Introduction to: Evolution-Involution Slideshow http://evolution-involution.org
Evolution Where did we come from?...Where are we going? Illustration: Thomas Peters http://spaceart1.ning.com/profile/ThomasPeters
The Reproduction Revolution: Selection Pressure in a Post-Darwinian World. Biorevolution: Human evolution is about to accelerate and BLTC wants to insure that designer babies and human cloning evolve via best practice of genetic engineering. Selection pressure isn't going to slacken. On the contrary, we're on the eve an era of unnatural or artificial selection - a different kind of selection pressure, but a selection pressure that will be extraordinarily intense, favouring a very different set of adaptations than traits that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment on the African savannah. More: http://www.reproductive-revolution.com/index.html Artwork: http://www.bltc.com
The Tunguska Air Blast A century ago, on June 30, 1908, an asteroid or comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere and exploded over Siberia, flattening 2,000 square kilometers of forest. This is simply the latest incident where bodies from outer space (in this case probably a small comet) have impacted life on Earth. There have been five major recorded episodes- from both internal (supermassive vulcanism and climatic upheaval) and external (asteroid impacts and gamma ray blasts) that have caused mass extinctions (up to 90% of Earths entire biota during the Permian-Tertiary "Great Dying"). The first struggles for life to establish may have begun as early as a few million years after Earth solidified into a planet 4.5 billion years ago with repeated extinctions happening during the Pre-Cambrian- so no fossil evidence is preserved. http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/targetearth/tunguska.html Illustration: Don Davis http://www.donaldedavis.com
Homo sapiens sapiens Races Race refers to the classification of humans into populations or groups based on various factors such as culture, language, social practice or heritable characteristics. As a biological term, race describes genetically divergent populations of humans that can be marked by common phenotypic and genotypic traits. This sense of race is often used (not without controversy) in forensic anthropology analyzing skeletal remains, biomedical research, and race-based medicine but has no official biological taxonomic significance. http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/ Detail - The Tower of Time- a 27 foot mural in the Smithsonian National Musum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu/explore.html Artwork: John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Humans as Biological Collective Early life forms were prokaryotic cells that evolved into nucleated eukaryotic cells that assimilated mitochondria to provide chemical energy in a symbiotic union with their host. We- along with plume worms, fruit flies and bats are direct descendants of that co-evolution between the microbes--organisms that live within and upon our host bodies that effect the dermal, digestive, immune and other systems vital to our health and survival. Our bodies harbor 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering our human cells 10 to one. A symbiotic perspective sees ourselves as hosts over an evolutionary timescale of billions of years in which our cells carry an ancient stamp of symbiosis in the form of mitochondria. In some ways, we’re an amalgam and a continuously evolving collective. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_body_politic Diorama: Mike O'Brien and Nola Davis http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/lubbock/murals.html
Portraits of Amerindians See Population Legend at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amerikanska_folk,_Nordisk_familjebok.jpg Artwork: Amerikanska Folk, Nordisk Familjebok (1876-1904) http://runeberg.org/nfba/0452.html
Buffalo Hunt Centered in what is now Utah, the area of the Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin was first settled (9,000 BC to about 5,500 BC) by Paleoindian - big and small game hunters, collectors, foragers. About 5,500 BC to about 1000 BC archaic indians adapted increasingly to agriculture. Originally considered to be an inferior, out-back branch of the well studied Anasazi culture, most archaeologists now believe that between 2500 and 1500 years ago, the existing groups of hunter-gatherers gradually developed into the Fremont Culture with a lifestyle of hunting/gathering and corn horticulture. They left a record of a distinctive pictographs and petroglyphs, throughout their range. The Three King's panel of the Fremont Indians near Vernal, Utah is regarded as the finest Indian petroglyph panel in the world. http://www.thefurtrapper.com/fremont_indians.htm Artwork: Nola Davis, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Lubbock Lake Landmark http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/lubbock/murals.html
