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Rewriting the history of the Boaz mastodon

Carrie Eaton, curator of collections at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum, displays a bone that revealed the true history of the museum’s famous mastodon skeleton. Credit: Jeff Miller

Through a combination of modern-day scientific sleuthing, historical detective work, and a plethora of persistence, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have rewritten the story of a celebrated mastodon whose skeleton has been on display for a century.
Two years ago, Carrie Eaton, curator of collections at the university’s Geology Museum, began searching for a way to honor the centennial of the Boaz mastodon, which went on display in 1915. The elephant-like creature is arguably one of the most famous fossils in Wisconsin

Mastodons and mammoths were two of the more than 40 large mammals that roamed North America toward the end of the last Ice Age. Mastodons were smaller than their mammoth cousins, which are more closely related to modern-day elephants. Both died out in the Midwest after the glaciers retreated.

Eaton visited UW Archives, looking for records that might reveal more about the Boaz mastodon’s discovery and how it ended up at the university. The deeper she and UW Archives Director David Null dug, the more surprises they uncovered.

“It got complicated because a couple of mastodons were found at the same time,” says Null.

In July 1898, Dean E.A. Birge wrote E.F. Riley, secretary of the UW-Madison Board of Regents, describing a “considerable number of bones” that had washed out of a ravine “not far from Fennimore,” about 70 miles west of Madison. E.R. Buckley, assistant geologist at the Wisconsin Geological Survey, paid $75 for them because he knew “Professor (Charles) Van Hise was desirous of obtaining mastodon bones with the design of gradually accumulating enough to make a complete skeleton.”

Newspaper articles from that time—published in outlets like the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Wisconsin State Journal, the LaCrosse Tribune and the Fennimore Times Review—described two separate discoveries of mastodon bones in southwestern Wisconsin, just a year apart.

The first was at Boaz, in July 1897, uncovered by four boys on the Dosch family farm. Buckley visited the site, detailed in his field notes the bones found there and purchased them for $50.

The second was at Anderson Mills in July 1898, found after a heavy rain by young Harry Anderson on his way to the field for a day of work.

Museum curator Eaton, puzzling over this information, remembered a set of intriguing photographs a visitor had shown her a decade earlier.

“He came to the museum with photos of these bones from Anderson Mills, asking if we knew where they were,” says Eaton. “At the time, the answer was no.”

The photos had been filed away, like many remnants of the past that fill the cabinets and drawers of Weeks Hall. The museum is home to 120,000 geological and paleontological specimens and exhibits that draw more than 50,000 visitors each year.

Eaton dug them out: rich photographs of a spread of mastodon bones, the family who found them and Buckley himself, who was at Anderson Mills following the find. She noticed something: a piece of the mastodon’s femur, at the kneecap end, was broken off. She wondered, could she find a bone in the museum with that very break?

She scanned and enlarged a photograph and brought it to the specimen in the museum for comparison. But it was difficult to tell, because in 1913, as workers prepared and mounted the bones for display, they had covered them in plaster and painted over them, masking many of their superficial features.

Working with museum scientist Dave Lovelace and staff at the Wisconsin Institute for Medical Research, Eaton put the femur through a CT scan, a type of medical X-ray, to see if she could find the break.

She also scanned a pair of ribs she thought might be from Anderson Mills, which had been described in the newspaper articles as “knitted” – a phenomenon caused by bone fractures that healed while the mastodon was still living.

The images she got back were convincing. She then inspected the rest of the skeleton and noted how the natural staining on the elements she had scanned matched most of the other bones. Just two of the bones were notably different in their appearance: the first left rib and the right tibia.

Eaton sent genetic samples from those two bones to McMaster University’s Ancient DNA Centre in Ontario, Canada, as well as samples from the left femur and humerus, which were stained like most of the other bones on display. She also sent samples from these four bones to a radiocarbon dating lab to determine their ages.

Her work confirmed that the right tibia and left first rib were likely from the same animal and that they are 700 to 800 years younger than the bones from Anderson Mills, which make up most of the mounted skeleton. For now, only these two bones can be attributed to the Boaz mastodon.

However, the age of the Boaz bones—which date to roughly 12,100 years ago—indicates the animal could have been among the “last mastodons standing,” Eaton says, placing it just before their Midwest extinction. A colleague at the Illinois State Museum, Chris Wigda, is piecing together that story.

So how did the entire mastodon end up attributed to the two-bone find at Boaz, leaving the Anderson Mills discovery forgotten?

“We assume both sat somewhere in Science Hall and it’s possible the labels got mixed up or the material got co-mingled and they mounted the skeleton thinking everything they had was from Boaz,” Eaton says.

For her, the story is far from over, as the project has raised more questions she and the Geology Museum staff—including Director Rich Slaughter and Assistant Director Brooke Norsted—would like to answer.

For now, the staff are planning outreach efforts throughout Dane County, teaching children more about Ice Age beasts and the “new” stories of the Boaz and Anderson Mills mastodons. This includes printing a 3D replica of the femur that provided the crucial evidence.

With funding from the American Girl Fund for Children, the Friends of the Geology Museum, and the Brittingham Trust—which was founded by a UW-Madison alumnus who attended the university when the mastodon was first mounted—they are also working on a new museum exhibit.

Eaton continues to try to reach relatives of the Anderson family to let them know their role in Wisconsin’s fossil record. On the backs of the pivotal photographs donated to the museum is the name W. Paul Dietzman, grandson of the original J.W. Anderson, Harry Anderson’s father. Dietzman, a decorated World War II veteran and UW-Madison alumnus, passed away in 2001.

“I would imagine that somewhere out there are some Anderson relatives who would love to hear this story,” Eaton says. “I only wish I could be the one to tell them.”

Video

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Linking superconductivity and structure

This is the tetragonal crystal structure of NaFe2As2, courtesy of Alexander Goncharov. Sodium (Na) is represented by the black balls, iron (Fe) by the red balls, and arsenic (As) by the yellow balls. Courtesy of Alexander Goncharov. Credit: Alexander Goncharov

Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity–maintain a flow of electrons–without any resistance. It can only be found in certain materials, and even then it can only be achieved under controlled conditions of low temperatures and high pressures. New research from a team including Carnegie’s Elissaios Stavrou, Xiao-Jia Chen, and Alexander Goncharov hones in on the structural changes underlying superconductivity in iron arsenide compounds–those containing iron and arsenic. It is published by Scientific Reports.
Although superconductivity has many practical applications for electronics (including scientific research instruments), medical engineering (MRI and NMR machines), and potential future applications including high-performance power transmission and storage, and very fast train travel, the difficulty of creating superconducting materials prevents it from being used to its full potential. As such, any newly discovered superconducting ability is of great interest to scientists and engineers.

Iron arsenides are relatively recently discovered superconductors. The nature of superconductivity in these particular materials remains a challenge for modern solid state physics. If the complex links between superconductivity, structure, and magnetism in these materials are unlocked, then iron arsenides could potentially be used to reveal superconductivity at much higher temperatures than previously seen, which would vastly increase the ease of practical applications for superconductivity.

When iron arsenide is combined with a metal–such as in the sodium-containing NaFe2As2 compound studied here–it was known that the ensuing compound is crystallized in a tetrahedral structure. But until now, a detailed structure of the atomic positions involved and how they change under pressure had not been determined.

The layering of arsenic and iron (As-Fe-As) in this structure is believed to be key to the compound’s superconductivity. However, under pressure, this structure is thought to be partially misshapen into a so-called collapsed tetragonal lattice, which is no longer capable of superconducting, or has diminished superconducting ability.

The team used experimental evidence and modeling under pressure to actually demonstrate these previously theorized structural changes–tetragonal to collapsed tetragonal–on the atomic level. This is just the first step toward definitively determining the link between structure and superconductivity, which could potentially make higher-temperature superconductivity a real possibility.

They showed that at about 40,000 times normal atmospheric pressure (4 gigapascals), NaFe2As2 takes on the collapsed tetragonal structure. This changes the angles in the arsenic-iron-arsenic layers and is coincident with the loss in superconductivity. Moreover, they found that this transition is accompanied by a major change in bonding coordination in the formation of the interlayer arsenic-arsenic bonds. A direct consequence of this new coordination is that the system loses its two-dimensionality, and with it, superconductivity.

“Our findings are an important step in identifying the hypothesized connection between structure and superconductivity in iron-containing compounds,” Goncharov said. “Understanding the loss of superconductivity on an atomic level could enhance our ease of manufacturing such compounds for practical applications, as well as improving our understanding of condensed matter physics.”

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Carnegie Institution.

Glacier changes at the top of the world

Researchers taking measurements in the Mera Glacier region of the Dudh Kosi basin. Credit: Patrick Wagnon

If greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, glaciers in the Everest region of the Himalayas could experience dramatic change in the decades to come. A team of researchers in Nepal, France and the Netherlands have found Everest glaciers could be very sensitive to future warming, and that sustained ice loss through the 21st century is likely. The research is published today (27 May) in The Cryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
“The signal of future glacier change in the region is clear: continued and possibly accelerated mass loss from glaciers is likely given the projected increase in temperatures,” says Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal, and leader of the study.

The glacier model used by Shea and his team shows that glacier volume could be reduced between 70% and 99% by 2100. The results depend on how much greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, and on how this will affect temperature, snowfall and rainfall in the area.”Our results indicate that these glaciers may be highly sensitive to changes in temperature, and that increases in precipitation are not enough to offset the increased melt,” says Shea. Increased temperatures will not only increase the rates of snow and ice melt, but can also result in a change of precipitation from snow to rain at critical elevations, where glaciers are concentrated. Together, these act to reduce glacier growth and increase the area exposed to melt.

Glaciers in High Mountain Asia, a region that includes the Himalayas, contain the largest volume of ice outside the polar regions. The team studied glaciers in the Dudh Kosi basin in the Nepal Himalaya, which is home to some of the world’s highest mountain peaks, including Mt Everest, and to over 400 square kilometres of glacier area. “Apart from the significance of the region, glaciers in the Dudh Kosi basin contribute meltwater to the Kosi River, and glacier changes will affect river flows downstream,” says Shea.

