Latest news with #LatePleistocene
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Archaeolgists Make Surprising Discovery About Ice Age Hunting Tools
A recent study published in Nature Communications has found the first-known evidence of human beings manufacturing tools out of whale bones. Throughout 26 rock shelters and caves within northern Spain and southwestern France, researchers found 173 bone specimens, including 83 tools and 90 fragments. An analysis using Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) found that 131 of those specimens were whale bones belonging to sperm whales, gray whales, blue whales, fin whales, and right or bowhead whales.'Our study reveals that the bones came from at least five species of large whales, the oldest of which date to approximately 19,000–20,000 years ago,' lead author Jean-Marc Pétillon said in a press release. 'These represent some of the earliest known evidence of humans using whale remains as tools.' The bones bear little sign of water wear, which means they were likely harvested from animals which had washed up on the shore rather than deep-sea hunting. Many of the tools were dated between 17,500 and 16,000 years ago, though the oldest specimen found dates back 20,000 years. In particular, the bones of sperm whales were found to be particularly popular in fashioning spears and other hunting instruments. Over 40 percent of projectile points and 73 percent of foreshafts analyzed were created from sperm whale bones.'What was more surprising to me, as an archaeologist more accustomed to terrestrial faunas, was that these whale species remained the same despite the great environmental difference between the Late Pleistocene and today,' Pétillon told Popular Science. 'In the same period, continental faunas are very different: the ungulates hunted include reindeer, saiga antelopes, bison, etc., all disappeared from Western Europe today.'Pétillon believes ancient people came from far and wide to scavenge whale bones and other parts when they washed up on shore. With further research, he and his team hope to deduce why tools constructed from whale bone declined so rapidly 16,000 years ago. 'The news of a stranding travels fast first, because it smells a lot [from a] long distance away, so people would concentrate from quite far,' Pétillon told New Scientist. 'So, it might not have been the main driver of people going to the seashore, but when that happened, it probably had an influence on the movement of the people who probably changed their planned pattern of movement to go there.'Archaeolgists Make Surprising Discovery About Ice Age Hunting Tools first appeared on Men's Journal on May 30, 2025
The Star
16-05-2025
- Science
- The Star
Horses were running between Asia, North America 50,000 years ago: study
Ancient horses repeatedly migrated between North America and Eurasia, reaching today's Russian Far East near China, during the late Pleistocene when sea levels dropped and a land bridge connected the two continents, a new study found. Among the studied fossils are Dalianensis horses, named after the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, near where they were unearthed. They are shown to have a mixed ancestry from both Eurasian and American populations. Dalianensis lived 17,000 years ago and were slightly bigger than existing wild horses. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. In the latest study, the scientists found that horses undertook multiple migrations across the Bering land bridge between 50,000 and 13,000 years ago, with genetic exchanges between North America and Eurasia in both directions. Researchers in Britain, Canada, France, Russia and the United States published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Friday. 'We find that Late Pleistocene horses from Alaska and northern Yukon are related to populations from Eurasia and crossed the Bering land bridge multiple times during the last glacial interval,' the team wrote. 'We also find deeply divergent lineages north and south of the American ice sheets that genetically influenced populations across Beringia and into Eurasia.' Horses evolved in the Americas around 4 million years ago. About 20,000 years ago, warming after the Last Glacial Maximum submerged the Bering land bridge, which led to a decline in horse populations in North America. They largely disappeared from the region about 10,000 years ago but continued to evolve and were domesticated in Eurasia. Spanish settlers likely reintroduced horses to the Americas in the 1500s. Horses were then moved through trade routes and became key to many Indigenous cultures across the American Southwest and the Great Plains. Lead author Ludovic Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics in France, said while some lineages native from America migrated and brought their genes far into Eurasia, a Eurasian lineage expanded from the Ural Mountains into western Alaska and all across the Arctic. This region comprises present-day northern Russia, Siberia and Alaska. 'The lineage that migrated the other way around from America into Eurasia indeed reached out to China, since we find subfossils in the Sukhkaya cave in the Russian Far East, not far from the Chinese city of Dalian and next to the Jilin Province, carrying a fraction of American genetic ancestry,' he said. 'These subfossils are older than 50 thousand years ago, and related to Equus dalianensis from around Dalian.' He said Dalianensis horses could be seen as 'a mixture of populations originating both from Eurasia and America'. 