Butchering Bison Clovis people (13,500 to 13,000 ya) were considered to be the ancestors of all the indigenous cultures of North and South America. However, this majority view has been contested over the last thirty years by several archaeological discoveries. Radiocarbon dating of the Monte Verde site in Chile place Clovis-like culture there as early as 13,500 years ago and remains found at the Channel Islands of California place coastal Paleoindians there 12,500 years ago. This suggests that the Paleoindian migration could have spread more quickly along the Pacific coastline, proceeding south, and that populations that settled along that route could have then begun migrations eastward into the continent. sculpture by Mike O'Brien, and a background scene painted by Nola Davis, courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/lubbock/murals.html
Clovis Deer Hunters New studies of genetic samples from native New World populations (from Alaska to Brazil) show they all share a unique allele at a specific microsatellite locus that is not found in any Old World populations (except Koryak and Chukchi of western Berengia), which implies that all modern Native Americans descended from a single founding population that was the result of migration of a narrow North Asian population. This is further supported by ancient DNA studies showing that Late Pleistocene Paleoamerican carried the same haplogroups (and even sub-haplogroups) as modern Native groups. Dogs are depicted whose ancestors must have accompanied the first humans into America- having co-evolved with Homo sapiens from wolves some 135 Kya. http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/who.php Texas A&M University
Clovis Mammoth Hunters Because of the much greater similarity to stone point in France and the much greater concentration of their sites around the Chesapeake area it's possible Clovis populations first established along the Eastern seaboard. Sediment containing magnetic spherules, nanodiamonds and fullerenes widespread across N. America but with highest concentration in the Chesapeake suggest an impact event triggered the Younger Dryas Climatic Catastrophe creating a 10-degree drop in temperature and a 1000-year dust storm that wiped out 80% of the mega fauna along with all but a barely sustainable remnant of Clovis. Migration away from their devastated hunting grounds in the East- they may have eventually interacted with Folsum people spreading over the western regions. http://www.hotmoviesale.com/p82814/10000-BC.html
Cro Magnon Burial Ceremony A historically key challenge to evolutionary psychology has been how altruistic feelings and behaviors could have evolved when the process of natural selection is based on competition between different genes. Theories addressing this have included kin selection and reciprocal altruism. Neanderthals living in Shanidar Cave in the Zagros Mountains of Kurdistan in Iraq. 60,000 to 80,000 years ago buried their dead, and may have had burial ceremonies for the dead. Fossil evidence also shows that members of the group cared for one another: Injuries found in the fossilized bones of a man 35 to 45 years of age show serious injuries to the head and to a foot. Despite the severity of the injuries, the man's bones show signs of healing, suggesting he was cared for by others while he was injured. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
North American Short-faced Bear Arctodus simus- the giant short-faced bear has just chased two wolves away from their kill, a steppe bison calf. As the bear eats, the wolves wait, hoping to get back to their prey. The giant short-faced bear was the largest and perhaps the fiercest of the Ice Age land carnivores of North America. It appears to have specialized in scavenging, driving other predators away from their fresh kill. Diorama: Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre http://www.beringia.com
Giant Short-Faced Bear Arctodus simus, also known as the giant short-faced bear, is an extinct species of bear. It was native to prehistoric North America from about 800,000 years ago, and became extinct about 12,500 years ago so the earliest Clovis people may have confronted this fearsome predator. It is one of the largest bears in the fossil record and was among the largest mammalian land predators of all time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctodus_simus According to the still-debated Settlement of the Americas, a migration of humans from Eurasia to North America took place via Beringia, a land bridge created from falling sea levels which which began about 60,000 - 25,000 years ago, that connected the two continents across what is now the Bering Strait. The minimum time depth by which this migration had taken place is confirmed at 12,000 years ago, with the earliest period remaining unresolved. Indian Artwork: Karl Bodmer http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Karl_Bodmer
"Standoff" Sabertooth versus Dire Wolves in southern California 13,000 years ago. San Diego Natural History Museum http://www.sdnhm.org Artwork: William Stout http://planetdinosaur.com/paleo_art/william_stout.htm
