Human & elephants: big brains, O2, energy

The whole story on elephant and human brains

Below is a brief paraphrased summary, specific to my interest of why both humans and elephants have unique oxygen-aerobic mechanisms, due to semi-aquatic ancestry with part-apnea part-aerobic foraging.

"We grasp objects with opposable thumbs, while it uses its trunk. We're both long-lived animals with rich social lives. And we have very, very large brains. Faced with similarly pressing fuel demands (to feed such large costly brains), humans and elephants have developed similar adaptations in a set of genes used in our mitochondria - small power plants that supply energy to our cells. The genes in question are "aerobic energy metabolism (AEM)" genes - they govern how the mitochondria metabolise nutrients in food, in the presence of oxygen. We already knew that the evolution of AEM genes has accelerated greatly since our ancestors split away from those of other monkeys and apes. (There is) evidence that the same thing happened in the evolution of modern elephants. our brain accounts for a fifth of our total demand for oxygen but the elephant's brain is even more demanding. It's the largest of any land mammal, it's four times the size of our own and it requires four times as much oxygen.

Humans and elephants have faster AEM rate but slower general rates of evolution among protein-coding genes, with long lives. Goodman speculates that with lower mutation rates, we'd be less prone to developing costly faults in our DNA every time it was copied anew. Overall, his conclusion was clear - in the animals with larger brains, a suite of AEM genes had gone through an accelerated burst of evolution compared to our mini-brained cousins. Six of our AEM genes that appear to have been strongly shaped by natural selection even have elephant counterparts that have gone through the same process."

While both humans and elephants forage in water and on land, full aquatics only forage in water, so super-develop apneic respiration, while elephants and humans only improved their aerobic capacity in association with apnea foraging.

Gibbons, Humans, Great Apes

http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.html

"Early hominid ancestors may have left the trees to take advantage of ground-level foods, a behavioral shift that could have resulted in two of the major defining characteristics of humans: unique teeth and walking on two legs, a mode of locomotion known as bipedalism that is extremely rare elsewhere in the animal kingdom."

No, they started at wetland/woodland edges, eating water lily/lotus/sedge rhyzomes/umbels and bush berries and low hanging fruits and fallen nuts, then apes moved higher in rainforest canopy while human ancestors moved to more coastal seashore areas.


Humans & gibbons share these traits (unlike great apes):

1) long achilles tendon
2) proportionately long legs (not neandertals)
3) protruding chin (not neandertals)*
4) upright biped primarily
5) no laryngeal air sac (exclude siamangs)
6) more monogamous pair bonding
7) continuous song rather than discrete hoots
8) low sexual dimorphism (teeth)
9) no woven branch nest (also siamangs)


gibbons and great apes share these traits (unlike humans)

1) fur coat
2) grasping big toe
3) very low carnivory
4) large canines, small molars


Chromosomes: Great apes have conserved primitive 48 chromosomes, humans derived 46, gibbons variable per species.

Gait: Gibbons and humans have conserved bipedal upright locomotion (original float-feeding/standing hominoid posture) while great apes have derived terrarboreal quadrupedalism.

Milk composition in hominoids, human milk is unique to all apes and all mammals
http://glycob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/5/499

"In comparison, type I oligosaccharides predominate over type II oligosaccharides in human milk, whereas nonprimate milk almost always contains only type II oligosaccharides. The milk or colostrum of the great apes contained oligosaccharides bearing both N-glycolylneuraminic acid and N-acetylneuraminic acid, whereas human milk contains only the latter. Great ape milk, like that of humans, contained fucosylated oligosaccharides whereas siamang milk did not."

Neu5Gc in hominoids, malaria susceptibility in humans and NWM Aotus monkeys
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/18/11736.abstract

Human malaria resistance recent? "Although sickle cell is best known in Africa, there is also an India-Pakistan variant of it that seems to have evolved separately," Hawks explained. "Both variants have evolved very recently, in the last three or four thousand years, and in that time have risen to as much as 10 to 15 percent of the populations.
Surprisingly, based on skull measurements, the human brain appears to have been shrinking over the last 5,000 or so years.

"When it comes to recent evolutionary changes, brains have shrunk about 150 cubic centimeters, off a mean of about 1,350. That's roughly 10 percent," Hawks said. "As to why is it shrinking, perhaps in big societies, as opposed to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, we can rely on other people for more things, can specialize our behavior to a greater extent, and maybe not need our brains as much," he added.

Human salivary amylase multiple of chimp, especially starch-eaters? Digestion begins as soon as you shovel a forkful of those mashed potatoes into your mouth and masticate (or chew) the food. Your mouth secretes saliva (up to 1.5 quarts a day) that moistens your food and also contains enzymes (special kinds of proteins) that help break down the food before it reaches your stomach.

One of these enzymes, called salivary amylase, breaks down starches, and a new study finds that humans carry extra copies of the gene that encodes the enzyme, which may have helped spur human evolution. The study, published in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Nature Genetics, found that humans have more copies of the gene than their ape relatives. The humans sampled carried as many as 15 copies each, while chimpanzees had only two.

The study also found a correspondence between the number of copies of the gene and the amount of starch in a population's diet. Members of the Tanzanian Hadza tribe, which ate more tubers and roots, had more copies of the gene than their neighbors (the Datog) who mostly raised livestock. The finding supports theories that some change in the diet of early humans fueled the simultaneous increases in the size of human brains and bodies, as well as the expansion of our ancestors' geographic range.

Trade distinguished Hs from others (neandertal, baboon, bonobo)
group inter-trade

Evolving group gene
dance, trance & chance

Slight chin in early Hs man 110ka in China & S Africa?
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/china/mulan-mandible-stone-2009.html

City - rete - net - spiderweb

Butterfly World Map: Closed ball, open prime octahedral butterfly
re butterfly effect in chaos theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_J.S._Cahill
http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html
(Number 6 includes both fine graticule grid, Antarctica, hexagonal mega-grid and great circles.)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcrowe/4002050596/sizes/o/
Weaving through the solar system


(Jon Mac Cosham's initial attempt to model the Adomah tet)

Adomah PhysiChem Periodic Table prime tetrahedral 20 inside 100 outside
http://www.perfectperiodictable.com/
28 regular triads of 74 elements, other sporadic irregulars (1st elements).

Leonardo's star tetrahedron: center reg tet surrounded by 4 reg tets, making a compound structure, all equilateral triangles
star tet (not stella octangula)

A star tet is a reg tet outwardly stellated (cumulated), a pentachoron is a reg tet inwardly stellated.
star tet ~ pentachoron

AM: The star-tet has 3D tetrahedral symmetry. The pentachoron has 5-fold hyperspace symmetry.
Connecting the 4 vertices of the star-tet produces four additional tets to the star-tets
already existent 5 tets, connect those 4 vertices, and get a big tetrahedron, total 10 tets.

4 simplex or pentachoron
pentachoron
pentachoron is a four-dimensional object bounded by 5 tetrahedral cells. It is also known as the 5-cell, pentatope, or hyperpyramid. It is a 4-simplex, the simplest possible convex regular 4-polytope (four-dimensional analogue of a polyhedron), and is analogous to the tetrahedron in three dimensions and the triangle in two dimensions.

http://teamikaria.com/hddb/wiki/Pentachoron
All 5 tetrahedral cells of the pentachoron are present in this diagram: the outer tetrahedron, and the 4 “inner” tetrahedra outlined by one triangular face of the outer tetrahedron and 3 of the blue lines each. Although they appear as slightly flattened tetrahedra, this is only because they are being viewed at from an angle. In actuality, they are perfectly regular tetrahedra.

AM: There's that 5 — you see that in the pentachoron in four dimensions. Now, in three dimensions, the cuboctahedron volume of 20 tets collapses down to an icosahedron volume of approximately 18.5 tets, then collapses further down to an octahedron volume of 8 tets. But in four dimensions, the icosahedron has a volume of 20 regular tets, however the center is somewhere along the fourth dimension, which explains how you can get 20 regular tets in an icosahedron!

DD: Cuboctahedron contains 20 (reg) tet endovols, reg icosa contains 18.51 (irreg) tet endovols; while stellated cuboctahedron contains also 20 (reg) tet exovols and reg stellated icosa contains 20 (reg) tet exovols.

A 3D polyhedron is bounded by 2D faces, so the base of the 3D tetrahedron is a 2D triangle.
A 4D polychoron is bounded by 3D cells, so the base of the 4D pentachoron is a 3D tetrahedron.


Lynn Margulis: Endosymbiosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis






A freaky photo of an over-exposed 'Sun' of Cheng Du, China.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6474312/Caught-on-camera-naked-love-rival-flees-furious-husband.html

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/11/first_video_of_marvelous_spatu.php#more
Spatule display of South American birds



Radiating 2D net software systems & 3D basket hardware structures

Is tri-axial weaving (includes spot welding) necessary for all structure? Yes, likely.
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/manifesto/index.shtml

4 animals tie knots: human (complex), weaver bird (simple loop & weave globe), hagfish (self-knots to remove slime), draughtboard shark (tangle egg case to seaweed with flow produces knots).
http://www.cgpartnersllc.com/projects-clients/bronx-zoo/weaverbird-observation-system/



triaxial weaving

Penta weave: spherical, takraw
Hexa weave: planar, taut
Hexapent weave: sub-triangled spherical
Hepta weave: saddle, pond-pebble wave, torus
7 triangles merge - torus

http://www.tonymarston.net/spiderweb4.gif
http://asseenthroughmyeyes.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/how-are-you-building-your-network/

City settlement:
Computer network:
Spider web:
Basket:
Fish net:

From Synergeo: relative volumes in concentric hierarchy, Kirby, Allan

> This duo-tet of 8 vertices defines a cube of 12 edges with thrice
> the volume of either inscribed tetrahedron, assuming these have
> edges of equal length. The cube's dual, the octahedron, again with
> prime vector edges, has a relative volume of four. Within our core
> scaffolding, named the isotropic vector matrix (all edges the same
> length) these volumes become the two kinds of edge-defined void.
> The tetrahedra outnumber the octahedra in a ratio of 2:1.

