Evolution During Human Colonizations: Selective Advantage of Being There First

Research published in Science Nov. 3 reveals that the first individuals settling on new land are more successful at passing on their genes than those who did not migrate. According to Dr. Damian Labuda at the University of Montréal and Sainte-Justine Hospital, the study suggests that population expansion creates opportunities for natural selection to act.

The findings come from the utilization of a unique research infrastructure, the BALSAC population database which allows the reconstruction of the structure of the Quebec population over four centuries. In this research the descending lineages of all couples married in the Charlevoix-Saguenay Lac St-Jean region between 1686 and 1960 were analyzed. This genealogy comprises more than 1 million individuals.

Dr. Laurent Excoffier, University of Berne and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Dr. Damian Labuda, and Dr. Hélène Vézina, Projet BALSAC, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, who led the study, together with research associates Claudia Moreau, Michèle Jomphe and Ph.D. student Claude Bhérer, investigated the demographic history of this region to investigate the effects of rapid territorial and demographic expansion on the dynamics of colonization and human evolution.

"We find that families who are at the forefront of a range expansion into new territories had greater reproductive success. In other words, that they had more children, and more children who also had children," Labuda explained. "As a result, these families made a higher genetic contribution to the contemporary population than those who remained behind in what we call the range core, as opposed to the wave front.

The research confirms in humans a phenomenon that has already been observed in other species with much shorter generation spans. "We knew that the migration of species into new areas promoted the spread of rare mutations through a phenomenon known as 'gene surfing', but now we find that selection at the wave front could make this surfing much more efficient," Excoffier said. This evolutionary mechanism in combination with founder effects and social or cultural transmission of reproductive behavior could explain why some genetic diseases are found at an elevated frequency in the Charlevoix and Saguenay Lac Saint-Jean regions where the study was carried out, as rare mutations can also surf during a range expansion.

"It is exciting to see how a study on a regional population of Quebec can bring insight on a human process that has been going on for thousands of years. The BALSAC population is a powerful tool for social and genetic research and this study is a very nice demonstration of its possibilities," Vézina said.

The researchers also note that, although their study concerns a whole human population spread over several centuries, it only represents a short period of human evolution at a limited geographical scale. It thus appears difficult to directly generalize these results obtained in a farmer population to what happened during other range expansions, especially considering the differences between the ecological demography of hunter-gatherer and farmer communities. But given the highly successful history of the human colonization of our planet, it appears very likely that a considerable fraction of our ancestors have lived on the edge of expansion waves. Consequently, several human traits favoring dispersal and reproduction could have evolved during phases of range expansions rather than resulting from selection in constant environments.

Read more at Science Daily

Britain's oldest family business opened when Henry VIII ruled

RJ Balson and Sons, a butchers based in Bridport, Dorset, boasts an astonishing history that is almost 500 years old.

Experts have traced the businesses roots back through 25 generations to when founder John Balson opened a stall in the town's market on South Street in 1535.

Since then dozens of family members have worked as butchers in the market town, passing their skills down the generations.

And 476 years later, the shop remains a thriving business and has been named Britain's oldest family run retailer.

At that time Henry VIII was still married to Anne Boleyn, the first complete English language translation of the Bible was printed in Antwerp by William Tynedale and Miles Coverdale, and Peru, the Galapagos Islands and Quebec were discovered.

It has been in its present location since 1880, not far from its orginal location.

According to the Institute for Family Business, this makes it the oldest continuously trading family business in Britain.

The firm sells its produce, including 20 varieties of sausages such as els, boar and ostrich,l all over the world, with a large customer base in America.

It also sells exotic fare such as pheasants and guinea fowl but has remained close to its traditional roots.

Until recently the store's owner was Donald Balson, who died this year aged 88.

He said earlier this year: "The love of the job, which has been passed down from generation to generation, is one of the main reasons we have been successful."

His son Richard Balson, 54, said on Thursday: "It's not always gone directly from father to son - sometimes it's gone to a brother and sons but it has been in the family all the time and in January, my son will come into the business to run the online side.

