Green plants can't uptake carbon from soil, because they use water to move nutrients, water + carbon = carbonic acid (eats limestone -> caves). Soil fungi do decompose carbs, as do animals, and exude CO2. Plant leaves "breathe" O2 just like animals and fungi. Plant leaves "eat" CO2, using solar energy to decompose it into O2 & C, the C is then combined with H et al to make carbs for plant tissue. Plants (grasses) require wind to reduce stratification of gases (gas stratification starves them of C or chokes them of O2), tropical rainforests need mobile animals not only for fruit dissemination but also gas mixing (flying insects/fruit bats/fruit birds), this is the major advantage of angiosperm flora over non-fruiting gymnosperms (seeded but non-fruiting conifers) and the reason that flowering plants and symbiotic fauna "won" the competitive war against cycads, conifers, ferns, etc. Biological textbooks say little about gas stratification prevention, but it is critical in closed-canopy ecosystems (same reason that sealife comes in both mobile jetsam (tail/fin) & immobile photosynthetic flotsam). [my comment@]
flowers + fruit induce faunal flight to mix gas
-
flower origin
-
ancient scorpionflies pollinating gymnosperms?
ResearchBlogging.org
"The first flowering plants evolved more than a hundred million years ago, while dinosaurs were still on the scene. Since then, they’ve come to dominate the world, largely outcompeting the plants that were there before, such as conifers, cycads, and ginkgoes...The reason for showy flowers is to attract pollinators, most commonly insects. Today, the majority of flowering plants use insects to carry their pollen, whereas most gymnosperms (the older group of plants, including conifers) are pollinated by the wind. Insects have one clear advantage over the wind: they can track down another flower of the same species...From insect fossils, it looks like there were pollinators (scorpionflies) around in the Jurassic, which had evolved together with the gymnosperms that were around at the time...some fossil gymnosperms weren't well adapted for wind pollination."
http://takluyver.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/carbon-dioxide-and-nitrogen-not-such-a-double-whammy/
"Nitrogen makes up nearly 80% of the atmosphere, but pure nitrogen (aka N2) isn’t very easy to get at. What counts is ‘reactive nitrogen’, especially dissolved nitrate (NO3-) and ammonia (NH4+). Plants can readily take this up and use it, helping them to grow faster (NPK fert). In fact, over half of the reactive nitrogen being made each year now comes from human activities.
Ecologists know quite well that adding nitrogen often leads to fewer species living together. And a recent experiment neatly showed why that might be: when plants’ roots are battling it out for nutrients (like nitrogen), it’s a relatively fair fight. But add nitrogen, and the fight moves above the ground, for the light plants need to grow. Here, bigger plants can quickly shade out smaller ones and kill (some of) them off... carbon dioxide and nitrogen have different effects on plants, and they seem to balance out to some extent. Although the effect of light wasn’t clear cut in this experiment, I think it might also be important that higher carbon dioxide lets plants grow in deeper shade."
-
leaf veins
http://ecographica.blogspot.com/2009/12/evolution-is-in-veins-of-our-captors.html
"...primitive ancestors of the tyrannical angiosperms underwent adaptation to feed on the then abundant atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through undertaking a process known as photosynthesis, some early plant-forms gained reproductive advantage and quickly out-competed their rivals. In time, their numbers became so great that oxygen – a byproduct of photosynthesis - accumulated in the biosphere to such extent that it triggered a catastrophic transition to an oxygenated planet. In hindsight, this rapid transition, called the ‘Great Oxygenation Event,’ can be viewed as a first step in the angiosperms’ selfish remaking of the Earth, and as foreshadowing the eventual enslavement of all humankind.
Initially, constrained anatomy affectively limited the plants’ ability to channel the xylem tissues required for harnessing the sun’s rays. Xylem tissues are essential to photosynthesis because it is their job to convey water and nutrients throughout the plant. Early plants lacked sufficient internal structure and architecture to serve as pathways for xylem transport; this physically restricted the amount of energy that could be generated through photosynthesis. In other words, because of a lack of adequate venation, the radiation of angiosperms was kept in-check. However, this all changed during the Cretaceous Period.
Over the course of evolutionary history, natural selection tinkered at the physiology of the angiosperms, incrementally improving their clumsy and inefficient application of photosynthesis until eventually, about 120,000,000 years ago, the density of the angiosperms’ veins dramatically increased by 300-400%. The upsurge in venation meant that the plants’ xylem tissues more frequently made contact with individual plant cells; this pushed the capacity of the angiosperms’ energetic processes far beyond what they could achieve previously. Newly acquired energy surpluses were promptly invested in reproduction and as a result angiosperm populations exploded the world over."
Marine CO2 effects on shellfish, crustaceans, calcific algae:
crabs & CO2
(compare to green plants in soil which can't absorb carbonic acid through roots, so must consume CO2 in air via photosynthesis.)
eco-web-tet: ants, fungi, bacteria, plant in 4 way symbiotic relationship
plants & ants
Game theory: bacteria and human in decision making in stress
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uoc--bpn121109.php
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
34ma migrations
Cavies and new world monkeys emigrated from Africa to South America (via antarctica?) 34ma.
cavies
Cavioids and New World Monkeys migrated northwards as Antarctica froze 34ma
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50250
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50350
African Rift formed 34ma
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50253
Pinwheeling Pangea
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50257
http://tech.grou
ps.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50380
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.U21E..01C
Cosmic impacts (oceanic?) on Earth and Moon 34ma
(Note that Australia separated from Antarctica 64ma, just after the Yucatan cosmic impact, deccan traps and C/K dino extinction of ~65ma) Aust. marsupials dispersed from So. America to Australia via Antarctca during late Cretaceous–early Paleocene.
La Meseta Fauna from Patagonia before early late Paleocene, other taxa arrived in early Eocene. http://www.springerlink.com/content/h5r16469kqr06560/
Fossil Land Mammal from Antarctica
MICHAEL O. WOODBURNE 1 and WILLIAM J. ZINSMEISTER 2
1 Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside 92521
2 Institute of Polar Studies and Department of Geology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210
A fossil land mammal, apparently the first found in Antarctica, belongs to the extinct marsupial family Polydolopidae. The fossils were recovered from rocks about 40 million years old on Seymour Island, in the northern Antarctic Peninsula. The newly discovered marsupials support theories that predicted their former presence in Antarctica and strengthen proposals that Australian marsupials perhaps originated from South American species that dispersed across Antarctica when Australia still was attached to it, prior to 56 million years ago.
-
A Bizarre New Family of Marsupialia (Incertae sedis) from the Early Pliocene of Northeastern Australia: Implications for the Phylogeny of Bunodont Marsupials
We consider the distributions of a number of dental characters in bunodont marsupials and argue that no North American Late Cretaceous taxa can be convincingly referred to the order Polydolopimorphia. Thus, polydolopimorphians continue to be known only from the Cenozoic of Gondwana, with no fossil evidence that their initial divergences occurred in North America
-
These marsupials went from S America to Antarctica, some continued on to Australia.
Did monkeys and cavies go from Africa to Antarctica to S America? The timing data does not seem to indicate that this had happened. More likely both had rafted across the narrow but widening straits which eventually became the Atlantic Ocean. Currents may have brought vegetative rafts from W Africa westward to approximately Bolivia.
-
Today Antarctica is compressed gravitationally by millions of tons of glacial ice, pushing the former coastlines far below todays' sea level (highly susceptible to constant erosion from the antarctic circumpolar current), leaving only former highlands and mountain ranges. Fossils from 34ma monkeys and cavioids from the former rainforests there aren't accessible except at rare uplifted areas such as offshore isles, and south Argentina.
-
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/soes/staff/acng/SOFINE/SOFINE.html
The SOFINE project studies the 'frictional' processes that slow down the strongest current on Earth (the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, ACC) and drive the extension of the ocean's overturning circulation across the Southern Ocean. The experiment focuses on a major ACC meander (around the northern Kerguelen Plateau, southern Indian Ocean), which features as an area of intensified 'friction' and cross-ACC flow in most present theories and models of the Southern Ocean circulation.
-
http://www.ga.gov.au/oceans/sa_Kergln.jsp
Geological sampling and scientific drilling shows that it was emergent or under shallow water for up to 40 million years of its history. Wood fragments and coal found in Late Cretaceous sediments indicate that the plateau may have been covered with forests.
-
http://www.genetics.wayne.edu/lgross/Problems.html
among eutherian or placental mammals, the ceboids have one of the oldest histories in South America with 26-27 million year old fossils of the primitive ceboid Branisella (3) documenting that ceboids were already established in South America during the Oligocene. Among extant eutherians, only caviomorph rodents and edentates have older documented histories in South America, the former now being represented by a 34 million year old Eocene fossil (4,5) and the latter by early Cenzoic Paleocene fossils (6)
Branisella: oldest NWM fossil, from Bolivia: As a whole, the dentition of Branisella is very similar to that of Proteopithecus from the Late Eocene of Fayum, Egypt, except in the lower canine morphology, suggesting a close phyletic relationship between them.
New fossil platyrrhines from the Pinturas Formation, southern Argentina
John G. Fleagle
Early Miocene coastal Patagonia: Primates
Two new fossil vertebrate localities are described from the Santa Cruz Formation (late early – early middle Miocene) of coastal Patagonia. They are noteworthy because they are the lowest stratigraphically of any precisely recorded in coastal Santa Cruz Province and they contain a rich fauna including many partially articulated skeletons undisturbed by collecting. Thus, they offer the potential for taphonomic analysis and paleocommunity reconstruction. The latter is particularly intriguing because the fauna document the Miocene Climatic Optimum at >51° South latitude. Together with several previously documented sites in this region, it offers a potential window into the nature of mammalian communities farther south than any other in the world during this time and documents the farthest south distribution of primates.
-
Radiometric dates indicate that the fossil mammals (including platyrrhine primates) occurring in the lower and middle parts of the formation may range in age from about 16·6 to younger than 13·3 Ma (million years ago) (Santacrucian and, almost certainly, Friasian land-mammal ages). This age range is somewhat younger than previous estimates, and suggests that the Pinturas faunas correlate broadly with those from the type Santa Cruz Formation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4HCKFGH-6&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1990&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1258475485&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=844d12d7aeedf097b12b5de1b5329587
-
Chronology of Cenozoic primate localities in South America
Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 19, Issues 1-2, February-March 1990, Pages 7-21
Bruce J. MacFadden
The available fossil record indicates that primates have occurred in South America since the middle Tertiary. The oldest known primate-bearing locality, Salla, Bolivia, of Deseadan age, was previously thought to be about 35 myr old, or early Oligocene age. However, 12 radioisotopic dates from Salla using40K-40Ar and fission-track methods and magnetostratigraphic correlations indicate a late Oligocene age for this site. The exact level that produced the earliest-known South American primate,Branisella, lies just above a tuffaceous zone that yielded dates of 26·4 ± 1·0 and 25·1 ± 0·7 Ma. The revision of the “primate datum” in Bolivia from early to late Oligocene has ramifications for: (1) the calibration of other, younger primate-bearing localities in South America; and (2) biogeographic hypotheses concerning primate origins in light of plate tectonics. The other known Tertiary primate localities in South America are of Colhuehuapian (ca. 18–19 Ma). Santacrucian (ca. 15–18 Ma) and possible Friasian (ca. 14–15 Ma) ages. There is a major gap of some 14 myr that exists between these primate occurrences of middle Miocene age and the next younger localities, which are all late Pleistocene.
"But some lemurs, oddly enough, have only two nipples, and they're located over the pectoral muscles where we have them, but where most other mammals don't."