Changes in glacier volume can impact the availability of water, with consequences for agriculture and hydropower generation. While increased glacier melt initially increases water flows, ongoing retreat leads to reduced meltwater from the glaciers during the warmer months, with greatest impact for the local populations before the monsoon when rainfall is scarce. Glacier retreat can also result in the formation and growth of lakes dammed by glacial debris. Avalanches and earthquakes can breach the dams, causing catastrophic floods that can result in river flows 100 times greater than normal in the Kosi basin.

To find out how glaciers in the region will evolve in the future, the team started by using field observations and data from local weather stations to calibrate and test a model of glacier change over the past 50 years. “To examine the sensitivity of modelled glaciers to future climate change, we then applied eight temperature and precipitation scenarios to the historical temperature and precipitation data and tracked how glacier areas and volumes responded,” says study co-author Walter Immerzeel of Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Part of the glacier response is due to changes in the freezing level, the elevation where mean monthly temperatures are 0°C. “The freezing level currently varies between 3200 m in January and 5500 m in August. Based on historical temperature measurements and projected warming to the year 2100, this could increase by 800-1200m,” says Immerzeel. “Such an increase would not only reduce snow accumulations over the glaciers, but would also expose over 90% of the current glacierized area to melt in the warmer months.”

The researchers caution, however, that the results published in The Cryosphere should be seen as a first approximation to how Himalayan glaciers will react to increasing temperatures in the region. Patrick Wagnon, a visiting scientist at ICIMOD and glaciologist at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Grenoble, France, says: “Our estimates need to be taken very cautiously, as considerable uncertainties remain.” For example, the model simplifies glacier movements, which impact how glaciers respond to increases in temperature and precipitation.

But the researchers stress in the paper that “the signal of future glacier change in the region is clear and compelling” and that decreases in ice thickness and extent are expected for “even the most conservative climate change scenario.”

Reference:
J. M. Shea, W. W. Immerzeel, P. Wagnon, C. Vincent, and S. Bajracharya. Modelling glacier change in the Everest region, Nepal Himalaya . DOI:10.5194/tc-9-1105-2015

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by European Geosciences Union.

3D geological tour of the Guadalquivir basin using Google Earth

Distribution of thematic layers on a scale of 1:50,000 over the satellite images of Google Earth. Above shows the area left of the Strait of Gibraltar. Credit: USAL; Image courtesy of Plataforma SINC

A team from the University of Salamanca has developed a tool that allows a 3D journey in ten sites of geological and palaeontological interest in the Guadalquivir basin (Huelva, Spain). In the virtual tour, developed with Google Earth, you can visit and explore treasures of this area, such as records of the opening of the Atlantic Ocean, using tablets and smartphones.
Researchers from the University of Salamanca (USAL) have designed a geological and palaeontological virtual tour in 3D in which various locations can be viewed around Huelva. The tour includes, among many other conserved treasures, five-million-year-old marine fossils. The results of the project have been published in the journal Environmental Earth Sciences.

As Antonio M. Graña, professor in the Geology department at this university and co-author of the study, comments, “the objective is to showcase the geological and palaeontological heritage of the area and generate educational resources and research.”

Building on the extensive experience of the team in the Upper Neogene deposits in the province of Huelva, on the western edge of the Guadalquivir basin, “we wanted to do something different to bring geology and palaeontology closer to earth science students, using the abilities of Google Earth and everyday technologies such as tablets and smartphones.”

In particular, Graña indicates that geo-informatics tools have been applied, such as the geographical information system ArcGis 10.2, “to produce a virtual 3D tour of the geo-referenced sites including multiple digital layers grouped by geological and topographical maps, digital terrain models and orthophotos.”

The educational resources generated, which include a virtual route, flight simulator, field notebook with questionnaires, videos and augmented reality, are implemented with models and mapping. They can be downloaded free of charge from the homepages of the Spanish Geology and Mining Institute (Instituto Geológico y Minero de España) and the National Geographical Institute (Instituto Geografico Nacional).

Google Earth’s free virtual globe

Each stop on the route of the ten interest sites selected “contains descriptive and graphical elements which can be seen on Google Earth’s free virtual globe, together with diagrams, photographs and information factsheets to quantitatively evaluate the scientific, educational and cultural value of each site of geographical and palaeontological interest,” the expert highlights.

Using this 3D digital geological database, a virtual flight route is proposed which can be shown in video format and is compatible with smartphones and tablets.

As the professor says “When you start getting closer with these virtual flights you can see how the geological mapping is superimposed on the orthophotographs loaded in Google Earth. We can zoom in or out to get closer to or distance ourselves from the geosite, analysing the geological context of the study sector. The tool also gives us an overall spatial view of the route and places us on the different geological and palaeontological materials available in 3D.”

The tour also allows us to observe the topographical position and the sequence with other lithologies. To enhance the virtual tour, “each stop is bursting with graphical documentation from the different information factsheets, field photographs of the actual outcrop and even sometimes includes the Google streetview option to analyse the structure and the outcrop that we want to visit on the route,” he adds.

The virtual flight can directly record a route in which the different layers that are superimposed on the satellite image and aerial photos of Google Earth can be activated or deactivated.

“The flight can be created directly from the computer keyboard or by guiding the flight simulator with a joystick.” It can fly over the map and geosites as if it were a videogame and you can choose different types of plane and observe the different panoramas using the controls,” says Graña.

Ten geological stops

The ten geosites on the geological and palaeontological tour of the Guadalquivir basin have been selected for different reasons. “Some have records of the opening of the Atlantic ocean in the Mesozoic, such as pillow lavas (similar to that found in the Atlantic part of Iceland) located between the towns of Niebla and Bonares, next to the Seville-Huelva motorway,” he adds.

Another of these locations “contains five-million-year-old marine fossils which are found in the same place in which they lived, which allows for palaeoecological interpretations of the characteristics of the Pliocene sea.” This site is in a place known as Casa del Pino, next to Bonares.

The virtual 3D tour also includes geological stops located in places where scientific surveys have been made up to 250 metres in depth in which many environmental changes have been dated with great accuracy by studying calcareous microplankton (next to the bullring in Huelva and next to the Montemayor chapel in Moguer). Graña explains that these explorations are mentioned in numerous international publications.

The team from USAL does not limit itself to the area of the Guadalquivir basin in its projects. It has also made a 3D geological tour of the Protected National Park of Las Batuecas (Salamanca) and is now developing a 3D georoute on foot of a stretch of the Portuguese Algarve.

Other initiatives include similar routes relating to the Miocene in Lisbon, one of the most representatives in Europe, as well as on Lanzarote and the island of Maio (Cape Verde), concludes Graña.

Reference:
J. A. González-Delgado, A. M. Martínez-Graña, J. Civis, F. J. Sierro, J. L. Goy, C. J. Dabrio, F. Ruiz, M. L. González-Regalado, M. Abad. Virtual 3D tour of the Neogene palaeontological heritage of Huelva (Guadalquivir Basin, Spain). Environmental Earth Sciences, 2014; 73 (8): 4609 DOI: 10.1007/s12665-014-3747-y

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by Plataforma SINC.

Go fish! Ancient birds evolved specialist diving adaptations

Evolution of diving specializations within the Hesperornithiformes. Credit: Image courtesy of Taylor & Francis

A new study of some primitive birds from the Cretaceous shows how several separate lineages evolved adaptations for diving.
Living at the same time as the dinosaurs, Hesperornithiform bird fossils have been found in North America, Europe and Asia in rocks 65-95 million years old. Dr Alyssa Bell and Professor Luis Chiappe of the Dinosaur Institute, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, publishing in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, have undertaken a detailed analysis of their evolution, showing that separate lineages became progressively more adept at diving into water to catch fishes, like modern day loons and grebes.

The Hesperornithiformes are a highly derived but very understudied group of primitive birds from the Cretaceous period. This study is the first comprehensive phylogenetic analysis, or evaluation of evolutionary relationships, to ever be undertaken on the entire group.

The results of this study confirm that the Hesperornithiformes do form a single group (or clade), but that within this group the inter-relationships of the different taxa are more complex than previously thought. Additionally, this study finds that anatomical changes were accompanied by enlargement in overall body size, which increased lung capacity and allowed deeper diving.

Overall, this study provides evidence for understanding the evolution of diving adaptations among the earliest known aquatic birds.

Reference:
Alyssa Bell, Luis M. Chiappe. A species-level phylogeny of the Cretaceous Hesperornithiformes (Aves: Ornithuromorpha): implications for body size evolution amongst the earliest diving birds. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 2015; 1 DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2015.1036141

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by Taylor & Francis.

Location matters in the lowland Amazon

Although lowland Amazon forests look monotonously green from satellites, Carnegie scientists have discovered that they are actually arranged in chemically-distinct communities patterned by the soils and microtopography that underlie the forest. This Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) image reveals floodplain forest canopies in red that are naturally packed with growth chemicals, as compared to forest canopies on neighboring terraces in yellow-green that are outfitted with fewer growth chemicals. These CAO maps explain the geographic pattern of carbon dioxide uptake in the lowland Amazon, and help to predict forest responses to climate change. Credit: Image is courtesy of Greg Asner

You know the old saying: Location, location, location? It turns out that it applies to the Amazon rainforest, too. New work from Carnegie’s Greg Asner illustrates a hidden tapestry of chemical variation across the lowland Peruvian Amazon, with plants in different areas producing an array of chemicals that changes across the region’s topography. His team’s work is published by Nature Geoscience.
“Our findings tell us that lowland Amazon forests are far more geographically sorted than we once thought,” Asner explained. “It is not simply a swath of green that occurs with everything strewn randomly. Place does matter, even if it all appears to be flat and green monotony at first glance.”

The Amazonian forest occupies more than five million square kilometers, stretching from the Atlantic coast to the foothills of the Andes. Thousands of tree and other plant species are found throughout this area, each synthesizing a complex portfolio of chemicals to accomplish a variety of functions from capturing sunlight to fighting off herbivores, to attracting pollinators, not to mention the chemical processes involved in adapting to climate change.

The lowland forests of the Amazon rest on a hidden, underlying mosaic of geologic and hydrologic variation. It turns out that this mosaic affects the diversity of chemical functions that forest plants undertake, because the varying topography affects water, nutrients, and other plant resources. Understanding how the chemical activity of plants varies geographically is crucial to understanding the way an ecosystem functions on a large scale.