The La Brea Tar Pits in California are the most famous of many tar pits around the world that have preserved the fossil remains of extinct megafauna from the last ice age more than 30 Kya. The only human evidence recovered so far- is the crushed skull of a female dating to 9 Kya. Radiocarbon dating has shown the Clovis period to range from 13,300 to 12,800 calendar years ago, giving the culture only several hundred years to reach the tip of South America. The Clovis-first model says it would have taken anywhere from 700 to 1,000 years but archaeological sites in South America have yielded the same dates. It now seems the peopling of the Americas was not a singular event but instead- people arrived at different times and took different routes and potentially came from different places. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070223-first-americans_2.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Brea_Tar_Pits Artwork: Charles S. Knight (1874-1953) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Knight
Luzia At least two distinct groups of early humans colonized the Americas, a new study says, reviving the debate about who the first Americans were and when they arrived. Anthropoligists studied 81 skulls of early humans from Brazil's Lagoa Santa region and found them to be different from both modern and ancient Native Americans. One skull discoverd at a site in the state of Minas Gerais called Lapa Vermelha was given the name "Luzia". The 7,500- to 11,000-year-old remains suggest that the oldest settlers of the Americas came from different genetic stock than more recent Native Americans. Modern Native Americans share traits with Mongoloid peoples of Mongolia, China, and Siberia but researchers found many skulls from Brazil appear much more similar to modern Australians, Melanesians, and Sub-Saharan Africans. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1212_051212_humans_americas.html Lagoa Santa sites - by George Weber http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter54/text-LagoaSanta/text-LagoaSanta.htm
Las Palmas Clovis Woman A scientific reconstruction of an ancient woman known as La Mujer de las Palmas, based on the skeletal remains of a female who lived between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Experts reconstructed what the woman may have looked like based on the remains found in 2002 in a flooded sinkhole cave near the Caribbean resort of Tulum, Mexico. Anthropologist Alejandro Terrazas says the reconstruction resembles people from southeastern Asia areas like Indonesia, even though experts had long believed the first people to migrate to the Americas where from northeast Asia. http://www.inah.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62:10000-years-old-skeleton-extracted-from-flooded-cave&catid=61:anthropology&Itemid=64 Reconstruction: Elizabeth Daynès http://www.daynes.com/en/home.php
This undated photo taken at the France-based Atelier Daynes in Paris, released on Friday, July 23, 2010, by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, shows a scientific reconstruction of an ancient woman known as La Mujer de las Palmas, based on the skeletal remains of a female who lived between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago in Tulum, Mexico. Experts reconstructed what the woman may have looked like based on the remains found in 2002 in a sinkhole cave near the Caribbean resort of Tulum, Mexico. Anthropologist Alejandro Terrazas says the reconstruction resembles people from southeastern Asia areas like Indonesia, even though experts had long believed the first people to migrate to the Americas where from northeast Asia. (AP Photo/ Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History)
Huaorani Tribe One of the indigenous Amazonian tribes in Ecuador, possibly descended from an initial wave of immigration that occurred between around 25 Kya during the Beringian glacial refugium that presented a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska- resulting in a swift peopling of the Americas that spread within 10 K years as far south as Monte Verde in Chile. In the last 40 years, they have shifted from a hunting and gathering stone age society to live mostly in permanent forest settlements. Conclusions from studies of mitochondrial genomes suggesting that all Indigenous Amerindian haplogroups are part of a single founding east Asian population are questioned by fossil evidence in Brazil's Lagoa Santa region. Subsequent immigrants around 10 Kya may have displaced earlier populations in North America which themselves were displaced by later arrivals- the ancestors of modern native-American indians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huaorani
Bison Hunters Bison became the dominant mega fauna to survive the Younger Dryas Climatic Catastrophe and replaced the Columbian Mastodon as a stable in the diet of Clovis culture. After several thousand years, the Clovis may have exchanged technology with the N, Asian populations from Beringia during a several thousand-year interaction eventually dying off, leaving the Folsom the dominant culture who adopted less refined spear point technology to become the direct ancestors of all modern Amerindians.