"He's got a son too, so hopefully it'll keep on going. We started up just before the Mary Rose sank just short of Portsmouth harbour.

Read more at The Telegraph

Ancient Chinese Coin Brought Good Luck in Yukon

The discovery of a puzzling 340-year-old coin etched with traditional Chinese characters in Canada's Yukon territory suggests that the area was already aflurry with trading even before the Gold Rush.

Minted during the Qing Dynasty reign of Emperor Kangxi, the coin is 60 percent copper and 40 percent zinc. It was cast between 1667 and 1671 -- long before the 1898 gold rush, when people from all over the world headed to Dawson City and the Klondike gold fields.

The coin adds to an intriguing small collection of ancient Chinese coinage discovered in Yukon near gold rush trails.

"Overall, three Chinese coins have been found in the Yukon Territory," expedition leader James Mooney, from Ecofor Consulting Ltd., told Discovery News.

While one dates from 1724 and 1735, a third coin, unearthed in 1993 near a gold rush trail by Beaver Creek, is surprisingly older.

"This coin was thought to date from 1880 to 1910 and to be associated with a Klondike era use of a trading trail," Mooney said.

But fact-checking following the new discovery revealed that the coin dated from between 1403 and 1424.

"This age overlaps with a controversial theory of worldwide exploration by Chinese explorers, and only begs more questions," Mooney said.

The three ancient Chinese coins are round with a square hole in the center, but the newly found coin has four additional small holes above each corner of the central square.

"The vast majority of these Chinese 'cash coins' did not have additional holes drilled into them," Gary Ashkenazy, an expert in old Chinese coins, told Discovery News.

However, coins of certain emperors were considered to be particularly auspicious and were treated as amulets or charms.

"Additional holes were drilled in these coins so that they could be attached to a house ridgepole, door or gate in order to provide protection. They were also sewn onto clothing as a means to protect a person from ghosts and evil spirits," Ashkenazy said

The Yukon coin was likely used this way since it was cast during the long reign of Emperor Kangxi.

"These coins are considered lucky because kang means health and xi means prosperous. Also, Emperor Kangxi reigned for more than 60 years so his name is associated with longevity," Ashkenazy said.

Chinese people collected coins cast from each of the 20 mints which operated during the reign of Emperor Kangxi. Put on a string in a certain order to form a sort of poem, the coins were carried as amulets for good luck.

A Ming Dynasty coin unearthed in 1993 in a travel corridor near a Yukon gold trail, may have also been a good luck charm, according to Ashkenazy. Cast between 1403 and 1424 during the reign of Emperor Cheng Zu, it featured the inscription yong le tong bao, meaning "happiness forever."

Although it cannot be ruled out that the ancient coins were brought into Yukon by gold diggers who carried them as family amulets, Mooney believes that they are evidence of extensive pre-gold rush trading.

Found at a spot overlooking a river that would have made a good campsite, the 17th-century coin likely reached the remote wilderness of Yukon through "Russian and coastal Tlingit trade intermediaries," Mooney said.

The coin would have been brought back by Russians when they traded furs from North American wildlife to the Chinese in exchange for their goods.

Known to have occurred as early as the mid-1700s, Russian trade along the Pacific Northwest also involved the native Tlingit people.

The Russians traded glass beads, silk, coinage and other goods from China with the Tlingit in exchange for furs, such as sea otter, seal, beaver, fox and marten.

Read more at Discovery News

Dino-Era Disaster: Multiple Drowned Toothy Birds

Bones, eggs and eggshells are all that's left of a Transylvania Dinosaur-Era bird colony that made the mistake of nesting next to a big river, which wound up drowning the avian clan.

The discovery, made in the Sebes area of Transylvania, Romania, represents the first known nest colony for any Upper Cretaceous bird, according to a presentation today at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 71st Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

The birds were enantiornithines, which retained toothed beaks and had claws on their hands. Scientists now know these birds were colonial, waterside nesters, a common habit typically seen in modern birds that eat aquatic plants or animals.

