Gizmorama - May 21, 2014

Good Morning,

This just in from the scientific community - Whales can't taste anything but salt. But it's sea salt so it's really not that bad. Bon appetit!

Learn about this interesting story and more from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- 13,000-year-old skeleton of early American found in underwater cave --*
MERIDA, Mexico (UPI) - Archaeologists say they've found the oldest skull and skeleton in the Americas, and it's evidence that Native Americans -- whether modern or ancient -- trace their lineage to a single migration of people across the land bridge that once connected North America and Asia.

It's the skull of a 16-year-old girl, dubbed Naia, who some 13,000 years ago fell into a deep cave on the Yucatan Peninsula while fetching water. Since flooded by rising sea levels, the underground layer is now called the Outland Cave and is part of a vast network called the Sac Actun cave system -- one of the largest underwater cave systems ever surveyed.

In 2007, divers exploring the system came upon a giant underwater chamber full of fossils -- including the bones of saber-toothed tigers, giant ground sloths, and other Ice Age mammals. They also found the skeleton of Naia.

"It was a small cranium laying upside down with a perfect set of teeth and dark eye sockets looking back at us," Alberto Nava, one of the divers, recalled.

Little did Nava or the the divers know, the perfectly preserved skeleton would help solve a migration mystery.

For a long time, archaeologists and anthropologists have remained puzzled by the appearance of modern Native Americans, whose facial structure most closely resembles the peoples of China, Korea or Japan. Meanwhile, the skulls of ancient Americans, often referred to as Paleoamericans, are narrower and more forward-projecting, recalling the native peoples of Africa, Australia, and the southern Pacific Rim.

The discrepancy lead some scientists to surmise that the Americas were populated by two separate migrations, first by people hailing from Polynesia or western Asia and later by people from East Asia.

But the skeleton, and a new study, offer some clarity. Naia's skull features facial characteristics of ancient Americans and the DNA lineage of modern Native Americans -- a lineage that traces to Beringia, the ancient region of grassland steppe that connected modern-day Alaska with Siberia during the last ice age. Lead archaeologist James Chatters says it's proof that both sets of Native Americans originate from the same place.

But although the new study -- published this week in the journal Science -- settles the problem of Native American migration, questions remain.

As Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, explained to USA Today: "It's interesting, because it raises a new question: Why are there (skull and facial) changes? Is it really true that Native Americans have evolved ... in such a short amount of time?"


*-- Whales can't taste anything but salt --*
WUHAN, China (UPI) - In the mammalian race to food snobbery, whales are at the back of the pack. They don't even know what umami is.

They're likely rather adept, however, at determining the salt content of a given food item. Salt, after all, is the only thing whales can taste.

According to a new study, evolutionary gene mutations among cetacean ancestors -- which include whales and dolphins -- have rendered four of five taste bud types useless, destroying their ability to taste sweet, bitter, umami (savory) and sour. Almost all other vertebrates have the full array of functioning taste sensors.

Researchers made their discovery while sequencing the genomes of 15 species, including baleen whales, like bowheads and minkes, as well toothed species, like bottlenose dolphins and sperm whales.

"The loss of bitter taste is a complete surprise, because natural toxins typically taste bitter," explained zoologist Huabin Zhao of Wuhan University in China, the study's lead researcher.

The study was published earlier this month in journal Genome Biology and Evolution.

The fact that most whale species swallow their food whole may at least partially explain the loss of taste buds, as flavors are mostly released when food is chewed. Mutations often infiltrate the genetic code after certain traits become useless.

But the retention of salty taste receptors, scientists say, may help whales maintain proper sodium levels and blood pressure.

Still, if the price of a strengthened sense of salt is the the inability to taste dangerous substances, it's a cost that sometimes proves perilous.

Packs of killer whales have unknowingly swum into the middle of oil spills, and dolphins have died after eating fish filled with algal toxins.

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