Long-necked dinosaurs rotated their forefeet to the side

These are well preserved footprints of the find site in Morocco, with clearly visible claw impressions.

Long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) could orient their forefeet both forward and sideways. The orientation of their feet depended on the speed and centre of mass of the animals. An international team of researchers investigated numerous dinosaur footprints in Morocco at the foot of the Atlas Mountains using state-of-the-art methods. By comparing them with other sauropods tracks, the scientists determined how the long-necked animals moved forward. The results have now been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"Long-necked dinosaurs" (sauropods) were among the most successful herbivores of the Mesozoic Era -- the age of the dinosaurs. Characteristic for this group were a barrel-shaped body on columnar legs as well as an extremely long neck, which ended in a relatively small head. Long-necked dinosaurs existed from about 210 to 66 million years ago -- they thus had been able to assert themselves on earth for a very long period. Also their gigantism, with which they far surpassed other dinosaurs, points at their success.

Sauropods included the largest land animals in Earth history, some over 30 metres long and up to 70 tonnes in weight. "However, it is still unclear how exactly these giants moved," says Jens Lallensack, paleontologist at the Institute of Geosciences and Meteorology at the University of Bonn in Germany. The limb joints were partly cartilaginous and therefore not fossilised, allowing only limited conclusions about the range of movement.

Detective work with 3D computer analyses

The missing pieces of the puzzle, however, can be reconstructed with the help of fossil footprints of the giants. An international team of researchers from Japan, Morocco and Germany, led by the University of Bonn, has now investigated an unique track site in Morocco at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. The site consists of a surface of 54 x 6 metres which was vertically positioned during mountain formation and shows hundreds of individual footprints, some of which overlap. A part of these footprints could be assigned to a total of nine trackways (sequences of individual footprints). "Working out individual tracks from this jumbled mess of footprints was detective work and only possible through the analysis of high-resolution 3D models on the computer," says Dr. Oliver Wings of the Zentralmagazin Naturwissenschaftlicher Sammlungen der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg in Germany.

The researchers were amazed by the results: the trackways are extremely narrow -- the right and left footprints are almost in line. Also, the forefoot impressions are not directed forwards, as is typical for sauropod tracks, but point to the side, and sometimes even obliquely backwards. Even more: The animals were able to switch between both orientations as needed. "People are able to turn their palms downwards by crossing the ulna and radius," says Dr. Michael Buchwitz of the Museum für Naturkunde Magdeburg. However, this complicated movement is limited to mammals and chameleons in today's terrestrial vertebrates. It was not possible in other animals, including dinosaurs. Sauropods must therefore have found another way of turning the forefoot forwards.

How can the rotation of the forefoot be explained?

How can the rotation of the forefoot in the sauropod tracks be explained? The key probably lies in the mighty cartilage layers, which allowed great flexibility in the joints, especially in the shoulder. But why were the hands rotated outwards at all? "Outwardly facing hands with opposing palms were the original condition in the bipedal ancestors of the sauropods," explains Shinobu Ishigaki of the Okayama University of Science, Japan. The question should therefore be why most sauropods turned their forefeet forwards -- an anatomically difficult movement to implement.

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Dangerous bee virus might be innocent bystander

Professor Madeleine Beekman with beehives.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have found that the relationship between the tissue-sucking Varroa mite and virulence of a virus of honey bees, has most likely been misunderstood.

The study challenges the long-held belief that the parasitic Varroa mite -- a mite that sucks the tissue of honey bees -- transmits the Deformed Wing Virus of honeybees and in doing so changes the virus to make it more virulent and deadly.

Research published today in Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences concludes that this belief is incorrect.

"The prevailing wisdom is that the mite selects for very virulent strains of the virus," said Professor Madeleine Beekman from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Sydney.

"For that reason, the virus is now known as a very dangerous virus and the Australian beekeepers are adamant this virus should not get into the country. In fact, there is legislation that prevents the import of any bee products that could contain the virus. But our work shows that the virus is more likely to be an innocent bystander."

Australia is the only country in the world to remain free of the Varroa mite. This makes Australian honey and wax valuable because it is free of chemical residues used to eliminate the parasite.

"Australia is the last country on the planet to produce completely pure honey," says Professor Beekman. "But the mite is highly likely to arrive in Australia on shipping containers so we need to understand how the mite and the virus interact."

Professor Beekman and her team in the Behaviour and Genetics of Social Insects Lab injected honey bee pupae with high levels of Deformed Wing Virus which is carried by the mite to test if the virus was highly virulent due to changes in the transmission route that occurred via the Varroa mite.