Co-author Darren Naish, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Southampton, told Discovery News that the birds "would have looked peculiar to modern eyes." In addition to their toothiness, they had "a heavier looking tail."

The frozen-in-time avian disaster scene suggests that the birds were enjoying a peaceful end to the nesting period, with some hatchlings and their parents already in the process of leaving, when everything suddenly changed.

"Because the fossil assemblage consists only of eggshell fragments, eggs and bird bones, it is most likely that the flooding was actually a quick 'swamping' or 'drowning' where the water from the river rose by, say, a foot or two," Naish said, explaining that "it was not a massive tidal wave-style event, but most like a tidal bore-style flooding."

The fossils show that some adults were swept up by the water and drowned. Baby bird bones suggest remaining chicks died too.

"The water sweeping across the colony picked up broken eggshell, any remaining eggs and birds, and carried them a few meters across to a shallow depression, perhaps present on the other side of the colony," where the researchers found the remains buried under layers of sediment.

Gareth Dyke, who is also a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Southampton, worked with Naish, Matyas Vremir, and other researchers on the excavation.

Dyke told Discovery News that such findings are extremely rare, since “only a handful of undisputed, isolated Cretaceous eggs are known.” He added that the Romanian scene contains “the first fossil evidence for a breeding colony of Mesozoic birds.”

Before the flooding at the site, known as Hatzeg Basin, the scene must have been quite tranquil.

"We should imagine hundreds of closely spaced individuals of these birds sitting on their nests, flying off a few times during the day to bathe or feed near or in the river," Naish said. "Seeing as colonial nesting is known in non-avian dinosaurs as well as in modern birds, its discovery in Mesozoic birds isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it’s nice to have it confirmed."

Read more at Discovery News

Evolution Offers Clues to Leading Cause of Death During Childbirth

Unusual features of the human placenta may be the underlying cause of postpartum hemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal deaths during childbirth, according to evolutionary research at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Defined as the loss of more than a pint of blood during or just after vaginal delivery, postpartum hemorrhage accounts for nearly 35 percent, or 125,000, of the 358,000 worldwide annual maternal deaths during childbirth.

Despite its prevalence, the causes of postpartum hemorrhage are unknown, says Julienne Rutherford, assistant professor of oral biology at UIC, who along with Elizabeth Abrams, assistant professor of anthropology, co-authored a theoretical synthesis published in the journal American Anthropologist. While common in humans, postpartum hemorrhage is rare in other mammals, including nonhuman primates.

"Understanding the underlying cause of the increased risk of postpartum hemorrhage in humans is a critical step toward discovering new treatments and eventually preventing it on a global scale," Rutherford said.

Previous studies on postpartum hemorrhage have focused on how it can be treated and on recognizing its associated risk factors, Abrams said. Less has been done to discover its cause.

In humans, the invasiveness of the placenta into the uterine wall and the subsequent takeover of maternal blood vessels appear to be greater than in nonhumans, Rutherford said. This suggests a link between placental invasiveness early in pregnancy and blood loss at delivery, when the placenta separates from the uterine wall.

Research by Abrams and Rutherford suggests that hormones produced by trophoblasts -- cells formed during the first stage of pregnancy that provide nutrients to the embryo and develop into a large part of the placenta, and that guide the interaction with the uterus -- may provide an early predictor of risk.

"Biomarkers of postpartum hemorrhage that could be used early in pregnancy would allow women to make informed decisions about their choice of birthing site and medical care based on their risk," Abrams said. This biomarker hypothesis has not yet been studied.

Many women in poor countries don't give birth in hospitals or clinics, said Abrams, who has conducted research on childbirth in the sub-Saharan countries of Malawi and Tanzania. By the time postpartum bleeding occurs, it may be too late to reach a health center.

In a normal birth, the placenta begins to separate from the uterine wall before delivery. Bleeding at the site is normally stopped by the constriction of blood vessels due to the contraction and retraction of uterine muscles. Hemorrhage can occur weeks after birth, but most deaths occur within four hours of delivery.