The enclosed stella octangula has half the volume of the enclosing cube.
The enclosed octahedron has half the volume of either enclosing tetrahedron.


> Each vertex anchors the center of a ball in touch with 12 others at
> 12 "kissing points". Their encasing polyhedra or voronoi cell, is
> the rhombic dodecahedron. The rhombic dodecahedron is a nonstructural space
> filler. Its 12 diamond facets have long and short diagonals, with
> the volume 3 cube its short diagonals, the volume 4 octahedron its
> long diagonals.

The rhombic dodecahedron (which fills space by face-centered cubic) has twice
the volume of the enclosed cube.
The Escher's Solid (which fills space by body-centered cubic) has twice the
volume of the enclosed rhombic dodecahedron.
The cube (which fills space by cubic) has twice the volume of the enclosed
Escher's Solid.


The sphere and the tetrahedron: The limit conditions involved are the inherent geometrical limit conditions of the sphere enclosing the most volume with the least surface and the fewest angular protrusions, while the tetrahedron encloses the least volume with the most surface and does so with most extreme (yet fewest) angular vertex protrusion of any regular geometric forms. The sphere has the least interfriction surface with other spheres and the greatest mass to restrain interfrictionally; while the tetrahedra have the most interfriction, interference surface with the least mass to restrain. RBF

Cheese tetrahedron: A tet is the only polyhedron which retains its initial form after having a flat slice removed from any face. A cube, octa, icosa cannot. The only other item that can do that is a fluid sphere, which kinetically returns to spherical shape after removal of any quantity.

Global Sea Conditions as of date posted

Click on desired feature: region, wave height/direction, sea surface temperature...
http://www.oceanweather.com/data/


Compare today's sea surface temperatures to SST during the last glacial maximum 18,000 years ago in the ice age:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CLIMAP.jpg



Average sea surface salinities

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth540/content/c3_p4.html




View Larger Map

Antarctic glacier melt: today fastest since 14ka, per 100m sediment deposit
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/nocs-pco110609.php

The Falklands islands wolf: a social isolate for 6.7 million years, related closest to North American Maned wolf which 4ma later expanded to South America.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/darwins-wolf/

Google eyes see Amazon rainforest destruction
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2009/11/google_had_never_done_anything.php

Nazca desertification due to empire growth (same everywhere).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/peru/6478168/Nazcas-destruction-of-forests-caused-downfall.html

MtDNA molecular clock proven unreliable in antarctic penguins
http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem_print.aspx?name=68078801

Speech genes? tospeak, Foxp2 and basal vocalization/tissue patterns
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48680/title/A_gene_critical_for_speech
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/revisiting_foxp2_and_the_origins_of_language.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link

Marine-Rift Conduit

Ardi at Yardi: fossil hominin http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/10/01/ardipithecus-we-meet-at-last/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113387960
-

Shallow-water habitats as sources of fallback foods for hominins
R Wrangham, D Cheney, R Seyfarth & E Sarmiento 2009 AJPA 140:630-642

Underground/underwater Storage Organs (rhyzomes) consumed
by hominins could have included both underwater and underground storage
organs, ie, from both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Shallow aquatic
habitats tend to offer high plant growth rates, high densities, and
relatively continuous availability throughout the year.

This study differs from traditional savanna chimpanzee models
of hominin origins by proposing that access to aquatic habitats was a
necessary condition for adaptation to savanna habitats. It also raises the
possibility that harvesting efficiency in shallow water promoted adaptations
for habitual bipedality in early hominins.
-

Similarities of African apes and dolphins in group behavior
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5gv9w4jw#


But note this from Molly: Why is the discussion always between chimps and humans? Orangs are more intelligent than chimps and we share a type C viral gene with them that other apes don’t have. How do they fit in the ancestor picture?
-
Scientists have tallied up genes that were accidentally duplicated in our lineage, for example, so that we now have more copies of them than do other primates. They've also identified genes that became pseudogenes. And some genes in humans got their start as noncoding DNA in other primates. Recently Aoife McLysaght of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College Dublin discovered three proteins produced by humans that aren't found in our closest non-human relatives. McLysaght then discovered that the genes for these three human proteins correspond almost precisely to stretches of noncoding DNA in the other species. It appears that mutations transformed these pieces of genetic material into genes capable of making proteins. (per Carl Zimmer) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/beta/evolution/ten-great-advances-evolution.html




This image was added by magellan on Aug 2, 2003 7:55 AM, Dave's Garden http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/21902/
"Hardy Water Lily \\\'Arc en Ceil\\\' best known for its unusual variegated green leaves mottled with pink, cream and sometimes red. Produces many blooms which open light pink and change to off white."


Goubbat al Kharab (Gebt/Gulf from Indian Ocean) to Awash (A!k'wa'sh) River to Rift Valley, recent volcanic uplift changed watersheds
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0201-126&volpage=photos&photo=104004
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2009/09/mvp_5_ardoukoba_djibouti.php
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=12065

http://fotobank.ru/image/JW00-5676.html
Women with ornate shell hairstyles harvesting water lily bulbs at Awash River ("nymphs from Afar?") gather nymphaea (water lilies) in the presence of dragonfly nymphs (larvae) which feed on pond mosquito larvae, see story about remarkable journey taken by these Dragonflies from India over the Indian Ocean to Africa: http://the-arc-ddeden.blogspot.com/2009/07/migration-lemurs-dragons-wings.html

Backfloating on Awash River
http://herc.berkeley.edu:16080/jdesmond_clark_memorial/jdc03.jpg
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10877665
Post-volcanic Awash R watershed
http://gridnairobi.unep.org/chm/waterbasins/Awash%20River%20Basin-11-03-08.jpg
Post-volcanic Abbe R / Tana L watershed in Ethiopia
http://gridnairobi.unep.org/chm/waterbasins/Abbay_River_Basin-11-03-08.jpg

Note: Lake Tana & Blue Nile (Abbay) River, Ethiopia is NOT Tana river delta, Kenya coast. They are different regions. Lake Abbe (Abhe Bad) also differs, being the final depository of the Awash River on the border between Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Lake Abbe, end of Awash River
Lake Abbe, Djibouti

Tana river-delta on the Kenya coast:
Tana delta, Kenya

Lake Tana: highland source of Ethiopia Blue Nile (Abbay) River:
Lake Tana, Ethiopia

Both are linked to early human evolution and civilization.

Homo sapiens developed cane canoes, rafts, boats
Lake Tana papyrus canoe
Lake Baringo ambatch canoe

But before these composite boats evolved, simple bundles of reeds were used as floats, and wood-hafted stone axes as weights, during cyclic submersion while foraging for plant rhyzomes, cichlids, catfish, crustaceans, shellfish etc.

Kelp Highway, Blue Highway
http://the-arc-ddeden.blogspot.com/2008/05/human-ancestors-at-waterside.html
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48574/title/Droughts_gave_early_h

University of Texas at Austin anthropologist John Kappelman presented this counterintuitive idea October 19 in a talk titled “Blue Highways,” which followed his fossil digs along the Blue Nile tributaries in Ethiopia. Early humans are thought to have taken one of two routes out of Africa: along the Red Sea, or along the Nile Valley and out across Eurasia. But “there’s been very little testing on the ground, recovering fossils and sites that actually permit us to evaluate either one of those two hypothetical migration events,” Kappelman said. Most fossils found to date come from the rift valley on the eastern side of the continent, where dry, flat, exposed land makes for good fossil hunting. In the late 1990s, Kappelman started exploring the tributaries on the western side of the Nile, where no one had looked for fossils before. The last record of western exploration there was from British naturalist Sir Samuel Baker in the 1860s.

“This area that was a blank slate for Africa is finally starting to fill in,” Kappelman said.
Samuel Barker noticed something key: The rivers are dry for most of the year, but every summer the water rushes back “like freight cars,” Kappelman said. The torrent of water gouged out deep holes that retained water even during the dry season, leaving a necklace of isolated pools.

And the pools were full of fish. “The fish were literally in a bucket,” Kappelman says. If early humans stayed near these water holes, they could feast all through the dry season without working too hard. “We think of dry seasons as a time of adversity. We’re proposing that these were the easy times,” Kappelman says.

Kappelman and his team found double-edged blades that were probably used as arrow heads and evidence of hearth fires in several sites around the Nile. He thinks using these water holes could have taught early humans crucial skills, like fishing with nets or bow and arrow, that helped them survive seasonal and climate changes after migration to other parts of the world.
“It honed the behavioral foraging habits of early humans, and taught them to exploit a wide range of food,” Kappelman said.

(Ainu culturally derived) coastal Ama divers

The traditional Ama divers of Japan south coast spent part of the year tending freshwater rice paddies and part diving at the seashores with pry tools and basket floats.

The Moken (okeos) Andaman Sea people have wooden boat communities, children dive for shellfish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moken

Notes on tropical/fragrant water lily: Seed, tuber, buds as food

http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/seeds/waternut.htm

In times of drought in the waterlilies natural habitat what happens is the pads will die off and the tuber will remain below the soil and becomes quite nut-like, protecting the tuber through the dry season. Once the rains return and the tuber becomes moist again it will send up new growth from the terminal crown and a new plant will be born. http://www.victoria-adventure.org/waterlilies_images/sean_tuber_tutorial/page1.html

Water lilies reproduce by seed and also by new plants sprouting from the large spreading roots (underground stems called rhizomes). A planted rhizome will cover about a 15-foot diameter in about five years.