In the absence of the mite, the virus needs to be transmitted to other bees via direct interactions between an infected and non-infected bee. Varroa does the transmission by biting one bee and then another.

The team found the transmission route used by the Varroa mite selects against viruses that are much more virulent than the Deformed Wing Virus, such as Sacbrood virus and Black queen cell virus. These viruses normally suppress Deformed Wing Virus. The elimination of Sacbrood and Black Queencell virus leaves just Deformed Wing Virus, which does not kill the bees.

"Our work therefore changes our understanding of the effect Varroa has on Deformed Wing Virus and the health of honey bee colonies," Professor Beekman said.

"It means we don't have to be scared of the virus. Instead we need to focus on eliminating the mite and reducing its numbers."

The results will also have an impact on the ways the Australian beekeepers can prepare themselves for the arrival of Varroa.

"Many countries actively select for honey bee populations that can tolerate the Varroa mite without treatment. Australian beekeepers would like to import the sperm from such populations to start preparing their honey bees for when the mite arrives," said Professor Beekman.

"But the importation of the sperm is currently forbidden because of the threat of Deformed Wing Virus, which can be present in bee sperm. Perhaps beekeepers can now convince the authorities that bee sperm is safe."

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Layered cocktails inspire new form of male birth control

This colorful layered cocktail, called a Galaxy, provided the inspiration for a new form of male contraceptive tested in rats.

For decades, women have shouldered most of the burden of contraception. However, long-term use of female birth control pills could increase the risk for side effects such as blood clots or breast cancer. Now, inspired by colorful layered cocktails, researchers have developed a medium-term, reversible male contraceptive. They report their results in the journal ACS Nano.

Common forms of male contraception are either short-term (condoms) or long-term (vasectomy). However, condoms can fail, and vasectomies, while effective, are not often reversible. Xiaolei Wang and colleagues wanted to devise a medium-term, reversible form of male contraception. They drew inspiration from cocktails, such as the Galaxy, that bartenders make by layering colorful liquids in a glass. If the beverage is stirred or heated, the layers combine into a uniform liquid. Wang and colleagues wondered if they could use a similar approach to inject layers of materials to block the vas deferens, the duct that conveys sperm from the testicle to the urethra. Applying heat would cause the layers to mix, breaking them down and "unplugging the pipeline."

The team tested their approach in male rats. They sequentially injected four layers of materials into the vas deferens: a hydrogel that forms a physical barrier to sperm; gold nanoparticles, which heat up when irradiated with near-infrared light; ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), a chemical that breaks down the hydrogel and also kills sperm; and finally, another layer of gold nanoparticles. The injected materials kept the rats from impregnating females for more than 2 months. However, when the researchers shone a near-infrared lamp on the rats for a few minutes, the layers mixed and dissolved, allowing the animals to produce offspring. The researchers say that while this pilot experiment is promising, more research is needed to verify the safety of the materials.

From Science Daily

'Superbug gene' found in one of the most remote places on Earth

Antibiotic-Resistant Genes (ARGs) that were first detected in urban India have been found 8,000 miles away in one of the last 'pristine' places on earth, a new study has shown.

Soil samples taken in the Kongsfjorden region of Svalbard have now confirmed the spread of blaNDM-1 into the High Arctic -- an ARG originally found in Indian clinical settings, which conditionally provides multidrug resistance (MDR) in microorganisms.

Worldwide spread of blaNDM-1 and other MDR genes is a growing concern because they often target "last resort" classes of antibiotics, including Carbapenems.

Carried in the gut of animals and people, the research team, led by Newcastle University's Professor David Graham, say that blaNDM-1 and other medically-important ARGs were found in Arctic soils that were likely spread in the faecal matter of birds, other wildlife and human visitors to the area.

"Polar regions are among the last presumed pristine ecosystems on Earth, providing a platform for characterizing pre-antibiotic era background resistance against which we could understand rates of progression of AR 'pollution'," says Professor Graham, an environmental engineer at Newcastle University who has spent 15 years studying the environmental transmission of antibiotic resistance around the world.

"But less than three years after the first detection of the blaNDM-1 gene in the surface waters of urban India we are finding them thousands of miles away in an area where there has been minimal human impact.

"Encroachment into areas like the Arctic reinforces how rapid and far-reaching the spread of antibiotic resistance has become, confirming solutions to AR must be viewed in global rather than just local terms."