Beringia Origin Theory "The Ice Age" refers to the most recent colder period that peaked at the Last Glacial Maximum approximately 20,000 years ago, in which extensive ice sheets lay over large parts of the North American and Eurasian continents. It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand survived the Last Glacial Maximum in Beringia becoming isolated by rising glacial walls for at least 5,000 years. Sometime after 16,500 years ago, as the glaciers blocking the way southward melted, the expansion south into the Americas ensued. Ancestors of the malamute dog were likely part of this population as a domesticated dog of adjoining lineage was found in a 30 Kya site in Belgium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia Image: Documentary 'Homo Sapiens" Sagrera TV, Spain
Siberian Hunters - Pleistocene North Asian hunter-gatherers are thought to have migrated over the Beringia land bridge and become the first humans to enter N. America. The fact that spearheads recovered from Pleistocene sites in Siberia are made of bone (with a series of stone chips fitted into a slot along one edge) and have no resemblance to the finely napped Clovis stone points that mark the earliest human presence throughout N. America- some scientists have proposed that the first migration was not via the Beringia land bridge but by Solutrean paleo seal hunters traveling in primitive boats (wood-framed covered in animal hide) along the southern edge of the Laurentide ice sheet that provided a sustainable migration route from the European continent to N. America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solutrean_theory Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
California Before Humans Camels, tapirs, horses, and early llamas roamed southern California 20,000 years ago, but none of those species—not even the horses—survived there after the end of the Ice Age. San Diego Natural History Museum http://www.sdnhm.org Artwork: William Stout http://planetdinosaur.com/paleo_art/william_stout.htm
Pleistocene Campsite Archaelogical evidence indicates human dependence on mammoth hunting was widespread for many thousands of years throughout eastern Europe. Mammoth bone dwellings in Mezhirich, Ukraine, and in the Dneiper River valley of Russia and Ukraine date between 15,000 and 27,000 years ago. Later the culture extended into the Clovis Culture in North America. Homo erectus is known to have consumed mammoth meat as early as 1.8 million years ago. http://blyd.livejournal.com/20460.html
The Cave Bear Ursus spelaeus was a species of bear which lived in Europe during the Pleistocene and became extinct at the beginning of the Last Glacial Maximum about 27,500 years ago. There undoubtedly were regular encounters with homo sapiens who competed with a large population of the giant bears for cave shelters since caves have been discovered with the remains of thousands of bears. The main difference between the cave bear and the brown bear of today is the size: the weight of a male could be up to 1 ton, with shoulder height about 30% bigger than the brown bear. Collections of bear bones at several widely dispersed sites suggest that Neanderthals may have worshiped cave bears. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_bear Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
Cave Art The earliest known European cave paintings date to Aurignacian, some 32,000 years ago. The purpose of the paleolithic cave paintings is not known. The evidence suggests that they were not merely decorations of living areas, since the caves in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing habitation. Also, they are often in areas of caves that are not easily accessed. Some theories hold that they may have been a way of communicating with others, while other theories ascribe them a religious or ceremonial purpose. Smithsonian Museum - Hall of Human Origins http://humanorigins.si.edu/ Artwork: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com
Neanderthal - Ice Age Artwork: Giovanni Caselli http://www.giovannicaselli.com/earlymannew1.html
Cro Magnon The Cro-Magnon were the first early modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens) of the European Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present. Cro-Magnon (a deprecated term- now replaced with "Anatomically Modern or Early Modern Humans") evolved in East Africa some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. An exodus from Africa over the Arabian Peninsula around 60,000 years ago brought modern humans to Eurasia, with one group rapidly settling coastal areas around the Indian Ocean and one group migrating north to steppes of Central Asia. The inland group is the founder of North and East Asians (the "Mongol" people), Caucasoids and large sections of the Middle East and North African population. Migration from the Black Sea area into Europe started some 45,000 ya, probably along the Danubian corridor. By 20,000 years ago, the whole of Europe was settled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
Cro Magnon Hunters In Europe, the first modern humans appear in the archaeological record rather suddenly around 40,000 years ago. The abruptness of the appearance of these Cro-Magnon people could be explained by their migrating into the region from Africa via Southwest Asia. They apparently shared Europe with Neandertals for another 12,000 years. A computer-based analysis of 10 different human DNA sequences suggests interbreeding between people living in Asia, Europe, and Africa for at least 600,000 years although most skeletons of Neandertals and Cro-Magnon people do not show hybrid characteristics. It is also possible that migrations were not only in one direction--people could have migrated into Africa as well. The Genographic Project traced y chromosomes of Toubou of Chad to show that their ancestors had migrated back into northern Africa from populations settled in the middle east some 30 Kya. http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm Artwork: Raúl Martin http://www.raul-martin.net