Fragrant water lily has an interesting pollination strategy. Each white or pink flower has many petals surrounding both male and female reproductive parts, and is only open during the daytime for three days. On the first morning, the flowers produce a fluid in the cup-like center and are receptive to pollen from other flowers. However, they are not yet releasing pollen themselves. Pollen-covered insects are attracted by the sweet smell, but the flower is designed so that when they enter the flower, they fall into the fluid. This washes the pollen off their bodies and onto the female flower parts (stigmas) causing fertilization. Usually the insects manage to crawl out of the fluid and live to visit other flowers, but occasionally the unfortunate creature will remain trapped and die when the flower closes during the afternoon. On the second and the third days, the flowers are no longer receptive to pollen, and no fluid is produced. Instead, pollen is released from the stamens (the flexible yellow match-shaped structures in the flower center). Visiting insects pick up the pollen and transport it to flowers in the first day of the flowering cycle. After the three days the flowers are brought under water by coiling their stalks. The seeds mature under water and after several weeks are released into the water. Water currents or ducks, which eat the seeds, distribute them to other areas. This flowering regimen is followed nearly throughout the summer, producing many eye-pleasing blooms and a large supply of seeds.

In addition to reproducing by seeds, water lilies spread by rhizomes. Anyone who has tried to curtail this plant's growth in front of their dock knows how tenacious these root systems are. Also, if pieces of the rhizome are broken off during control efforts, they will drift to other locations and establish a new patch of lilies.

The fragrant water lily was utilized in many ways by Native Americans in the eastern United States. Roots of this and other water lilies were used medicinally as a poultice for sores and tumors, internally for many aliments including digestive problems, and rinse made for sores in the mouth. The leaves and flowers were also used as cooling compresses. In addition, the rhizomes were occasionally used as food and the young leaves and lower buds were eaten as a vegetable. Even the seeds were fried and eaten or ground into flour. Wildlife, including beaver, muskrat, ducks, porcupine, and deer also will eat the leaves, roots, or seeds. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/Programs/wq/plants/weeds/lily.html

Jordan Valley frog bit Hydrocharis morsus-ranae
http://www.wildflowers.co.il/english/plant.asp?ID=750

Jordan Valley white water lily
http://www.flowersinisrael.com/Nymphaeaalba_page.htm

Jordan Valley yellow pond lily
http://www.flowersinisrael.com/Nupharlutea_page.htm

India pink lotus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelumbo_nucifera

Egyptian blue water lily
http://www.egyptianmyths.net/lotus.htm
The Egyptian Blue Water-lily, N. caerulea, opens its flowers in the morning and then sinks beneath the water at dusk, while the Egyptian White Water-lily, N. lotus, flowers at night and closes in the morning.

Tana river delta nymphaea
http://www.feow.org/ecoregion_details.php?eco=567

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070604230442AA91zkq

Okavango Delta: termite, tree, hippo
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0412/feature3/fulltext.html

Congo Mbeli bai, Ndoki swamp lowland gorilla eat floating frogbit hydrocharis (92%) & some sedges (8%)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/d66v4990r452721p/fulltext.html

http://www.arkive.org/western-gorilla/gorilla-gorilla/video-go08.html

http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/sci.anthropology.paleo/2008-08/msg00063.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZcTP7Kb01NAC&pg=PA365&lpg=PA365&dq=Hydrocharis+chevalieri&source=bl&ots=b6deCmBDmQ&sig=vhg4uBxNyqaoMfZFmBNaw9t4SM0&hl=en&ei=dnnFSon1HJHcsgOA7OGhBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#v=onepage&q=Hydrocharis%20chevalieri&f=false
Picture shows superficial resemblance of Hydrocharis and water lily, but hydrocharis roots float free with stolons at surface (easily dredged from above surface by gorilla standing or sit-floating upright with inflated laryngeal air sacs), while the water lily has anchored benthic roots and horizontal rhyzomes at a depth 6"-10" below soil substrate far below the water surface, often requiring facial submersion and combined with benthic shellfish foraging).

Nassarius marine mud snail shells used for ornamentation inland
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16051.full

http://taos-telecommunity.org/epow/EPOW-Archive/archive_2009/EPOW-090119.htm

Hydrocharis storage turion buds into new plant
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HydrocharisBaby.jpg


Comparatives:

Butterfly (Nymphalids) 90ma & Angiosperm (flowering plants) 100ma evolution
http://www.abhishek-tiwari.com/2009/10/butterfly-phylogenetics.html

Frog 125ma & Archeafructus 125ma (water lily predecessor?) North East China
(see earlier posts)

Human ancestors: India 3ma (see Yohn & Todaro: African primate-only viruses between 3-5ma) (also see India origin of malaria 3ma), Djibouti (unique Tuberculosis 2ma), myosin mutation 2.4ma reduced jaw muscles & brain size constraint
2ma Asian pseudogene RRm2p4 nucleotide polymorphism on human X chromosome
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/2/189

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-03/uopm-mmp032204.php
In an effort to find the remaining genes that govern myosin--the major contractile protein that makes up muscle tissue Penn researchers have found one small mutation that undermines an entire myosin gene. Their estimated dating for the appearance of this mutation places it at about 2.4 million years ago, just prior to a period of major evolutionary changes in the hominid fossil record. These include the beginning of larger brain size, so important in making us human. Anthropologists have long debated how humans evolved from ancestors with larger jaw muscles and smaller brains. This newly discovered mutation seems responsible for the development of smaller jaw muscles in humans as compared to non-human primates. Did this genetic mutation lift an evolutionary constraint on brain growth in early humans? MYH16 on chromosome 7 They found the gene-inactivating mutation in all modern humans sampled, with the same inherited muscle "disease." However, the mutation was not present in the DNA of seven species of non-human primates, including chimpanzees. macaque chewing and biting muscles are nearly ten times as large as in humans, which correlates with the fact that MYH16 protein is made in macaques and not in humans. researchers calculated that the inactivating mutation appeared in a hominid ancestor about 2.4 million years ago, after the lineages leading to humans and chimpanzees diverged. Shortly thereafter, roughly 2.0 million years ago, the less muscled, larger brained skulls of the earliest known members of the genus Homo start to appear in the fossil record.

From this the investigators postulated that the first early hominids born with two copies of the mutated MYH16 gene would show many effects from this single mutation--most notably a reduction in size and contractile force of the jaw-closing muscles, some of which exert tremendous stress across and/or cause deposition of additional bone atop growth zones of the braincase. "The coincidence in time of the gene-inactivating mutation and the advent of a larger braincase in some early Homo populations may mean that the decrease in jaw-muscle size and force eliminated stress on the skull, which 'released' an evolutionary constraint on brain growth,

Ice age glacial sea level 100m drops as Yemen gateway to south Asia and Sahara-Sinai desert gateway to Europe.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/54756

Based on this, we know that Ardi & Lucy were not likely to have been direct human ancestors, but possible chimp ancestors or extinct relatives which shared many phenotypical traits with early human ancestors.
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other items

Neandertals at Gibralter, Anglo Saxons of eastern England feasted on dolphin
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/ea500d5e8628fcce#
http://anthropology.net/2009/09/16/neanderthal-hearths-at-el-salt-reveal-plant-and-fish-remains/#comment-15042


Stone/wood beaters used on tree bark cloth felt (cf Mongolian wool felt pulled/bounced behind horse, egyptian papyrus pith paper) in China, Vietnam, Tonga, Mexico.
Judith Cameron, Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National Univ.
http://dspace.anu.edu.au:8080/bitstream/1885/47191/1/ch13.pdf

Flora and fauna, fish hook and sewn plank canoe transmission between Asia and America pre-Colombian
ON LINGUISTICS AND CASCADING INVENTIONS: A COMMENT ON
ARNOLD’S DISMISSAL OF A POLYNESIAN CONTACT EVENT IN
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Terry L. Jones and Kathryn A. Klar

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~tljones/AQ74(1)%20Jones%20+%20Klar.pdf


http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8-OilJCX1moC&oi=fnd&pg=PA238&dq=archaeology+%22pre-Columbian+contact%22&ots=PB_vZlY7vy&sig=NKJwE9osSyqBM8UMjEN__3G4zFk#v=onepage&q=archaeology%20%22pre-Columbian%20contact%22&f=false

Zizyphus fruit tree of Eurasia, short stemmed: http://www.citizendia.org/Jujube

Nutrition at waterside: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/54785

Cattle domestication at Mehrgarh, Indus above Indus delta.
http://www.citizendia.org/Mehrgarh
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Plausible? He only at rift & coast, not interior, Hs pre-domesticated along Levant-Indus coast, then returned to Africa as pastoralist/agriculturalist H&G only (pygmy/san/onge/kusunda?)...explains why megafauna remained in Africa long after mammoths and other megafauna all extinct throughout EurAsia.