To figure it out, Asner and his team took a high-tech approach based on data collected from their Carnegie Airborne Observatory, or CAO, and developed the first high-resolution maps of the forest’s canopy chemistry. A novel combination of instruments onboard the CAO, including a high-fidelity imaging spectrometer and a laser scanner, was used to map four huge forested landscapes along two Amazonian river systems. The instruments enabled the team to capture previously hidden chemical fingerprints of rainforest canopy species.

“This is the first time that so many chemicals have been measured and mapped in any forest ecosystem on Earth,” Asner said. “No one has done the mapping we have achieved here, which enabled a discovery that the lowland Amazon is anything but monotonous or similar everywhere.”

Their results reveal that the pattern of chemical properties in canopy trees changes along the paths of the two rivers–the Madre de Dios River and the Tambopata River–as well as across the landscape’s topography on a ‘microscale’, with very small changes in elevation making all the difference to the plants living there. CAO’s laser-guided spectroscopic mapping is unsurpassed in its ability to connect biological and geological processes. Studies of this kind help scientists to better understand Earth’s tremendous diversity and its geographic patterning, both of which are required to understand evolution or the future of species in a changing world.

“Looking at the lowland Amazon with this kind of detail, you can see back in time, from the way the topography was shaped millions of years ago, which still affects soils and mineral availability today, to the way that different species evolved to take advantage of this great variety of subtly changing conditions,” Asner explained. “And we can peer into the future and see how quickly human activity is changing the kaleidoscope of diversity that has been uniquely shaped over millions of years.”

Reference:
Felipe Sinca et al. Landscape biogeochemistry reflected in shifting distributions of chemical traits in the Amazon forest canopy. Nature Geoscience, May 2015 DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2443

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by Carnegie Institution.

Surfer 12

Surfer 12 was released January 14, 2014.  New Features  including reverseable axes, date/time format, log Z scale, download air photos from NAIP WMS (Web Map Services), save old formats, export drawn objects with a map, multiple post map labels, base map editing, blank a buffered convex data zone, and import and export new file formats including vector GeoPDF, JPEG2000, SVG, KML/KMZ and more.

Surfer is a contouring and 3D surface mapping software program that runs under Microsoft Windows. The Surfer software quickly and easily converts your data into outstanding contour, surface, wireframe, vector, image, shaded relief, and post maps. Virtually all aspects of your maps can be customized to produce exactly the presentation you want using Surfer’s software tools. Producing publication quality maps has never been quicker or easier.

Features

Map Projections

Load maps in any map projection, and convert between projections.

Surfer now supports map projections! Choose from an endless list of coordinate systems for your map to display. Specify the source coordinate system for each of the layers in your map, and choose to display the map in any other coordinate system! For example, load data and grid files in UTM or State Plane coordinates, and display the map in Latitude/Longitude coordinates! It is simply that easy! Save the coordinate system information for your grid to an external file for future reuse.

Contour Maps

Surfer software’s contour maps give you full control over all map parameters.

You can accept the Surfer intelligent defaults to automatically create a contour map, or double-click a map to easily customize map features. Display contour maps over any contour range and contour interval, or specify only the contour levels you want to display on the map. And with the Surfer software you can add color fill between contours to produce dazzling displays of your maps, or produce gray scale fills for dramatic black and white printouts.

Contour Map Features

  • Automatic or user-defined contour intervals and ranges
  • Full control over contour label format, font, frequency, placement, and spacing
  • Drag contour labels to place them exactly where you want them
  • Automatic or user-defined color for contour lines
  • Color fill between contours, either user-specified or as an automatic spectrum of your choice
  • Save and retrieve custom line styles and fills for contour maps
  • Full control over hachures
  • Regulate smoothing of contour lines
  • Reshape contour lines
  • Blank contour lines in areas where you don’t want to show any data
  • Specify color for blanked region
  • Rotate and tilt contour maps to any angle
  • Add color scale or distance scale bars
  • Independently scale in the X and Y dimensions
  • Full control over axis tick labels, tick spacing, grid lines and titles
  • Create any number of contour maps on a page
  • Print maps in black-and-white or full color
  • Overlay base, vector, shaded relief, image, or post maps on contour maps
  • Drape contour maps over 3D surfaces for dramatic displays
  • Export contours in 3D DXF format

3D Surface Maps

The 3D surface map uses shading and color to emphasize your data features.

Change the lighting, display angle and tilt with a click of the mouse. Overlay several surface maps to generate informative block diagrams.

3D Surface Map Features

  • Specify surface color gradation, shininess, base fill and line color
  • Control mesh line frequency, color, style, surface offset
  • Set lighting horizontal and vertical angles, ambient, diffuse, and specular properties
  • Overlay contour maps, image maps, post maps, shaded relief maps, raster and vector base maps, and other surface maps for spectacular presentations
  • Choose overlay resample method and resolution, color modulation (blending) of surface and overlays
  • Change View tilt, rotation, field of view angles, perspective or orthographic projection
  • Set XYZ scales in map units or page length, choose proportional or independent XY scaling
  • Use data XY limits or specify a subset of the map
  • Control background fill and line color and styles
  • Add color scales to explain the data values corresponding to each color
  • Disable the display of blanked grid nodes or map the blanked areas to a specific Z level
  • Produce a detailed report of the grid statistics
  • Substitute a new grid file into an existing map

3D Wireframe Maps

Surfer wireframe maps provide an impressive three dimensional display of your data.

Use color zones, independent X,Y,Z scaling, orthographic or perspective projections at any tilt or rotation angle, and different combinations of X, Y and Z lines to produce exactly the surface you want. Drape a color-filled contour map over a wireframe map to create the most striking color or black-and-white representations of your data. The possibilities are endless.

3D Wireframe Map Features

  • Display any combination of X,Y, and Z lines
  • Use automatic or user-defined color zones to highlight different Z levels
  • Stack any number of 3D surfaces on a single page
  • Optional hidden line removal
  • Overlay any combination of contour, filled contour, base, post, and classed post maps on a surface
  • Views of the top or bottom of the surface, or both
  • Proportional or independent scaling in the X,Y, and Z dimensions
  • Full control over axis tick marks and tick labels
  • Add a base with optional vertical base lines
  • Display the surface at any rotation or tilt angle

Vector Maps

Instantly create vector maps in Surfer to show direction and magnitude of data at points on a map.

You can create vector maps from information in one grid or two separate grids. The two components of the vector map, direction and magnitude, are automatically generated from a single grid by computing the gradient of the represented surface. At any given grid node, the direction of the arrow points in the direction of the steepest descent. The magnitude of the arrow changes depending on the steepness of the descent. Two-grid vector maps use two separate grid files to determine the vector direction and magnitude. The grids can contain Cartesian or polar data. With Cartesian data, one grid consists of X component data and the other grid consists of Y component data. With polar data, one grid consists of angle information and the other grid contains length information. Overlay vector maps on contour or wireframe maps to enhance the presentation!

Vector Map Features

  • Define arrow style, color, and frequency
  • Symbol color may be fixed or based on vector magnitude
  • Display map scales, color scale bars, and vector scale legends
  • Scale the arrow shaft length, head length, and width
  • Control vector symbol origin
  • Choose from linear, logarithmic, or square root scaling methods

Image Maps

Surfer image maps use different colors to represent elevations of a grid file.

Create image maps using any grid file format: GRD, DEM, SDTS DDF, GTOP30 HDR. Surfer automatically blends colors between percentage values so you end up with a smooth color gradation over the map. You can add color anchors at any percentage point between 0 and 100. Each anchor point can be assigned a unique color, and the colors are automatically blended between adjacent anchor points. This allows you to create color maps using any combination of colors. Any color fill you choose for an image map can be used with any other image map, even if the associated grid files cover distinctly different Z ranges. Image maps can be created independently of other maps, or can be combined with other maps. They can be scaled, resized, limited and moved.

Image Map Features

  • Pixel maps or smoothed images
  • Dither bitmaps if needed
  • Create an associated color scale
  • Create custom color spectrum files for use on any image or shaded relief map
  • Overlay image maps with contour, post, or base maps
  • Data-independent color spectrum files
  • Specify color for missing data
  • Change the rotation and tilt angles

More Features: Click Here

New Features in Surfer 12

Download Free Online Maps

More information is now at your fingertips. Download image layers from hundreds of free online Web Map Services (WMS) through Surfer’s new, integrated WMS browser. Connect to online data sources, pick the layers of interest you want to download, and Surfer seamlessly downloads and imports the images into your projects.

Grid and Display Maps with Log Z Scaling

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From chicken to dinosaur

The perching toe from chicken to dinosaur. Credit: Image courtesy of Universidad de Chile

A unique adaptation in the foot of birds is the presence of a thumb-like opposable toe, which allows them to grasp and perch. However, in their dinosaur ancestors, this toe was small and non- opposable, and did not even touch the ground, resembling the dewclaws of dogs and cats. Remarkably, the embryonic development of birds provides a parallel of this evolutionary history: The toe starts out like their dinosaur ancestors, but then its base (the metatarsal) becomes twisted, making it opposable. Brazilian researcher Joâo Botelho, working at the lab of Alexander Vargas at the University of Chile, decided to study the underlying mechanisms. Botelho observed that the twisting occurred shortly after the embryonic musculature of this toe was in place.

“This is one of the clearest examples of how indirect the morphological consequences of genetic change are mediated,” Gunter Wagner, evolutionary geneticist and professor at Yale.

Bird embryos move a lot inside the egg during development, and the onset of movement at this toe coincided with the twisting of its base. Botelho also demonstrated that in this toe, genes of cartilage maturation were expressed at a much later stage than other digits: It retains many rapidly dividing stem cells for a much longer period. Such immature cartilage is highly plastic and easily transformed by muscular activity.