Which ones? If only lemurs with enlarged air sacs have one pair of pectoral nipples, that would indicate upright aquatic foraging/floating as in gorillas and apiths (sea cows), parallel convergence.
Anthropoidea: (monkeys) subset of Haplorhines have only two actual breasts, pectoral mammae which are unlike those of other mammals. And unlike lemurs, most monkeys have completely lost the ability to move their ears. Monkeys also lack the specialized sensory whiskers and the wet nose that lemurs and so many "lesser" animals have, and lost the ability to synthesize either vitamin D3 or vitamin C.
cavies
Cavioids and New World Monkeys migrated northwards as Antarctica froze 34ma
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50250
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50350
African Rift formed 34ma
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50253
Pinwheeling Pangea
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50257
http://tech.grou
ps.yahoo.com/group/AAT/message/50380
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.U21E..01C
Cosmic impacts (oceanic?) on Earth and Moon 34ma
(Note that Australia separated from Antarctica 64ma, just after the Yucatan cosmic impact, deccan traps and C/K dino extinction of ~65ma) Aust. marsupials dispersed from So. America to Australia via Antarctca during late Cretaceous–early Paleocene.
La Meseta Fauna from Patagonia before early late Paleocene, other taxa arrived in early Eocene. http://www.springerlink.com/content/h5r16469kqr06560/
Fossil Land Mammal from Antarctica
MICHAEL O. WOODBURNE 1 and WILLIAM J. ZINSMEISTER 2
1 Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside 92521
2 Institute of Polar Studies and Department of Geology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210
A fossil land mammal, apparently the first found in Antarctica, belongs to the extinct marsupial family Polydolopidae. The fossils were recovered from rocks about 40 million years old on Seymour Island, in the northern Antarctic Peninsula. The newly discovered marsupials support theories that predicted their former presence in Antarctica and strengthen proposals that Australian marsupials perhaps originated from South American species that dispersed across Antarctica when Australia still was attached to it, prior to 56 million years ago.
-
A Bizarre New Family of Marsupialia (Incertae sedis) from the Early Pliocene of Northeastern Australia: Implications for the Phylogeny of Bunodont Marsupials
We consider the distributions of a number of dental characters in bunodont marsupials and argue that no North American Late Cretaceous taxa can be convincingly referred to the order Polydolopimorphia. Thus, polydolopimorphians continue to be known only from the Cenozoic of Gondwana, with no fossil evidence that their initial divergences occurred in North America
-
These marsupials went from S America to Antarctica, some continued on to Australia.
Did monkeys and cavies go from Africa to Antarctica to S America? The timing data does not seem to indicate that this had happened. More likely both had rafted across the narrow but widening straits which eventually became the Atlantic Ocean. Currents may have brought vegetative rafts from W Africa westward to approximately Bolivia.
-
Today Antarctica is compressed gravitationally by millions of tons of glacial ice, pushing the former coastlines far below todays' sea level (highly susceptible to constant erosion from the antarctic circumpolar current), leaving only former highlands and mountain ranges. Fossils from 34ma monkeys and cavioids from the former rainforests there aren't accessible except at rare uplifted areas such as offshore isles, and south Argentina.
-
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/soes/staff/acng/SOFINE/SOFINE.html
The SOFINE project studies the 'frictional' processes that slow down the strongest current on Earth (the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, ACC) and drive the extension of the ocean's overturning circulation across the Southern Ocean. The experiment focuses on a major ACC meander (around the northern Kerguelen Plateau, southern Indian Ocean), which features as an area of intensified 'friction' and cross-ACC flow in most present theories and models of the Southern Ocean circulation.
-
http://www.ga.gov.au/oceans/sa_Kergln.jsp
Geological sampling and scientific drilling shows that it was emergent or under shallow water for up to 40 million years of its history. Wood fragments and coal found in Late Cretaceous sediments indicate that the plateau may have been covered with forests.
-
http://www.genetics.wayne.edu/lgross/Problems.html
among eutherian or placental mammals, the ceboids have one of the oldest histories in South America with 26-27 million year old fossils of the primitive ceboid Branisella (3) documenting that ceboids were already established in South America during the Oligocene. Among extant eutherians, only caviomorph rodents and edentates have older documented histories in South America, the former now being represented by a 34 million year old Eocene fossil (4,5) and the latter by early Cenzoic Paleocene fossils (6)
Branisella: oldest NWM fossil, from Bolivia: As a whole, the dentition of Branisella is very similar to that of Proteopithecus from the Late Eocene of Fayum, Egypt, except in the lower canine morphology, suggesting a close phyletic relationship between them.
New fossil platyrrhines from the Pinturas Formation, southern Argentina
John G. Fleagle
Early Miocene coastal Patagonia: Primates
Two new fossil vertebrate localities are described from the Santa Cruz Formation (late early – early middle Miocene) of coastal Patagonia. They are noteworthy because they are the lowest stratigraphically of any precisely recorded in coastal Santa Cruz Province and they contain a rich fauna including many partially articulated skeletons undisturbed by collecting. Thus, they offer the potential for taphonomic analysis and paleocommunity reconstruction. The latter is particularly intriguing because the fauna document the Miocene Climatic Optimum at >51° South latitude. Together with several previously documented sites in this region, it offers a potential window into the nature of mammalian communities farther south than any other in the world during this time and documents the farthest south distribution of primates.
-
Radiometric dates indicate that the fossil mammals (including platyrrhine primates) occurring in the lower and middle parts of the formation may range in age from about 16·6 to younger than 13·3 Ma (million years ago) (Santacrucian and, almost certainly, Friasian land-mammal ages). This age range is somewhat younger than previous estimates, and suggests that the Pinturas faunas correlate broadly with those from the type Santa Cruz Formation http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WJS-4HCKFGH-6&_user=10&_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1990&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1258475485&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=844d12d7aeedf097b12b5de1b5329587
-
Chronology of Cenozoic primate localities in South America
Journal of Human Evolution, Volume 19, Issues 1-2, February-March 1990, Pages 7-21
Bruce J. MacFadden
The available fossil record indicates that primates have occurred in South America since the middle Tertiary. The oldest known primate-bearing locality, Salla, Bolivia, of Deseadan age, was previously thought to be about 35 myr old, or early Oligocene age. However, 12 radioisotopic dates from Salla using40K-40Ar and fission-track methods and magnetostratigraphic correlations indicate a late Oligocene age for this site. The exact level that produced the earliest-known South American primate,Branisella, lies just above a tuffaceous zone that yielded dates of 26·4 ± 1·0 and 25·1 ± 0·7 Ma. The revision of the “primate datum” in Bolivia from early to late Oligocene has ramifications for: (1) the calibration of other, younger primate-bearing localities in South America; and (2) biogeographic hypotheses concerning primate origins in light of plate tectonics. The other known Tertiary primate localities in South America are of Colhuehuapian (ca. 18–19 Ma). Santacrucian (ca. 15–18 Ma) and possible Friasian (ca. 14–15 Ma) ages. There is a major gap of some 14 myr that exists between these primate occurrences of middle Miocene age and the next younger localities, which are all late Pleistocene.
"But some lemurs, oddly enough, have only two nipples, and they're located over the pectoral muscles where we have them, but where most other mammals don't."
Which ones? If only lemurs with enlarged air sacs have one pair of pectoral nipples, that would indicate upright aquatic foraging/floating as in gorillas and apiths (sea cows), parallel convergence.
Anthropoidea: (monkeys) subset of Haplorhines have only two actual breasts, pectoral mammae which are unlike those of other mammals. And unlike lemurs, most monkeys have completely lost the ability to move their ears. Monkeys also lack the specialized sensory whiskers and the wet nose that lemurs and so many "lesser" animals have, and lost the ability to synthesize either vitamin D3 or vitamin C.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Amazing animals
platymolekiwiduck
A Hawaiian duck that resembled a platypus-mole-kiwi, probably foraged in forest duff and shallow streams, huge trigeminus - why? electrosensory bill or nares? apnea adaptation? whiskery feathers?
An octopus carries and uses coconut shells
octopus hand tools
long tail glider
the tail has 2 rows of ventral ridges, reminds me of my interpretation of dino-bird and pterosaur long bony tails with bristle scale feathers to grasp tree bark, both taxa co-evolved into short tailed flyers with improved perching rear toe claws but in this "squirrel" which lacks wings is sufficient for gliding from tree to tree.
Both from Christopher Taylor's nature blog, Catalogue of Organisms
From Zooillogix nature blog: antarctic seals & elephant birth
leopard seals
weddell seals
http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2009/11/graphic_elephant_birth.php
Cameron's blog: Galapagos Marine iguana
Marine CO2 effects on shellfish, crustaceans, calcific algae:
crabs & CO2
(compare to green plants in soil which can't absorb carbonic acid through roots, so must consume CO2 in air via photosynthesis.)
eco-web-tet: ants, fungi, bacteria, plant in 4 way symbiotic relationship
Ich! Parasite has 2 endoparasites:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uog-url120209.php
-
Humans and saltwater: (h/t Frank at Greg's site)
a recent study in ultra-marathon runners (100 mi) found that they lost between 11.2 and 144 g of sodium during the event. Obviously the range is huge and it really depends on the person. Total water loss in the same event ranges from 14 to 36 liters.
A liter of seawater contains approximately 35g of salt. One liter of blood contains 9g of salt. For every liter of seawater you drank you would need to add 2.8 liters of fresh unsalted water to be “even.”
-
While sweating excessive amounts of salt would be deleterious to humans inhabiting hot and humid inland environments, sweating large quantities of salt that was isotonic with the blood stream would be advantageous in a hot and humid coastal marine environment where significant
quantities of marine invertebrates were consumed." MW
-
PZ on evo development of nervous system: exaptation of simple organelles in protists to tissue cells, salt control, electric potential...
nerve evolution
A Hawaiian duck that resembled a platypus-mole-kiwi, probably foraged in forest duff and shallow streams, huge trigeminus - why? electrosensory bill or nares? apnea adaptation? whiskery feathers?
An octopus carries and uses coconut shells
octopus hand tools
long tail glider
the tail has 2 rows of ventral ridges, reminds me of my interpretation of dino-bird and pterosaur long bony tails with bristle scale feathers to grasp tree bark, both taxa co-evolved into short tailed flyers with improved perching rear toe claws but in this "squirrel" which lacks wings is sufficient for gliding from tree to tree.
Both from Christopher Taylor's nature blog, Catalogue of Organisms
From Zooillogix nature blog: antarctic seals & elephant birth
leopard seals
weddell seals
http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2009/11/graphic_elephant_birth.php
Cameron's blog: Galapagos Marine iguana
Marine CO2 effects on shellfish, crustaceans, calcific algae:
crabs & CO2
(compare to green plants in soil which can't absorb carbonic acid through roots, so must consume CO2 in air via photosynthesis.)
eco-web-tet: ants, fungi, bacteria, plant in 4 way symbiotic relationship
Ich! Parasite has 2 endoparasites:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/uog-url120209.php
-
Humans and saltwater: (h/t Frank at Greg's site)
a recent study in ultra-marathon runners (100 mi) found that they lost between 11.2 and 144 g of sodium during the event. Obviously the range is huge and it really depends on the person. Total water loss in the same event ranges from 14 to 36 liters.
A liter of seawater contains approximately 35g of salt. One liter of blood contains 9g of salt. For every liter of seawater you drank you would need to add 2.8 liters of fresh unsalted water to be “even.”