Parallel: Further north, the Rift in the Jordan Valley, at paleo-lake Ubeidiya (3 km So of Sea of Gallilee), a large shallow freshwater lake at 100m below sea level, many acheulean hand axes found from 1.5ma. "Originally the site was on the edge of a small sweet-water lake; this accounts for the abundance of bones of mammals, reptiles, fish and birds. The hominids living at the site were hunters and scavengers. They made distinctive chopping tools of flint and spheroids of limestone, as well as hand-axes of flint and to lesser degree of basalt" (also almond and pond lily nuts). 20? km east of the Medit. along Jezreel valley, north of Dead Sea. During the Neogene, the Mediterranean penetrated into the Jordan Valley. The end of the Pliocene marks the creation of the Rift valley, cover basalt from 5ma to 3ma underlie the interesting layers. See page 11/31 at this pdf:
www.paleoanthro.org/dissertations/Miriam%20Belmaker.pdf
http://www.sitesandphotos.com/catalog/images/455911.jpg
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1966Natur.209.1268M
IN 1959 Dr, G. Haas, of the Department of Zoology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was sent some fossil animal bones which had been turned up by a bulldozer levelling a field near Tell Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley near Lake Tiberias. In this material, Dr. Haas identified bones of extinct mammalia and ``a human incisor and two small fragments of a hominid calvarium of very great thickness''1.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118911262/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

The large carnivores from ‘Ubeidiya (early Pleistocene, Israel)
Of specific importance is the presence of the African origin saber tooth Megantereon cf. M. whitei and the Eurasian origin canids Canis moschbachensis and Lycaon lycoanoides. Hippo tusk, mammoth molar at Ubeidiya:
http://digitool.haifa.ac.il/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=88799&local_base=GEN01
http://digitool.haifa.ac.il/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=88785&local_base=GEN01

http://www.gsi.gov.il/Eng/_Uploads/141Reactivation-of-the-Levant-passive.JPG
http://www.topo-europe.eu/3-the-natural-laboratory-concept/3-7-the-caucasus-and-levant/3-7-4-crustal-structure-and-physiography

Peritethyan and Pannonian Seas of Europe 10ma
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/MSC_basin_hypotheses.svg/350px-MSC_basin_hypotheses.svg.png&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis&usg=__DZ63mmr9Wjv7sZ9LyhOuf7dsN5w=&h=364&w=350&sz=14&hl=en&start=34&sig2=Q1CH8sJ688ieeTITF3depQ&um=1&tbnid=81PvmHgYbY8IXM:&tbnh=121&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlevant%2Bbasin%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1&ei=XwflSqKRDpDQswPlvqCwBA

The Pannonian Sea existed for about 9 million years. Its last remains disappered in the middle of Pleistocene Epoch, about 600,000 years ago. The water of the Pannonian Sea actually ruptured its way through the modern Đerdap Gorge on the Danube river and flowed through the gorge leaving behind a large plain known as the Pannonian Plain.
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Snail fossils suggest semiarid eastern Canary Islands were wetter 50,000 years ago

Isotopic measurements performed on fossil land snail shells resulted in oxygen isotope ratios that suggest the relative humidity on the islands was higher 50,000 years ago, then experienced a long-term decrease to the time of maximum global cooling and glaciation about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, according to new research by Yurena Yanes, a post-doctoral researcher, and Crayton J. Yapp, a geochemistry professor, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. With subsequent post-glacial climatic fluctuations, relative humidity seems to have oscillated somewhat, but finally decreased even further to modern values.

Consequently the eastern Canary Islands experienced an overall increase in dryness during the last 50,000 years, eventually yielding the current semiarid conditions. Today the low-altitude eastern islands are characterized by low annual rainfall and a landscape of short grasses and shrubs, Yanes says. The research advances understanding of the global paleoclimate during an important time in human evolution, when the transition from gathering and hunting to agriculture first occurred in the fertile Middle East and subsequently spread to Asia, North Africa and Europe.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/smu-sfs102709.php#at

Via Elaine at AAT, from Dawkins site: [Recall that Queen Hatsheput, Pharaoh of Egypt that voyagedd the Red Sea to Punt met Queen Ati there who had steatopygya as did her daughter, showing a continuum from South African Namakwa KhoiSan to Andamaners, also seen in early Hs Euro mother Venus sculptures]

"One very interesting feature is Steatopygia -- extreme obesity in women during
pregnancy, often occur in Andamanese. It's considered as a disorder, but i
suspect it's an aquatic "adaptaion" -- for that pregnant women need more energy
storage and buoyancy (u may link it to water birth), or also, as the photo show,
a "platform" for the baby staying near water surface. (well this sounds
ridiculous, but it could contribute to higher survival rate if they were that
aquatic)" The photo shows and infant standing on the protuding buttocks of the mother
hanging on to her neck... and re. buoyancy: "Human buoyancy is very close to optimal for aquatic mammals. More importantly perhaps, our center of buoyancy is compatible with marine, not terrestrial mammals (Slijper 1976). This gives us the ability to maintain a horizontal attitude near the surface of the water with minimal energy expenditure."


Parallel: East Asian people have reduced body and facial hair with fu manchu beard, West Asian & African people have facial hair with full beard. East Asian tigers have only small fu manchu beard, West Asian & African lions have large mane and full beard.
India/Tibet has both types of people and lions-tigers. Why? Tigers more aquatic-arboreal or colder climate?

Marcel on marine kidneys, oreopith, AHV: http://www.bautforum.com/science-technology/94562-elaine-morgan-says-we-evolved-aquatic-apes-3.html

MSC: 6ma - 5.5ma Mediterranean dried out. Last common ancestor of chimpanzee and Homo is dated to around 5.5 Mya. Papio/gelada divergence at 4 (3.99) Mya.

Wood eating crabs at depth, as well as wood boring molluscs and isopods, there are crustaceans which eat plant matter which sinks to the ocean floor, including old wooden boats and tools (so its even harder to get evidence of ancient coastal tool use!).
http://www.oceanleadership.org/2009/the-deep-sea-crab-that-eats-trees/

Seeing fish at depth: http://www.fishbase.org/photos/depth.cfm?PicName=Lamer_j0.jpg

Fluid & Rigid Spheres

Wai: Hawaiian for water
Koa: Hawaiian for bold

I didn't expect that a falling raindrop inflates into an umbrella form and explodes into droplets, but it does.

I didn't expect that a waterball could contain and retain a central air bubble in microgravity, but it can.

Nature does not always conform to expectations.

I always thought that earth had a central dense rocky core, but now I'm not certain, it may be more like a turtle egg, hard shell, soft center or even gas-filled center (small or large). Earths' crust has floating tectonic plates like ice floes, floating on magmasphere, with hydrosphere floating on much of the crust.

http://www.pmmh.espci.fr/fr/gouttes/recherche/indexUS.html
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0295-5075/80/3/34005
http://bluedroplet.com/video/8/don-pettit-nasa-expedition-6-international-space-station
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/multimedia/Exp10_image_009.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tortoise-Hatchling.jpg
Tortoise surrounded by carapace/plastron/rib cage in a soft membrane in a shell, 3 spheroids in one.

Spheres are funny, a rigid and fluid sphere are quite different, one packs together like oranges in a basket, the other conglomerates into a single waterball in microgravity or puddle on earths' surface.

What seems rough is smooth at another scale in rigid structures with straight bonds, but fluid water has no scalar difference, always spherical with curved surface bonds even at the subatomic level I guess, depending on ambient pressure and temperature and material.



Alternative rattan takraw ball weave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/woven/479585393/
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The Buddy System vs Social Network: "Individual" addiction as social epidemic?
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/17-10/ff_christakis?currentPage=1
enforcement/reinforcement as societal standing wave.

http://www.tau.ac.il/~shmulikm/Elat-Yonni.htm
Coral reefs at Red Sea at Elat, tectonics rejuvenate reefs and lagoons

Volcanic soil: New magma rock cools, crystallizes, erodes. Silt crumbles downslope, washes downstream. Plants started as ocean phototsynthesizers, some moved to shallow freshwater, some to soaked soil, some to moist soil. Plant roots anchor, support, evapotranspiratively suction mineralized water up via capillary action, exchanging with air at leaf pore surfaces, release water, O2, CO2 and phenolic resins.

Fishapods

With placoderm-like forebears in brackish shallows, perhaps Tiktaalik was a
primitive proto-salamander/reptile, Acanthostega a primitive pelagic
proto-ray-finned fish (with its duplicated digits for better hydrodynamic
propulsion), and Ichthyostega a primitive proto-frog, with its lack of
abdominal ribs allowing the gradually lengthening rear limbs with broad
paddled feet to come far forward to launch or lunge (and later to leap),
"differentiated vertebral column, with a short neck, weird tall neural spines
in the pelvic region, and a tail which is proportionally shorter" sounding a
lot like a short-legged frog, to eventually lose a few digits and fuse the
coccyx, but retain the primitive skin breathing ability and need to reproduce
in shallow later.

See pictures of fishapods
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/04/functional_anatomy_part_i.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fishapod

Humboldt Natural History Museum closure

http://www.northcoastjournal.com/blogthing/2009/08/07/hsu-natural-history-museum-close/

Local (Humboldt county) North Coast Natural History Museum, associated with Humboldt State University, may be soon closing. They've had a good exhibit on ancient hominids, and always whale fossils and various coastal species.

Being right on the Pacific coast and Redwood forest and linked to HSU marine/envirinmental/forestry studies. A small museum, nothing fancy. This area is economically depressed but ecologically wealthy.

Sociopolitical economic freeze,
Priorities and opportunities,
Sparks blowing in a hot breeze,
Halt the growing of li'l trees.

http://www.humboldt.edu/~natmus/
Introduction

http://savethenorthcoastnhm.org/index.php?q=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=3&widgetID=1
If you can and wish to donate some spare funding

[The ARC has no direct affiliation with the museum, but is considering a potential link via ARC-AID-A, a not-for-profit program being considered.]

http://redwoods.info/showrecord.asp?id=243
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http://www.krisweb.com/krishumboldtbay/krisdb/html/krisweb/whats_new.htm

KRIS Humboldt Bay
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I rarely give a moments thought to political rhetoric, but this seemed appropriate in today's global sociopolitical climate:

"So long as our relationship is defined by our differences,

we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace".