These observations suggested the toe is twisted as a result of mechanical forces imposed on it by the embryonic musculature. Definitive proof, however, would come from experiments. When Botelho applied Decamethonium bromide, a pharmacological agent capable of paralyzing embryonic musculature, the result was a non-opposable toe with a straight, non-twisted base identical to that of their dinosaur ancestors. Only a few experiments are known to recover dinosaur traits in birds (such as a dinosaur-like shank and tooth-like structures). The undoing of the perching digit is thus an important new addition, and the results have now been published in Scientific Reports, an open-access journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

The significance of this experiment, however, goes beyond the fact that a dinosaur-like toe is being retrieved. Evolutionary research often centers on mutations, but the development and evolution of the perching toe cannot be understood without the forces of embryonic muscular activity. The study is described as “true developmental mechanics” by Gunter Wagner, an evolutionary geneticist and professor at Yale. “This is one of the clearest examples of how indirect the morphological consequences of genetic change are mediated. The experiments prove that interactions about organ systems channel the directions of organismal evolution.”

Reference:
João Francisco Botelho, Daniel Smith-Paredes, Sergio Soto-Acuña, Jorge Mpodozis, Verónica Palma, Alexander O. Vargas. Skeletal plasticity in response to embryonic muscular activity underlies the development and evolution of the perching digit of birds. Scientific Reports, 2015; 5: 9840 DOI: 10.1038/srep09840

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by Universidad de Chile.

Deciphering clues to prehistoric climate changes locked in cave deposits

This is a photo of the small stalagmite in the Mawmluh cave before it was collected. Below, a gray-scale image of a slab of the stalagmite after it was prepared for analysis. The red lines show the locations where the layers were counted and the green lines show the locations where the material was dated. The adjacent numbers are the dates with the uncertainties of the measurements. Credit: Courtesy of Jessica Oster.

When the conversation turns to the weather and the climate, most people’s thoughts naturally drift upward toward the clouds, but Jessica Oster’s sink down into the subterranean world of stalactites and stalagmites.
That is because the assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University is a member of a small group of earth scientists who are pioneering in the use of mineral cave deposits, collectively known as speleothems, as proxies for the prehistoric climate.

It turns out that the steady dripping of water deep underground can reveal a surprising amount of information about the constantly changing cycles of heat and cold, precipitation and drought in the turbulent atmosphere above. As water seeps down through the ground it picks up minerals, most commonly calcium carbonate. When this mineral-rich water drips into caves, it leaves mineral deposits behind that form layers which grow during wet periods and form dusty skins when the water dries up.

Today, scientists can date these layers with extreme precision based on the radioactive decay of uranium into its daughter product thorium. Variations in the thickness of the layers is determined by a combination of the amount of water seeping into the cave and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the cave’s atmosphere so, when conditions are right, they can provide a measure of how the amount of precipitation above the cave varies over time. By analyzing the ratios of heavy to light isotopes of oxygen present in the layers, the researchers can track changes in the temperature at which the water originally condensed into droplets in the atmosphere changes and whether the rainfall’s point of origin was local or if traveled a long way before falling to the ground.

The value of this information is illustrated by the results of a study published May 19 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Oster’s group, working with colleagues from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History and the University of Cambridge titled “Northeast Indian stalagmite records Pacific decadal climate change: Implications for moisture transport and drought in India.”

In the study, Oster and her team made a detailed record of the last 50 years of growth of a stalagmite that formed in Mawmluh Cave in the East Khasi Hills district in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, an area credited as the rainiest place on Earth.

Studies of historical records in India suggest that reduced monsoon rainfall in central India has occurred when the sea surface temperatures in specific regions of the Pacific Ocean were warmer than normal. These naturally recurring sea surface temperature “anomalies” are known as the El Niño Modoki, which occurs in the central Pacific, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which takes place in the northern Pacific. (By contrast, the historical record indicates that the traditional El Niño, which occurs in the eastern Pacific, has little effect on rainfall levels in the subcontinent.)

When the researchers analyzed the Mawmluh stalagmite record, the results were consistent with the historical record. Specifically, they found that during El Niño Modoki events, when drought was occurring in central India, the mineral chemistry suggested more localized storm events occurred above the cave, while during the non-El Niño periods, the water that seeped into the cave had traveled much farther before it fell, which is the typical monsoon pattern.

“Now that we have shown that the Mawmluh cave record agrees with the instrumental record for the last 50 years, we hope to use it to investigate relationships between the Indian monsoon and El Niño during prehistoric times such as the Holocene,” said Oster.

The Holocene Climate Optimum was a period of global climate warming that occurred between six to nine thousand years ago. At that time, the global average temperatures were somewhere between four to six degrees Celsius higher than they are today. That is the range of warming that climatologists are predicting due to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activity. So information about the behavior of the monsoon during the Holocene could provide clues to how it is likely to behave in the future. This knowledge could be very important for the 600 million people living on the Indian subcontinent who rely on the monsoon, which provides the area with 75 percent of its annual rainfall.

“The study actually grew out of an accidental discovery,” said Oster. Vanderbilt graduate student Chris Myers visited the cave, which co-author Sebastian Breitenbach from Cambridge has been studying for several years, to see if it contained enough broken speleothems so they could use them to date major prehistoric earthquakes in the area.

Myers found a number of columns that appear to have broken off in the magnitude 8.6 earthquake that hit Assam, Tibet in 1950. But he also discovered a number of new stalagmites that had begun growing on the broken bases. When he examined these in detail he found that they had very thick layers and high concentrates of uranium, which made them perfect for analysis.

Because of the large amount of water running into the cave, the stalagmite they choose to analyze had grown about 2.5 centimeters in 50 years. (If that seems slow, compare it with growth rates of a few millimeters in a thousand years found in caves in arid regions like the Sierra Nevada.) As a result, the annual layers averaged about 0.4 millimeters thick – wide enough for the researchers to get seven to eight samples per layer, which is slightly better than one measurement every two months.

The amount of information about the climate that scientists can extract from the stalagmites and stalactites in a cave is amazing. But the value of this approach increases substantially as the number of caves that can act as climate proxies increases.

It is not a simple task. Because each cave is unique, the scientists have to study it for several years before they understand it well enough to use it as a proxy. For example, they must establish how long it takes water to move from the surface down to the cave, a factor that can vary from days to months.

Efforts to use the mineral deposits in caves as climate proxies began in the 1990’s. Currently, there are only a few dozen scientists who are pursuing this line of research and they have analyzed the mineral deposits from 100 to 200 caves in this fashion.

Warren D. Sharp from the Berkeley Geochronology Center, Ralf Bennartz, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt, Neil P. Kelley from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and Vanderbilt Laboratory Manager and doctoral student Aaron Covey also contributed to the study, which was supported by the Vanderbilt International Office, National Science Foundation grant OISE-0968354 and additional awards and grants from the Cave Research Foundation, the Geological Society of America and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Video

Reference:
Christopher G. Myers, Jessica L. Oster, Warren D. Sharp, Ralf Bennartz, Neil P. Kelley, Aaron K. Covey, Sebastian F.M. Breitenbach. Northeast Indian stalagmite records Pacific decadal climate change: Implications for moisture transport and drought in India. DOI: 10.1002/2015GL063826

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Vanderbilt University.

Earthquake preparations need to start now

Developing the resilience to withstand a massive earthquake along the Pacific Northwest’s Cascadia Subduction Zone is the responsibility of public agencies, private businesses and individuals, and that work should be under way now, Oregon State University’s Scott Ashford advised Congressional leaders this week in Washington, D.C.

“It will take 50 years for us to prepare for this impending earthquake,” Scott Ashford, Kearney Professor and dean of the OSU College of Engineering, said in testimony this week before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management.

“The time to act is before you have the earthquake. Everybody needs to take some responsibility and start preparing now.”

Earthquake preparation – or lack thereof – is not an issue unique to Oregon, Ashford noted – 42 U.S. states have significant earthquake faults. Recent research on the New Madrid Fault Line indicates the risk of earthquakes is much higher than previously thought in this major seismic zone that spans seven states, including Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi.

“In Alaska, Hawaii and California, you don’t have to convince people there is a risk of earthquakes, but we haven’t had much earthquake activity in the Midwest, so preparedness is not a top-of-mind concern for residents in this region,” said Ashford, an international expert who has studied the impact of subduction zone earthquakes in much of the Pacific Rim, including the devastating 2011 quake in Japan.

The focus of the Congressional hearing was planning and preparing for seismic hazards in the Pacific Northwest. The region is vulnerable to the threat of a mega, 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which could significantly damage roads, bridges, buildings, sewers, gas and water lines, electrical system and more across the region.

Ashford urged the committee to support three federal initiatives:

Investments in more resilient transportation networks that will be critical to rescue, relief, and recovery efforts following a natural disaster, and required for the economy to recover following an earthquake
Partnerships with states to require seismic resilience of federally regulated utilities that transport liquid fuel through pipelines and that supply the majority of a state’s population such as in Oregon
Investments in applied research to ensure that taxpayer dollars are used most effectively as private companies, the public, and local, state and federal agencies work to improve resilience to an eventual massive earthquake.

Business and governmental leaders in Oregon have begun to prepare for a mega-quake. The Oregon Resilience Plan, which was completed in early 2013, outlines more than 140 recommendations to reduce risk and improve recovery from a massive earthquake and tsunami that is anticipated on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. In 2014, the Governor’s Task Force on Resilience Plan Implementation, chaired by Ashford, submitted to the Oregon legislature a comprehensive program to save lives, mitigate damage and prepare for a costly, life-threatening disaster that is seen as both catastrophic and inevitable.

“The house subcommittee wanted to know what our task force had learned in Oregon through the Oregon Resilience Plan project and how our recommendations can serve as models to help other states,” Ashford said.

Oregon State has also established the Cascadia Lifelines Program, a research initiative to help improve critical infrastructure performance during an anticipated major earthquake. Partners in the program include public agencies and private utilities such as Portland General Electric and Northwest Natural Gas.

“The agencies are working collectively on this issue,” Ashford said. “Orchestrating the actions, agendas and investments in research of different stakeholders is a big step in the right direction.”

More research is needed to determine how best to identify and mitigate problems stemming from a massive earthquake.

“OSU research helps quantify the risks and determine how, in Oregon, we can address those risks,” Ashford said. “We can’t simply replace all of our existing infrastructure. We may need to find ways to retrofit, replace or repair things quickly after an earthquake.”

One thing individuals can do is establish an emergency plan and keep on hand enough provisions such as food, water and medicine to survive up to 14 days without outside aid. In a major quake, many roads will likely be inaccessible and power could be out for weeks or longer, Ashford said.

“People are going to be on their own a lot longer than previously thought,” he said.

