Whales may have come from deer-like animal

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 28 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - It sounds like a stretch, but a new study suggests that the missing evolutionary link between whales and land animals is an odd raccoon-sized animal that looks like a long-tailed deer without antlers. Or an overgrown long-legged rat.

The creature is called Indohyus, and recently dug up fossils reveal some crucial evolutionary similarities between it and water-dwelling cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises.

For years, the hippo has been the leading candidate for the closest land relative because of its similar DNA and whale-like features. So some scientists were skeptical of the new hypothesis by an Ohio anatomy professor whose work was being published Thursday in the journal Nature.

Still, some researchers have been troubled that hippos seem to have lived in the wrong part of the world and popped up too recently to be a whale ancestor.

Newer fossils point to the deer-like Indohyus. The animal is a "missing link" to the sister species to ancient whales, said Hans Thewissen, an anatomy professor at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine.

"As a zoo animal, it looks nothing like a whale," Thewissen said. But, he added, when it comes to anatomical features, the Indohyus "is quite strikingly like one."

Thewissen, who earlier published papers on fossils of what he called the first amphibious whale and the skeleton of the oldest known whale, studied hundreds of Indohyus bones unearthed from mudstone in the Kashmir region of India. From that cache of bones he created a composite skeleton of a 48 million-year-old creature.

The key finding connecting Indohyus to the whale is its thickened ear bone, something only seen in cetaceans. An examination of its teeth showed that the land-dwelling creature spent lots of time in the water and may have fed there, like hippos and whales. Also, the specific positioning and shape of certain molars connects Indohyus to the earliest whales, which are about 50 million years old, Thewissen said.

"The earliest whales didn't look like whales at all," Thewissen said. "It looked like a cross between a pig and a dog." They lost their legs and ability to walk on land about 40 million years ago, he said.

And the Indohyus? "A tiny little deer maybe the size of a raccoon and no antlers," Thewissen said. He said it most resembles the current African mousedeer, which has a rat-like nose and "when danger approaches, it jumps in the water and hides."

India and Pakistan were the general region where early whales lived. That matches with the Indohyus but not the early African hippos, Thewissen said. While modern-day cetaceans are known to be smart, early whales and Indohyus had small brains, the researcher said.

Other scientists were intrigued, but far from convinced, especially since the case for hippos has looked good, they said.

"While this new hypothesis for the origin of whales is compelling, it will require further testing, especially since other recent studies have suggested both hippos and Raoellids were involved in whale ancestry," San Diego State University biology professor Annalisa Berta said in an e-mail. Raoellids are the larger grouping of species that include the Indohyus.

Kenneth Rose, a professor of functional anatomy and evolution at Johns Hopkins University, said Thewissen didn't provide enough evidence to merit his conclusions. He also questioned the use of the composite skeleton. The ear bone thickness, the key trait that Thewissen used, was difficult to judge and seemed based on a single specimen, Rose said. Much of the work is based on teeth, and overall the remains preserved from this family of species are poorly preserved, he said.

Thewissen said there are problems with not enough well preserved fossils, but he said what's left makes a strong case for Indohyus as the closest land ancestor — with hippos as the closest living land relative.

This undated handout artist rendering provided by Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) shows a piece of a Indohyus skull.

The very nature of the world is death, but Jesus is Life.

That is all.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/COMMENTARY/10...

Year of global cooling
December 19, 2007

By David Deming - Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.

Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.

Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells. No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

David Deming is a geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma.

Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that "Lucy" - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the "Robust hominids."
[The jaw bone of Lucy and the...]

The jaw bone of Lucy and the jaw bone of Australopithecus afarensis.
Photo: Courtesy

The specific structure found in Lucy also appears in a species called Australopithecus robustus. Prof. Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine's department of anatomy and anthropology wrote, "The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor."

The robust hominids were discovered in southern Africa 69 years ago and are believed to have lived between 2 million and 1.2 million years ago. Their jaws and jaw muscles were adapted to the dry environment in which they lived.

Rak and colleagues studied 146 mature primate bone specimens, including those from modern humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans and found that the "ramus element" of the mandible connecting the lower jaw to the skull is like that of the robust forms, therefore eliminating the possibility that Lucy and her kind are Man's direct ancestors. They should therefore, the Israeli researchers said, "be placed as the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours."

Their research has just been published in the on-line edition of PNAS, the Proceedings of the [US] National Academy of Sciences.

Lucy, which means "you are wonderful" in Amharic, was discovered (40 percent of its skeleton) by the International Afar Research Expedition in Ethiopia's Awash Valley. Fitting the bones together, they said it was an upright walking hominid (Homo sapiens, which comprises modern Man and extinct manlike species). They later found its jaws and additional bones.

Further analysis led the Afar researchers to believe it was of a female, and the skeleton listed as AL 288-1 was nicknamed Lucy because the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was often played at the camp.

The specimen was only 1.1 meters tall, estimated to weigh 29 kilograms and look somewhat like a common chimpanzee. Although it had a small brain, the pelvis and leg bones were almost identical in function with those of modern humans, proving that these hominids had walked erect.

Although fossils closer to chimpanzees have been found since then, Lucy - which is housed in the national museum in Addis Ababa - is prized by anthropologists who study Man's origin.

Rak and his colleagues also wrote that the structure of Lucy's mandibular ramus closely matches that of gorillas, which was "unexpected" because chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans, and not gorillas.

The Chronicle’s Lisa Falkenberg records a few of the diverse opinions overheard at the exhibit (fully titled “Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia”):

    She walked over to examine the lifelike 3 ½foot, hairy, half-smiling model of what scientists believe Lucy looked like and had her own questions.

    “They don’t have any finger bones, so how do they know her hand was like that?” Marla Bryant asked her mother, Leona Rice.

    “They’re guessing,” Rice replied.

    Young Garrett processed the scene for a few more minutes and then shrugged.

    “She’s just a monkey,” he declared, and then walked off.