-
While sweating excessive amounts of salt would be deleterious to humans inhabiting hot and humid inland environments, sweating large quantities of salt that was isotonic with the blood stream would be advantageous in a hot and humid coastal marine environment where significant
quantities of marine invertebrates were consumed." MW
-
PZ on evo development of nervous system: exaptation of simple organelles in protists to tissue cells, salt control, electric potential...
nerve evolution
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Relative volumes & concentric hierarchy
tetra tripod table, balloonage
Icosa alloys mimic elements:
Icosa
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050205125336.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091228152348.htm
Sphere/tet/cube packing, entropy, tets in quasicrystal disks, density in box container
quasi-crystal tet packing
Researchers packed tetrahedra into a cubic box more densely than ever before: 85.03
(Cubes have a 100 percent packing fraction in a cubic box, while spheres pack at only 74 percent.) The tetrahedron was for decades conjectured to be the only solid that packs less densely than spheres, until just last year when U-M mathematics graduate student Elizabeth Chen found an arrangement of 77% that proved that speculation wrong.
the more significant finding is that the tetrahedrons can unexpectedly organize into intricate quasicrystals at a point in the computer simulation when they take up roughly half the space in the theoretical box.
In this computer experiment, many thousands of tetrahedrons organized into dodecagonal, or 12-fold, quasicrystals made of parallel stacks of rings around pentagonal dipyramids. A pentagonal dipyramid contains five tetrahedrons arranged into a disk. The researchers discovered that this motif plays a key role in the overall packing. In the simulation, the tetrahedrons organized into a quasicrystal and settled on a packing that, when compressed further, used up 83 percent of the space. Engel then reorganized the shapes into a "quasicrystalline approximate," which is a periodic crystal closely resembling the quasicrystal. He found an arrangement that filled more than 85 percent of the space.
This is the first result showing such a complicated self-arrangement of hard particles without help from attractive interactions such as chemical bonds, Glotzer said.
Thermos vacuum allows IR radiation outwards through glass, photonic crystals reduce IR heat loss better than pure vacuum
In a typical thermos, a vacuum is used to reduce heat transfer. Scientists have found that layers of photonic crystals in a vacuum can reduce the thermal conductance to about half that of a pure vacuum. Basically, heat can be transferred from one material to another in three main ways: convection, conduction, and radiation. Conduction and convection both require some kind of material medium for heat to pass through; therefore, the lack of material in a pure vacuum greatly minimizes the effectiveness of these two processes. However, heat can also be transferred through infrared radiation, a form of light that is invisible but can be felt as heat. In the example of the thermos, infrared radiation can travel through the vacuum to the thermos' outer wall; when absorbed by the outer wall, the radiation causes the molecules in the outer wall to vibrate and release heat. Significantly, photonic crystals can have band gaps that forbid propagation of certain frequency ranges of light. In this case, they could be used to block infrared radiation.
The scientists found that a 100-micron-thick structure made of a stack of 10 photonic crystal layers, each 1 μm thick and separated by 90-μm gaps of vacuum, could reduce the thermal conductance to about half that of a pure vacuum. In a more recent study, Fan and his colleagues calculated the fraction of all frequencies that the photonic crystal allows through. They were somewhat surprised to find that the thermal conductance doesn't depend on the thickness of the layers but only on how fast light travels through the material, or its index of refraction.
Circles & spheres, flakes and crystals, water & ice
NYTimes
link
super cold
water-tet
Take a regular tetrahedron and set the distance from vertex to tet center as unit 1. Then an
edge of the tet is 1.632993.. . So this number is directly related to the ubiquitous Maraldi angle, 109.47.. degrees (the caltrop angle -- the vertex-center-vertex angle in a regular tet).
CircumsphereRadius/Edge = (1/4)*SQRT(6)
Edge/CircumsphereRadius = 4/SQRT(6)
Vertex-Vertex central Maraldi Angle = arc cos -1/3 ( or ) 2*ACOS(SQRT(1/3))
Giacomo_F._Maraldi: "In math known for obtaining experimentally the angle in the
rhombic dodecahedron shape in 1712, which is still called Maraldi angle."
"Water is a network-forming matter. You can imagine the structure of the network as a kitchen sponge, Matsumoto continues. The sponge structure is originally a kind of foam but membranes are lost, and only the beams - bonds - remain. In both network of water and kitchen sponge, four bonds meet at a point, or node, to form a three dimensionally connected random network. As Plateau pointed out in 19th century, four beams of a foam crosses at a node with regular tetrahedral angle - Maraldi's angle - similar to the waters hydrogen bond network. Matsumoto used computer simulation to look at three ways to change the volume of the foam cells: extension of the bonds, a change in the containing angle between the bonds, and a change in network topology. By discriminating the three contributions, the mechanism became very clear. One contributes to thermal expansion, another one contributes to thermal contraction, and the last one does not. Density maximum is a result of these competing contributions, he explains. "
Caltrops: reg tet 'land mines' The simple design paradigm says that the most elegant, efficient, iconic inventions are necessarily the simplest; like the elastic band, the brick, and the pizza. A caltrop is a simple piece of shaped metal (concrete tank killers); a spiky tetrahedron which, when liberally scattered on the ground, causes a great deal of annoyance to any passing dudes or ponies. And the brilliant thing is that however you drop them, they always land spiky point up.
Biological size, volume, area, fluid flow
size & form
Interaction on Bucky Fuller's tetrahedra as unit volume in synergetic sequence, with input from Allan, Kirby, myself:
Shape: Volume (notes)
MITE: 1/8 (AAB mods)
Tetra: 1 (24 A mods)
Coupler: 1 (8 MITE's)
Stella Octangula: 1.5 (Little octahedron of .5 volume + little tets totalling volume of 1. Notice that the Stella Octangula occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Cubocta: 2.5 (1/2 ƒ)
Octa: 4 (dual of cube)
Cube: 3 (dual of octa)
Cube-Octahedron Compound: 4.5 (first stellation of cub-octahedron)*
Rh-Dodeca: 6 (12 half-couplers, other ways)
Escher's Solid: 12 tetras (or 12 couplers [see above], other ways. Notice that the Escher's Solid occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Cubocta: 20 (volume = 8*2.5)
Cube: 24 (2ƒ)
Stella Octangula: 12 (Octa volume of 4 + 8 tets. Notice that the Stella Octangula occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Octahedron: 32 (2ƒ)
Cube-Octahedron Compound: 36 (larger version)
*The (small) cube-octahedron compound has a volume of 4.5, since the cube corners are
half the heights of the regular tetrahedrons.
Relative Volume Sequence: (mine, preliminary, w/ response from Allan)
tet 1 (reg or irreg)
reg tet volume, of course!
coupler 1 (irreg octa)
tet duo 2 (vertex/edge/face bonded)
two tetrahedrons
duotet cube 3
The volume of the cube is 3 tetrahedrons.
octa 4
The volume of the octahedron is 4 tetrahedrons.
The volume of the cube-octahedron compound or first stellation of cub-octahedron is 4.5 tetrahedra. If the octants are elevated even more to regular tetrahedra, then you will get the cuboctahedral star with a volume of 5. (see below)
star tet 5 [tetra-star]
The star tetrahedron is the unfolded net of the pentachoron, which is bounded by 5 tetrahedra.
rhombic triacontahedron 5
reg tet stell cubocta 5 [cubocta star w/ reg tet ecto]
rh dodeca 6
Rhombic dodecahedron has twice the volume of the cube. The volume of the stellated rhombic dodecahedron is 12, which is half the volume of the enclosing 2ƒ cube of volume 24. (below)
star octa 12 [octa star]
Stellated octahedron has half the volume of the enclosing 2ƒ cube of volume 24.
stellated rh dodeca 12
icosa int 18.51 endo
If you think that the icosahedron has volume 20, then you're obviously from another (fourth) dimension! The icosahedron, as we know in our flat Euclidean three-dimensional realm, has a endo- volume of about 18.51 tetrahedra.
cubocta 20 endo
This is the jitterbug, fully extended.
star icosa ext 20 [icosa star reg tet ecto]
But that's assuming that each face has a REGULAR tetrahedron on it.
star cubocta 40 [cubocta star reg tet endo ecto]
The 2ƒ version of the cube-octahedron compound or stellated cuboctahedron has a volume of 36 tetrahedra. For the star cuboctahedron to have a volume of 40, each face would have to be stellated with equilateral triangles (i.e. half-octahedra and regular tetrahedra). (see above)
-
> Icosa (Fuller explanation, Amy Edmondson, paraphrased)
> Its endo-volume of approximately 18.51 does not fit rationally into
> the cosmic hierarchy with whole numbers nor click-stop when
> jitterbugging.
> I found this interesting, a clue perhaps re. 18.51 1/electron
> "The icosahedron contracts to a radius less than the radii of the
> vector equilibrium from which it derived. There is a sphere that is
> tangent to the other 12 spheres at the center of an icosahedron, but
> that sphere is inherently smaller. Its radius is less than the
> spheres in tangency which generate the 12 vertexes of the vector
> equilibrium or icosahedron. Since it is no longer the same-size
> sphere, it is not in the same frequency or in the same energetic
> dimensioning. The two structures are so intimate, but they do not
> have the same amount of energy. For instance, in relation to the
> tetrahedron as unity, the [endo]volume of the icosahedron is 18.51 in
> respect to the vector equilibrium's [endo]volume of 20 [and also the
> star icosa's ectovolume of 20]. The ratio is tantalizing because the
> mass of the electron in respect to the mass of the neutron is one
> over 18.51. That there should be such an important kind of seemingly
> irrational number provides a strong contrast to all the other
> rational data of the tetrahedron as unity, the octahedron as four,
> the vector equilibrium as 20, and the rhombic dodecahedron as six:
> beautiful whole rational numbers". Syn 400.00 system
> "When the volume of a tetrahedron is specified as one unit, other
> ordered polyhedra are found to have precise whole-number volume
> ratios, as opposed to the cumbersome and often irrational quantities
> generated by employing the cube as the unit of volume. Furthermore,
> the tetrahedron has the most surface area per unit of volume".
> (sphere has least) A Fuller Explanation
> http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/ivm.html
> shows IVM in a tet
> from previous:
> Relative volumes: (endo = interior, ecto = exterior shell)
> Tet: (@IVM), vol 1
> Oct: (@IVM), vol 4
> Star Tet: center tet endovol 1 + ectovol 4 (ext tets), vol 5
> Star Oct: center oct endovol 4 + ectovol 8 (@IVM), vol 12
> Star Icosa: center icosa endovol 18.51 + ectovol 20, vol 38.51
> Star Cubocta: endovol 20 + ectovol 20, vol 40
> DD
> On Nov 23, 2009, at 8:00 AM, rybo6 wrote:
> > "Topologically, lines are composed of points."
> > I don't know how it is defined elsewhere, but to me, a line is a
> > point with depth (not = zero), and a point is a line with depth = 0.
> > [Where 'depth' is any direction.] This does not conflict with the
> > definition of a point being a line crossing (which is the same as 2
> > or more vectors meeting at a vertex).
> > The irreg tets that make an icosa, do their struts meet at the
> > center, or do each reach to the opposite face? I thought each face
> > triangle had a tet apex at the icosa center (not modelable with
> > toothpicks), but maybe it goes to the opposite side at a point. Or
> > are there no irreg tets in an icosa?
> > Here (@ link bottom) see the regular icosa and star icosa:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_triambic_icosahedron
> > Here see that 2 halves of duotet = cubocta & 2 halves of cubocta =
> > duotet. Do the relative volumes equate?