Video

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Oregon State University.

New species of ancient intruder discovered in England

This image shows two pentastomids (in orange) attached externally to the ostracod; one of the pentastomids; the ostracod with its shell removed, showing the external pentastomids and a pentastomid near the eggs of the ostracod. Credit: Siveter, Briggs, Siveter and Sutton

An international team of scientists led by the University of Leicester has discovered a new species of fossil in England — and identified it as an ancient parasitic intruder.
The fossil species found in 425-million year old rocks in Herefordshire, in the Welsh borderland, is described as ‘exceptionally well preserved.’ The specimens range from about 1 to 4 millimeters long.

The fossil species — a ‘tongue worm’, which has a worm-like body and a head and two pairs of limbs — is actually a parasite whose representatives today live internally in the respiratory system of a host, which it enters when it is eaten.

The new fossil, which was originally entirely soft-bodied, is the first fossil tongue worm species to be found associated with its host, which in this case is a species of ostracod — a group of micro-arthropods (crabs, spiders and insects are also arthropods) with two shells that are joined at a hinge.

Professor David Siveter, of the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester made the discovery working alongside researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Imperial College London and Yale, USA. Their research is published in the journal Current Biology and was supported by The Natural Environmental Research Council, together with the Leverhulme Trust, the John Fell Oxford University Press (OUP) Research Fund and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Professor Siveter said: “This discovery is important not only because examples of parasites are exceptionally rare in the fossil record, but also because the possible host of fossil tongue worms — and the origin of the lifestyle of tongue worms — has been the subject of much debate.

“This discovery affirms that tongue worms were ‘external’ parasites on marine invertebrate animals at least 425 million years ago; it also suggests that tongue worms likely found their way into land-based environments and associated hosts in parallel with the movement of vertebrates onto the land by some 125 million years later.”

Professor Siveter said tongue worms — technically termed pentastomids — are in fact not worms at all; they are an unusual group of tiny and widespread parasitic arthropods. Their fossils are exceptionally rare and until now are known only from a handful of isolated juvenile specimens.

Today they are known from about 140 species, nearly all of which are parasitic on vertebrate animals, particularly reptiles and including humans. Some of the fossil tongue worm specimens occur inside the shell, near the eggs of the ostracod; others are attached to the external surface of its shell, a unique position for any fossil or living tongue worm.

Professor Siveter added: “The tongue worm and its host lived in a sea that 425 million years ago — during the Silurian period of geological time — covered much of southern Britain, which was positioned then in warm southerly subtropical latitudes. The animals died and were preserved when a volcanic ash rained down upon them. The new species has been named Invavita piratica, which means an ‘ancient intruder’ and ‘piracy’, referring to its parasitic lifestyle in the sea.”

The fossils have been reconstructed as virtual fossils by 3D computer modelling.

Reference:
David J. Siveter, Derek E.G. Briggs, Derek J. Siveter, Mark D. Sutton. A 425-Million-Year-Old Silurian Pentastomid Parasitic on Ostracods. Current Biology, 2015 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.035

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Leicester.

A new study focussing on the birds of the Ice Age

Further representative skeletal elements of taxa in the MIS 3 deposits at Pin Hole. a) Asio flammeus left tarsometatarsus PH(F) 7837/38; b) Bubo sp. distal left radius PH(F) 7801/00; c) Surnia ulula right tarsometatarsus PH(F) 8476; d) Tachymarptis melba right ulna PH(F) 18600; e) Lagopus muta right tarsometarsus PH(F) 9; f) Lagopus lagopus right tarsometarsus PH(F) 266; g) Anthropoides virgo premaxilla PH(F) 30; h) Alaudidae left humerus PH(F) 8064–8068; i) Turdus sp. right carpometacarpus PH(F) 9069–9071; j) Sturnus sp. right carpometacarpus PH(F) 7374; k) Corvus corax right carpometacarpus PH(F) 13075–13076; l) Corvus cf. monedula right femur PH(F) 8069.

A new study focusing on the birds of the Ice Age has shed light on the long term response of birds to climate change.
The study, published in PLOS ONE, has revealed that many of the birds were larger at this time reflecting the richness and greater productivity of the environment in the Ice Age.

Conducted by Bournemouth University’s John Stewart alongside research from Roger Jacobi, a picture emerges of an unusual mix of birds in one space and a distinct Neanderthal Dawn Chorus.

John Stewart said, “During the Ice Age just over 40 thousand years ago in the north of England Neanderthals were living in an environment which included extinct animals like woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and cave hyenas as well as the more familiar horses and reindeer. These mammals are well known to science and many studies have illuminated the spectacular fauna that lived at this early stage. Not so well known are the birds.”

Another finding was that the mixtures of birds that lived together were different from anywhere in the world today. Birds exotic to Britain, such as species normally expected in the tundra to the north (like skuas, and hawk owls), the Mediterranean to the South (like alpine swifts) or the Eastern steppes (like demoiselle cranes and long-legged buzzards) lived together with birds expected in the region today (such as grey herons and wood pigeons).

John Stewart continued, “It is clear the birds of the time of Neanderthals have changed in a way that is almost as dramatic as the change we have seen in mammals. It also signifies that the dawn chorus witnessed by the Neanderthals at that time and place has no parallels anywhere today.”

Reference:
John R. Stewart, Roger M. Jacobi. The Long Term Response of Birds to Climate Change: New Results from a Cold Stage Avifauna in Northern England. PLOS ONE, 2015; 10 (5): e0122617 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122617

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by Bournemouth University.

Lawrence Livermore researchers use seismic signals to track above-ground explosions

High-speed photographs of a controlled surface explosion at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, similar to the explosions at White Sands Missile Range were used in a study of seismic signals to detect above-ground explosions. Credit: Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Counter-WMD Test Support Division (CXT).

Lawrence Livermore researchers have determined that a tunnel bomb explosion by Syrian rebels was less than 60 tons as claimed by sources.
Using seismic stations in Turkey, Livermore scientists Michael Pasyanos and Sean Ford created a method to determine source characteristics of near earth surface explosions. They found the above-ground tunnel bomb blast under the Wadi al-Deif Army Base near Aleppo last spring was likely not as large as originally estimated and was closer to 40 tons.

Seismology has long been used to determine the source characteristics of underground explosions, such as yield and depth, and plays a prominent role in nuclear explosion monitoring. But now some of the same techniques have been modified to determine the strength and source of near and above-ground blasts.

The new method to track above-ground explosions serves as a forensic tool for investigators and governmental agencies seeking to understand the precise cause of an explosion.

“The technique accounts for the reduction in amplitudes as the explosion depth approaches the free surface and less energy is coupled into the ground,” said Michael Pasyanos, an LLNL geophysicist and lead author of a paper appearing in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The team, also made up LLNL scientist Sean Ford, used the method on a series of shallow explosions in New Mexico where the yields and depths were known.

Pasyanos and Ford’s examination of source characteristics of near-surface explosions is an extension of the regional amplitude envelope method. This technique was developed and applied to North Korean nuclear explosions, then applied to chemical explosions and nuclear tests in Nevada.

“The technique takes an earthquake or explosion source model and corrects for the wave propagation to generate predicted waveform envelopes at any particular frequency band,” Pasyanos said.

Methods for determining the yields of contained events range from teleseismic amplitudes and P-wave spectra to regional P-wave amplitudes and magnitudes. Pasyanos developed a method to characterize underground explosions based on regional amplitude envelopes across a broad range of frequencies. One advantage of the method is that examining the signal over a wide frequency band can reduce some of the strong tradeoffs between yield and depth, Pasyanos said

“By allowing the methodology to consider shallow, uncontained events just below, at, or even above the Earth’s surface, we make the method relevant to new classes of events including mining events, military explosions, industrial accidents, plane crashes or potential terrorist attacks.” Pasyanos said. “A yield estimate is often very important to investigators and governmental agencies seeking to understand the precise cause of an explosion.”

For the Syrian explosion, the team did not have local seismic data from Syria, but it was well recorded by regional stations from the Continental Dynamics: Central Anatolian Tectonics (CD-CAT) deployment in Turkey.

If the explosion occurred well above the surface, a yield of 100 tons TNT equivalent would be required to produce the observed seismic signal.

“Given the video footage of the explosion, however, we know that it was neither at nor above the free surface, nor fully coupled,” Ford said. “We estimate a chemical yield ranging from 6 and 50 tons depending on the depth, with the best estimate between 20-40 tons. Including independent information on the depth, we could narrow this considerably. If, for instance, we definitively knew that the explosion occurred at 2 meters below the surface, then we would estimate the yield at 40 tons.”

The team found that though there are expected tradeoffs between yield and depth/height, when constrained by other information, the yields are consistent with ground truth yields in tests in New Mexico and reasonable values from what Pasyanos and Ford know about in Syria.

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

First dinosaur fossil discovered in Washington state

The first dinosaur fossil described from Washington state (left) is a portion of a femur leg bone (full illustration right) from a theropod dinosaur. Theropods are a group of meat-eating, two-legged dinosaurs, including T. rex and Velociraptor. The fossil was discovered by Burke Museum paleontologists at Sucia Island State Park in the San Juan Islands. Credit: Illustration courtesy of PLOS ONE, modified by the Burke Museum.

Burke Museum paleontologists have published a description of the first dinosaur fossil from Washington state. The fossil was collected by a Burke Museum research team along the shores of Sucia Island State Park in the San Juan Islands.
Burke Museum researchers discovered the fossil while collecting ammonite fossils (a creature with a spiral shell) from a marine rock unit known as the Cedar District Formation. The researchers first noticed a small section of exposed bone on the surface of the rocks, then returned with a team of paleontologists to help excavate the fossil so it could be studied at the Burke Museum.

A new study by Burke Museum Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Dr. Christian Sidor and University of Washington graduate student Brandon Peecook describes the find in the journal PLOS ONE. The fossil is a partial left femur of a theropod dinosaur, the group of two-legged, carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus rex and modern birds.

The fossil is 16.7 inches long and 8.7 inches wide. Because the fossil is incomplete, paleontologists aren’t able to identify the exact family or species it belonged to. However, Sidor and Peecook compared the fossil to other museums’ specimens and were able to calculate that the complete femur would have been over 3 feet long — slightly smaller than T. rex. The fossil is from the Late Cretaceous period and is approximately 80 million years old.