Meeting As of 2010, genetic evidence suggests interbreeding took place with Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) between roughly 80,000 to 50,000 years ago in the Middle East, resulting in indigenous sub-Saharan Africans having no Neanderthal DNA, and Caucasians and Asians having between 1% and 4% Neanderthal DNA. However, specimens with combined Human and Neanderthal traits have also been found in Spain as recently as 40,000 BC suggesting long term and widespread intermingling of 'anachronistic races' throughout history. The evidence is controversial since Neanderthals lived in Europe and western Asia from 230,000 to 29,000 years ago, petering out soon after the arrival of modern humans from Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal Artwork: Adrie and Alfons Kennis http://home.kpn.nl/alad/index2.html
Mammoth Hunt - Ukraine The largest known species, Songhua River Mammoth, reached heights of at least 16 feet at the shoulder. Mammoths would probably normally weigh in the region of 6 to 8 tons, but exceptionally large males may have exceeded 12 tons. However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asian Elephant. The woolly mammoth was the last species of the genus. Most populations of the woolly mammoth in North America and Eurasia, as well all the Columbian mammoths in North America, died out around the time of the last glacial retreat 10,000 ya. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth
Homo neanderthalensis The Neanderthal (also spelled Neandertal) is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene (the epoch from 2.588 million to 12,000 years BP covering the world's recent period of repeated glaciations). Neanderthals- found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia- are either classified as a subspecies (or race) of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Ventures Out of Africa Leaders of a band of Homo sapiens sapiens are pictured approaching the southern highlands of the Asir Mountains in the Arabian peninsula, 50 Kya. The Djibouti-Aden isthmus formed several times during intermittent glacial event, allowing both early and late H. sapiens to trek or raft into Arabia. During many times in the past, the region was well-watered, with rivers and lakes. Behaviorally modern humans appear to have evolved in Africa about 150,000 years ago and began a sustained migration out of Africa around 50,000 years ago. Pictured are members of a group that may have been as few as 150 individuals that could be ancestors of all modern humans. It is proposed they ranged first to Australia- then to Central Asia. http://www.roperld.com/HomoSapienEvents.htm#ages See also: 285 Ky obsidian "arrowhead points" More: http://www.geo.arizona.edu/web/HumanEvolutionWorkshop/pdf/presentations/Brooks.pdf Digital Diorama: http://evolution-involution.org
Homo neanderthalensis The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus that is known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia. Neanderthals are either classified as a subspecies (or race) of humans (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) or as a separate species (Homo neanderthalensis). The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago and became extinct in Asia by 50,000 years ago and in Europe by 30,000 years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo neanderthal female Female Neanderthal brains were about 200 cm smaller than those of males. This sexual dimorphism should not be a surprise since female bodies were smaller. Modern human female brains are about 10% smaller than those of males for the same reason. It would be a mistake to assume that a minor difference in overall brain size is directly correlated with intelligence among archaic or modern humans. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com Reconstruction: Adrie and Alfons Kennis http://home.kpn.nl/alad/index2.html
Toba Supermassive Eruption The volcanic eruption that resulted in Lake Toba (100 x 30 km) 74,000 years ago, is known to have been by far the biggest eruption of the last 2 million years. The Toba event specifically covered India, Pakistan, and the Gulf region in a blanket of ash 3–15 feet deep. Toba is also regarded by some as having caused worldwide population extinctions as a result of the ‘nuclear winter’ that followed. Although a deep east-west division, or ‘furrow’, is still seen clearly in the genetic record, scholars are conflicted whether the Toba volcano led to severe and wholesale environmental destruction or, as recent research in India suggests, a mosaic of ecological settings was present, and some areas experienced a relatively rapid recovery after the volcanic event. http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/toba2.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory Artwork: http://evolution-involution.org
Neanderthal Family Proto-Neanderthal traits are occasionally grouped to another phenetic 'species', Homo heidelbergensis, or a migrant form, Homo rhodesiensis. By 130,000 years ago, complete Neanderthal characteristics had appeared. These characteristics then disappeared in Asia by 50,000 years ago and in Europe by about 30,000 years ago, with no further individuals having enough Neanderthal morphological traits to be considered as part of Homo neanderthalensis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal Artwork: J. H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com