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/synergeo/attachments/folder/1932305706/item/652172707/view
> > http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s09/figs/f5031.html
> > http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/figs/f0632.html
> > Relative volumes: (endo = interior, ecto = exterior)
> > Tet: vol 1 (@IVM)
> > Oct: vol 4 (@IVM)
> > Star Tet: center tet endovol 1 + ectovol 4 (ext tets)
> > Star Oct: center oct endovol 4 + ectovol 8 (@IVM)
> > Star Icosa: center icosa endovol 18.51 + ectovol 20
> > Star Cubocta: endovol 20 + ectovol 20
> > Icosa (Fuller explanation, Amy Edmondson, paraphrased)
> > Its endo-volume of approximately 18.51 does not fit rationally into
> > the cosmic hierarchy with whole numbers nor click-stop when
> > jitterbugging. The icosahedron is a phase in between octahedron and
> > vector equilibrium, rather than a definitive stopping point in the
> > flow. The icosahedron is thus restricted to single-layer
> > construction, able to contract/collapse to rigidity, its radius too
> > small to permit having same-size nuclear sphere. (461.05)
> > You could not have two adjacent layers of vector equilibria and then
> > have them collapse to become the icosahedron, it has to be an outside
> > layer, remote from other layers... . It may have as high a frequency
> > as nature may require. The center is vacant. (456.20-1).
> > If the center of an icosa is vacant, should its structural volume be
> > zero? Consider the volume of a donut/torus, is the donut hole volume
> > included in the donut's volume? The donut hole does not contribute to
> > the structure of the donut, it is vacant, but it is part of the donut
> > definition. That is sort of what I think the inner volume of an icosa
> > is, a sort of donut hole, a vestige, therefore not a whole number,
> > perhaps like the interstitial spaces in ball packing.
> > DD
Cubocta = cube & octahedron dual intercept, VE when complete
Octet = octahedron & tetrahedron 3D lattice (CCP), cubocta or star oct IVM
Cuboctet = IVM with cubocta voids (vector flexor) expand-contract jitterbug
shrinks from 20 tetvol hollow cubocta with single bonds to 4 tetvol octet with double bonds
Relativity on earth
Bucky's design science goal was "To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." Tim Tyler: How can you tell if the world is 'working' for someone? What % of humanity is the world 'working' for today? It seems rather unrealistic to expect nobody to be disadvantaged. Advantages in nature are relative - "evolution is driven by relative fitnesses, not absolute fitnesses. Santayana's aphorism, ``It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.''
At any time, an organism's chances of surviving depend not on how fit it is, but on how fit it is relative to its competition."
http://www.swintons.net/deodands/archives/cat_neutron_teaspoon.html
Neutron stars do really exist. Long after the protons and electrons have long given up the struggle to maintain their identity against the force of gravity, all that is left is neutrons, pressed together into one big atomic nucleus a few kilometres across.
Stars are big balls of gases. Their size is determined by the balance between two opposing forces: gravity pulling the gas inwards, and pressure pushing it outwards. Just like the pressure of air in a balloon, pressure reflects the fact that it's hard to push things together. The pressure depends on how many things you're trying to push together (density), but it also depends on how hard they are to push together. At higher temperatures, the air molecules have more energy, so it takes more effort to keep them from bouncing off each other. There's a relation, then, between the amount of matter and the pressure it exerts in a given setting, which is called the equation of state. We have a fairly good idea of this relationship for the interior of stars like our own sun. Eventually, as our sun radiates energy away, the internal pressure will fall and the gravitational force will increase the density until the point at which electrons are forced together (or, more precisely into degenerate states) forming a white dwarf, and for these conditions we also have a fairly good idea of the equation of state. But for more massive stars, the collapse keeps going past this point and is only halted when the remaining neutrons are forced too 'close' together. And at this point we reach some uncertainty (at least according to 1980 era graduate texts) in what the equation of state is. So there is some real scientific uncertainty in the mass of the neutron teaspoon.
Icosa alloys mimic elements:
Icosa
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050205125336.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091228152348.htm
Sphere/tet/cube packing, entropy, tets in quasicrystal disks, density in box container
quasi-crystal tet packing
Researchers packed tetrahedra into a cubic box more densely than ever before: 85.03
(Cubes have a 100 percent packing fraction in a cubic box, while spheres pack at only 74 percent.) The tetrahedron was for decades conjectured to be the only solid that packs less densely than spheres, until just last year when U-M mathematics graduate student Elizabeth Chen found an arrangement of 77% that proved that speculation wrong.
the more significant finding is that the tetrahedrons can unexpectedly organize into intricate quasicrystals at a point in the computer simulation when they take up roughly half the space in the theoretical box.
In this computer experiment, many thousands of tetrahedrons organized into dodecagonal, or 12-fold, quasicrystals made of parallel stacks of rings around pentagonal dipyramids. A pentagonal dipyramid contains five tetrahedrons arranged into a disk. The researchers discovered that this motif plays a key role in the overall packing. In the simulation, the tetrahedrons organized into a quasicrystal and settled on a packing that, when compressed further, used up 83 percent of the space. Engel then reorganized the shapes into a "quasicrystalline approximate," which is a periodic crystal closely resembling the quasicrystal. He found an arrangement that filled more than 85 percent of the space.
This is the first result showing such a complicated self-arrangement of hard particles without help from attractive interactions such as chemical bonds, Glotzer said.
Thermos vacuum allows IR radiation outwards through glass, photonic crystals reduce IR heat loss better than pure vacuum
In a typical thermos, a vacuum is used to reduce heat transfer. Scientists have found that layers of photonic crystals in a vacuum can reduce the thermal conductance to about half that of a pure vacuum. Basically, heat can be transferred from one material to another in three main ways: convection, conduction, and radiation. Conduction and convection both require some kind of material medium for heat to pass through; therefore, the lack of material in a pure vacuum greatly minimizes the effectiveness of these two processes. However, heat can also be transferred through infrared radiation, a form of light that is invisible but can be felt as heat. In the example of the thermos, infrared radiation can travel through the vacuum to the thermos' outer wall; when absorbed by the outer wall, the radiation causes the molecules in the outer wall to vibrate and release heat. Significantly, photonic crystals can have band gaps that forbid propagation of certain frequency ranges of light. In this case, they could be used to block infrared radiation.
The scientists found that a 100-micron-thick structure made of a stack of 10 photonic crystal layers, each 1 μm thick and separated by 90-μm gaps of vacuum, could reduce the thermal conductance to about half that of a pure vacuum. In a more recent study, Fan and his colleagues calculated the fraction of all frequencies that the photonic crystal allows through. They were somewhat surprised to find that the thermal conductance doesn't depend on the thickness of the layers but only on how fast light travels through the material, or its index of refraction.
Circles & spheres, flakes and crystals, water & ice
NYTimes
link
super cold
water-tet
Take a regular tetrahedron and set the distance from vertex to tet center as unit 1. Then an
edge of the tet is 1.632993.. . So this number is directly related to the ubiquitous Maraldi angle, 109.47.. degrees (the caltrop angle -- the vertex-center-vertex angle in a regular tet).
CircumsphereRadius/Edge = (1/4)*SQRT(6)
Edge/CircumsphereRadius = 4/SQRT(6)
Vertex-Vertex central Maraldi Angle = arc cos -1/3 ( or ) 2*ACOS(SQRT(1/3))
Giacomo_F._Maraldi: "In math known for obtaining experimentally the angle in the
rhombic dodecahedron shape in 1712, which is still called Maraldi angle."
"Water is a network-forming matter. You can imagine the structure of the network as a kitchen sponge, Matsumoto continues. The sponge structure is originally a kind of foam but membranes are lost, and only the beams - bonds - remain. In both network of water and kitchen sponge, four bonds meet at a point, or node, to form a three dimensionally connected random network. As Plateau pointed out in 19th century, four beams of a foam crosses at a node with regular tetrahedral angle - Maraldi's angle - similar to the waters hydrogen bond network. Matsumoto used computer simulation to look at three ways to change the volume of the foam cells: extension of the bonds, a change in the containing angle between the bonds, and a change in network topology. By discriminating the three contributions, the mechanism became very clear. One contributes to thermal expansion, another one contributes to thermal contraction, and the last one does not. Density maximum is a result of these competing contributions, he explains. "
Caltrops: reg tet 'land mines' The simple design paradigm says that the most elegant, efficient, iconic inventions are necessarily the simplest; like the elastic band, the brick, and the pizza. A caltrop is a simple piece of shaped metal (concrete tank killers); a spiky tetrahedron which, when liberally scattered on the ground, causes a great deal of annoyance to any passing dudes or ponies. And the brilliant thing is that however you drop them, they always land spiky point up.
Biological size, volume, area, fluid flow
size & form
Interaction on Bucky Fuller's tetrahedra as unit volume in synergetic sequence, with input from Allan, Kirby, myself:
Shape: Volume (notes)
MITE: 1/8 (AAB mods)
Tetra: 1 (24 A mods)
Coupler: 1 (8 MITE's)
Stella Octangula: 1.5 (Little octahedron of .5 volume + little tets totalling volume of 1. Notice that the Stella Octangula occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Cubocta: 2.5 (1/2 ƒ)
Octa: 4 (dual of cube)
Cube: 3 (dual of octa)
Cube-Octahedron Compound: 4.5 (first stellation of cub-octahedron)*
Rh-Dodeca: 6 (12 half-couplers, other ways)
Escher's Solid: 12 tetras (or 12 couplers [see above], other ways. Notice that the Escher's Solid occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Cubocta: 20 (volume = 8*2.5)
Cube: 24 (2ƒ)
Stella Octangula: 12 (Octa volume of 4 + 8 tets. Notice that the Stella Octangula occupies half the volume of its enclosing cube.)
Octahedron: 32 (2ƒ)
Cube-Octahedron Compound: 36 (larger version)
*The (small) cube-octahedron compound has a volume of 4.5, since the cube corners are
half the heights of the regular tetrahedrons.
Relative Volume Sequence: (mine, preliminary, w/ response from Allan)
tet 1 (reg or irreg)
reg tet volume, of course!
coupler 1 (irreg octa)
tet duo 2 (vertex/edge/face bonded)
two tetrahedrons
duotet cube 3
The volume of the cube is 3 tetrahedrons.
octa 4
The volume of the octahedron is 4 tetrahedrons.
The volume of the cube-octahedron compound or first stellation of cub-octahedron is 4.5 tetrahedra. If the octants are elevated even more to regular tetrahedra, then you will get the cuboctahedral star with a volume of 5. (see below)
star tet 5 [tetra-star]
The star tetrahedron is the unfolded net of the pentachoron, which is bounded by 5 tetrahedra.
rhombic triacontahedron 5
reg tet stell cubocta 5 [cubocta star w/ reg tet ecto]
rh dodeca 6
Rhombic dodecahedron has twice the volume of the cube. The volume of the stellated rhombic dodecahedron is 12, which is half the volume of the enclosing 2ƒ cube of volume 24. (below)
star octa 12 [octa star]
Stellated octahedron has half the volume of the enclosing 2ƒ cube of volume 24.
stellated rh dodeca 12
icosa int 18.51 endo
If you think that the icosahedron has volume 20, then you're obviously from another (fourth) dimension! The icosahedron, as we know in our flat Euclidean three-dimensional realm, has a endo- volume of about 18.51 tetrahedra.
cubocta 20 endo
This is the jitterbug, fully extended.
star icosa ext 20 [icosa star reg tet ecto]
But that's assuming that each face has a REGULAR tetrahedron on it.
star cubocta 40 [cubocta star reg tet endo ecto]
The 2ƒ version of the cube-octahedron compound or stellated cuboctahedron has a volume of 36 tetrahedra. For the star cuboctahedron to have a volume of 40, each face would have to be stellated with equilateral triangles (i.e. half-octahedra and regular tetrahedra). (see above)
-
> Icosa (Fuller explanation, Amy Edmondson, paraphrased)
> Its endo-volume of approximately 18.51 does not fit rationally into
> the cosmic hierarchy with whole numbers nor click-stop when
> jitterbugging.