Although incomplete, Sidor and Peecook were able to determine the femur is from a theropod dinosaur for two reasons: First, the hollow middle cavity of the bone (where marrow was present) is unique to theropods during this time period; and second, a feature on the surface of the bone (the fourth trochanter) is prominent and positioned relatively close to the hip, which is a combination of traits known only in some theropods among dinosaurs.

“This fossil won’t win a beauty contest,” Sidor said. “But fortunately it preserves enough anatomy that we were able to compare it to other dinosaurs and be confident of its identification.”

“The fossil record of the West Coast is very spotty when compared to the rich record of the interior of North America,” Peecook said. “This specimen, though fragmentary, gives us insight into what the West Coast was like 80 million years ago, plus it gets Washington into the dinosaur club.”

Washington is now the 37th state where dinosaurs have been found.

Fossilized prehistoric clams were also found inside the hollow part of the bone, which indicates the dinosaur fossilized in marine rock. These additional fossils are a rare occurrence and provide scientists with a snapshot of other lifeforms that were present where the dinosaur fossilized.

The accompanying fossilized clams are so well preserved that Burke paleontologists were able to identify the species, Crassatellites conradiana. These clams lived in shallow water, so it’s likely the dinosaur died near the sea, was tossed by the waves, and eventually came to rest among the clams.

Why have no dinosaurs been found in Washington state until now?

Dinosaurs are found in rocks from the time periods in which they lived (240-66 million years ago). Washington state was mostly underwater during this period, so Washington has very little exposed rock of the right age. Because dinosaurs were land animals, it is very unusual to find dinosaur fossils in marine rocks–making this fossil a rare and lucky discovery.

How did the dinosaur get to Sucia Island State Park?

Eighty million years ago, the rocks that today form Sucia Island were likely deposited farther south. How much farther south is a topic of scientific debate, with locations ranging between present-day Baja California, Mexico, and Northern California. Earthquakes and other geologic forces that constantly reshape our planet moved the rocks north to their present-day location.

Reference:
Brandon R. Peecook , Christian A. Sidor. The First Dinosaur from Washington State and a Review of Pacific Coast Dinosaurs from North America. PLoS One, 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127792

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by University of Washington.

Scientists Discover World’s Oldest Stone Tools

Photos of selected Lomekwi 3 stones accompanying the paper show both cores and flakes knapped from the cores that the authors say illustrate various techniques. Credit: West Turkana Archaeological Project

Scientists working in the desert badlands of northwestern Kenya have found stone tools dating back 3.3 million years, long before the advent of modern humans, and by far the oldest such artifacts yet discovered. The tools, whose makers may or may not have been some sort of human ancestor, push the known date of such tools back by 700,000 years; they also may challenge the notion that our own most direct ancestors were the first to bang two rocks together to create a new technology.
The discovery is the first evidence that an even earlier group of proto-humans may have had the thinking abilities needed to figure out how to make sharp-edged tools. The stone tools mark “a new beginning to the known archaeological record,” say the authors of a new paper about the discovery, published today in the leading scientific journal Nature.

“The whole site’s surprising, it just rewrites the book on a lot of things that we thought were true,” said geologist Chris Lepre of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Rutgers University, a co-author of the paper who precisely dated the artifacts.

The tools “shed light on an unexpected and previously unknown period of hominin behavior and can tell us a lot about cognitive development in our ancestors that we can’t understand from fossils alone,” said lead author Sonia Harmand, of the Turkana Basin Institute at Stony Brook University and the Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre.

Hominins are a group of species that includes modern humans, Homo sapiens, and our closest evolutionary ancestors. Anthropologists long thought that our relatives in the genus Homo — the line leading directly to Homo sapiens — were the first to craft such stone tools. But researchers have been uncovering tantalizing clues that some other, earlier species of hominin, distant cousins, if you will, might have figured it out.

Chris Lepre from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory takes sediment samples to help date the age of the Lomekwi site. Credit: West Turkana Archaeological Project

The researchers do not know who made these oldest of tools. But earlier finds suggest a possible answer: The skull of a 3.3-million-year-old hominin, Kenyanthropus platytops, was found in 1999 about a kilometer from the tool site. A K. platyops tooth and a bone from a skull were discovered a few hundred meters away, and an as-yet unidentified tooth has been found about 100 meters away.

The precise family tree of modern humans is contentious, and so far, no one knows exactly how K. platyops relates to other hominin species. Kenyanthropus predates the earliest known Homo species by a half a million years. This species could have made the tools; or, the toolmaker could have been some other species from the same era, such as Australopithecus afarensis, or an as-yet undiscovered early type of Homo.

Lepre said a layer of volcanic ash below the tool site set a “floor” on the site’s age: It matched ash elsewhere that had been dated to about 3.3 million years ago, based on the ratio of argon isotopes in the material. To more sharply define the time period of the tools, Lepre and co-author and Lamont-Doherty colleague Dennis Kent examined magnetic minerals beneath, around and above the spots where the tools were found.

The Earth’s magnetic field periodically reverses itself, and the chronology of those changes is well documented going back millions of years. “We essentially have a magnetic tape recorder that records the magnetic field … the music of the outer core,” Kent said. By tracing the variations in the polarity of the samples, they dated the site to 3.33 million to 3.11 million years.

Lepre’s wife and another co-author, Rhoda Quinn of Rutgers, studied carbon isotopes in the soil, which along with animal fossils at the site allowed researchers to reconstruct the area’s vegetation. This led to another surprise: The area was at that time a partially wooded, shrubby environment. Conventional thinking has been that sophisticated tool-making came in response to a change in climate that led to the spread of broad savannah grasslands, and the consequent evolution of large groups of animals that could serve as a source of food for human ancestors.

One line of thinking is that hominins started knapping — banging one rock against another to make sharp-edged stones — so they could cut meat off of animal carcasses, said paper co-author Jason Lewis of the Turkana Basin Institute and Rutgers. But the size and markings of the newly discovered tools “suggest they were doing something different as well, especially if they were in a more wooded environment with access to various plant resources,” Lewis said. The researchers think the tools could have been used for breaking open nuts or tubers, bashing open dead logs to get at insects inside, or maybe something not yet thought of.

“The capabilities of our ancestors and the environmental forces leading to early stone technology are a great scientific mystery,” said Richard Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the research. The newly dated tools “begin to lift the veil on that mystery, at an earlier time than expected,” he said.

Potts said he had examined the stone tools during a visit to Kenya in February.

“Researchers have thought there must be some way of flaking stone that preceded the simplest tools known until now,” he said. “Harmand’s team shows us just what this even simpler altering of rocks looked like before technology became a fundamental part of early human behavior.”

Ancient stone artifacts from East Africa were first uncovered at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in the mid-20th century, and those tools were later associated with fossil discoveries in the 1960s of the early human ancestor Homo habilis. That species has been dated to 2.1 million to 1.5 million years ago.

Subsequent finds have pushed back the dates of humans’ evolutionary ancestors, and of stone tools, raising questions about who first made that cognitive leap. The discovery of a partial lower jaw in the Afar region of Ethiopia, announced on March 4, pushes the fossil record for the genus Homo to 2.8 million years ago. Evidence from recent papers, the authors note, suggests that there is anatomical evidence that Homo had evolved into several distinct lines by 2 million years ago.

There is some evidence of more primitive tool use going back even before the new find. In 2009, researchers at Dikika, Ethiopia, dug up 3.39 million-year-old animal bones marked with slashes and other cut marks, evidence that someone used stones to trim flesh from bone and perhaps crush bones to get at the marrow inside. That is the earliest evidence of meat and marrow consumption by hominins. No tools were found at the site, so it’s unclear whether the marks were made with crafted tools or simply sharp-edged stones. The only hominin fossil remains in the area dating to that time are from Australopithecus afarensis.

The new find came about almost by accident: Harmand and Lewis said that on the morning of July 9, 2011, they had wandered off on the wrong path, and climbed a hill to scout a fresh route back to their intended track. They wrote that they “could feel that something was special about this particular place.” They fanned out and surveyed a nearby patch of craggy outcrops. “By teatime,” they wrote, “local Turkana tribesman Sammy Lokorodi had helped [us] spot what [we] had come searching for.”

By the end of the 2012 field season, excavations at the site, named Lomekwi 3, had uncovered 149 stone artifacts tied to tool-making, from stone cores and flakes to rocks used for hammering and others possibly used as anvils to strike on.

The researchers tried knapping stones themselves to better understand how the tools they found might have been made. They concluded that the techniques used “could represent a technological stage between a hypothetical pounding-oriented stone tool use by an earlier hominin and the flaking-oriented knapping behavior of [later] toolmakers.” Chimpanzees and other primates are known to use a stone to hammer open nuts atop another stone. But using a stone for multiple purposes, and using one to crack apart another into a sharper tool, is more advanced behavior.

The find also has implications for understanding the evolution of the human brain. The toolmaking required a level of hand motor control that suggests that changes in the brain and spinal tract needed for such activity could have occurred before 3.3 million years ago, the authors said.

“This is a momentous and well-researched discovery,” said paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who was not involved in the study. “I have seen some of these artifacts in the flesh, and I am convinced they were fashioned deliberately.” Wood said he found it intriguing to see how different the tools are from so-called Oldowan stone tools, which up to now have been considered the oldest and most primitive.

Lepre, who has been conducting fieldwork in eastern Africa for about 15 years, said he arrived at the dig site about a week after the discovery. The site is several hours’ drive on rough roads from the nearest town, located in a hot, dry landscape he said is reminiscent of Arizona and New Mexico. Lepre collected chunks of sediment from a series of depths and brought them back to Lamont-Doherty for analysis. He and Kent used a bandsaw to trim the samples into sugar cube-size blocks and inserted them into a magnetometer, which measured the polarity of tiny grains of the minerals hematite and magnetite contained in the sediment.

“The magnetics pretty much clinches that the age is something like 3.3 million years old,” said Kent, who also is a professor at Rutgers.