'It implies that a Eurasian lineage first established and evolved in the region, and at some point mixed with another lineage that expanded in the region, and originated all the way up to America,' Orlando added. When asked about the motivations for horses to migrate vast distances across continents in both directions, he pointed to a Native American Lakota concept for the rationale for life forms to move. Orlando said when environmental conditions became suboptimal for horses and their associated microbes and food sources, 'they would reach out to other more favourable environments where they can thrive again, and maybe merge with other populations that would reinforce them'. 'Migration is thus one of the key ways that life has to develop,' he said. 'Maintaining populations as they are and within limited habitats may not be enough as they could not [necessarily] thrive, mix and develop new alliances to face fast-changing environments.' First author Yvette Running Horse Collin, a postdoctoral researcher in the archaeology, genomics, evolution and societies group of the laboratory in France, said horses 'moved great distances regularly until relatively recent times when their natural patterns were interrupted'. 'For the Lakota, and many Indigenous Peoples, our relationship and science around the horse helps us to understand that the horse was designed to move,' she said. 'The horse is not only responding to change, it is also actually part of the change.' To conserve horses, Collin said it was important to protect other forms of life that move with horses. 'It is for this reason that one of the research outcomes of this study is to suggest the creation of corridors that would allow life to move – together – as needed,' she said. 'One of our next steps will be to apply the findings in this study to preserve life in our traditional territory in the Black Hills of South Dakota and provide for the scientific measurement of those efforts.' More from South China Morning Post: For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2025.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Dire wolves have been 'resurrected': See how scientists used ancient DNA to create the pups
A species that hasn't existed since the Earth's last Ice Age has been "resurrected" by scientists. The dire wolf, which died out around 12,500 years ago, has been "de-extincted," according to Dallas-based biotech company Colossal Biosciences. No one is more excited than George R. R. Martin, author of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series which was adapted into HBO's "Game of Thrones." Dire wolves play a prominent role in the story, and Martin wrote in a blog post that the previously extinct animals are special to him. Three dire wolf pups have been created by Colossal scientists using ancient DNA, along with cloning and gene-editing technology, to alter the genes of a gray wolf, the prehistoric wolf's closest living relative. Six-month-olds Romulus and Remus, and their two-month-old sister Khaleesi are being raised at an undisclosed U.S. wildlife facility, according to Time Magazine. But while they've been raised by humans from birth, they shy away from human contact thanks to their wild lupine genes. The "de-extinction" of dire wolves is promising for those who hope to see other extinct species resurrected, as well as keep endangered species from ceasing to exist. For instance, Colossal scientists hope to use what they've learned to help the endangered red "ghost" wolf, which has a very limited gene pool remaining. "The dire wolf project is surreal and unreal at the same time," said Aurelia Skipwith, Colossal Conservation Advisory Board Member and former director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. "It's recreating reality that stemmed from reality, from millennia ago. To think that in this day dire wolves aren't just mythical illusions ... now, we have the science and ingenuity to bring life back to once existing reality. Colossal is drastically changing the prognosis for countless endangered species around the world." The dire wolf was the largest of the Late Pleistocene canids in North America, and their skulls could reach up to 12 inches long, with larger and more robust teeth than today's gray wolves, according to the National Park Service. An average dire wolf had a shoulder height of 38 inches and body length of 69 inches. Colossal's dire wolf pups are expected to be up to 6 feet long and 150 pounds in adulthood, Time reported. Dire wolf fossils have been found across North and South America, as far north as Alaska and as far south as Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia, according to the park service. Colossal scientists made 20 edits in 14 of the common gray wolf genes, which made for differences like the pups white coat, larger size, stronger shoulders, wider head, larger teeth and jaws, more-muscular legs and characteristic vocalizations. The ancient DNA used to determine what changes to make came from a 13,000-year-old tooth from Sheridan Pit, Ohio and a 72,000-year-old ear bone from American Falls, Idaho. Both were loaned to Colossal by the museums that house them. Once the embryos were created, three domestic dogs were used as surrogate mothers for each of the pups. Each was born by planned cesarean section. While Oklahoma statutes don't directly address the ownership of wolves, Oklahoma Title 29, §4-107 does outline the process for which one can possess wildlife for "commercial purposes." In Oklahoma, no one can possess or raise wildlife for commercial purposes without obtaining a permit. According to Born Free USA, an animal advocacy and wildlife nonprofit, anyone owning these animals as "pets" must also obtain this permit, whether the animal is for commercial purposes or not. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Dire wolves resurrected: Can you own wolves in Oklahoma?
