning in preserving…

Accompanying the book of the same name, Iain Sinclair extends his psychogeographic franchise out to the New World in this lightly dramatised documentary, which traces the 1891 trek of his great-grandfather Arthur Sinclair into the Amazon jungle to set up a coffee plantation for the Peruvian Corporation of London. Kicking off with testimony from the Asháninka people whose land was hijacked, his stated aim is a Conradian voyage upriver – only reversing the “romance” surrounding the colonial plunder of the time and still…

An ancient leg bone found near the famed skull of a human ancestor is providing new evidence that our lineage may have been walking upright 7 million years ago. A partial thighbone and two lower arm bones from Chad’s Djurab Desert suggest a species known as Sahelanthropus tchadensis ambled along on two legs, as well as spending some time in the trees, according to a new study. If the creature did walk upright, it’s a “huge” discovery, says Dan Lieberman, a Harvard University…

In spite of their reputation as living dinosaurs, birds have come a long way since the days of T. rex and friends. Gone is the toothy rostrum, replaced by the more familiar beak. Their skeletons have adapted for flight, as have their forelimbs. Even their pelvis is twisted into a shape that their more ancient ancestors would barely recognize.  These changes weren't spontaneous developments, nor are they absolute. For a brief period early in their development, in fact, birds of all variety grow a pelvis that wouldn't have…