> I found this interesting, a clue perhaps re. 18.51 1/electron
> "The icosahedron contracts to a radius less than the radii of the
> vector equilibrium from which it derived. There is a sphere that is
> tangent to the other 12 spheres at the center of an icosahedron, but
> that sphere is inherently smaller. Its radius is less than the
> spheres in tangency which generate the 12 vertexes of the vector
> equilibrium or icosahedron. Since it is no longer the same-size
> sphere, it is not in the same frequency or in the same energetic
> dimensioning. The two structures are so intimate, but they do not
> have the same amount of energy. For instance, in relation to the
> tetrahedron as unity, the [endo]volume of the icosahedron is 18.51 in
> respect to the vector equilibrium's [endo]volume of 20 [and also the
> star icosa's ectovolume of 20]. The ratio is tantalizing because the
> mass of the electron in respect to the mass of the neutron is one
> over 18.51. That there should be such an important kind of seemingly
> irrational number provides a strong contrast to all the other
> rational data of the tetrahedron as unity, the octahedron as four,
> the vector equilibrium as 20, and the rhombic dodecahedron as six:
> beautiful whole rational numbers". Syn 400.00 system
> "When the volume of a tetrahedron is specified as one unit, other
> ordered polyhedra are found to have precise whole-number volume
> ratios, as opposed to the cumbersome and often irrational quantities
> generated by employing the cube as the unit of volume. Furthermore,
> the tetrahedron has the most surface area per unit of volume".
> (sphere has least) A Fuller Explanation
> http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/ivm.html
> shows IVM in a tet
> from previous:
> Relative volumes: (endo = interior, ecto = exterior shell)
> Tet: (@IVM), vol 1
> Oct: (@IVM), vol 4
> Star Tet: center tet endovol 1 + ectovol 4 (ext tets), vol 5
> Star Oct: center oct endovol 4 + ectovol 8 (@IVM), vol 12
> Star Icosa: center icosa endovol 18.51 + ectovol 20, vol 38.51
> Star Cubocta: endovol 20 + ectovol 20, vol 40
> DD
> On Nov 23, 2009, at 8:00 AM, rybo6 wrote:
> > "Topologically, lines are composed of points."
> > I don't know how it is defined elsewhere, but to me, a line is a
> > point with depth (not = zero), and a point is a line with depth = 0.
> > [Where 'depth' is any direction.] This does not conflict with the
> > definition of a point being a line crossing (which is the same as 2
> > or more vectors meeting at a vertex).
> > The irreg tets that make an icosa, do their struts meet at the
> > center, or do each reach to the opposite face? I thought each face
> > triangle had a tet apex at the icosa center (not modelable with
> > toothpicks), but maybe it goes to the opposite side at a point. Or
> > are there no irreg tets in an icosa?
> > Here (@ link bottom) see the regular icosa and star icosa:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_triambic_icosahedron
> > Here see that 2 halves of duotet = cubocta & 2 halves of cubocta =
> > duotet. Do the relative volumes equate?
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/synergeo/attachments/folder/1932305706/item/652172707/view
> > http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s09/figs/f5031.html
> > http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s10/figs/f0632.html
> > Relative volumes: (endo = interior, ecto = exterior)
> > Tet: vol 1 (@IVM)
> > Oct: vol 4 (@IVM)
> > Star Tet: center tet endovol 1 + ectovol 4 (ext tets)
> > Star Oct: center oct endovol 4 + ectovol 8 (@IVM)
> > Star Icosa: center icosa endovol 18.51 + ectovol 20
> > Star Cubocta: endovol 20 + ectovol 20
> > Icosa (Fuller explanation, Amy Edmondson, paraphrased)
> > Its endo-volume of approximately 18.51 does not fit rationally into
> > the cosmic hierarchy with whole numbers nor click-stop when
> > jitterbugging. The icosahedron is a phase in between octahedron and
> > vector equilibrium, rather than a definitive stopping point in the
> > flow. The icosahedron is thus restricted to single-layer
> > construction, able to contract/collapse to rigidity, its radius too
> > small to permit having same-size nuclear sphere. (461.05)
> > You could not have two adjacent layers of vector equilibria and then
> > have them collapse to become the icosahedron, it has to be an outside
> > layer, remote from other layers... . It may have as high a frequency
> > as nature may require. The center is vacant. (456.20-1).
> > If the center of an icosa is vacant, should its structural volume be
> > zero? Consider the volume of a donut/torus, is the donut hole volume
> > included in the donut's volume? The donut hole does not contribute to
> > the structure of the donut, it is vacant, but it is part of the donut
> > definition. That is sort of what I think the inner volume of an icosa
> > is, a sort of donut hole, a vestige, therefore not a whole number,
> > perhaps like the interstitial spaces in ball packing.
> > DD
Cubocta = cube & octahedron dual intercept, VE when complete
Octet = octahedron & tetrahedron 3D lattice (CCP), cubocta or star oct IVM
Cuboctet = IVM with cubocta voids (vector flexor) expand-contract jitterbug
shrinks from 20 tetvol hollow cubocta with single bonds to 4 tetvol octet with double bonds
Relativity on earth
Bucky's design science goal was "To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." Tim Tyler: How can you tell if the world is 'working' for someone? What % of humanity is the world 'working' for today? It seems rather unrealistic to expect nobody to be disadvantaged. Advantages in nature are relative - "evolution is driven by relative fitnesses, not absolute fitnesses. Santayana's aphorism, ``It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.''
At any time, an organism's chances of surviving depend not on how fit it is, but on how fit it is relative to its competition."
http://www.swintons.net/deodands/archives/cat_neutron_teaspoon.html
Neutron stars do really exist. Long after the protons and electrons have long given up the struggle to maintain their identity against the force of gravity, all that is left is neutrons, pressed together into one big atomic nucleus a few kilometres across.
Stars are big balls of gases. Their size is determined by the balance between two opposing forces: gravity pulling the gas inwards, and pressure pushing it outwards. Just like the pressure of air in a balloon, pressure reflects the fact that it's hard to push things together. The pressure depends on how many things you're trying to push together (density), but it also depends on how hard they are to push together. At higher temperatures, the air molecules have more energy, so it takes more effort to keep them from bouncing off each other. There's a relation, then, between the amount of matter and the pressure it exerts in a given setting, which is called the equation of state. We have a fairly good idea of this relationship for the interior of stars like our own sun. Eventually, as our sun radiates energy away, the internal pressure will fall and the gravitational force will increase the density until the point at which electrons are forced together (or, more precisely into degenerate states) forming a white dwarf, and for these conditions we also have a fairly good idea of the equation of state. But for more massive stars, the collapse keeps going past this point and is only halted when the remaining neutrons are forced too 'close' together. And at this point we reach some uncertainty (at least according to 1980 era graduate texts) in what the equation of state is. So there is some real scientific uncertainty in the mass of the neutron teaspoon.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Note to a colleague re. the ARC
A fine diving spot: Deans Blue Hole, Bahamas
Divers paradise
Myostatin protein regulates muscle build, effect on myoglobin, brain, jaws?
myostatin vs follistatin
nose nerves, inf conchae, PSR
Physis: a marine journal, CIEE in Bonaire
Physis
Blue planet divers site, diver list
Blue Planet Divers
Shoal/slow/shallow, sandbar, reef, wave patterns at shallows
Shoal, lagoon, Ayre/lake/laut/loch
Ayre
The derivation of the word ayre is from Old Norse. It refers to a shallow bay/lake being separate from the sea by a sandspit. This may partly cut off a sheltered stretch of water from the sea to form a shallow freshwater loch.[2] This word is still in use for the particular landform in the Northern Isles of Scotland.
In Malay/Indonesian, ayer or air means water, laut means lake or sea.
The post-coastal Hadza Hunter/Gatherer camps
Hadza
Isotope markers in bone: Seal (high) vs mollusk (low) in human diet, iris bulbs, at South African coastal Holocene sites
South Africa coastal hunting and gathering diet
Through chemical analysis of bone collagen from 69 skeletons dated from 4,500 to 2,000 years before present, what foods were you able to determine that Holocene populations in Robberg/Plettenberg and the Matjes River Rock Shelter were consuming?
In this area, people were able to choose from a long menu of foods including venison and the meat of other wild animals, berries, edible roots and corms, particularly of plants in the iris family, seafood including shellfish, fish, seabirds, stranded dolphins or whales, and much else. All these items have been identified in excavated food remains. It is, however, harder to know their relative importance. Neither conventional archaeological techniques nor isotope analysis (for different reasons) permit precise quantification of individual foods, but it is clear from the high ratios of 15N/14N in their bones that people buried at Robberg/ Plettenberg Bay ate unusually large quantities of high trophic level [animals high on the food chain] marine foods, very likely the meat of seals and large predatory fish caught in the deep waters surrounding the Robberg Peninsula. Bone tissue accumulates over many years, so this was a long-term dietary pattern. People buried at Matjes River Rock Shelter, on the other hand, ate much more mixed diets, with more terrestrial food or low trophic level [low on the food chain] marine foods, such as shellfish.
Why do you think their diets were different? Why is this finding important or surprising?
Today, there is a seal colony on the Robberg Peninsula, and it was probably there in the past as well. (This inference is based on the age distribution of seals that ancient people butchered and ate.) Mainland seal colonies are relatively rare (most colonies are on offshore islands, which offer protection from predators), so this would have been a special opportunity for hunter-gatherers--a type of living larder. In addition, the peninsula juts out into deep water, allowing access to fish not usually caught by shore-based anglers. People who lived at Robberg/Plettenberg Bay made the most of their good fortune, while people who lived at Matjes River Rock Shelter didn't have these advantages. What's surprising about it is the degree of specialisation in local resources, from which we can infer that these people were living within relatively small areas, rather than trekking regularly across large areas of landscape. This is unexpected, given the very mobile lifestyle of most recent southern African hunter-gatherers.
How does ethnographic research contribute to the analysis of Stone Age societies in South Africa?
Later Stone Age societies were the ancestors of communities who continued to live a foraging lifestyle, in the Kalahari and elsewhere, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Studies of Kalahari foragers have been of enormous importance in anthropology in recent decades. In some respects, there are clear similarities between recent and ancient southern African hunter-gatherers, and the ethnographies have provided valuable insights into earlier societies. For example, aspects of belief systems recorded in the Kalahari in the twentieth century are also expressed in rock paintings that may be several thousand years old.
What does the painted seal scapula found in the cave at Knysna tell us about the hunter-gatherer society that created it?
This is a unique artifact--it's the only painted bone we have from South Africa, so interpretation must be cautious. Paintings on the walls of caves and rock shelters, however, expressed aspects of people's belief systems, including ideas about relationships between animals and humans in this world and in the spirit world. The animals depicted are usually larger species charged with symbolic power. The choice of a seal scapula and the images painted on it, of which the left-hand one, at least, looks very seal-like, hints that seals may have been important in a spiritual, as well as an economic sense.
You describe the societies as succumbing to "opportunistic sedentism." What do you mean by this, and why is it significant? How might being sedentary affect other aspects of life?