Homo neanderthalensis Female hunters may have doomed Neanderthals by putting the reproductive core in harm's way and may have contributed to the Neanderthals' extinction, says a recent study. It uses archaeological evidence to argue that Neanderthal females hunted—and were stomped, gored, and worse—alongside males. Pitting the reproductive core of a population that never topped 10,000 against giant beasts could bring doom to a hard-pressed species. http://www.newser.com/story/11439/female-hunters-may-have-doomed-neanderthals.html#ixzz0t9Cq1Xoo Reconstruction: Adrie and Alfons Kennis http://home.kpn.nl/alad/index2.html
Homo sapiens - Treking for 200,000 years Humans, known taxonomically as Homo sapiens, are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo. Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
Homo neanderthal Child The Gibraltar 2 Neanderthal child specimen is represented by 5 cranial fragments recovered by Dorothy Garrod at the Devil’s Tower site in Gibraltar (Garrod et al., 1928). http://www.ifi.uzh.ch/staff/zolli/CAP/Main_face.htm Reconstruction: E. Daynès, Paris http://www.daynes.com
Homo neanderthal As of 2010, genetic evidence suggests interbreeding may have taken place with Homo sapiens sapiens (anatomically modern humans) between roughly 80,000 to 50,000 years ago in the Middle East, resulting in indigenous sub-Saharan Africans having no Neanderthal DNA, and Caucasians and Asians having between 1% and 4% Neanderthal DNA. However, specimens with combined Human and Neanderthal traits have also been found in Spain as recently as 40,000 BC suggesting long term and widespread intermingling of 'anachronistic races' throughout history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal
Interglacial Neanderthal Researchers say genetic sampling suggests that early Homo sapiens interbred with neanderthal about 60,000 years ago in the eastern Mediterranean and, more recently, about 45,000 years ago in eastern Asia. Those two events happened after the first H. sapiens had migrated out of Africa so H. sapiens confined in Africa have no trace of neanderthal inheritance. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100420/full/news.2010.194.html http://bhowc.wordpress.com/2006/03/
Early Homo sapiens idaltu A reconstruction of a large-brained Homo sapiens skull reveals the imposing face of the Herto man. The remains along with others at the site near the village of Herto on the Bouri Peninsula in Ethiopia date to between 160,000 and 154,000 years ago. Large cleavers (7.5 inches long) and other flaked stone tools were used to butcher hippo. Crude stone tools first appear 2.6 million years ago with our australopithecine ancestors. H. sapiens remains in Morocco have been dated to 160 Kya. The earliest H. sapiens specimens found outside of Africa come from a 90 Kya site in Israel but this early colony seemed not to have endured perhaps due to competition from neanderthals. Na Geo July 2010 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/archives Artwork: J. H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com
Homo rhodesiensis (Rhodesian man) is a possible hominin species described from a fossil skull. Other morphologically-comparable remains have been found from the same, or earlier, time period in other widespread African localities. These remains were dated between 300,000 and 125,000 years old. Most current experts believe Rhodesian Man to be within the group of Homo heidelbergensis though other designations such as Homo sapiens arcaicus and Homo sapiens rhodesiensis have also been proposed. It is possible that Homo rhodesiensis was the ancestor of Homo sapiens idaltu (Herto Man), which would be itself at the origin of Homo sapiens sapiens although no direct linkage of the species can so far be determined. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rhodesiensis
Homo erectus pekinensis Peking Man, also called Sinanthropus pekinensis (currently Homo erectus pekinensis), is an example of Homo erectus. A group of fossil specimens was discovered in 1923 near Beijing, China. More recently, the finds have been dated from roughly 500,000 years ago, although a new dating suggests they may be as much as 680,000-780,000 years old. Some Chinese paleoanthropologists have asserted in the past that the modern Chinese (and possibly other ethnic groups) are descendants of Peking Man. However, a recent study undertaken by Chinese geneticist Jin Li showed that the genetic diversity of modern Chinese people is well within that of the whole world population, which suggests there was no inter-breeding between modern human immigrants to East Asia and Homo erectus, such as Peking Man, and that the Chinese are descended from Africa, like all other modern humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus_pekinensis
Homo antecessor Homo antecessor is an extinct human species (or subspecies) dating from 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago, that was discovered in Atapuerca, Spain. Antecessor is one of the earliest known human varieties in Europe. Various archaeologists and anthropologists have debated how H. antecessor related to other Homo species in Europe with suggestions that it was an evolutionary link between Homo ergaster and Homo heidelbergensis, although Richard Klein believed that it was instead a separate species that evolved from H. ergaster or that H. antecessor is the same species of H.heidelbergensis, who inhabited Europe from 600,000 to 250,000 years ago in the Pleistocene. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_antecessor