Concern over the spread of Antibiotic-Resistant (AR) genes

Increasing antibiotic resistance is a global health crisis. An example is NDM-1, which is a protein that can confer resistance in a range of bacteria. NDM-1 was first identified in New Delhi and coded by the resistant gene blaNDM-1.

Strains that carry blaNDM-1 were first found in clinical settings in 2008, but by 2010 blaNDM-1 was found in surface waters in Delhi. Since then, the resistant gene has been found in over 100 countries, including new variants.

There are currently few antibiotics to combat bacteria that are resistant to Carbapenems -- still a last-resort antibiotic class -- and worldwide spread of blaNDM-1 and related ARGs is a concern.

"What humans have done through excess use of antibiotics on global scales is accelerate the rate of evolution, creating a new world of resistant strains that never existed before," explains Graham.

"Through the overuse of antibiotics, faecal releases and contamination of drinking water, we have consequentially speeded-up the rate at which superbugs might evolve.

"For example, when a new drug is developed, natural bacteria can rapidly adapt and can become resistant; therefore very few new drugs are in the pipeline because it simply isn't cost-effective to make them."

Benchmark for tracking resistance

Published today in the academic journal Environmental International, this latest research was carried out by an international team of experts from the Universities of Newcastle, York and Kansas and the Chinese Academy of Science in Xiamen, and was funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council and other agencies.

Analysing the extracted DNA from forty soil cores at eight locations along Kongsfjorden, a total of 131 ARGs were detected.

"The resistance genes detected were associated with nine major antibiotic classes, including aminoglycosides, macrolides and ?-lactams, which are used to treat many infections. As an example, a gene that confers MDR in Tuberculosis was found in all cores, whereas blaNDM-1 was detected in more than 60% of the soil cores in the study.

"This finding has huge implications for global AR spread," warns Graham. "A clinically important ARG originating from South Asia is clearly not 'local' to the Arctic."

"Identifying an ARG 'gradient' across the study landscape, which varies as a function of human and wildlife impact, shows there are still isolated Polar locations where ARG levels are so low they might provide nature's baseline of antimicrobial resistance," Graham says.

"The gradient of resistance genes closely reflects corresponding indicators of wastes in the geochemistry, which suggests a novel basis for identifying sites for further AMR research" adds lead author, Dr Clare McCann, of Newcastle University.

"The only way we are going to win this fight is to understand all pathways that lead to antibiotic resistance.

Read more at Science Daily

The hidden treasure of digital piracy? Can boost bottom line for manufacturers, retailers

HBO's popular television series "Game of Thrones" returns in April, but millions of fans continue to illegally download the program, giving it the dubious distinction of being the most pirated program.

Many may wonder why the TV network hasn't taken a more aggressive approach to combating illegal streaming services and downloaders. Perhaps it is because the benefits to the company outweigh the consequences. Research analysis by faculty in Indiana University's Kelley School of Business and two other schools found that a moderate level of piracy can have a positive impact on the bottom line for both the manufacturer and the retailer -- and not at the expense of consumers.

"When information goods are sold to consumers via a retailer, in certain situations, a moderate level of piracy seems to have a surprisingly positive impact on the profits of the manufacturer and the retailer while, at the same time, enhancing consumer welfare," wrote Antino Kim, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies at Kelley, and his co-authors.

"Such a win-win-win situation is not only good for the supply chain but is also beneficial for the overall economy."

While not condoning piracy, Kim and his colleagues were surprised to find that it can actually reduce, or completely eliminate at times, the adverse effect of double marginalization, an economic concept where both manufacturers and retailers in the same supply chain add to the price of a product, passing these markups along to consumers.

The professors found that, because piracy can affect the pricing power of both the manufacturer and the retailer, it injects "shadow" competition into an otherwise monopolistic market.

"From the manufacturer's point of view, the retailer getting squeezed is a good thing," Kim said. "It can't mark up the product as before, and the issue of double marginalization diminishes. Vice versa, if the manufacturer gets squeezed, the retailer is better off.

"What we found is, by both of them being squeezed together -- both at the upstream and the downstream levels -- they are able to get closer to the optimal retail price that a single, vertically integrated entity would charge."

In the example of "Game of Thrones," HBO is the upstream "manufacturer" in the supply chain, and cable and satellite TV operators are the downstream "retailers."