The idea is that people might initially have practiced a degree of sedentism in areas where there were rich resources, because there was no need to move. Early on, this is likely to have been a flexible pattern. When population densities rose, and there were limited options for moving, settlement patterns became more fixed--increasing our chances of recognizing them in the archaeology. Cross-culturally, more settled lifestyles require people to develop new methods of dealing with conflict, they allow storage of food or other commodities, opening up the possibility of differential access to resources and thus to social inequality. Southern Cape peoples probably didn't go very far down this road, but these are interesting questions.
-
Owl monkeys, Aotus spp: nocturnal, huge tarsier/lemur-like eyes, thyroid, low metabolism, retro? Have same NeuA5 sialic acid as humans, so susceptible to human type malaria but brains small, and furry, retro? Original morph of NWM/OWM/apes, before malaria?
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a786187256
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090427214059AAhcd0T
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&hs=ELV&q=owl+monkey+sialic+acid&start=10&sa=N
Java man
http://www.planetmole.org/indonesian-news/sangiran-museum-sragen-central-java.html
Prehistory of leprosy
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genomics/disease/leprosy-monot-2009-phylogeography.html
"How long should a dive last? A simple model of foraging decisions by breath-hold divers in a patchy environment" Authors: Thompson D.; Fedak M.A.
Source: Animal Behaviour, Volume 61, Number 2, February 2001, pp. 287-296(10) Pub: Elsevier
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9W-45BC899-7S&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=07b1166ce0f70cea4937c616fee8c25b
Effects of increased swimming costs on foraging behavior and efficiency of captive Steller sea lions: Evidence for behavioral plasticity in the recovery phase of dives
Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Volume 333, Issue 2, 13 June 2006, Pages 306-314 L.A. Cornick, S.D. Inglis, K. Willis, M. Horning
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8F-4JBGKN3-3&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F13%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=article&_cdi=5085&_sort=v&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=34&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=05c93e6a3219bcfc6d5c4d49120eaba8
Why do macaroni penguins choose shallow body angles that result in longer descent and ascent durations? Authors: Katsufumi Sato, Jean-Benot Charrassin, Charles-André Bost, Yasuhiko Naito1
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/23/4057
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../18987289
Repetitive paired stimulation of nasotrigeminal and peripheral chemoreceptor afferents cause progressive potentiation of the diving bradycardia.
Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2008 Nov 5;
Authors: Rozloznik M, Paton JF, Dutschmann M
The hallmarks of the mammalian diving response are protective apnea and bradycardia. These cardio-respiratory adaptations can be mimicked by stimulation the trigeminal ethmoidal nerve (EN5) and reflect oxygen conserving mechanisms during breath-hold dives. Increasing drive from peripheral chemoreceptors during sustained dives was reported to enhance the diving bradycardia. The underlying neuronal mechanisms, however, are unknown. In the present study, expression and plasticity of EN5-bradycardias after paired stimulation of the EN5 and peripheral chemoreceptors was investigated in the in situ working heart-brainstem preparation. Paired stimulations enhanced significantly the bradycardic responses compared to EN5-evoked bradycardia using sub-maxim…
http://www.immersionlibre.fr/
Bubbles and bubble rings:
bubblelogics
Prevalence and severity of external auditory exostoses in breath-hold divers
To explore the prevalence and severity of external auditory exostoses in a population of experienced breath-hold divers, and to compare these to the same parameters within surfing and self-contained underwater breathing apparatus diving populations.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18346299&dopt=Abstract
Indirect evidence for arterial chemoreceptor reflex facilitation
by face immersion in man
It is concluded that the intensification is caused by chemoreceptor reflex facilitation, due to stimulation of trigeminal receptors in the face.
The initiation and maintenance of bradycardia in a diving mammal
the muskrat, Ondatra zibethica
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/469759&dopt=Abstract
Extremes in human breath hold facial immersion bradycardia
Although the average human response to apneic facial immersion in ice water is a reduction in heart rate from 70 to 45 beats/min, a small proportion of healthy subjects develop diving bradycardia to less than 20 beats/min. Twenty-seven healthy subjects performed resting, seated, 30-s mid-inspiratory breath hold, facial immersion in a basin of water. Heart rate dropped more when the water temperature was 1 degree C than at 24 degrees C. Five subjects developed asymptomatic diving bradycardia to less than 15 beats/min. One physically active individual consistently had dive heart rates as low as 5.6 beats/min.
The nose is the source of many powerful reflexes, including the diving response, sneeze and sniff reflexes, and reflexes affecting autonomic nervous function to the cardiovascular system, airways in the lungs, the larynx, and other organs. The physiology of the nose 1986
The water content and glucose concentration in the whole blood of marine mammals were found to be correlated to red blood cell concentration. Because hematocrit (Hct) undergoes significant periodic shifts in these mammals during periods of apnea and/or diving, the measured values of whole blood glucose change due to alterations in Hct, independent of shifts in metabolite regulatory pathways. In contrast to humans, where red blood cell and plasma glucose concentrations are equivalent, in most other mammalian species red blood cell glucose concentration is much lower than that in plasma.
Influence of hematocrit on whole blood glucose levels: new evidence from marine mammals
Passive Flooding Of Paranasal Sinuses
And Middle Ears As A Method Of Equalisation In Extreme Breath-hold Diving
We describe a diver who, by training, is capable of allowing passive flooding of the sinuses and middle ear with (sea) water during descent, by suppressing protective (parasympathetic) reflexes during this process.
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2008/02/28/bjsm.2007.043679.abstract
Adaptations to deep breath-hold diving: respiratory and circulatory mechanics
Respiration and circulation in diving mammals are characterized by interrelated adaptations of structure, function, and behavior that are incompletely described and understood. This speculative survey touches some of them. a) Arterial blood flow can be controlled by vasoconstriction not only in arterioles but also in large arteries. The latter physiology is not well known. b) Mechanisms that might regulate and limit nitrogen uptake are not clear, although Scholander's suggestion that airspaces become gas-free during deep dives is still accepted. c) Systemic arterial retes may be able to store oxygenated blood in some diving mammals. If so, O2 in the lung might be 'skimmed off' early in a dive, leaving the N2 behind. d) Variable clusters of interdependent adaptations in diving mammals include compliant chest walls that avoid thoracic squeeze; inspiratory breath holds that maintain high lung volumes; large tidal volumes that nearly empty the lung at end-expiration...
Renal response to head-out water immersion in Korean women divers
Head-out water immersion (HOI) induces a profound diuresis and natriuresis, which may endanger the body fluid balance of breath-hold divers during prolonged diving work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8507293&dopt=Abstract
An intact glutamatergic trigeminal pathway is essential for the cardiac response to simulated diving http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/269/3/R669
Autonomic response to auditory stimulation
Autonomic and behavioral response to fear stimulation (sudden noise 80 dB) was studied in 12 sleeping infants at ages 8-50 weeks. The aim of the present study was to identify a possible passive defense response in infants. The response, which is widespread in birds and mammals, is characterized by apnea and bradycardia with circulatory changes as seen during the forced diving response.
Trigeminal mediation of the diving response in the muskrat
These data implicate trigeminal neurons in the medullary dorsal horn as modulators of autonomic activity, especially in the cardiorespiratory adjustments after nasal stimulation.
PMID: 1760738 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
h/t Ivo @ http://apnea.cz/media.html?Lang=EN&
-
Hello (...) [slightly modified]
Do you have an opinion on these?
Chromosome 2 is unique to humans amongst hominoids, it contains the genes/SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) for:
- Photic sneeze (Dark adaptation, O2/CO2 apnea regulation?)
- Hypothyroidsm (Ecto/endo-thermic adipocity, Iodine regulation?)
- Hemochromatosis (Bone density, Iron regulation?)
I do not view that as mere coincidence.
Regarding baby backfloating in warm sunlit lagoons:
Human babies have full envelope of SC white fat (insulatory) but dorsal brown fat, which provides warmth to the only sun-shaded area that also is exposed to the coolest proximal water, infant humans (and seals) AFAIK don't shiver for warmth (not useful for hydrostatic backfloating in water). Breastfeeding human infants produce/accumulate Hydrogen (nature's most buoyant material) in the gut, and this, combined with (otherwise healthy) infant colic (GI gas entrapment while backfloating and associated crying) and abundant white SC fat, would provide sufficient buoyancy in dense warm calm saltwater to allow parental foraging without hindrance, in part resulting in loss of fur coat.
Regarding human endurance locomotion: At lagoons, dive foraging would be typical, but in between optimal lagoons, shoreline walking/wading/jogging would be typical due to hazards of rough surf, cold water, box jellyfish, sharks/crocs, etc. This would be maintained during inland seasonal migrations where diving was limited.
Regarding islanding: I think that similar to how Gibralter functioned as a gateway for EurAsian macaques into north Africa, I think the Afar-Eritrea-Yemen region functioned as a gateway to and from EurAsia. The 'bridge' linking Yemen is about 100m deep, about the depth of sea level drop at various glacial periods, (disregarding lack of data on local tectonic changes). I do not view the Danakil alps region as "the refuge", but rather as a periodic gateway, similar to Gibralter and Sinai, though it may have been a stopover with a residual population, similar to today's Barbary macaques at Gibralter.
I haven't found any evidence to contradict the dark adaptation-dive / sunlight surface exhale idea (Aquaphotic Respiratory Cycle), except that it is not used today by modern human divers. I consider it plausible that during the MSC human ancestors separated from the other apes due to being trapped in the Medit. basin, where a unique environment produced selection for a unique hominid different from the others. The low UV present, similar to today's Dead Sea, may have selected for light skin tone or less fur, and unusual eyes (exposed white eye sclerae), and plausibly the sun sneeze, and also increased availability of stone, both for tools and climbing. Later filling of the basin would send various human-types in different directions, to adapt to local conditions with different morphotypes, many would go extinct later.
DD
ps. I've stepped away from AAT yahoogroup for a bit, but continue to skim the threads.
MSC refill
5.6 - 5.33ma MSC may have refilled in 2 years, H/P split 5 - 7ma
picture of Medit MSC refill 5.33ma
Divers paradise
Myostatin protein regulates muscle build, effect on myoglobin, brain, jaws?
myostatin vs follistatin
nose nerves, inf conchae, PSR
Physis: a marine journal, CIEE in Bonaire
Physis
Blue planet divers site, diver list
Blue Planet Divers
Shoal/slow/shallow, sandbar, reef, wave patterns at shallows
Shoal, lagoon, Ayre/lake/laut/loch
Ayre
The derivation of the word ayre is from Old Norse. It refers to a shallow bay/lake being separate from the sea by a sandspit. This may partly cut off a sheltered stretch of water from the sea to form a shallow freshwater loch.[2] This word is still in use for the particular landform in the Northern Isles of Scotland.
In Malay/Indonesian, ayer or air means water, laut means lake or sea.
The post-coastal Hadza Hunter/Gatherer camps
Hadza
Isotope markers in bone: Seal (high) vs mollusk (low) in human diet, iris bulbs, at South African coastal Holocene sites
South Africa coastal hunting and gathering diet
Through chemical analysis of bone collagen from 69 skeletons dated from 4,500 to 2,000 years before present, what foods were you able to determine that Holocene populations in Robberg/Plettenberg and the Matjes River Rock Shelter were consuming?
In this area, people were able to choose from a long menu of foods including venison and the meat of other wild animals, berries, edible roots and corms, particularly of plants in the iris family, seafood including shellfish, fish, seabirds, stranded dolphins or whales, and much else. All these items have been identified in excavated food remains. It is, however, harder to know their relative importance. Neither conventional archaeological techniques nor isotope analysis (for different reasons) permit precise quantification of individual foods, but it is clear from the high ratios of 15N/14N in their bones that people buried at Robberg/ Plettenberg Bay ate unusually large quantities of high trophic level [animals high on the food chain] marine foods, very likely the meat of seals and large predatory fish caught in the deep waters surrounding the Robberg Peninsula. Bone tissue accumulates over many years, so this was a long-term dietary pattern. People buried at Matjes River Rock Shelter, on the other hand, ate much more mixed diets, with more terrestrial food or low trophic level [low on the food chain] marine foods, such as shellfish.