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Dissected mammoth calf smells like ‘fermented earth and flesh'
A woolly mammoth calf discovered in 2024 underwent its first detailed postmortem analysis by researchers from Russia's Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg. After spending around 130,000 years buried in Siberian permafrost, Yana (named after the river basin in which she was found) is one of the most well-preserved mammoth specimens ever found. The opportunity to conduct a necropsy on Yana will likely yield a trove of new information about the species and its Late Pleistocene environment. That said, spending hours up-close-and-personal with a nearly 400-pound thawing carcass may not have been the most enjoyable experience. According to the Agence France-Presse (AFP), Yana's examiners described the roughly four-foot-tall calf as smelling like a 'mixture of fermented earth and flesh' after spending tens of thousands of years 'macerated in the Siberian subsoil.' The findings are already proving to be worth any unpleasantness. Over multiple hours, experts wearing sterile bodysuits, facemasks, and goggles made incisions into Yana's front quarters using scalpels, surgical scissors, and other medical tools. The permafrost's freezerlike conditions allowed the mammoth to retain much of its gray-brown skin, and even patches of reddish hair. In addition to removing exterior samples, the team of biologists and zoologists collected portions of Yana's digestive tract, including her stomach and colon. Researchers are particularly interested in the contents of the colon, which could include ancient microorganisms that improve our understanding of the evolutionary trajectory to their modern descendants. Further examinations may also reveal the microbiotic environment inside Yana while she was alive. The young mammoth's mouth also helped better pinpoint her age at the time of death. The discovery of milk tusks—akin to human baby teeth—proved Yana was at least a year old when she died, but not old enough for them to have already fallen out. And while her cause of death remains a mystery, one culprit can be crossed off the list of suspects: humans. 'Here on the territory of Yakutia there were not yet any humans,' Mammoth Museum director Maxim Cheprasov explained to the AFP, adding that they didn't arrive in the area until 28,000–32,000 years ago. Although humans weren't responsible for Yana's death, they are almost certainly behind the circumstances that led to her discovery. After remaining frozen for 130,000 years, warming global temperatures are causing permafrosts to thaw and reveal their long-hidden contents. While specimens like Yana offer valuable new insights, there are potential dangers to these opportunities. Some experts have expressed worries that melting permafrost may release hibernating pathogenic microorganisms into a world that isn't equipped to handle or resist them.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Neanderthal 'population bottleneck' around 110,000 years ago may have contributed to their extinction
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Neanderthals may have been headed toward their demise much earlier than experts previously thought, new research suggests. In the study, published online Feb. 20 in the journal Nature Communications, researchers discovered that around 110,000 years ago, our closest human relatives experienced a "population bottleneck" that decimated their genetic diversity. A population bottleneck occurs when there is a sudden reduction in genetic variation within a species. Bottlenecks in a species can be brought on by a number of processes, such as climate change, hunting or genocide. The end result of a bottleneck may be a population that is sickly or on the verge of extinction. The scientists identified the bottleneck by analyzing changes in the shape of the Neanderthal inner ear over time. When they analyzed the inner ears of Neanderthal skulls, they discovered that there was an abrupt decline in variation in this bone in skulls dated to the beginning of the Late Pleistocene, signaling a significant change in the Neanderthal skeleton. Typically, comparisons among ancient DNA samples help researchers pinpoint when bottlenecks happened. But in this case, the team used the reduced variation in the Neanderthals' ear bones as a proxy. They focused on the semicircular canals, a set of bony tubes in the inner ear that are fully formed at birth. During life, these canals are filled with fluid, helping to maintain balance and detect head movements, such as shaking or nodding. Because semicircular canals are evolutionarily "neutral" — because their variation does not affect a person's survival — tracking subtle changes in the canals over time can shed light on the size and diversity of a past population. Related: Did we kill the Neanderthals? New research may finally answer an age-old question. Using CT scans, the researchers examined the semicircular canals of 30 Neanderthals from three time periods: 13 from the site of Sima de los Huesos in Spain that were dated to 430,000 years ago, 10 from the site of Krapina in Croatia that were dated to 120,000 years ago, and seven "late" Neanderthals from France, Belgium and Israel that were dated to 64,000 to 40,000 years ago. This analysis revealed that the group of late Neanderthals had significantly lower variation in their inner ear bones than the earlier groups did, which led the researchers to conclude that a genetic bottleneck event occurred more recently than 120,000 years ago. RELATED STORIES —Who was the last Neanderthal? —Neanderthals' blood type may help explain their demise, new study finds —Neanderthals and humans interbred 47,000 years ago for nearly 7,000 years, research suggests "By including fossils from a wide geographical and temporal range, we were able to capture a comprehensive picture of Neanderthal evolution," study co-author Mercedes Conde-Valverde, a biological anthropologist at the University of Alcalá in Spain, said in a statement. The reduction in diversity between early and late Neanderthals "is especially striking and clear, providing strong evidence of a bottleneck event," she said. The findings fit in well with previous discoveries about Neanderthals, such as evidence of population turnover that negatively affected European Neanderthals' numbers. But it is unclear if the same pattern holds for southwestern Asian Neanderthals, like those who lived at Shanidar in Iraqi Kurdistan, the researchers wrote in their study, since their skulls were not available for analysis.