Kim and his co-authors -- Atanu Lahiri, associate professor of information systems at the University of Texas-Dallas, and Debabrata Dey, professor of information systems at the University of Washington -- presented their findings in the article, "The 'Invisible Hand' of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain," published in the latest issue of MIS Quarterly.

They suggest that businesses, government and consumers rethink the value of anti-piracy enforcement, which can be quite costly, and consider taking a moderate approach. Australia, for instance, due to prohibitive costs, scrapped its three-strikes scheme to track down illegal downloaders and send them warning notices. Though the Australian Parliament passed a new anti-piracy law last year, its effectiveness remains unclear until after it is reviewed in two years.

As with other studies, Kim and his colleagues found that when enforcement is low and piracy is rampant, both manufacturers and retailers suffer. But they caution against becoming overzealous in prosecuting illegal downloaders or in lobbying for more enforcement.

"Our results do not imply that the legal channel should, all of a sudden, start actively encouraging piracy," they said. "The implication is simply that, situated in a real-world context, our manufacturer and retailer should recognize that a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial and should, therefore, exercise some moderation in their anti-piracy efforts.

Read more at Science Daily

Engineering a cancer-fighting virus

This is a comparison of cancer cells and normal cells after being infected with the dl355 adenovirus. The top four cell types listed on the left (HeLa, C33A, A549, and H1299) are cancer cells, and the bottom two (BJ and WI38) are normal cells. As the amount of dl355 virus administered to the cancer cells increased (represented by MOI), more cancer cells died in 7 days, while the normal cells continued to live.

An engineered virus kills cancer cells more effectively than another virus currently used in treatments, according to Hokkaido University researchers.

Hokkaido University researchers have engineered a virus that selectively targets and kills cancer cells. The virus, called dl355, has an even stronger anticancer effect than another engineered virus currently used in clinical practice, according to a study published in the journal Oncology Reports.

Molecular oncologist Fumihiro Higashino and colleagues deleted a gene involved in viral replication, called E4orf6, from a type of adenovirus. The team previously discovered that E4orf6 stabilizes a type of mRNA called ARE-mRNAs in the infected cells enabling viral replication. ARE-mRNAs are known to be stable in stressed cells and cancer cells, but rapidly degrade in normal cells.

In laboratory tests, they found that their modified adenovirus, called dl355, replicated and increased its number significantly more in cancer cells than it did in normal cells. Higashino explains "The E4orf6-lacking virus relies on the stable ARE-mRNAs in cancer cells for its replication."

Some viruses can be used to treat cancers, as they replicate within the cells until they burst and die. The researchers infected several types of cultured cancer cells with 100 dl355 virus particles per cell and found that nearly all the cancer cells died within seven days. In contrast, most normal cells infected with the virus did not die, even after seven days. Several cancer cell lines managed to survive low doses of dl355, but all cancer cells were killed by the virus as the dose was increased. Tumour growth was also significantly suppressed when dl355 was administered to human tumour cells grown in mice.

Finally, the team compared the anticancer effects of dl355 with another anticancer adenovirus currently used in clinical practice, called dl1520. dl355 replication was higher in all cancer cell lines tested, including cervical and lung cancer cells, and was better at killing all but one type of cancer cell, compared to dl1520. Both viruses only killed very few normal cells.

The findings suggest that dl355 has potential to be an effective anticancer treatment, the team concludes. They suggest enhancing the stabilization of ARE-mRNAs in cancer cells could even further strengthen its effect, but Professor Higashino notes that further research is required. "While we think dl355 has the potential to be an effective treatment method in dealing with many types of cancers, much more research needs to be done. When we think of a timeline, at least five more years of further research may be required, possible more, on top of clinical trials," Professor Higashino noted.

From Science Daily

Missing-link in planet evolution found

This is an artist's impression of the newly discovered object.

For the first time ever, astronomers have detected a 1.3 km radius body at the edge of the Solar System. Kilometer sized bodies like the one discovered have been predicted to exist for more than 70 years. These objects acted as an important step in the planet formation process between small initial amalgamations of dust and ice and the planets we see today.

The Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt is a collection of small celestial bodies located beyond Neptune's orbit. The most famous Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object is Pluto. Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects are believed to be remnants left over from the formation of the Solar System. While small bodies like asteroids in the inner Solar System have been altered by solar radiation, collisions, and the gravity of the planets over time; objects in the cold, dark, lonely Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt preserve the pristine conditions of the early Solar System. Thus astronomers study them to learn about the beginning of the planet formation process.

Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects with radii from 1 kilometer to several kilometers have been predicted to exist, but they are too distant, small, and dim for even world-leading telescopes, like the Subaru Telescope, to observe directly. So a research team led by Ko Arimatsu at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used a technique known as occultation: monitoring a large number of stars and watching for the shadow of an object passing in front of one of the stars. The OASES (Organized Autotelescopes for Serendipitous Event Survey) team placed two small (28 cm) telescopes on the roof of the Miyako open-air school on Miyako Island, Miyakojima-shi, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, and monitored approximately 2000 stars for a total of 60 hours.

Analyzing the data, the team found an event consistent with a star appearing to dim as it is occulted by a 1.3 km radius Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object. This detection indicates that kilometer sized Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Objects are more numerous than previously thought. This supports models where planetesimals first grow slowly into kilometer sized objects before runaway growth causes them to merge into planets.

Arimatsu explains, "This is a real victory for little projects. Our team had less than 0.3% of the budget of large international projects. We didn't even have enough money to build a second dome to protect our second telescope! Yet we still managed to make a discovery that is impossible for the big projects. Now that we know our system works, we will investigate the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt in more detail. We also have our sights set on the still undiscovered Oort Cloud out beyond that."

Read more at Science Daily

Fluid-inspired material self-heals before your eyes

The fluid-inspired material self-heals in seconds when scratched, scraped or cracked.

It's hard to believe that a tiny crack could take down a gigantic metal structure. But sometimes bridges collapse, pipelines rupture and fuselages detach from airplanes due to hard-to-detect corrosion in tiny cracks, scratches and dents.

A Northwestern University team has developed a new coating strategy for metal that self-heals within seconds when scratched, scraped or cracked. The novel material could prevent these tiny defects from turning into localized corrosion, which can cause major structures to fail.

"Localized corrosion is extremely dangerous," said Jiaxing Huang, who led the research. "It is hard to prevent, hard to predict and hard to detect, but it can lead to catastrophic failure."

When damaged by scratches and cracks, Huang's patent-pending system readily flows and reconnects to rapidly heal right before the eyes. The researchers demonstrated that the material can heal repeatedly -- even after scratching the exact same spot nearly 200 times in a row.

The study was published today (Jan. 28) in Research, the first Science Partner Journal recently launched by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in collaboration with the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). Huang is a professor of materials science and engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering.

While a few self-healing coatings already exist, those systems typically work for nanometer- to micron-sized damages. To develop a coating that can heal larger scratches in the millimeter-scale, Huang and his team looked to fluid.

"When a boat cuts through water, the water goes right back together," Huang said. "The 'cut' quickly heals because water flows readily. We were inspired to realize that fluids, such as oils, are the ultimate self-healing system."

But common oils flows too readily, Huang noted. So he and his team needed to develop a system with contradicting properties: fluidic enough to flow automatically but not so fluidic that it drips off the metal's surface.

The team met the challenge by creating a network of lightweight particles -- in this case graphene capsules -- to thicken the oil. The network fixes the oil coating, keeping it from dripping. But when the network is damaged by a crack or scratch, it releases the oil to flow readily and reconnect. Huang said the material can be made with any hollow, lightweight particle -- not just graphene.

"The particles essentially immobilize the oil film," Huang said. "So it stays in place."

Read more at Science Daily

To catch a wave, rocket launches from top of world

Earth's magnetosphere, showing the northern and southern polar cusps (illustration).

On Jan. 4, 2019, at 4:37 a.m. EST the CAPER-2 mission launched from the Andøya Space Center in Andenes, Norway, on a 4-stage Black Brant XII sounding rocket. Reaching an apogee of 480 miles high before splashing down in the Arctic Sea, the rocket flew through active aurora borealis, or northern lights, to study the waves that accelerate electrons into our atmosphere.

CAPER-2, short for Cusp Alfvén and Plasma Electrodynamics Rocket-2, is a sounding rocket mission -- a type of spacecraft that carries scientific instruments on short, targeted trips to space before falling back to Earth. In addition to their relatively low price tags and quick development time, sounding rockets are ideally suited for launching into transient events -- like the sudden formation of the aurora borealis, or northern lights.

For CAPER-2 scientists, flying through an aurora provides a peek into a process as fundamental as it is complex: How do particles get accelerated throughout space? NASA studies this phenomenon in an effort to better understand not only the space environment surrounding Earth -- and thus protect our technology in space from radiation -- but also to help understand the very nature of stars and atmospheres throughout the solar system and beyond.