There are two major risk factors for postpartum hemorrhage, said Rutherford. The leading factor is uterine contractions that are too weak to stop bleeding. The cause of this is unclear, but it could delay delivery of the placenta -- which is the other known risk factor, she said. The best predictor for any woman is previous postpartum hemorrhage, "which has disturbing implications for women in resource-poor settings," Abrams said.

Understanding how the human placenta differs from that of other primates is a new approach, and according to Abrams and Rutherford, it is one that might help explain the mechanisms underlying risk factors in humans.

Read more at Science Daily

NASA Studying Ways to Make 'Tractor Beams' a Reality

Tractor beams -- the ability to trap and move objects using laser light -- are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary or atmospheric particles and delivering them to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft for analysis.

The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) has awarded Principal Investigator Paul Stysley and team members Demetrios Poulios and Barry Coyle at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., $100,000 to study three experimental methods for corralling particles and transporting them via laser light to an instrument -- akin to a vacuum using suction to collect and transport dirt to a canister or bag. Once delivered, an instrument would then characterize their composition.

"Though a mainstay in science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, laser-based trapping isn't fanciful or beyond current technological know-how," Stysley said. The team has identified three different approaches for transporting particles, as well as single molecules, viruses, ribonucleic acid, and fully functioning cells, using the power of light.

"The original thought was that we could use tractor beams for cleaning up orbital debris," Stysley said. "But to pull something that huge would be almost impossible -- at least now. That's when it bubbled up that perhaps we could use the same approach for sample collection."

With the Phase-1 funding from OCT's recently reestablished NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program designed to spur the development of "revolutionary" space technologies, the team will study the state of the technology to determine which of the three techniques would apply best to sample collection. OCT received hundreds of proposals, ultimately selecting only 30 for initial funding.

Replace Current Sample-Collection Methods

Currently, NASA uses a variety of techniques to collect extraterrestrial samples. With Stardust, a space probe launched in 1999, the Agency used aerogel to gather samples as it flew through the coma of comet Wild 2. A capsule returned the samples in 2006. NASA's next rover to Mars, Curiosity, will drill and scoop samples from the Martian surface and then carry out detailed analyses of the materials with one of the rover's many onboard instruments, including the Goddard-built Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite.

"These techniques have proven to be largely successful, but they are limited by high costs and limited range and sample rate," Stysley said. "An optical-trapping system, on the other hand, could grab desired molecules from the upper atmosphere on an orbiting spacecraft or trap them from the ground or lower atmosphere from a lander. In other words, they could continuously and remotely capture particles over a longer period of time, which would enhance science goals and reduce mission risk."

Team to Study Three Approaches

One experimental approach the team plans to study -- the optical vortex or "optical tweezers" method -- involves the use of two counter-propagating beams of light. The resulting ring-like geometry confines particles to the dark core of the overlapping beams. By alternately strengthening or weakening the intensity of one of the light beams -- in effect heating the air around the trapped particle -- researchers have shown in laboratory testing that they can move the particle along the ring's center. This technique, however, requires the presence of an atmosphere.

Another technique employs optical solenoid beams -- those whose intensity peaks spiral around the axis of propagation. Testing has shown that the approach can trap and exert a force that drives particles in the opposite direction of the light-beam source. In other words, the particulate matter is pulled back along the entire beam of light. Unlike the optical vortex method, this technique relies solely on electromagnetic effects and could operate in a space vacuum, making it ideal for studying the composition of materials on one of the airless planetary moons, for example.

Read more at Science Daily

Zombie Volcano or New Supervolcano?

A broad swath of the Altiplano plateau in southwest Bolivia is inflating like a giant balloon, presumably as magma builds up deep underground. This aggressive rise hints that a new supervolcano could be awakening in South America, geologists say, and so they are keen to learn more about the underlying cause.

