Gizmorama
December 29, 2010
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Good Morning,
Scientists have just recently made a definitive distinction
between what is now two species of African Elephants. Check
out the details on this revolutionary study in the second
article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Scientists track ancient gene 'explosion'
BOSTON - U.S. researchers say an explosion of new genes more
than 3 billion years ago created about a quarter of today's
DNA blueprint of all life. Scientists at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology say about 27 percent of all gene fam-
ilies that exist today were born between 3.3 billion and
2.8 billion years ago, ScienceNews.org reported Tuesday.
The surge of gene births, dubbed the Archean expansion,
happened before some important changes occurred in Earth's
early chemistry, including the appearance of large amounts
of oxygen in the atmosphere, evolutionary biologists Eric
Alm and Lawrence David say. Fossils of organisms billions
of years old are difficult to find but the researchers have
found a rich molecular fossil bed billions of years old in
the genetic blueprints of living organisms. "Imprinted in
the DNA of modern organisms is the history of these Pre-
cambrian events," Alm says. The study may show how early
organisms responded to and helped alter the planet's early
chemistry, the researchers said -- noting that genes for
using oxygen appeared at the end of the genetic expansion
around 2.8 billion years ago, long before oxygen began accum-
ulating in the atmosphere around 2.5 billion years ago.
Study: African elephants in two species
YORK, England - Researchers say gene studies may have set-
tled a long-running debate by proving there are two distinct
species of African elephants, savannah and forest species.
Scientists say the two types have been separated for at least
3 million years and are genetically completely different from
each other, the BBC reported Tuesday. Savannah-dwelling ele-
phants, weighing 6 or 7 tons, are about twice as heavy as
the elephants living in forest habitats. Along with other
differences in size and shape, this led some researchers to
conclude there are two species -- the savannah elephant,
Loxodonta africana, and the forest species, Loxodonta cyclo-
tis. Scientists from the United States and Europe say genetic
studies have proved the case. "The divergence of the two
species took place around the time of the divergence of the
Asian elephant and woolly mammoths," Michi Hofreiter, a spec-
ialist in ancient DNA at the Britain's York University,
said. "The split between African savannah and forest ele-
phants is almost as old as the split between humans and
chimpanzees," Hofreiter said. "This result amazed us all."
Lightning could signal volcanic eruptions
SEATTLE - A worldwide network of lightning detectors is
being put to a new use detecting volcanic eruptions that
could be hazardous to aviation, U.S. researchers say. In
its first months of test operations in Alaska and the Russian
Far East, the system operated by the University of Washington
spotted two eruptions a full hour before they showed up on
satellite images, The Seattle Times reported Tuesday. The
churning clouds unleashed by explosive volcanic eruptions
generate lightning, which antennas can identify by their dis-
tinctive low-frequency radio signatures. Such detections
could provide valuable warning time for aircraft, whose en-
gines can fail when clogged with volcanic ash. "If we're able
to get an extra 30 or 60 minutes more of a heads-up, it could
be a real contribution," vulcanologist John Ewert of the U.S.
Geological Survey's Cascades Volcano Observatory said. UW
space-sciences professor Robert Holzworth has managed the
World Wide Lightning Location Network since 2004, expanding
it from a handful of stations to 52 around the world. More
than 3 million lightning strokes are logged by the system
every month, and only a tiny fraction are from volcanoes. But
those are fairly easy to spot because they're usually not
associated with a storm, Holzworth said.
Ancient human group identified by DNA
LEIPZIG, Germany - Scientists say human fossils in Siberia
have been identified as those of an ancient human group dub-
bed the Denisovans, cousins of the Neanderthals. Researchers
say the shadowy ancient group lived in Asia from roughly
400,000 to 50,000 years ago and interbred with ancestors of
modern inhabitants of New Guinea, The New York Times reported.
Scientists have managed to extract the entire genome of the
Denisovans from just one broken finger bone and a wisdom
tooth found in a Siberian cave, the newspaper said. A pre-
vious incomplete analysis of Denisovan DNA had suggested the
group was far removed from both Neanderthals and humans. The
new findings suggest the ancestors of both the Neanderthals
and the Denisovans came out of Africa half a million years
ago, with the Neanderthals spreading westward in the Near
East and Europe while the Denisovans headed east. The re-
searchers say the findings confirm there were at least four
distinct types of human in existence when anatomically modern
humans first left Africa. Along with modern humans, scien-
tists have identified Neanderthals and a dwarf human species
found on the Indonesian island of Flores nicknamed "The
Hobbit," the BBC reported. To this list, experts must now
add the Denisovans. "It is fascinating to see direct evidence
that these archaic species did exist (alongside us) and it's
only for the last few tens of thousands of years that is un-
ique in our history that we are alone on this planet and we
have no close relatives with us anymore," said Svante Paabo
of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, who carried
out the DNA analysis.
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