"Throughout the universe you have charged particles getting accelerated -- in the Sun's atmosphere, in the solar wind, in the atmospheres of other planets, and in astrophysical objects," said Jim LaBelle, space physicist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and principal investigator for the CAPER-2 mission. "An aurora presents us with a local laboratory where we can observe these acceleration processes close at hand."

Technically, the CAPER-2 team is interested in what happens just before an aurora starts glowing. Electrons, pouring into our atmosphere from space, collide with atmospheric gases and trigger the aurora's glow. Somehow, they pick up speed along the way.

"By the time they crash into our atmosphere, these electrons are traveling over 10 times faster than they were before," said Doug Rowland, space physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who also studies particle acceleration. "We still don't understand the fundamental physics of how that happens."

The CAPER-2 team focused on a special kind of aurora that forms during the day. Unlike the nighttime aurora, the daytime aurora is triggered by electrons that stream in directly from the Sun -- and we know far less about them.

"There's been a huge amount of research done on the regular nighttime aurora, but the daytime aurora is much less studied," said Craig Kletzing, space physicist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and coinvestigator for the mission. "There are good indications that there are some similarities and there are also some differences."

The team is focusing on how the electrons that create daytime auroras are jostled around by waves, in ways that may or may not differ from nighttime auroras. Two kinds of waves are of special interest, and have opposite effects. Alfvén waves, named after Swedish Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén who first predicted their existence in 1942, are thought to accelerate the electrons. These huge waves -- measuring tens to hundreds of miles long from peak to peak -- propagate along Earth's magnetic field lines, whipping electrons to and fro.

On the other side are Langmuir waves, which are generated by the electrons themselves -- a process that steals some of the electrons' energy and slows them down. CAPER-2 will carry a high-resolution wave-particle correlator to measure them, the first sounding rocket mission to do so for the daytime aurora.

"This is very data-intensive," said LaBelle. "It's unique to sounding rockets to be able to look at this mechanism in this level of detail."

For the launch, the CAPER-2 team traveled to northern Norway, one of the few places that can put a rocket within range of the daytime aurora. Every day, northern Norway rotates under an opening in Earth's magnetic field known as the northern polar cusp, where particles from the Sun can funnel into our upper atmosphere.

Meeting the aurora right where they form is the best way to understand physical processes that are far too large to replicate in a lab.

Read more at Science Daily

Humans colonized diverse environments in Southeast Asia and Oceania during the Pleistocene

Cagayan, Northern Luzon, the Philippines -- Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in regard of early hominin movements across the supposed "Movius Line" a boundary previously argued to separate populations. Records from the region can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or "the Hobbit"), and Homo sapiens.

Investigations into what it means to be human have often focused on attempts to uncover the earliest material traces of 'art', 'language', or technological 'complexity'. More recently, however, scholars have begun to argue that more attention should be paid to the ecological uniqueness of our species. A new study, published in Archaeological Research in Asia, reviews the palaeoecological information associated with hominin dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania throughout the Pleistocene (1.25 Ma to 12 ka). Our species' ability to specialize in the exploitation of diverse and 'extreme' settings in this part of the world stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominin taxa, and reaffirms the utility of exploring the environmental adaptations of Homo sapiens as an avenue for understanding what it means to be human.

The paper, published by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History focuses on hominin movements across the supposed 'Movius Line' a boundary previously argued to separate populations with different cultural and cognitive capacities. While such divisions and assumptions are now clearly outdated, the authors argue that focus on this part of the world may, instead, be used to study the different patterns of colonization of diverse tropical and maritime habitats by different members of our ancestral line. As Noel Amano, co-author on the study states, 'analysis of biogeochemical records, animal assemblages, and fossil plant records associated with hominin arrival can be used to reconstruct the degree to which novel or specialized adaptations were required at a given place and time'.

Southeast Asia offers a particularly exciting region in this regard as such records can be linked to a variety of hominins throughout the Pleistocene, including Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis (or 'the Hobbit'), and Homo sapiens. As Patrick Roberts, lead author of the study states the accumulated evidence shows, 'While earlier members of our genus appear to have followed riverine and lacustrine corridors, Homo sapiens specialized in adaptations to tropical rainforests, faunally depauperate island settings, montane environments, and deep-water marine habitats.' The authors hope that, in future, the growth of new methods and records for determining past hominin ecologies will enable similar comparisons to be undertaken in different parts of the world, further testing the unique capacities of our species during its global expansion.

From Science Daily