So far, they know the inflation is surprisingly fast: the center of the patch has risen 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) in the past 20 years. What is more, the uplift extends about 43 miles (70 kilometers) across -- similar in size to the caldera that formed in the wake of the latest eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, which blanketed half of the U.S. in ash 640,000 years ago.

At the center of all recent intrigue is Uturuncu, a nearly 20,000-foot (6,000 meter) ancient volcano long given up for dead. Based on the spewage from its last eruption, 300,000 years ago, it would not qualify as a supervolcano on its own. (Its peers are far tamer, including Mount St. Helens in Washington state). But Uturunca could be drawing magma from a dense swarm of nearby volcanoes, many of which are currently active.

The big question is how much magma has accumulated so far. Based on Uturunca’s rate of inflation, scientists calculated the magma chamber has been growing by about 27 cubic feet (1 cubic meter) per second. But for how long? Amassing magma at that rapid clip for thousands of years would make for a serious amount of fuel for an eruption. Or maybe its only just begun gathering steam. The rate measurements are based on satellite data the go back only 20 years.

Geologists Noah Finnegan and Jonathan Perkins of the University of California, Santa Cruz, spent several weeks in Boliva last November to get a sense for Uturunca’s long-term history by tracing the shifting shorelines and deltas of ancient lakes. If the volcano’s summit had been rising as rapidly over the past several thousand years, it would gradually lift a side of the lakes.

“Because the uplift of Uturuncu is more pronounced in the center and tapers out toward the edges, that produces an uplift gradient, which is what will cause the lakes to tilt,” Perkins told Discovery News. “It’s kind of like having a jack in the center that slowly ramps up the topography over geologic time.”

The pair’s preliminary findings, which they reported at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in October, indicate that the expansion probably started only recently, and so the magma chamber probably has not yet grown to supervolcanic proportions. (For comparison, the chamber seething underneath Yellowstone is at least 200 miles deep and 400 miles east to west.)

Read more at Discovery News

Saber-Toothed Squirrel Lived Near Dinosaurs

Northern Patagonia was once home to a squirrel-like mammal with extremely long canine teeth, a petite 4 to 6-inch-long body, a narrow muzzle and a rounded skull, according to a paper in the latest issue of Nature.

You won't see this critter stealing birdfood in your garden because it lived more than 100 million years ago when dinosaurs were still thriving. As you can see from the above image, dinos must have been no strangers to this saber-toothed animal that might have spent its days darting around columnar dino legs.

The discovery breaks a prior gap of about 60 million years in the fossil record for South American mammals.

University of Louisville paleontologist Guillermo Rougier and co-authors Sebastián Apesteguía and Leandro Gaetano named the new animal Cronopio dentiacutus. It is a dryolestoid, an extinct group of animals distantly related to today's marsupials and placentals.

"It looks somewhat like 'Scrat,' the saber-toothed squirrel from 'Ice Age,'" Rougier was quoted as saying in a UofL press release. He's a professor of anatomy and neurobiology there.

Real life is often more bizarre than fiction.

"The new dryolestoid, Cronopio, is without a doubt one of the most unusual mammals that I have seen, extinct or living," said John Wible, curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The researchers found skulls of the Scrat-like animals embedded in rock in a remote area of northern Patagonia, about 100 miles from the city of Allen in the Argentinian province of Rio Negro. It took the team several years of patient lab work to remove the specimens from the rocks.

"We knew it was important, based on the age of the rocks and because we found skulls," Rougier said. “Usually we find teeth or bone fragments of this age. Most of what we know of early mammals has been determined through teeth because enamel is the hardest substance in our bodies and survives well the passage of time; it is usually what we have left to study."

"The skull, however, provides us with features of the biology of the animal," he continued, "making it possible for us to determine this is the first of its kind dating to the early Late Cretaceous period in South America. This time period in South America was somewhat of a blank slate to us. Now we have a mammal as a starting point for further study of the lineage of all mammals, humans included."

A lot of paleontologist eyes are now on South America.

"… Until now, all we have had are isolated teeth and a few jaw fragments … which don't really help much in deciphering broader relationships," said Rich Cifelli, presidential professor of zoology at the University of Oklahoma and a researcher, who, like Rougier, has spent his career discovering and identifying mammal remains.