Earlier dating work by Lepre and Kent helped lead to another landmark paper in 2011: a study that suggested Homo erectus, another precursor to modern humans, was using more advanced tool-making methods 1.8 million years ago, at least 300,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Reference:
Sonia Harmand, Jason E. Lewis, Craig S. Feibel, Christopher J. Lepre, Sandrine Prat, Arnaud Lenoble, Xavier Boës, Rhonda L. Quinn, Michel Brenet, Adrian Arroyo, Nicholas Taylor, Sophie Clément, Guillaume Daver, Jean-Philip Brugal, Louise Leakey, Richard A. Mortlock, James D. Wright, Sammy Lokorodi, Christopher Kirwa, Dennis V. Kent, Hélène Roche. 3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya. Nature, 2015; 521 (7552): 310 DOI: 10.1038/nature14464

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Ancient lake challenges understanding of evolution

The Bay of Stoer region in north-west Scotland, where ancient lake sediments have revealed high levels of molybdenum, a key element in the evolution of complex life.

An ancient lake could hold the key to our understanding of how complex life evolved on Earth, according to research carried out by the University of Aberdeen.
Scientists have studied samples of lake sediments deposited 1.5 billion years ago in the Bay of Stoer region in north-west Scotland, and discovered high levels of the metal molybdenum, a key element in the evolution of multicellular life.

The discovery challenges the commonly held view that an important stage of evolution, leading eventually to human life, occurred in the deep ocean, as opposed to a continental environment.

Professor John Parnell, from the University’s School of Geosciences, explains: “Molybdenum was required to support nitrogen fixation, which allowed simple life to flourish and support a food chain. It was also being incorporated into enzymes used by complex life.

“Previous research has measured the amount of molybdenum in rocks from ancient oceans to assess its supply, but found that it was only available sparsely at the time when complex life was expanding about 1.5 billion years ago.

“This new data, gathered from a site in north-west Scotland over the last year, shows that greater quantities of molybdenum were available in a continental environment at this time. This supports a growing theory that this important stage of evolution was advanced on the continents and not in the ocean.”

The site from which the sediments were recovered is already considered a highly-prized scientific resource, having provided evidence of how a critical point in evolution took place several hundred years earlier than scientists had previously understood .

This latest discovery further underlines the importance of the site, whose geographic location makes it ideal for research purposes, as Professor Parnell explains:

“When carrying out this kind of research there are very few rocks that you can study that have been deposited in a terrestrial setting, which is what makes this site in north-west Scotland special.

“There are other possible locations around the world, but these aren’t easy to get to and you can’t travel back and forth to carry out serious research at them.

“The difference with this site is that it’s so well-preserved and easily accessible, which makes it an excellent place to look for the kind of evidence that we have uncovered.

“This research is part of a bigger body of work on these rocks which is ongoing. It is clear that the site is a very important archive to help us understand the earth’s early history, so we will continue to develop that work at Aberdeen.”

More information: “High Molybdenum availability for evolution in a Mesoproterozoic lacustrine environment.” Nature Communications 6, Article number: 6996 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7996

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by University of Aberdeen.

Top 10 New Species for 2015

A cartwheeling spider, a bird-like dinosaur and a fish that wriggles around on the sea floor to create a circular nesting site are among the species identified by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) as the Top 10 New Species for 2015.

Two animals — a frog that gives birth to tadpoles and a wasp that uses dead ants to protect its nest — are unusual because of their parenting practices. Also on the list are an animal that might surpass the new species distinction to be an entirely new phylum, a 9-inch walking stick and a photogenic sea slug. Rounding out the top 10 are a coral plant described as endangered almost as soon as it was discovered and a red-and-green plant used during Christmas celebrations in Mexico.

The list is compiled annually by ESF’s International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE). The institute’s international committee of taxonomists selected the Top 10 from among the approximately 18,000 new species named during the previous year. ESF released this year’s list May 21 to recognize the birthday, May 23, of Carolus Linnaeus, an 18th century Swedish botanist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy. The annual list, established in 2008, calls attention to discoveries that are made even as species are going extinct faster than they are being identified.

“The last vast unexplored frontier on Earth is the biosphere. We have only begun to explore the astonishing origin, history, and diversity of life,” said Dr. Quentin Wheeler, ESF president and founding director of the IISE. Scientists believe 10 million species await discovery, five times the number that are already known to science.

“An inventory of plants and animals begun in the 18th century continues apace with the discovery of about 18,000 additional species each year. The nearly 2 million species named to date represent a small fraction of an estimated 12 million. Among the remaining 10 million are irreplaceable clues to our own origins, a detailed blueprint of how the biosphere self-organized, and precious clues to better, more efficient, and more sustainable ways to meet human needs while conserving wild living things. It is time to mount a mission to planet Earth to distinguish, describe, name and classify its life-forms before it is too late. The Top 10 is a reminder of the wonders awaiting us,” Wheeler said.

The Top 10 Species of 2015

Feathered Dinosaur: ‘Chicken from Hell’

Anzu wyliei
Location: U.S.A.

How it made the Top 10: With a mixture of bird and dinosaur features, Anzu wyliei is from a bird-like group of dinosaurs that lived in North America. A contemporary of the more famous T. rex and Triceratops, this species made nests and sat on the eggs until they hatched. Among their bird-like features were feathers, hollow bones and a short snout with a parrot-like beak. These omnivores appear to have lived on floodplains eating vegetation, small animals and possibly eggs. Three well-preserved partial skeletons were discovered in North and South Dakota, in the Hell Creek Formation. Because some caenagnathids were chicken-sized, this new dinosaur was dubbed “chicken from Hell.” However, at more than 10 feet in length (3.5m), 5 feet in height (1.5m) and 600 pounds (200-300kg), this was no chicken.

Coral Plant: Atypical Tubers

Balanophora coralliformis
Location: Philippines

How it made the Top 10: This parasitic plant, discovered and almost immediately considered endangered, has elongated, repeatedly branching, and rough-textured aboveground tubers. These peculiar tubers give this root parasite from the Philippines a coral-like appearance distinct from the more typical underground tubers of related species. Parasitic plants do not contain chlorophyll and are incapable of photosynthesis, so they draw their nutrition from other living plants. This species is, so far, known from fewer than 50 plants, all found between 4,800 and 5,600 feet (1,465 and 1,735 m) elevation on the southwestern slopes of Mt. Mingan in mossy forest areas. Because so few plants are known to exist, and the narrow area in which they live is unprotected, the scientists who described it consider the plant critically endangered.

Cartwheeling Spider: Spinning in the Sand

Cebrennus rechenbergi
Location: Morocco

How it made the Top 10: This agile arachnid from the desert uses a gymnast’s trick to escape from threatening situations: It cartwheels its way out of danger. When danger comes calling, the spider first assumes a threatening posture. If the danger persists, the spider runs and, about half the time that running turns into cartwheeling which is twice as fast. Terrain is not a challenge: the spider can spin across flat ground as well as up and down hills. Rather than attempting to cartwheel away, the spider propels itself toward the source of the threat, perhaps invoking the theory that the best defense is a good offense. In the barren sand dunes where the spider lives, running away can prove pointless because there is no place to hide. The high temperatures of its desert habitat would be fatal to the spider if it persisted in this high-energy routine for long, so cartwheeling is thought to be an escape option of last resort. Even before the spider had been officially named, its behavior inspired a biomimetic robot that can similarly walk or roll.

The X-Phyla: Mysterious Newcomers

Dendrogramma enigmatica
Location: Australia

How it made the Top 10: Dendrogramma enigmatica and a second new species, D. discoids, are multicellular animals that look rather like mushrooms, with a mouth at the end of the “stem” and the other end in the form of a flattened disc. The best information suggests that they are related to the phylum Cnidaria (jellyfish, corals, sea anemones and hydras) or Ctenophora (comb jellies) or both, but the new animals lack evolutionary novelties unique to either and could be an entirely new phylum. They also resemble fossils from Precambrian time, perhaps making them living fossils of sorts. The mystery surrounding this animal accounts for its name, and its relationships are likely to remain enigmatic until specimens can be collected suitable for DNA analysis. The new animal is small, with a stalk less than a third of an inch (8 mm) in length and a “cap” that measures less than a half-inch (11mm) across. It was found on the sea floor, at a depth of about 3,200 feet (1,000 meters), off Point Hicks, Victoria.

Bone-house Wasp: Morbid Motherhood

Deuteragenia ossarium
Location: China

How it made the Top 10: This insect, which tops out at about a half-inch (15mm) in length, has a unique way to protect its offspring. The wasp constructs nests in hollow stems with several cells, each separated by soil walls. The wasp kills and deposits one spider in each cell to provide nourishment for her developing young. Once her egg is laid, she seals off the cell and hunts a spider for the next cell. Rather than provisioning the final or vestibule cell with a spider, she fills it with as many as 13 bodies of dead ants, thus creating a chemical barrier to the nest. This is the first animal known to take this approach to securing the front door to a nest. This species, found in Gutianshan National Nature Reserve in eastern China, has significantly lower parasitism rates than similar cavity-nesting wasps. Camouflage is supplied by a veil of volatile chemicals emitted by the dead ants, thwarting enemies that hunt wasp larvae by scent.

Indonesian Frog: A Tad Unusual

Limnonectes larvaepartus
Location: Indonesia

How it made the Top 10: There’s an exception to every rule and the newest species of fanged frog is such an exception. Unlike other frogs, Limnonectes larvaepartus from Sulawesi Island, Indonesia, gives birth to tadpoles that are deposited in pools of water. On one occasion, a female gave birth to a tadpole in the hand of a scientist at the moment she was captured. Fewer than a dozen of the world’s 6,455 frog species have internal fertilization and all except this new species lay fertilized eggs or give birth to tiny froglets. The species, about 1.5 inches long (40mm), is found in the island’s Northern Peninsula on the western edge of the Central Core. The region has not been fully explored for frogs, so the extent of this species’ range is not yet known. The frogs live in natural and disturbed forest habitats, often in areas occupied by one to five other species of the same genus. The frogs are found above flowing streams in leaf litter, grassy vegetation, or on rocky substrates.