US President Barack Obama

Icosa + Octa + Tet = ICTET

Novel structure incorporating 3 simplest structural polyhedral forms:
" the ARC in =4D= " the tail as a rotating/fused/swiveling structure

I found 6 correlations. [Update: a 7th found, the Proxigean extreme spring tide occurs every 31 years, see bottom of post.] The last one was hard, the ictet has 31 sides, but what was the 12? I knew there must be a twelve. Then I remembered Bucky's 12 radial spokes supporting a tensional wheel. Just as a rotating tail (but not a swiveling tail) such as a propeller or a clock must balance outwards to avoid offset erosion of the prop axle, the wheel must have 12 contacts in balance, as the sphere in a matrix must have 12 contact points. The result is extraordinary. (I did not originally see the link of 31 GC & vertebral nerve prs and 12 cranial nerves, Rybo at Synergeo group did, a copy of his graphic is at the bottom of the ARC blog. Ken at AAT group noted the 31 equal temperment of an octave.)

1 growth-31 vert neural pairs, 12 cranial nerve pairs, pentameric
2 form-31 great circles in icosa, 12 vertices, pentagonal
3 energy-31 equal temperment in octave, 12 tones, pentatonic
4 time-31~ day/night cycles in month, 12 month, heptapent
5 triax-31=sum of 1st 7 factors, of 12 factors of 60, hexapent
6 ictet-31 triangular sides, 12 deg. of freedom of tail pentabase
7 orbit-31 year cycle extreme proxigean spring tide, 12 pt ellipsis
Bio video of helical propelled bacteria: Rhodobacter sphaeroides
http://www.rowland. harvard.edu/ labs/bacteria/ showmovie. php?mov=rsphe_ f_swim_1
http://tinyurl. com/qzdb4r
Good graphical explanation of flagella, cilia, rod:
http://lecturer. ukdw.ac.id/ dhira/BacterialS tructure/ Flagella. html

Note: (Flower petals/leaves often split as 2, 3, 5, which are prime)

The number 60, a highly composite number, has twelve factors:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 10 = 31 (sum of 1st 7 factors)

In spherically arranged tight-fit ball packing layers:
12, 42, 92, 162, 252, 362 (shell layer balls in VE, Icosa)
10, 40, 90, 160, 250, 360 (subtract 2)
1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36 (divide by 10)
f = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (sq root)

form: 1 tet = 4 sides (tetrahedron)
form: 1 octa = 8 sides (octahedron)
form: 1 octet = 11 sides (2 merge into 1 double pane = tube)
form: 1 icosa = 20 sides (icosahedron)
form: 1 ictet = 31 sides (icosa w/ pin-hinged octet "tail")

Ictet = icosa + tail, polar moment, mono-axis

So now we have a composite structure of all 3 structural elements, the overall shape is an icosa-spheroid with an octet tail which can rotate in any direction (or if reversely docked, swing-hinge in an arc), answering the question, from whence did the flagella and sperm arise. Also explains the persistence of the tail in all motile organisms. Also explains why humans have 31 vertebral neural pairs, 12 cranial neural pairs and no tail. At least it would seem so.

AFAIK no one has noted the significance of the combined 'Ictet' structure as a universal jointed spheric mobile entity, and its numerical parallel of 31 sides with the 31 equal temperment of the octave, the 31 vertebral neural pairs in humans, the 31 lunar days and 31 great circles of the icosahedron, the 31 sum of 1st 7 factors of 60.

http://www.tabletoptelephone.com/~hopspage/Fuller.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icosahedron
http://www.buckminster.info/Pics/Tetrahedra/Tet-Quark-Mite.gif
At the single open vertex of the tetrahedron (the far left blue point) of the octet is the universal 'pin joint' which is attached to one of the 12 pentagonal sutures (pore/window) of the (truncated/regular) icosahedron or hexapent buckyball, the octet tail allowed to swivel radially or horizontally on a favorable plane.

(The picture includes the internal electrostatic bonding forces referred to as a mite or quark, whose form is an irregular tetrahedron.)

Note that the icosa meets the octet at a pentagon window, the tet meets the octa with each of the tet base corners having 5 vectors. So there is a continuum of pentagonal adhesion/cohesion, aka pentabase. Synergetic.

DDeden, August 18, 2009

(ictet not abbreviation for interpenetrated icosa-tet, rather an abbreviation for attached icosa-octa-tet, in the manner of R.B. Fuller term octet to name attached octa-tet form in patent.)

(More information on ICTET 31-12 available at AAT & Synergeo Yahoo groups.)
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background addendum:
The term harmony derives from the Greek (harmonía), meaning "joint", re. "to fit
together, to join". The harmonious major triad is composed of three tones in a
simple whole number ratio of 6:5:4. The major triad chord in music theory
consists of a root, a major third, and a perfect fifth.

In structural theory, the simplest closed structures, the Platonic triad, are
the tetrahedron, the octahedron and the icosahedron. It would seem to me that
these 2 triads or chords are the same relationship expressed in different form,
(sound) energy and physical matter. [Compare to diving/backfloating partners
with infant]

The relevance to the 'ictet' above is that the chordal form triad is
preserved, the icosa, tet and oct are securely joined, yet the pin joint allows
vibrational energy propulsion via propeller rotation equivalent to a wheel of 12 spokes tensionally held or 12 degrees of freedom. A dual pin hinge would produce lateral swiveling.

An alternative form, not considered here but perhaps relevant to echinoforms or
spongiforms, is a central icosa with an octet flagella (or spine) docked at each
of the 12 surface pentagons, resembling a stellated icosahedron.

Tetrahedron: triangular corner (3 lines converge)
Octahedron: square corner (4 lines converge)
Icosahedron: pentagon corner (5 lines converge)

Potentially supporting information as to the antiquity of the ictet tail structure, this time as a fused external structure: fused structural segments produce 'primary cilia' (flagella, filament) different from motile cilia and found in animal skin and brain cells. Not impossibly this 'primary cilia' became the source of the notochord & tail in pre/vertebrates.
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http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/uoc--ssc082109.php
"Unlike the more familiar motile cilia, primary cilia do not move, and only one pokes out of each cell. They have recently been discovered to play an essential role in assuring normal embryological development. May protect against skin cancer"

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/uoc--sbt082109.php
"UCSF scientists have discovered that a tiny filament extending from cells, until recently regarded as a remnant of evolution, may play a role in the most common malignant brain tumor in children. "In the last few years, primary cilia have been shown to be essential for the cell-signaling that drives both human development, including the differentiation of stem cells into neurons, and some diseases, including polycystic kidney disease. The fact that the two UCSF studies implicate primary cilia in two totally different tissues suggests the finding is likely to be very general."

Note: A skew icosahedron is inscribed within an octahedron in a 4 frequency tetrahedron.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/synergeo/message/54332

"In other words, you can't make a regular icosahedron out of regular tetrahedrons. In
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/synergeo/message/10326
I once said that, "The dihedral angle between the faces of a regular tetrahedron is 1.230959418 radians or 70.52877938 degrees. This is also the angle between alternating faces of a regular octahedron. Notice that it is not quite 72 degrees, so you can't put exactly five
tetrahedra around a common edge or five octahedra around a common vertex, as was attempted in the gapball or octaball Photos." AM
http://home.usit.net/~rybo6/rybo/id2.html
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The number 31 pops up again, this time in regard to tidal cycles.
"During the last 400 years, there have been 39 instances or 'Extreme Proxigean Spring Tides' There were, in fact cases of extreme tidal flooding recorded during these particular spring tides which occur once every 31 years."

1800 yr ocean tidal cycle
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=18099

The gravitational force of the moon is one ten-millionth that of earth, but when you combine other forces such as the earth's centrifugal force created by its spin, you get tides.
When the moon is full or new, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun are combined. At these times, the high tides are very high and the low tides are very low. This is known as a spring tide. The net result of this is that the Earth gets deformed into a slightly squashed, ellipsoidal shape due to these tidal forces.

The tidal bulge of the Moon follows along the path on the earth's surface which intersects with the orbital plane of the Moon. This plane is tilted about 23 degrees with respect to the equatorial plane of the earth. The result is that near the equator, the difference between high tide and low tide is actually rather small, compared to other latitudes.

The Proxigean Spring Tide is a rare, unusually high tide. This very high tide occurs when the moon is both unusually close to the Earth (at its closest perigee, called the proxigee) and in the New Moon phase (when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth). The proxigean spring tide occurs at most once every 1.5 years.

During the last 400 years, there have been 39 instances or 'Extreme Proxigean Spring Tides' where the tide-producing severity has been near the theoretical maximum. The last one of these was on March 7 1995 at 22:00 hours Greenwich Civil Time during a lunar Full Moon. There were, in fact cases of extreme tidal flooding recorded during these particular spring tides which occur once every 31 years."

If you see earths' orbit as a circle (slightly lopsided, ellipse) around the sun, imagine the sun as the center of a sunflower, and earth orbit as the edge of that center, then the moon could be seen as a set of 366 flower petals around it. In the last 400 years, the extreme proxigean spring tide occurred 39 times. Maybe at 366 it skipped the extreme tide.

Also note Rybo's picture at bottom of page showing the 31 spinal nerve pairs and 12 cranial nerve pairs.