Homo antecessor "La familía" Portrait of an extended family of early hominids whose fossil remains were discovered in a "pit of bones" site in a cave in Atapuerca, Spain. Anatomical evidence has been uncovered that shows they fabricated tools more than one million years ago so may be the earliest West European hominid. Illustration: Mauricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Homo antecessor Cannibal Feast At the Atapuerca site were numerous examples of cuts where the flesh had been fleshed from the bones of H. antecessor remains, suggesting ritualistic preparation or possibly cannibalism may have been practiced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_antecessor Reconstruction: Ibeas Museum, Burgos, Spain Adaptive Art: http://evolution-involution.org
Homo heidelbergensis The best evidence found for these hominin date around 500,000 years ago. H. heidelbergensis stone tool technology was very close to that of the Acheulean tools used by Homo erectus and is likely to be descended from the morphologically very similar Homo ergaster from Africa. But because H. heidelbergensis had a larger brain-case overlapping the average of modern humans — and had more advanced tools and behavior, it has been given a separate species classification. The species was 6 ft tall on average, and more muscular than modern humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis A Family Portrait Illustration: Adrie and Alfons Kennis http://home.kpn.nl/alad/index2.html
Homo heidelbergensis It is difficult to speak of our ancestors in terms of specific species during this long period of accelerated change from 800,000 to 100,000 years ago. The more biologically progressive post-800,000 B.P. populations in Europe and Africa are commonly classified as a distinct species--Homo heidelbergensis . By 300,000 years ago, some of these populations had begun the evolutionary transition that would end up with Neandertals and other archaic humans (also called archaic Homo sapiens and pre-modern humans). By 100,000 years ago, some populations had evolved into modern humans. Others remained largely unchanged until about 28,000 years ago, when they became extinct. These were the Neandertals. http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_1.htm Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo heidelbergensis. Most experts now agree that H. heidelbergensis is the direct ancestor of H. sapiens (with some uncertainty about such specimens as H. antecessor, now largely considered H. heidelbergensis) and H. neanderthalensis. Because of the radiation of H. heidelbergensis out of Africa and into Europe, the two populations were mostly isolated during the last of the prolonged Quaternary glacial periods. Neanderthals diverged from H. heidelbergensis probably some 300,000 years ago in Europe, H. sapiens probably diverged between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago in Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelbergensis Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo heidelbergensis Position of fosslized skeleton of H. heidelbergensis at Atapuerca found in the Sima de los Huesos site in Spain. Artwork: Mauricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Homo floresiensis Homo floresiensis fossils were discovered in a cave called Liang Bua on the Indonesian island of Flores. This hominid stood only three feet high, earning it the nickname The Hobbit. It lived as recently as 18,000 years ago, which was some 30,000 years after our own species had already been in southeast Asia for 30,000 years or more. http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/10/11/hobbits_again.php Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo floresiensis A recent full-body reconstruction of the ‘little lady of Flores’. The discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003 and of the recentness of its extinction has raised the possibility that numerous descendant species of Homo erectus may have existed in the islands of Southeast Asia and await fossil discovery. Homo erectus soloensis, who lived on Java at least as late as about 50,000 years ago, would be one of them. Some scientists are skeptical of the claim that Homo floresiensis is a descendant of Homo erectus. Reconstruction: Elizabeth Daynès http://www.daynes.com/en/home.php
Pleistocene Landscape of Siberian Tundra Mammoths first appeared in Africa early in the Pleistocene Epoch (the last 1.6 million years of the Earth’s history) and later migrated to Europe, Siberia, and across to North America. Proboscideans were very widespread. Their fossil remains can be found on every continent except Australia and South America. Stone spearpoint evidence showing humans hunted mammoths is widespread and may have started with hominids in Africa as early as 1.8 mya. The last of the large mammoths died out between 12,000-10,000 years ago; the Wrangle Island dwarfs survived until at least until 4700 years ago. The extinction of the larger forms has been attributed to both hunting by humans and climatic change. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene Artwork: Mauricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Gigantopithecus blacki G. blacki is an extinct species of ape that existed for about a million years, going extinct about 100,000 years ago after having been contemporary with modern humans for tens of thousands of years, and co-existing with H. erectus. Based on the fossil evidence, it is believed that adult male G. blacki stood about 9.8 ft tall and weighed as much as 1,200 lbs, making the species two to three times heavier than modern gorillas and nearly five times heavier than the orangutan, its closest living relative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantopithecus Artist: http://www.magicgroup.cz/Portfolios.php?gid=33&by=