Walking Stick: Not So Giant

Phryganistria tamdaoensis
Location: Vietnam

How it made the Top 10: While this new stick insect is not the world’s longest, it belongs to a family known as giant sticks. At 9 inches in length, Phryganistria tamdaeoensis is compelling evidence that, in spite of their size, more giant sticks remain to be discovered and our knowledge of these masters of camouflage is far from complete. This giant stick is common in the town of Tam Dao visited by many entomologists, yet it escaped notice until now. If you would like to see one of these big bugs up close, you are in luck. Living specimens are on display at the vivarium of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. The newcomer gets its name from the beautiful Tam Dao National Park in a mountainous area in the northwestern part of Vietnam. By the way, the record is held by Chan’s megastick, Phobaeticus chani, at more than 22 inches (567 mm), named in 2008 from Borneo.

Sea Slug: Beauty of the Deep

Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum
Location: Japan

How it made the Top 10: For this sea slug, the Top 10 competition was more than a beauty contest. It is a “missing link” between sea slugs that feed on hydroids and those specializing on corals. Gastropods do not get more photogenic than sea slugs whose graceful lines and vivid coloration make them beauties of the deep. This new species, which photographs in shades of blue, red and gold, also contributed to a better understanding of the origin of an unusual symbiosis in other species of the genus. Related sea slugs have multi-branched guts in which algae called zooanthellae live. These algae have a primary symbiotic relationship with the corals on which the sea slugs feed. Once sequestered in the gut, the photosynthetic algae produce nutrients of benefit to the host. The newly identified species is an inch long, more or less (17-28 mm), and resides in the Japanese islands.

Bromeliad: Feliz Navidad

Tillandsia religiosa
Location: Mexico

How it made the Top 10: During Christmas celebrations in Mexico, elaborate altar scenes or “nacimientos” depicting the birth of Christ are assembled by villagers. In Sierra de Tepoztlán, Tlayacapan, San José de los Laureles, and Tepoztlán, a beautiful bromeliad plant is frequently incorporated in the display. The plant turned out to be new to science. Tillandsia religiosa, with its rose-colored spikes and flat green leaves, can be found growing up to 5 feet tall (1.5m) in rocky habitat in northern regions of Morelos, Mexico. Stemless, solitary plants are found on cliffs and vertical walls in deciduous, coniferous, oak and cloud forests at altitudes between 6,000 and 7,000 feet (1,800 to 2,100 m) elevation, where they flower from December to March. The bromeliad is an example of a species long known to local inhabitants but only recently discovered by science.

Pufferfish: ‘Crop Circles’ under the Sea

Torquigener albomaculosus
Location: Japan

How it made the Top 10: Scientists recently solved a 20-year-old mystery under the sea and discovered a new fish. Intricate circles with geometric designs about six feet (2 meters) in diameter, found on the seafloor off the coast of Amami-Ōshima Island, were as weird and unexplained as crop circles. They turn out to be the work of a new species of pufferfish, Torquigener albomaculosus. Males construct these circles as spawning nests by swimming and wriggling in the seafloor sand. The nests, used only once, are made to attract females. The nests have double edges and radiating troughs in a spoke-like geometry. The design isn’t just for show. Scientists discovered the ridges and grooves of the circle serve to minimize ocean current at the center of the nest. This protects the eggs from the turbulent waters and possibly predators too. Yoji Okata, an underwater photographer, first observed the artistic behavior. Subsequently, a team of ichthyologists and a television crew carried out an expedition to record the phenomenon.

Video

A cartwheeling spider, a bird-like dinosaur and a fish that wriggles around on the sea floor to create a circular nesting site are among the species identified by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) as the Top 10 New Species for 2015.
Credit: ESF

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

Spinosaurus fishes for prey

John Hurts tells the stories of the biggest, deadliest and weirdest Dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth. Massive carnivorous hunter Spinosaurus hunts the giant fresh water fish Onchopristis.

Planet Dinosaur tells the stories of the biggest, deadliest and weirdest creatures ever to walk the Earth, using the latest fossil evidence and immersive computer graphics. Narrated by John Hurt.

Video Provided by: BBC Earth

The origin and diversification of snakes

This is a reconstruction of the ancestral crown-group snake, based on this study. Artwork by Julius Csotonyi. Credit: Julius Csotonyi

Snakes have long captured the human imagination. Their instantly recognizable slithering bodies, flickering tongues, and fearsome reputations have rendered them icons of fascination and fear throughout human history.
The intrigue surrounding snakes has also attracted attention from the scientific community. Herpetologists have long debated the origin and evolution of snakes. Several major questions have shaped this debate, including whether snakes originated on land or in the seas, and whether snakes originated on the Mesozoic supercontinent of Gondwana or Laurasia. Additionally, scientists have wondered how, when, and why snakes became so diverse (living snakes comprise over 3,000 species).

Historically, these questions have been difficult to answer, due in no small part to a lack of informative snake fossils. Fossils are essential for reconstructing the evolutionary history of organisms. They are our only means of catching a glimpse, however brief and incomplete, of how life actually evolved on Earth. Summarily inferring the history of life with only living species would be simply impossible: after all, how would we ever have postulated the existence of dinosaurs if we had only their closest living relatives – birds – to work with?

Luckily, a host of significant fossil snakes have come to light over the last decade, which together reveal new insights into how and why modern snakes came to be. These include better-preserved, more complete specimens of previously known fossil snakes, as well as entirely new fossil taxa such as Kataria anisodonta and Sanajeh indicus.

Thanks to these recent paleontological advances, the stage was primed for addressing big questions about snake evolutionary history. We, along with our colleagues at Yale University, assembled the most comprehensive dataset to date combining genetic and anatomical data from living and fossil snakes. This dataset allowed us to evaluate the early evolutionary history of snakes using cutting edge computational techniques, in order to generate the first analytical reconstruction of the common ancestor of all snakes.

Our results strongly suggest that snakes originated on land, rather than in the seas, as the oldest snake fossils currently known – Coniophis, Najash, and Dinilysia – are all terrestrial.

As for whether snakes evolved on Gondwana or Laurasia, our results suggest an intriguing possibility: while the most recent common ancestor of living snakes likely originated in the southern hemisphere around 100 million years ago, the most recent common ancestor of all animals, living or extinct, that is more closely related to living snakes than to any other group may have inhabited Laurasia around 128 million years ago. (Laurasia is the Mesozoic supercontinent made up of the land masses that we call North America, Europe, and Asia today).

Based on the results of our study, we are developing a picture of how these ancestral snakes would have lived and behaved alongside the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous period.

They likely lived in warm, well-watered, well-vegetated environments – not unlike today’s forests, although the composition of plants and animals in these environments would have been entirely different from what we see today.

The ancestral snakes were also nocturnal in their habits, widely foraging for soft-bodied prey that were about the same size as their heads – for instance, small mammals such as Yanoconodon, as depicted in the painting by Julius Csotonyi accompanying our study. Unlike modern snakes such as the boa constrictor, the ancestral snake had yet to evolve the ability to manipulate prey items much larger than its head, and could not yet constrict its prey.

Snakes were around during the latter portion of the age of dinosaurs, which means that they, too, experienced the catastrophic bolide impact that marked the end of the Mesozoic era, resulting in the complete extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.

However, our results suggest that snakes actually did quite well for themselves in the wake of this extinction event: henophidian snakes – which comprise the lion’s share of snake diversity today – seem to undergo a major and extensive radiation following the extinction event.

Most likely, the ancestors of modern henophidian snakes were able to take advantage of the relatively empty landscape left behind by the dinosaurs. They had free reign to fill up whatever empty niches they could, just as mammals did, after the demise of the formerly ecologically dominant dinosaurs.

We now have a much clearer picture of the early evolutionary history of snakes, both in terms of how and when they became so diverse, and how they behaved and flourished during the Mesozoic. Of course, as with any field of science, there’s always more to know. As paleontologists, we always hope for future exciting fossil discoveries that will shed even more light on the evolution of these fascinating organisms.

Reference:
Allison Y Hsiang, Daniel J Field, Timothy H Webster, Adam DB Behlke, Matthew B Davis, Rachel A Racicot, Jacques A Gauthier. The origin of snakes: revealing the ecology, behavior, and evolutionary history of early snakes using genomics, phenomics, and the fossil record. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2015; 15 (1) DOI: 10.1186/s12862-015-0358-5

Note: The above story is based on materials provided by BioMed Central.

Long-gone bacteria blows the whistle on gold deposits

Golden Bar pit where samples were collected. Credit: Siyu Hu

Modern science is shining light on Jurassic rock, associating the organic remains of ancient bacteria with an increased likelihood of striking gold.
Curtin University researcher Siyu Hu has discovered a link between million-year-old rocks containing certain types of organic matter and the prehistoric deposition of gold.

In her work, Ms Hu combined traditional techniques—such as optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy—with a technique called Raman spectroscopy, which can map the way different types of organic matter reflect laser light.

It works by associating tiny changes in the frequency of reflected light with molecular differences in matter.

Ms Hu gathered her samples from New Zealand’s largest gold mine, the Macraes mine in Otago, which contains a grab-bag of rock types created by exposure to different temperatures and pressures, all formed in a melting pot up to eight kilometres beneath the Earth’s surface.

“These rocks were metamorphosed in the Jurassic, several hundred million years ago, and they’ve been uplifted by the Earth’s movement, so they lift up and explode onto the surface,” Ms Hu says.

With this rock, Ms Hu says, comes two types of gold:

“The first is gold captured in quartz veins…this is very common, because gold is always transported by fluid and then deposits, mostly in quartz veins,” she says.

“The second kind is more interesting, because the gold is captured in graphitic rock in the host rock, which means there are no veins.”

Ms Hu found this second kind of gold often coexists with organic matter.

“The host rock contained a lot of organic matter, and probably, when the gold fluid passed through this area millions of years ago, this organic matter very slowly trapped the gold.”

Organic alchemy at work

Ms Hu’s work identified four types of organic matter in host rock samples from Macraes, each typified by characteristic Raman spectra and associated with rock created at a particular temperature.

Two of these types—Type 1 and Type 4—coexisted with gold-bearing sulfide minerals, indicating they may have played a role in forming the gold deposit.

While the origin of Type 4 is at yet unknown, Ms Hu associates Type 1 with ancient bacteria, suggesting the action of sulphide-reducing bacteria may have helped extract or adsorb gold, concentrating it for future reaction into gold and sulphide mineral deposits.

Ms Hu is continuing to investigate the link between Types 1 and 4 organic matter and the presence of gold.

Note : The above story is based on materials provided by Science Network WA.

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