On Bagpipes and Blowguns: Respiration at waterside

On Bagpipes & Blowguns
[Updated as of Aug. 31, 09 with addition on mumps, omnivory & air sac transition to diving]

Respiration in surface float feeding vs deep benthic diving

Float/surface foragers have a bagpipe-like system of breathing & vocalizing
The lungs and/or the air sac are always aerated (buoyant), nostril-up or closed

Dive/benthic foragers have a blowgun-like system of breathing & vocalizing
The lungs and/or the blood/muscle are oxygenated, nostril-down or closed

This is parallel in: [surface vs benthic foraging]
lily pad sitting frogs vs deep sub aquatic frogs
surface foraging right whales vs benthic foraging sperm whales
nostril-up wading reindeer/caribou vs nostril-down moose/muntjac
nostril-up gorillas/chimps vs nostril-down humans

Nostril-up usually indicates laryngeal/throat air sac (frog/gorilla/chimp)
Nostril-down usually indicates lack of throat sac (human/sea otter/nasalis)
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Allopatric speciation in humans and chimpanzees:
http://www.mailund.dk/index.php/2009/08/26/patterns-of-autosomal-divergence-between-the-human-and-chimpanzee-genomes-support-an-allopatric-model-of-speciation/
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090828/full/news.2009.870.html?s=news_rss

Hominoid to human: From sit-float to backfloat to boat
http://the-arc-ddeden.blogspot.com/2009/04/re-from-sit-float-feeding-to-backfloat.html

The link from laryngeal air sac inflated sit-floating hominoids 20ma to forage diving - backfloating humans 1ma, connecting mumps, milk, weaning, hydrodynamics.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/53637

I think human laryngocoeles indicate at least a small throat air sac ancestrally (like dolphins). I doubt they had very large air sacs equal to large adult male gorilla. Human females in some areas low in Iodine can develop goiters, there may be a link, since the thyroid cartilage is adjacent. Goiters are usually mild, but can become very large. I've never heard of any non-human hominoid having a goiter. Both male and female apes have air sacs, only males may have huge ones.

We know that 3 year old Selam (dikik-1) of about 3ma had a hyoid bone (tongue base bone) indicating a laryngeal air sac, we don't know her exact species, though similar to Lucy the Apith afarensis. The hyoid is a small weak bone, usually it breaks down long before the skull does. The air sac itself doesn't last long at all. All Genus Homo hyoids found lack air sac indications, which fits with diving/submerged crouching but not much arboreal-terrestrial-swamp mix. Human ancestors after gorilla, chimps split didn't stay in wetlands, they were somewhere else, no more upright sit-floating. Most likely seashore beaches and no more thick forest canopy.

The correlation of fused tail bone and enlarged throat air sac is strong in non-quadruped tetrapods. Waterside foragers which don't dive tend to have shortened tails, whether they have air sacs or long prehensile nose-lip tools. I think our ancestors changed from sit-floating in lukewarm brackish water to backfloating in sunwarmed saltwater with face submerged, so air sacs became disadvantageous and the male beard became fuller, possibly females had slight goiters, possibly post-weaned kids had mild mumps swellings before puberty (post-milk, chewing-salivation immuno-reaction, triggered by contagious mumps
virus which might otherwise be present but non-infectious?).

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/53638

More on mumps, milk, air sacs, goiter, saliva, defensins:

Gorillasw are herbivores, they get their protein from floating herbs. A mother gorilla and mother rabbit both feed their infants fecal pellets, I think deer also do this, to provide symbiotic gut bacteria and pre-digested plant material and probably some maternal hormone and immuno-defensins. Carnivores and omnivores don't do this. Instead they chew, partly swallow, then regurgitate the food for the infant (birds and wolves). Human mothers just chew and spit out some foods, Marc has noted that kissing may have begun this way ancestrally,
notably some tribes don't kiss but do alternatively rub noses, foreheads or cheeks.

Pre-birth, fetus gets food and defensins via blood.
Post-partum, newborn gets food and defensins via milk.
Human babies at weaning get food chewed by the mother, mixing her saliva containing defensins (anti-biotics & pro-biotics).

So I think that mumps and probably goiters only originated after the move from fresh-brackish wetland herbivory float-sit-foraging to increased upright submersed crouch-plucking lily seeds and invertebrates and early shallow diving.

So in Genus Homo (and maybe only partially in Genus Pan, see bushbaby spearing by female fertile chimps) there is a combined correlation of increased omnivorous nutrition, salivary defensin transmittance at weaning, improved submerged hydrodynamic form of throat area but male-only beards, reduced plant protein consumption but still Vit C dependence on fruits-plants so PTC gene still selected for, contagious but mild form of mumps after weaning but before puberty, mild form of goiter hypothyroidy in fertile females but not
pre-pubertal females or males, effect of osteoporosis in elder females(?), weaned children chewing more, activating salivary glands, but also suction feeding at puberty (raw oyster as aphrodisiac).

So, I think the early speculation that mumps correlates to the diving transition is further confirmed. The loss of the laryngeal air sac and AHV herbivory resulted in increased general diet including seafood high in Iodine and Omega 3 fatty acids, supplementing shore foods, with effects on jaw, dentition, tongue, larynx, facial hair, "childhood diseases". (Chicken pox may correlate to hair loss or sun UV or eccrine sweating protection in some way.)

(Marc V. had the idea about the goiter-hydrodynamic-diet-temperature link.)

-

Air sac & tidal lung breathing and buoyancy in dinosaurs, birds, crocs & snakes
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/07/birds_cannot_be_dinosaurs.php#c2023608

"mauka to makai" Hawaiian for 'inland to oceanside' is a science/nature/marine blog
http://maukamakai.wordpress.com/

http://underwater-society.org/
http://www.usfreediving.org/freediving-gs-faq.htm

Migration: lemurs & dragon's wings

Indian Ocean migrations: Madagascar lemurs, Maldive dragonflies

New theory on why male, female lemurs same size, matriarchal


Rice University link

Why are male and female lemurs the same size?

In most primate species, males have evolved to be much larger than females. Size is an advantage for males that guard females to keep other males from mating with them, and evolutionary biologists have long wondered why lemurs evolved differently. Some theories have suggested that environment played a role or that lemur social development was altered due to the extinction of predatory birds.

"Scientifically, this is quite a big question that researchers have debated for over 20 years," said Dunham, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "I actually started doing research on lemurs as an undergraduate, working in Ranomafana (National Park in Madgascar), and the question about size monomorphism has bugged me since then."

In a paper featured on the cover of this month's Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Dunham offers one of the first new theories on lemur monomorphism in more than a decade. After an exhaustive review of the observational work done on lemurs, Dunham came to the conclusion that male lemurs do guard their mates, just like other primates. But unlike gorillas and other primates that fight for mating rights with females, male lemurs have evolved to passively guard their mates.

They do this by depositing a solid plug inside the female's reproductive tract just as they finish mating. The plug is deposited as a liquid protein but quickly hardens and stays in place for a day or two. Since many female lemurs are sexually responsive to males for only one day out of the entire year, the plug serves the purpose of preventing other males from mating with the female, while also freeing the male to mate with other females during the brief time they are available.

"If the female has a short receptivity period, as most lemurs do, then we hypothesize that this is likely to be an advantageous strategy," said Dunham, who co-authored the paper with Rice evolutionary biologist Volker Rudolf.

To test their hypothesis, Dunham and Rudolf examined 62 primate species and found that copulatory plugs were most likely to occur in species where female sexual receptivity was very brief and where males and females were the same size. This was true both for lemur species and for a few other species, like South American squirrel monkeys.

"Our idea needs further testing because it's new, but it's more parsimonious than some of the old theories, and we're very excited about looking into it further," Dunham said. "We've made some explicit predictions about the conditions where this strategy should be favored, so there are plenty of ways it can be tested." Dunham said she hopes to travel to Madagascar within the next year to begin gathering data for a new project that will examine the impacts of climate change on lemur populations.

Lemurs evolved on the African island in isolation from other primates for 65 million years, and they are well-known for having odd traits not found in other primates. For example, some lemurs hibernate, storing fat in their tails, and all have toothcombs -- teeth that are perfectly shaped for grooming. Lemurs also differ from other primates in another key respect that has also stymied primatologists for years: The females are usually the dominant sex.

Dunham's investigations into the long-standing mystery of female dominance among lemurs led her to put forward another important theory last year. Published in the journal Animal Behavior, the theory suggests that female lemurs tend to dominate males because the females do all of the work in rearing the young and therefore have more will to fight and win.

"Game theory predicts that when the fighting abilities of two contestants are comparable, the outcome will depend upon the value that each contestant places on the resources they are fighting over," she said. "In this case, the females clearly have more at stake, but the only reason the females are in a position to compete for dominance is because they're roughly the same size and strength as the males."

[A parallel to Bonobo chimps, where female-female relationships are tight. Both lemurs and bonobos are likely derived from an ancestral pregnant female isolated by water from the normal society producing a matriarchal society. This has happened in human populations as well.]
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Dragons fly from Asia to Africa and back link

Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News



Globe skimmers (Pantala flavescens)
Globe skimmers rest up

Every year, millions of dragonflies fly thousands of kilometres across the sea from southern India to Africa. So says a biologist in the Maldives, who claims to have discovered the longest migration of any insect. If confirmed, the mass exodus would be the first known insect migration across open ocean water. It would also dwarf the famous trip taken each year by Monarch butterflies, which fly just half the distance across the Americas. Biologist Charles Anderson has published details of the mass migration in the Journal of Tropical Ecology. Each year, millions of dragonflies arrive on the Maldive Islands, an event which is well known to people living there.

"But no-one I have spoken to knew where they came from," says Anderson, an independent biologist who usually works with organisations such as the Maldivian Marine Research Centre to survey marine life around the islands.

Their appearance is especially peculiar because the 1200 islands that make up the Maldives lie 500 to 1000km from the mainland of southern India, and all are coral cays with almost no surface freshwater, which dragonflies need to complete their lifecycle. Anderson noticed the dragonflies after he first arrived in the Maldives in 1983. He started keeping detailed records each year from 1996 and now collates data collected by local observers at other localities in the Maldives, in India and on vessels at sea.

When Anderson compared these observations with those made of dragonflies appearing in southern India, he found a clear progression of arrival dates from north to south, with dragonflies arriving first in southern India, then in the Republic of Maldives' capital Male, and then on more southern atolls.