Read more at Discovery News

'Zombie' Worms Found in Mediterranean Fossil

Traces of bizarre, bone-eating 'zombie' worms have been found on a 3-million-year-old fossil whale bone from Tuscany in Italy. It is the first time the genus Osedax has been found in the Mediterranean, and suggests Osedax were widespread throughout the world's oceans 6 million years ago.

The new find, published in the journal Historical Biology, confirms what scientists have long suspected -- that Osedax were likely responsible for erasing parts of the fossil record by destroying bones before they could become fossils.

Worms from the Osedax genus do not have a mouth or gut but consume the bone by growing root-like tissues, which dissolve the bone as they grow.

Lead scientist Nicholas Higgs discovered tell-tale traces of Osedax in the Mediterranean last year using micro-CT (Computed Tomography) scanning technology as part of his PhD at the University of Leeds and the Natural History Museum.

He says: "After several promising leads came to a dead end, the scans from the final sample looked different and I knew that I was on to something."

Osedax were first discovered alive in 2002 in Monterey Bay, California, where they were living on the bones of a decaying gray whale.

Since then, scientists have been curious about how the worms might have affected fossil records, but understanding when Osedax evolved and where they lived in the past has until now remained a problem because actual remains of soft-bodied Osedax do not preserve as fossils.

The only way to tell where and when Osedax have been at work is by distinctive bulb-shaped cavities that they leave behind in a bone -- and it is these borings that have finally been recognised by Higgs.

His research shows how widespread Osedax were millions of years ago.

The only other known evidence of Osedax from the past is in whale bones from the Pacific coast of Washington State in the US -- about as far away as it is possible to get from the Mediterranean in terms of ocean connectedness.

When Mediterranean dried up almost six million years ago most deep sea animals were killed. About half a million years later the sea re-flooded from the Atlantic.

Higgs says: "So finding out that Osedax were feeding on this whale bone three million years ago tell us that their ancestors must have also been living in the Atlantic as well, because the Mediterranean was re-colonised 5.5 million years ago from the Atlantic."

It is now almost certain that the Mediterranean is currently host to undiscovered, living Osedax species, Higgs says.

"There are 20 different species in Monterey, California alone, so it's almost certain there are many more out there. If Osedax were living the Mediterranean three million years ago there's no reason why they aren't living there now."

Read more at Science Daily

Early time-telling instrument up for auction

The 14th century time-telling device, which carries the badge of King Richard II, was unearthed in a shed in Queensland, Australia in the 1970s.

Known as an equal hour horary quadrant, it allowed its user to tell the approximate time of day based on the position of the Sun and the time of year.

The brass contraption – the second oldest dated British scientific instrument – is thought to have been discovered in the mid-1800s by an ancestor of its current owner.

It was passed down through his family who eventually emigrated to New Zealand and Australia, and was later uncovered by Christopher Becker in the mid-1970s, lurking in an old bag of pipe fittings in a shed on the family farm.

The trinket lived as a paperweight on his desk for decades until he took the decision to sell it at the Bonham's Fine Clocks and Scientific Instrument Sale on December 13.

Mr Becker said: "I believe something of this significance deserves a little more recognition than just sitting on my desk as a personal reminder of what began a lifelong passion for collecting antiques."

The quadrant, which dates back to 1396, is the oldest of a group of similar instruments dated 1398, 1399 and 1400 and is only predated by the Chaucer astrolabe, a time-telling device from 1326 which can be viewed in the British Museum.

On one face is a scale of the days of the month sitting above 12 concentric arcs – one for each month of the year – on which a table of noon solar altitudes is marked.

Above this are two rings marking out years and leap years, and within that lies a figure of a stag with a coronet around its throat – an emblem linked to Richard II.

To tell the time the user would find the noon solar altitude on the table before turning it over and stretching a string against the corresponding mark on a degree scale.

Read more at The Telegraph