Why do you think their diets were different? Why is this finding important or surprising?
Today, there is a seal colony on the Robberg Peninsula, and it was probably there in the past as well. (This inference is based on the age distribution of seals that ancient people butchered and ate.) Mainland seal colonies are relatively rare (most colonies are on offshore islands, which offer protection from predators), so this would have been a special opportunity for hunter-gatherers--a type of living larder. In addition, the peninsula juts out into deep water, allowing access to fish not usually caught by shore-based anglers. People who lived at Robberg/Plettenberg Bay made the most of their good fortune, while people who lived at Matjes River Rock Shelter didn't have these advantages. What's surprising about it is the degree of specialisation in local resources, from which we can infer that these people were living within relatively small areas, rather than trekking regularly across large areas of landscape. This is unexpected, given the very mobile lifestyle of most recent southern African hunter-gatherers.
How does ethnographic research contribute to the analysis of Stone Age societies in South Africa?
Later Stone Age societies were the ancestors of communities who continued to live a foraging lifestyle, in the Kalahari and elsewhere, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Studies of Kalahari foragers have been of enormous importance in anthropology in recent decades. In some respects, there are clear similarities between recent and ancient southern African hunter-gatherers, and the ethnographies have provided valuable insights into earlier societies. For example, aspects of belief systems recorded in the Kalahari in the twentieth century are also expressed in rock paintings that may be several thousand years old.
What does the painted seal scapula found in the cave at Knysna tell us about the hunter-gatherer society that created it?
This is a unique artifact--it's the only painted bone we have from South Africa, so interpretation must be cautious. Paintings on the walls of caves and rock shelters, however, expressed aspects of people's belief systems, including ideas about relationships between animals and humans in this world and in the spirit world. The animals depicted are usually larger species charged with symbolic power. The choice of a seal scapula and the images painted on it, of which the left-hand one, at least, looks very seal-like, hints that seals may have been important in a spiritual, as well as an economic sense.
You describe the societies as succumbing to "opportunistic sedentism." What do you mean by this, and why is it significant? How might being sedentary affect other aspects of life?
The idea is that people might initially have practiced a degree of sedentism in areas where there were rich resources, because there was no need to move. Early on, this is likely to have been a flexible pattern. When population densities rose, and there were limited options for moving, settlement patterns became more fixed--increasing our chances of recognizing them in the archaeology. Cross-culturally, more settled lifestyles require people to develop new methods of dealing with conflict, they allow storage of food or other commodities, opening up the possibility of differential access to resources and thus to social inequality. Southern Cape peoples probably didn't go very far down this road, but these are interesting questions.
-
Owl monkeys, Aotus spp: nocturnal, huge tarsier/lemur-like eyes, thyroid, low metabolism, retro? Have same NeuA5 sialic acid as humans, so susceptible to human type malaria but brains small, and furry, retro? Original morph of NWM/OWM/apes, before malaria?
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a786187256
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090427214059AAhcd0T
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:official&hs=ELV&q=owl+monkey+sialic+acid&start=10&sa=N
Java man
http://www.planetmole.org/indonesian-news/sangiran-museum-sragen-central-java.html
Prehistory of leprosy
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genomics/disease/leprosy-monot-2009-phylogeography.html
"How long should a dive last? A simple model of foraging decisions by breath-hold divers in a patchy environment" Authors: Thompson D.; Fedak M.A.
Source: Animal Behaviour, Volume 61, Number 2, February 2001, pp. 287-296(10) Pub: Elsevier
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W9W-45BC899-7S&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=07b1166ce0f70cea4937c616fee8c25b
Effects of increased swimming costs on foraging behavior and efficiency of captive Steller sea lions: Evidence for behavioral plasticity in the recovery phase of dives
Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Volume 333, Issue 2, 13 June 2006, Pages 306-314 L.A. Cornick, S.D. Inglis, K. Willis, M. Horning
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T8F-4JBGKN3-3&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F13%2F2006&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=article&_cdi=5085&_sort=v&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=34&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=05c93e6a3219bcfc6d5c4d49120eaba8
Why do macaroni penguins choose shallow body angles that result in longer descent and ascent durations? Authors: Katsufumi Sato, Jean-Benot Charrassin, Charles-André Bost, Yasuhiko Naito1
http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/23/4057
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../18987289
Repetitive paired stimulation of nasotrigeminal and peripheral chemoreceptor afferents cause progressive potentiation of the diving bradycardia.
Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2008 Nov 5;
Authors: Rozloznik M, Paton JF, Dutschmann M
The hallmarks of the mammalian diving response are protective apnea and bradycardia. These cardio-respiratory adaptations can be mimicked by stimulation the trigeminal ethmoidal nerve (EN5) and reflect oxygen conserving mechanisms during breath-hold dives. Increasing drive from peripheral chemoreceptors during sustained dives was reported to enhance the diving bradycardia. The underlying neuronal mechanisms, however, are unknown. In the present study, expression and plasticity of EN5-bradycardias after paired stimulation of the EN5 and peripheral chemoreceptors was investigated in the in situ working heart-brainstem preparation. Paired stimulations enhanced significantly the bradycardic responses compared to EN5-evoked bradycardia using sub-maxim…
http://www.immersionlibre.fr/
Bubbles and bubble rings:
bubblelogics
Prevalence and severity of external auditory exostoses in breath-hold divers
To explore the prevalence and severity of external auditory exostoses in a population of experienced breath-hold divers, and to compare these to the same parameters within surfing and self-contained underwater breathing apparatus diving populations.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18346299&dopt=Abstract
Indirect evidence for arterial chemoreceptor reflex facilitation
by face immersion in man
It is concluded that the intensification is caused by chemoreceptor reflex facilitation, due to stimulation of trigeminal receptors in the face.
The initiation and maintenance of bradycardia in a diving mammal
the muskrat, Ondatra zibethica
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/469759&dopt=Abstract
Extremes in human breath hold facial immersion bradycardia
Although the average human response to apneic facial immersion in ice water is a reduction in heart rate from 70 to 45 beats/min, a small proportion of healthy subjects develop diving bradycardia to less than 20 beats/min. Twenty-seven healthy subjects performed resting, seated, 30-s mid-inspiratory breath hold, facial immersion in a basin of water. Heart rate dropped more when the water temperature was 1 degree C than at 24 degrees C. Five subjects developed asymptomatic diving bradycardia to less than 15 beats/min. One physically active individual consistently had dive heart rates as low as 5.6 beats/min.
The nose is the source of many powerful reflexes, including the diving response, sneeze and sniff reflexes, and reflexes affecting autonomic nervous function to the cardiovascular system, airways in the lungs, the larynx, and other organs. The physiology of the nose 1986
The water content and glucose concentration in the whole blood of marine mammals were found to be correlated to red blood cell concentration. Because hematocrit (Hct) undergoes significant periodic shifts in these mammals during periods of apnea and/or diving, the measured values of whole blood glucose change due to alterations in Hct, independent of shifts in metabolite regulatory pathways. In contrast to humans, where red blood cell and plasma glucose concentrations are equivalent, in most other mammalian species red blood cell glucose concentration is much lower than that in plasma.
Influence of hematocrit on whole blood glucose levels: new evidence from marine mammals
Passive Flooding Of Paranasal Sinuses
And Middle Ears As A Method Of Equalisation In Extreme Breath-hold Diving
We describe a diver who, by training, is capable of allowing passive flooding of the sinuses and middle ear with (sea) water during descent, by suppressing protective (parasympathetic) reflexes during this process.
http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2008/02/28/bjsm.2007.043679.abstract
Adaptations to deep breath-hold diving: respiratory and circulatory mechanics
Respiration and circulation in diving mammals are characterized by interrelated adaptations of structure, function, and behavior that are incompletely described and understood. This speculative survey touches some of them. a) Arterial blood flow can be controlled by vasoconstriction not only in arterioles but also in large arteries. The latter physiology is not well known. b) Mechanisms that might regulate and limit nitrogen uptake are not clear, although Scholander's suggestion that airspaces become gas-free during deep dives is still accepted. c) Systemic arterial retes may be able to store oxygenated blood in some diving mammals. If so, O2 in the lung might be 'skimmed off' early in a dive, leaving the N2 behind. d) Variable clusters of interdependent adaptations in diving mammals include compliant chest walls that avoid thoracic squeeze; inspiratory breath holds that maintain high lung volumes; large tidal volumes that nearly empty the lung at end-expiration...
Renal response to head-out water immersion in Korean women divers
Head-out water immersion (HOI) induces a profound diuresis and natriuresis, which may endanger the body fluid balance of breath-hold divers during prolonged diving work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8507293&dopt=Abstract
An intact glutamatergic trigeminal pathway is essential for the cardiac response to simulated diving http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/269/3/R669
Autonomic response to auditory stimulation
Autonomic and behavioral response to fear stimulation (sudden noise 80 dB) was studied in 12 sleeping infants at ages 8-50 weeks. The aim of the present study was to identify a possible passive defense response in infants. The response, which is widespread in birds and mammals, is characterized by apnea and bradycardia with circulatory changes as seen during the forced diving response.
Trigeminal mediation of the diving response in the muskrat
These data implicate trigeminal neurons in the medullary dorsal horn as modulators of autonomic activity, especially in the cardiorespiratory adjustments after nasal stimulation.
PMID: 1760738 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
h/t Ivo @ http://apnea.cz/media.html?Lang=EN&
-
Hello (...) [slightly modified]
Do you have an opinion on these?
Chromosome 2 is unique to humans amongst hominoids, it contains the genes/SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) for:
- Photic sneeze (Dark adaptation, O2/CO2 apnea regulation?)
- Hypothyroidsm (Ecto/endo-thermic adipocity, Iodine regulation?)
- Hemochromatosis (Bone density, Iron regulation?)
I do not view that as mere coincidence.
Regarding baby backfloating in warm sunlit lagoons:
Human babies have full envelope of SC white fat (insulatory) but dorsal brown fat, which provides warmth to the only sun-shaded area that also is exposed to the coolest proximal water, infant humans (and seals) AFAIK don't shiver for warmth (not useful for hydrostatic backfloating in water). Breastfeeding human infants produce/accumulate Hydrogen (nature's most buoyant material) in the gut, and this, combined with (otherwise healthy) infant colic (GI gas entrapment while backfloating and associated crying) and abundant white SC fat, would provide sufficient buoyancy in dense warm calm saltwater to allow parental foraging without hindrance, in part resulting in loss of fur coat.
Regarding human endurance locomotion: At lagoons, dive foraging would be typical, but in between optimal lagoons, shoreline walking/wading/jogging would be typical due to hazards of rough surf, cold water, box jellyfish, sharks/crocs, etc. This would be maintained during inland seasonal migrations where diving was limited.
Regarding islanding: I think that similar to how Gibralter functioned as a gateway for EurAsian macaques into north Africa, I think the Afar-Eritrea-Yemen region functioned as a gateway to and from EurAsia. The 'bridge' linking Yemen is about 100m deep, about the depth of sea level drop at various glacial periods, (disregarding lack of data on local tectonic changes). I do not view the Danakil alps region as "the refuge", but rather as a periodic gateway, similar to Gibralter and Sinai, though it may have been a stopover with a residual population, similar to today's Barbary macaques at Gibralter.