Each year, dragonflies first appear in Male between 4 and 23 October, with a mean arrival date of 21 October. Dragonfly numbers peak in November and December, before the insects then disappear once more. The insects arrive in waves, with each staying for no more than a few days.

Over 98% of the dragonflies recorded on the islands are Globe skimmers (Pantala flavescens), but Pale-spotted emperors (Anax guttatus), Vagrant emperors (A. ephippiger), Twisters (Tholymis tillarga) and Blue perchers (Diplacodes trivialis) also appear in some numbers. The dragonflies then reappear between April and June.
The dragonflies are clearly migrating from India across the open sea to the Maldives, says Anderson. That by itself is fairly amazing, as it involves a journey of 600 to 800km across the ocean," he says.

Quite how they do it was a bit of a mystery, as in October at least they appear to be flying against the prevailing winds. However, in October, and continuing into November and December, a weather system called the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone moves southwards over the Maldives. Ahead of the ITCZ the wind blows towards India, but above and behind it the winds blow from India. So it seems that the dragonflies are able to reach Maldives by flying on these winds at altitude above 1000m.

Globe skimmers are renowned for their ability to fly long-distances They can fly up to 6300m high, the highest of any dragonfly species With a tailwind of 10m per second, a dragonfly could cross from India to Male in 24 hours Maldivians consider the dragonflies' arrival to be a harbinger of the north-east monsoon But that is not the end of the animals' epic adventure. "As there is no freshwater in Maldives for dragonflies, what are they doing here?" asks Anderson.

"I have also deduced that they are flying all the way across the western Indian Ocean to East Africa." Anderson has gathered a wealth of circumstantial evidence to back his claim. Large numbers of dragonflies also start appearing in the northern Seychelles, some 2700km from India, in November, and then in Aldabra in the Seychelles, 3800km from India, in December. That matches the slow southerly movement of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone weather system, behind which winds blow steadily from India to East Africa.

It is also known that Globe skimmers appear in large numbers through eastern and southern Africa. In Uganda, they appear twice each year in March or April and again in September, while further south in Tanzania and Mozambique they appear in December and January. That strongly suggest that the dragonflies take advantage of the moving weather systems and monsoon rains to complete an epic migration from southern India to east and southern Africa, and then likely back again, a round trip of 14,000 to 18,000km.

"The species involved breeds in temporary rainwater pools. So it is following the rains, taking sequential advantage of the monsoon rains of India, the short rains of East Africa, the summer rains of southern Africa, the long rains of East Africa, and then back to India for the next monsoon," says Anderson.

"It may seem remarkable that such a massive migration has gone unnoticed until now. But this just illustrates how little we still know about the natural world." The monarch butterfly is often cited as having the longest migration of any insect, covering around 7000km in an annual round trip from Mexico to southern Canada.

On average, it takes four generations of butterflies to complete the journey.
Anderson believes that the dragonflies survive the ocean flights by gliding on the winds, feeding on other small insects. They too, take four generations to make the full round trip each year. He says the migratory paths of a number of insect-eating bird species, including cuckoos, nightjars, falcons and bee-eaters, follow that of the dragonfly migration, from southern India to their wintering grounds in Africa. That suggests the birds feed on the dragonflies as they travel.

"They [fly] at the same time and altitudes as the dragonflies. And what has not been realised before is that all are medium-sized birds that eat insects, insects the size of dragonflies," he says. "There are earlier records of swarms of Globe skimmers flying out to sea, and at sea," Anderson continues. "But it was always assumed that those dragonflies were doomed. Which says rather more about our earth-bound lack of imagination than it does about the globe skimmers' extraordinary flying abilities."

Aquatic frog of the Congo

The African dwarf frog, a member of the Pipidae, is an aquatic animal living its life entirely underwater, but needs to rise to the surface to breathe atmospheric air because they have lungs and not gills. They "breathe" water in through their skin. They are fairly small in size and don’t weigh more than a few ounces. (Wikipedia)

They produce vocal clicks and trills, rather than the more typical croaks of more terrestrial/arboreal frogs, due to a lack of long extensible tongue and throat sac.


Jamaican tree frog lacks vocal sac yet vocalizes
"Hyla marianae lacks a vocal sac" yet calls during mating season in arboreal wet bromeliads.
Treefrog without throat sac

So we see a precise parallel regarding water & foraging:
benthic foraging frogs & humans lack throat sac, lack tail
surface foraging frogs & large apes have throat sac, lack tail
arboreal foraging frogs & canopy gibbons lack throat sac, lack tail

benthic foraging salamanders & monkeys lack throat sac, have tail
arboreal foraging salamanders & *monkeys lack throat sac, have tail
*atellid howler monkey.
all wading/swimming/diving monkeys have medium or long tails.

---

Clicking for echolocation by dolphins and humans
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/echolocation/

Frog hydrodynamic streamlining:
Not linear in their resting position, no, but well streamlined and linear at
times when leaping and swimming.
http://www.funfacts.com.au/images/leaping-frog1.JPG
http://www.northrup.org/Photos/frog/low/frog-swimming-underwater.jpg

The frogs legs can spread wide, then clap together while pushing against the water.
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:oTBfOGA5itQV5M:http://afrogpond.com/files/motorbike-frog-eaparry.jpg

Some frogs/toads walk or gallop briefly rather than hop. Many treefrogs mostly climb on 4 limbs, boreal toads tend to walk more than hop on the ground. The natterjack ground gallops briefly on all four, and burrows into drying salt-mires with forelimbs initially and then rear limbs.
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/10/natterjack_life_and_times.php

This parallels primates/hominoids again, the change from ancestral long-tail locomotion (monkeys/salamanders) to non-tail hydrostatic foraging results in modified locomotion (leaping/swinging) which in some species returns to near-ancestral qpal locomotion in some species (natterjack/knucklewalking apes). The only missing parallel remaining is the possible frog which developed bipedal gait, so far not found in nature. Possibly long-tailed proto-archosaurs (ancestors of crocs, T rex, birds) developed from a coastal arboreal salamandrid, which in the avian line lost the long tail after branch vertical perching and reversed toe evolved.

Dahab

freediving through the arc

Through the Arch (freediving in Dahab) from dahaba.net on Vimeo.

Water babies

Parallel convergence

Sit float feeding in warm water -> hominoid, absent tail, air sac

Sit grass feeding on dry ground -> gelada, long tail, no air sac


Sit float feeding in warm water -> LCA toad/frog, throat sac, croak, long
prehensile tongue, rear feet similar to other frogs

Dive & swim in water -> diving frog, no throat sac, no croak, trill, no more
long prehensile tongue, rear feet differs from other frogs
Diving frog
This most-aquatic frog has a unique immunity to the fungi that is killing
amphibians around the world. Breath control.

Dive & swim in water -> human, no throat sac, no croak, speech/click
no prehensile toes, rear feet differs from other hominoids
Diving hominoid
This most-aquatic hominoid has a unique condition (domestication) that is
killing hominoids around the world. Breath control.

Parallel convergence among tetrapods.

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Orang-utans: Our Closest Relative?

Lluc

I find it odd that Lluca was pictured as a flat faced orangutan, considering
that it is the most distant of all hominoids from the current location of the
orangutan populations. Yet if it was merely the westernmost kin of a ring
species of base Pongid-Hominid apes which distributed along the Tethys shores
with localized dietary and predatory adaptations, and varying degrees of
bipedality, it is not so surprising.

IMO the question is not "are humans and orangs most closely related?" but
rather, "why do people insist on placing human ancestors geographically next to
chimps and gorillas, despite the gross differences in morphology?". Two closely
related species living in the same environment do not change drastically their
morphology, see gorillas and chimps.

Since lowland gorillas forage for floating AHV in brackish water, mountain
gorillas forage in highland fog forests for ground THV, savanna chimps forage in
open woodlands, forest chimps forage for small invertebrates in shallow water
and rainforest bonobos forage in the sub-canopy, we know that human ancestors
must have done something different (or in addition) to account for the extreme
morphological changes.

Crocs and hippos dominate the tropical waters of Africa except for small puddles
and highland waters, notably they lack both fur and SC fat, like manatees, they
rely on the sun's warmth in shallow water. Beavers and otters have thick fur and
live in sub-tropical and temperate waters, with the habit of cool water diving.

Humans, unlike all other great apes, fit in between these two groups, sun
basking (ashore and afloat in warm water) and cool-water deep-diving (deeper
than body length).

That this would have developed after the Orangutan had split eastwards and the
African apes split westwards, seems most parsimonious. The human ancestor seems
to have done neither, until they had well adapted to and dominated their new
African and Asian niches.

Rather, human ancestors seem to have paralleled the crab eating macaques (and
possibly Allen's swamp monkey), foraging both at the shoreline and beneath the
water surface, but still retaining the primate ability to climb. (also
paralleling the African clawed frog and marine otters, which can climb but not
as well as treefrogs or stoats.)

Why would human ancestors have generally stopped climbing and hanging from tree
branches and reeds while foraging? Because they brought their sticks with them
into the water to get food, just as chimps bring customized sticks to spear
bushbabies, to gather termites, to collect honey, to dig tubers in the wet
season. Orangutans don't customize sticks, though they use twigs to get neesia
seeds from spiny fruit, using their lips since one hand and both feet are used
to keep them in position in the high forest canopy.

Human ancestors didn't need their hands and feet to keep in position in the
canopy, because the canopy was low at shorelines, and because the food was as
much under the water surface as above, including later ambushed prey.


I can think of an interesting parallel here, whereby the young and old males
both compete individually and cooperate societally,

Gorilla: young lighter males climbing to canopy, older large males actively
ground foraging and in bais shallows

Orangutan: young lighter males climbing to canopy to forage, older larger males
lower (and if no cats) on ground foraging in swamps.

