Archive for the ‘Paleo Pals’ Category

Family Gets More Crowded, Evidence Of New Human Relative Found

Friday, April 16th, 2010

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From Stone Pages.com.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig recently announced that analysis of DNA from a tiny fragment of bone from the Denisova Cave in the Siberian Altai Mountains indicates that it may belong to a hitherto unknown hominid type.

John Krause and colleagues managed to isolate a complete sequence of mitochondrial DNA from a fragment of finger bone found by Russian researchers in 2008 that weighed only 30mg. This was compared with 54 sequences from modern humans, an early human sequence from Kotenski, Russia, six from Neanderthals, and one each from a chimpanzee and a bonobo. While Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA sequences have on average 202 differences from modern human sequences, the Denisova sequence has almost twice that number.

The director of the Institute’s genetics department, Svante Pääbo said “The results practically blew me away when I heard.” The researchers suggest the Denisova hominid shared a common ancestor with both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans, and may have lived alongside them as recently as 30,000 to 48,000 years ago. In turn, this completely new mitochondrial DNA sequence might imply a fourth wave of hominin migration out of Africa.

You might remember a similar point being raised by Andrew (with a far darker ending) on the most recent Weird Things podcast.

[Stone Pages]

Man Sized Species of Tyrannosaurus Rex Discovered

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

A species of tyrannosaur discovered in Western China in recent days stands up as tall as an average human, much smaller than its more recent and well known descendant T-rex. Cooler still, Xiongguanlong baimoensis, is an intermediate species between smaller ancestors and the massive man eating beast we all know and love:

So, the meat-eating biped also fills the size gap that accompanies the time gap in the fossil record, falling between small ancestors such as Guanlong wucaii — a lithe, half-meter–high creature that lived about 160 million years ago — and multiton behemoths such as Tyrannosaurus rex, which stood about 4 meters tall at the hips and lived between 68 million and 65 million years ago.

-Check out the whole article at Science News.