The missing link in human’s evolution has been found, or at least that’s what researchers think.

This 47 million-year-old primate (Darwinius Masillae) unveiled yesterday at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is the long-sought missing link in mankind’s family tree. Known as Ida, the lemur-like creature had opposable thumbs like humans, fingernails instead of claws and hands that can grasp things.

Ida, the 47million-year-old lemur could be the missing link in human evolution

(more…)

If you're new here and you like our articles, how about subscribing free for our updates via RSS feed.

National Center for Science Education executive director Eugenie C. Scott will guest start on the first hour of NPR’s Science Friday show for April 10, 2009.

Here’s what we know about Science Friday.

1. Science Friday aims to make science user friendly. We at GP love when folk take a scientific approach to things.
2. Science Friday has four blog writers – Bad Light Bulbs, Spring Buds, My Personal Cyber-Spy, And the Winning Vehicle is….
3. And they have a podcast
4. Science Friday has video archives.  Candy corn in space?
5. Science Friday makes science cool to know – Extinct Genes Resurrected, Spotting Stress in Statues, Dogs Bark, Birds Chirp, Fish Grunt
6. Science Friday tackles the difficult subjects – Texas Schools and Evolution, Obama, Congress, and Climate Change, Predicting Earthquakes
7. Science Friday is inviting the likes of Eugenie Scott of NCSE which defends the teaching of evolution in school.

In any event, it is never a bad thing if folk look at things rationally, scientifically, as long as the folk realize that science does not/cannot answer every question.

Some serious proof has been uncovered by the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

The group has learned that wild female chimpanzees copulate more frequently with males who share meat with them over long periods of time. In other words, men that share, get it more often. (Can you imagine the guy sitting out in the wild counting how many times Rosy the Ape copulated this month?)

Zakayo, the oldest alpha male chimpanzee in Uganda

Scientists (ahem) have long puzzled about this. They believe that men who are more successful hunters get more wives and a larger number of offspring. Let’s see. Men who do their jobs well get better wives. And people study this over while sitting in bushes? Come on!

Studies on wild chimpanzees show that male hunters share meat (not that meat) with females who did not participate in the hunt. One hypotheses proposed is meat-for-sex. But evidence doesn’t really support the claim though males, both humans and chimpanzees want the support.

In research conducted in the Tai National Park, Coted’Ivoire, it was found that females copulate more frequently with males who share meat with them on at least one occasion. Males who never shared never had sex. Well, duh!!

Gomes said: “Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis. Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake, without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting.”

“Previous studies might not have found a relationship between mating success and meat sharing because they focused on short-term exchanges; or perhaps because in those groups access to females was driven by male coercion so females rarely chose their mating partners,” she added.

The conclusion: “Our findings add to the ever-growing evidence suggesting that chimpanzees can think in the past and the future and that this influences their present behavior.”

So, “where’s my meat?”

There’s scientific proof that humans did not evolve from chimpanzees at Sweden’s Furuvik Zoo.

Researchers watched Santino the chimp’s anti-social behavior and studied the 31-year old alpha-male over the years – 10 years to be somewhat exact.

Santino never attacked others in his group probably because he was comfortable being the head banana … or getting his bananas first.

What shocked the researchers was that Santino would collect rocks each morning, even knocking out disks from concrete boulders, then store them until midday. At midday, visitors would come to the zoo and Santino would start throwing the rocks at the monkeys on the other side of the fence. He never hit anyone, well hardly ever. But, the fact that the chump, chimp planned ahead stunned the researchers. They concluded that humans could not have evolved from chimps because how many humans do you know who plan ahead? And if humans did plan ahead, then why is the world in the mess it is in?

Read more here.

Uncovered in south west China last year, Odontochelys semistestacea seems to be the oldest known turtle fossil – believed to date 220 million years back. More important it was used to put back the pieces regarding the evolution of the turtle shell.

Since long, paleontologists have been debating over the course of how the turtle developed its shell as some claimed that it evolved from underneath the body, while the other talked about it having been an extension of the scaly skin on top. And now we have the answer.

The uncovered fossil definitively supported the theory that the shell would have formed from below as extensions of the backbone and ribs, rather than as bony plates from the skin as others have theorized.

The fossil with its half formed lower shell and an absent upper shell proved the fact that it was the lower shell that first came into existence as a defensive mechanism of marine animals to protect themselves from attacks coming from the depths of the sea. As they started evolving as land creatures, the upper shell became an equally important form of defense and continued the evolution into its next step.

This also suggested to the team of scientists from Canada, China and the US who undertook this extensive research that the earliest turtles were indeed marine creatures and later moved onto land.

Source: DailyMail