Aquarboreal ape: young males more mobile fruit foraging, older larger males at
tidal waterside peeling mangrove oysters and papyrus.

He: young males climbing coconut palms, older larger males more in water diving
for longer periods.

Hn: young males in waterside trees leaping onto and stabbing thirsty animals
into the water, older larger fatter males backfloating camouflaged with long
spears aimed at the prey's throats and chest as they dash into deeper water away
from the airborne ambush.

Hs: young trim males as paddlers/sailors/fishers, older larger males as ship
builders/captains/bankers.

A bit simplified but interesting. Not sure what happened to the "harem" and size
dimorphism, seems variable depending on climate, but otherwise a sort of
continuum. I'd think the shoreline would make for weaker harem/dimorphism
societies than the inlands where drought would be more drastic. The very deep
diving elephant seal harems seem to contradict this, but that may be due to
quite different constraints (simultaneous birthing, cyclical food supply) than
an aquatic ape (with hidden estrus and year around birth) which could forage
above, below and along the surface, and travel far inland during the muddy
coastal rainy season.

Spiral garden

My interpretation: A screened geodesic bubble frame with wind-spinning spiral ramp garden, fish & seafood pond below, ballasted with coral-crete and anchored offshore.

From here: plantagon

From sit-float-feeding to backfloat-dive-feeding to boat-net-feeding

AAT ~20ma initiation, 5ma immersion, 2ma dive/backfloating

I've no argument with Hardy's 20ma and Filler's date of ~20ma as initial aquatic
era, in an evolutionary sense. Upright posture, proconsul/morotopith wetland
sit-float-feeding as a change from its predecessor of upright dry sitting
(geladas) indicates daily aquatic foraging (surface feeding with gradually
enlarging air sacs and shrinking tail, maintained even in today's lowland
gorillas).
Homo Genus 5ma developing estuarine submersion foraging (crouch plucking), 3ma
seashore diving, 1.5ma diving/backfloating ARC cycle around the Levant and
former peri/tethys and upper Rift, gradual increase in waterside group ambush
improved tool technologies, which eventually took them to cooler rougher
predator-filled waters where rafts and boats were advantageous.
-
This from PZ's blog:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/the_evolution_of_hedgehog.php#more
"As usual, it starts on a sound foundation of confirmed, known evidence, makes a reasonably hypothesis on the basis of the facts, and then proposes a series of research avenues with predicted results that would confirm the idea."

Non-scientists take note: this is a category of paper that is usually titled "hypothesis" or "insight," as opposed to a peer-reviewed research paper or a literature review, although it is more similar to the latter. PLoS Biology uses the term "unsolved mystery:"

Unsolved Mysteries discuss a topic of biological importance that is poorly understood and in need of research attention.

-

Re: From sit-float-feeding to backfloat-dive-feeding to boat-net-feeding

PAs can argue forever about details when evidence is scattered and lacking, and
topography and climate changes at varying rates.

I've produced a simple explanation, of how hominoids differentiated from other
primates (tail loss, air sacs), how Homo differentiated from other hominids (ARC
diving, low UV saltwater backfloating), and how Homo sapiens differentiated from
other Homo (mass harvesting -> trade -> transport).

Of the question 'What happened?' the missing pieces of the puzzle have been
found and placed, they fit.

Other explanations for the unique characteristics of humans compared to our genetic kin fall short by not taking into account various behaviors and vestigial traits common to humans but not to other primates. That doesn't mean they are insignificant or incorrect, just incomplete.

The story is a bit more complete now.


Prose of human speciation

Hominoids vs other primates (sit/float/eat, tail loss, air sacs),

Homo vs other hominids (ARC diving, low UV saltwater backfloating),

Homo sapiens vs other Homo (mass harvesting/transport).

---

Hominoids sit/floating on flooded ground,
hands to pluck/peel/pull/pinch,
calls/splashes/thumps to warn,
sleep in tree hollows, forks (damp), beaver dens
eat meat without bones (eggs, pith, larvae, seeded fruit)

Homo going deeper into water/caves, while apes went higher,
Homo crafted long/sharp fangs/claws of sticks/stones/shells.
Using pebbles to crack, flakes to cut, bifacials to bait, branches to bash,
spears to probe/pry/poke, lords of the ring/pond/pool
eat meat/nuts with shells/bones to be removed and reused.

Hs brought sunlight into cold night (fire),
and dark into hot day (shelter), and wet into dry.
Bags/baskets/boats processed (cut, woven) to transport, harpoons/atlatls to
launch spears/darts.
Meats/grains to guide/process (planting/herding), grinding masses, soaking,
heating, storing, exchanging, comparing.
Rings concentrically ordered, become overly congested and condense into
rectilinear patterns and vertical double-storied dwellings and overlapped social
groupings and finally oral-named individuals become anonymously writ-numbered
cells in the spherical body of humankind and beyond.


Compare these two shelters: entry routes, protection from bears/cold
link
link

Mammoth bone lodge of Central Russian floodplain 15ka, summer doorway
link

22ka camp huts & bedding at upper Rift waterside link

seal ancestors link

DDeden

Blue Man Group on Drumbone

Drumming trombone

Bio-convergent parallel: Anuroid & Hominoid

Arkive Video: Gorillas vertical wading and wet-sit-eating

left: dryland gelada, long-tailed, vertical-trunk, dry-sit-eat grasses, no air sac
right: lowland gorilla, tail-less, vertical-trunk, wet-sit-eat sedges, air sac


Another Video: Lowland Gorillas eating sedge rhyzomes and high-protein AHV (Aquatic Herbaceous Vegetation) while sitting-floating in forest open wetland Arkive video link

DD: The question is not "do air sacs always cause loss of tail?", but "is the complete loss of tail in hominoids due (in part) to laryngeal air sac?" The answer is clear, yes, float-sit-feeding with inflatable air sac selects for tail loss.

MV: Not so clear IMO: may depend on body size, size of airsacs, terrestrial vs aquatic milieu, salt vs fresh water milieu, time spent in trees & water, arm-hanging vs hopping vs above-branch, etc.

DD: parallel convergence at forest-waterside (swamp, wetland, shore):

left: Axlotl, long-tailed 'tadpole' with external gills and legs, swims but doesn't sit
right: Macaque, long-tailed, with lungs and legs, swims but doesn't feed sit-floating



Tadpoles with long tail swim, they don't sit partially feeding in water, they don't have prehensile tongue; frogs with no tail sit partially in water, and use long prehensile tongue to eat. Some frogs then evolved more arboreal traits (better climbing skills, less swimming), others spend much time on lake bottoms and developed more aquatic traits (skin 'gill' breathing)

left: tree frogs have since further specialized to arborealty, more 'spidery' and colorful
right: aquatic frog with hydrodynamic red external gills re-adapted to full submersion



Monkeys with long tails swim (Nasalis, Long-tailed macaque); while Ndoki swamp gorillas
(~LCA H-oid) with no tail sit partially in water while feeding.

left: tree apes have since further specialized to arborealty, more 'spidery' and colorful
right: aquatic apes (humans) with hydrodynamic hair re-adapted to submersion diving



AFAIK, neither spidery tree frogs nor deep-submersion frogs inflate their throat air sacs as much as forest-waterside frogs.

AFAIK, neither spidery tree apes (gibbon) nor deep submersion apes (humans) inflate their throat air sacs as much as forest-waterside apes.

Parallel pattern. Partial sit-float eating -> air sac -> tail lost; eventually species body size may enlarge at forest-waterside, OR become full-time spidery at arboreal canopy OR adapt deep submersion with active skin glands* or skin gills* as per photos.

DD: Complete loss of tail = vertical-trunk float-sitting while plucking-foraging. Laryngeal air sacs. Compare to long tailed gelada sitting while plucking-foraging grass on dry ground. No air sacs there, of course.

MV: Some baboons have short tails IIRC?

DD: None lost their tail, many highland monkeys (cold nights select for short tails) with non-prehensile tails have short tails. Tail covers peri-anal region, in water, muscle valves and tissue close peri-anal region.

Dry-sit-eating (no air sac, long-tailed) savanna gelada vs wet/float-sit-eating (air sac, tail-less) Ndoki swamp gorilla
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/49817

* frogs and salamanders may respire via gills, lungs or skin. I conjecture that the eccrine skin glands of humans (inactive in African apes except volar eccrines) function in very limited respiration. link

Evolution Canyon European-African micro-climates in Jordan Rift Valley

Aquanautical microbiota: Green Algae

Spirogyra reproduction, reminds one of double helix DNA, chromosome replication


Dancing spheres: volvox rotates, oscillates

Volvox reproduction, note the triangulation of cytoplasm threads, geodesic structure



volvox A large sphere colony with daughter sphere colonies containing small granddaughter colonies. Both male and female colonies form inside the equator of the parent colony. Volvoxes are hollow spheres of independent cells that each have an eye spot, the colony develops a light-polarity, where half of the colony has larger eye spots, making a supercell eyeball of sorts. Click the link to find out more. volvox wikipedia
nuther volvox tale


Pediastrum algae, a flat disk star


These outstanding photos are from this site: The Micropolitan Museum

Hydrodictyon reticulatum, Hexa-penta Water net algae, from: Hydrodictyon, Wikipedia


Protists: dinoflagellate plant/animal (planimal?) in toxic red tide, endosymbiont coral bleaching, some photosynthesizers and some with eyes (retina), have minicircles of 12 genes.
http://madlabrat.blogspot.com/2009/10/protists-and-their-plastids.html

Marimo Moss balls (Chladophora)

from cell to super-cell organism to super-organism society: colonial ants

Asian small clawed otter pups

teh cuteness
LOL-otterz at San Diego Zoo

Coastal Forest Giants: leave some for the future
Northern California Redwood trees
Tasmania Eucalyptus trees