I haven't found any evidence to contradict the dark adaptation-dive / sunlight surface exhale idea (Aquaphotic Respiratory Cycle), except that it is not used today by modern human divers. I consider it plausible that during the MSC human ancestors separated from the other apes due to being trapped in the Medit. basin, where a unique environment produced selection for a unique hominid different from the others. The low UV present, similar to today's Dead Sea, may have selected for light skin tone or less fur, and unusual eyes (exposed white eye sclerae), and plausibly the sun sneeze, and also increased availability of stone, both for tools and climbing. Later filling of the basin would send various human-types in different directions, to adapt to local conditions with different morphotypes, many would go extinct later.
DD
ps. I've stepped away from AAT yahoogroup for a bit, but continue to skim the threads.
MSC refill
5.6 - 5.33ma MSC may have refilled in 2 years, H/P split 5 - 7ma
picture of Medit MSC refill 5.33ma
Monday, November 16, 2009
Human & elephants: big brains, O2, energy
The Brain: relative size, speed & complexity of sensory system (including intra-specific communication): oxygen as catalyst, food as fuel
On elephant and human brains, summarized from Not Exactly Rocket Science
Both humans and elephants show both semi-aquatic and terrestrial foraging traits, throw stones, manipulate branches or sticks, squirt water, live relatively long lives, have strong social behavior, have generally low rates of mutation yet high rate of mutations among specialized amino acids involved in "aerobic energy metabolism (AEM)" genes - which govern how mitochondria metabolise nutrients in food, in the presence of oxygen.
We already knew that the evolution of AEM genes has accelerated greatly since our human ancestors split away from those of other monkeys and apes (highly beneficial to a part-time sessile-benthic submersed forager (human ancestor, elephant ancestor) which needs both apneic and aerobic capability, but not a full-time pelagic dive chaser (dolphin) which needs maximal apneic (anaerobic) capability, nor a part-time wetland floating-food forager (congo swamp gorilla) which keeps its face always above water surface and so lacks apneic capability while not transiting far habitually so no selection for aerobic endurance.
"While other mutations were reshaping our brain and nervous system, these altered AEM genes helped to provide our growing cerebral cortex with much-needed energy.
And sure enough, elephants have more than twice as many genes with high ratios of non-synonymous mutations to synonymous ones than tenrecs do, particularly among the AEM genes used in the mitochondria. In the same way, humans have more of such genes compared to mice (which are as closely related to us, as tenrecs are to elephants). 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.
Goodman's next challenge is to see what difference the substituted amino acids would have made to us and elephants and whether they make our brains more efficient at producing aerobic energy. He also wants to better understand the specific genes that have been shaped the convergent evolution of human and elephant brains over the course of evolution."
-
Both elephants and humans are very water-dependent and not well conserving of metabolic fluids (unlike full-time savanna/marine dwellers), moving from waterhole/lagoon to waterhole/lagoon, foraging opportunistically along the way.
-
Elephant ancestors were semi-aquatic - Telegraph
semi-aquatic ancestors of elephants
-
Tiny brains
Tiny brains: "Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics. According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces — all with brains the size of pinheads. Despite many attempts to link the volume of an animal's brain with the depth of its intelligence, scientists now propose that it's the complexity of connections between brain cells that matters most...
Whales, with brains that weigh up to 20 pounds and have more than 200 billion neurons, are no smarter than people, with our measly 3-pound brains that have just 85 billion neurons. Instead of contributing intelligence, big brains might just help support bigger bodies, which have larger muscles to coordinate [Larger muscles aren't significant, see large herbivore dinosaurs with tiny brains] and more sensory information coming in.
-
An islanded goat evolved coldbloodedness and delayed life span and small brain/eyes:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/11/13/0813385106.abstract
Some animals stranded on resource-poor islands shrink size and develop lethargic metabolism while absorbing sunlight (Galapagos tortoises), others adapt to a shore-based lethargy & active aquatic lifestyle with large brain/eyes (seals, sea lions).
-
Discussion on baby crying relative to mother tongue:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1869
-
Sports competition & aggression, instinct vs control
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/sports/22brain.html?em
-
Brain and nerves slideshow at:
here
Hominid Brain to Body size: Encephalization Quotient, estimated diet
5.8 Homo sapiens - grain-meat-nut-fruit-herb/tuber-seafood-eater, boats, cooking
4.0 Homo erectus (late) - berry/nut-tuber-seafood-meat-eater, simple spears-axes
3.3 Homo erectus (early) - berry/nut/tuber-seafood-eater, sticks-pebbles
3.1 H/A habilis - mixed diet? -nut-fruit-invertebrate eater?
2.9 Australopithecus robustus - tuber-nut-berry-herb eater
2.0 Pan t. (chimpanzee) - fruit-honey-termite-meat-nut eater
1.7 Gorilla g. (gorilla) - herb-fruit-hydrocharis eater
On elephant and human brains, summarized from Not Exactly Rocket Science
Both humans and elephants show both semi-aquatic and terrestrial foraging traits, throw stones, manipulate branches or sticks, squirt water, live relatively long lives, have strong social behavior, have generally low rates of mutation yet high rate of mutations among specialized amino acids involved in "aerobic energy metabolism (AEM)" genes - which govern how mitochondria metabolise nutrients in food, in the presence of oxygen.
We already knew that the evolution of AEM genes has accelerated greatly since our human ancestors split away from those of other monkeys and apes (highly beneficial to a part-time sessile-benthic submersed forager (human ancestor, elephant ancestor) which needs both apneic and aerobic capability, but not a full-time pelagic dive chaser (dolphin) which needs maximal apneic (anaerobic) capability, nor a part-time wetland floating-food forager (congo swamp gorilla) which keeps its face always above water surface and so lacks apneic capability while not transiting far habitually so no selection for aerobic endurance.
"While other mutations were reshaping our brain and nervous system, these altered AEM genes helped to provide our growing cerebral cortex with much-needed energy.
And sure enough, elephants have more than twice as many genes with high ratios of non-synonymous mutations to synonymous ones than tenrecs do, particularly among the AEM genes used in the mitochondria. In the same way, humans have more of such genes compared to mice (which are as closely related to us, as tenrecs are to elephants). 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.
Goodman's next challenge is to see what difference the substituted amino acids would have made to us and elephants and whether they make our brains more efficient at producing aerobic energy. He also wants to better understand the specific genes that have been shaped the convergent evolution of human and elephant brains over the course of evolution."
-
Both elephants and humans are very water-dependent and not well conserving of metabolic fluids (unlike full-time savanna/marine dwellers), moving from waterhole/lagoon to waterhole/lagoon, foraging opportunistically along the way.
-
Elephant ancestors were semi-aquatic - Telegraph
semi-aquatic ancestors of elephants
-
Tiny brains
Tiny brains: "Insects may have tiny brains, but they can perform some seriously impressive feats of mental gymnastics. According to a growing number of studies, some insects can count, categorize objects, even recognize human faces — all with brains the size of pinheads. Despite many attempts to link the volume of an animal's brain with the depth of its intelligence, scientists now propose that it's the complexity of connections between brain cells that matters most...
Whales, with brains that weigh up to 20 pounds and have more than 200 billion neurons, are no smarter than people, with our measly 3-pound brains that have just 85 billion neurons. Instead of contributing intelligence, big brains might just help support bigger bodies, which have larger muscles to coordinate [Larger muscles aren't significant, see large herbivore dinosaurs with tiny brains] and more sensory information coming in.
-
An islanded goat evolved coldbloodedness and delayed life span and small brain/eyes:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/11/13/0813385106.abstract
Some animals stranded on resource-poor islands shrink size and develop lethargic metabolism while absorbing sunlight (Galapagos tortoises), others adapt to a shore-based lethargy & active aquatic lifestyle with large brain/eyes (seals, sea lions).
-
Discussion on baby crying relative to mother tongue:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1869
-
Sports competition & aggression, instinct vs control
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/sports/22brain.html?em
-
Brain and nerves slideshow at:
here
Hominid Brain to Body size: Encephalization Quotient, estimated diet
5.8 Homo sapiens - grain-meat-nut-fruit-herb/tuber-seafood-eater, boats, cooking
4.0 Homo erectus (late) - berry/nut-tuber-seafood-meat-eater, simple spears-axes
3.3 Homo erectus (early) - berry/nut/tuber-seafood-eater, sticks-pebbles
3.1 H/A habilis - mixed diet? -nut-fruit-invertebrate eater?
2.9 Australopithecus robustus - tuber-nut-berry-herb eater
2.0 Pan t. (chimpanzee) - fruit-honey-termite-meat-nut eater
1.7 Gorilla g. (gorilla) - herb-fruit-hydrocharis eater
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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.
Note folded flanges of adult male reduce sunlight in eyes, give gorilla appearance; balding scalp. Nonfolded flanges are broadly flat faced, very non-gorilla appearance, note clear beard and non-nasal mustache. Bornean and Sumatran orangs separated 1.6ma
flanges
flat flange
Very dark furred orangutan
dark orangutan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan
Male with flanges, eyes near center of face, long hair like mammoth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pongo_pygmaeus84-300.jpg
Human deep larynx vs ape air sacs: apnea/speech vs flotation (de Boer, Boe, Lieberman...)
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/2009/10/how-old-is-language.html#more
http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/fossil-evidence.html
http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/stop-your-yacki.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WKT-46MJTJN-D&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9b118ac4f846a53b6cb9455392901a9d
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC15600/
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/apes-are-not-us.html
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
Toba supervolcano dried and cooled south Asia 73ka
Toba effects
Face & limb traits identify various congenital disorders:
traits
Herbivorous hadrosaur dinosaur: biped, quadruped, hopper or walker?
hadrosaur
"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.
Note folded flanges of adult male reduce sunlight in eyes, give gorilla appearance; balding scalp. Nonfolded flanges are broadly flat faced, very non-gorilla appearance, note clear beard and non-nasal mustache. Bornean and Sumatran orangs separated 1.6ma
flanges
flat flange
Very dark furred orangutan
dark orangutan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan
Male with flanges, eyes near center of face, long hair like mammoth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pongo_pygmaeus84-300.jpg
Human deep larynx vs ape air sacs: apnea/speech vs flotation (de Boer, Boe, Lieberman...)
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/2009/10/how-old-is-language.html#more
http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/fossil-evidence.html
http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/stop-your-yacki.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WKT-46MJTJN-D&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=9b118ac4f846a53b6cb9455392901a9d
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC15600/
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/apes-are-not-us.html
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
Toba supervolcano dried and cooled south Asia 73ka
Toba effects
Face & limb traits identify various congenital disorders:
traits
Herbivorous hadrosaur dinosaur: biped, quadruped, hopper or walker?
hadrosaur
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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
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
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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
Proconsul, Morotopith: Uganda, 21-20ma, upright spine
Orangs split 20ma
Gorilla split 8ma
Oreopithecus: Sardinia island, 9 - 7ma, very long arms, tree climbing, stilted biped.
Sahelanthropus: Chad, 7 - 6ma (SN: 7/13/02, p. 19)
Orrorin: 6ma (SN: 7/14/01, p. 20)
Ardipithecus ramidus: 4.4ma Rift - Afar
Kenyanthropus 3.5ma: (SN: 3/24/01, p. 180)
Ardipithecus kadabba: 5.8 - 5.2ma
Australopithecus afarensis: 3.2ma Lucy, Selam
Homo 2.4ma
ardi pic
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/52228/title/Evolution%E2%80%99s_Bad_Girl
-
Best article on MSC: MSC
-
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."
Asian genes
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
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