Scavenging Elephant Carcass Early humans lived in the Olorgesailie region, in what is now the southern Kenya, between 1.2 million and 490,000 years ago. The elephant butchery site at Olorgesailie, in the 990,000-year-old layer, illustrates the kind of opportunities that existed for hominins in the Olorgesailie basin. More than 2300 stone artifacts were found surrounding the bones of an extinct elephant, Elephas recki. Many of these artifacts were sharp flakes that could have been used to extract meat from the carcass. Smithsonian Museum - Hall of Human Origins http://humanorigins.si.edu/ Artwork: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com
Homo erectus Homo erectus is an extinct species of hominid that originated in Africa—and spread as far as China and Java—from the end of the Pliocene epoch to the later Pleistocene, about 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago. There is still disagreement on the subject of the classification, ancestry, and progeny of H. erectus, with two major alternative hypotheses: erectus may be another name for Homo ergaster, and therefore the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens; or it may be an Asian species distinct from African ergaster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus Credit: Paleoartist: John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Currently, there are two unresolved hypotheses concerning Homo erectus: (1) Specimens assigned to Homo ergaster should be assigned to erectus, which would then be the direct ancestor of later hominids such as Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens; or, alternatively, (2) erectus may be an Asian form distinct from African ergaster. Whichever of these views is correct, Homo erectus is the earliest hominid known outside of Africa, and was perhaps also the first to use fire. Artist: J.H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com
Turkana Boy A nearly complete 1.6-Myo skeleton, found near Lake Turkana, Kenya, belonged to an eight-year-old boy. Nicknamed "Turkana Boy," the fossil is much more fully developed than a modern eight-year-old and probably would have reached six feet as an adult. Turkana Boy is of the species Homo erectus whose reconstructed skeleton - with a narrow pelvis and tall, thin body - is interpreted as showing adaptation to the hot climate and the need to run long distances. However a more recent 1.4 Myo fossil of a female H. erectus from N, Ethiopia showed a shorter stature, wider chest - features more commonly found now in humans from colder, even Arctic climates. Her wide pelvis suggests the birth canal and brain size were co-evolving, as H. erectus adapted to the need to give birth to larger-brained babies above the need to adapt to the pressure of external environmental factors. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/history/turkana.php Artwork: Viktor Deak http://www.anatomicalorigins.com
Nariokotome Boy Nariokotome Boy (more commonly known as Turkana Boy) is the epithet of a fossil discovered at Nariokotome near Lake Turkana in Kenya. It proved to be a nearly complete skeleton of a hominid (Homo erectus or H. ergaster) male, dated to the early Pleistocene 1.5 Mya. He was roughly 8 years old. His jaw shows that he had a diseased gum where a deciduous molar – one of his baby teeth – had been shed. An infection seems to have set in and he probably died of septicaemia (blood poisoning). See also: http://australianmuseum.net.au/How-do-we-know-how-they-died Display: Musée National de Préhistoire, Les Eyzies http://www.nrm.se Reconstruction: Elizebeth Daynès http://www.daynes.com/en/home.php Digital Diorama: http://evolution-involution.org
Homo ergaster The discovery of Turkana boy (H. ergaster) in 1984 gave evidence that, despite its Homo-sapiens-like anatomy, it may not have been capable of producing sounds comparable to modern human speech. Ergaster at least may have communicated with a pre-language lacking the fully developed structure of modern human language, but more developed than the basic communication used by chimpanzees. Such inference has been challenged by the discovery of H. ergaster/erectus vertebrae some 150,000 years older than the Turkana Boy in Dmanisi, Georgia, that reflect vocal capabilities within the range of H. sapiens. Both brain-size and the presence of the Broca's area also support the use of articulate language. Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo ergaster Several different species of the genus primateus Homo lived in Africa around two million years ago. Of these species, Homo ergaster is the most plausible ancestor of modern humans—or we could be descended from a species that has yet to be discovered. Homo ergaster: This species had a body essentially like that of modern humans: long legs, short arms and in some specimens a moderately large brain. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/history/many.php
Homo ergaster Homo ergaster first appeared on the scene about two million years ago. They were tall and slender, with long legs and larger brains than most of their predecessors so may be very early precursors of modern humans. A nearly complete 1.6-million-year-old skeleton, found near Lake Turkana, Kenya, belonged to an eight-year-old boy. Nicknamed "Turkana Boy," Turkana Boy and his kind were tall and lanky—and completely at home striding out on the open savanna. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/history/ Diorama: American Musum of Natural History: Spitzer Hall of Human Origins http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/
Homo ergaster Homo ergaster is one of the more problematic of somewhat accepted species designations currently tossed around in anthropological literature. Each individual researcher that sees ergaster as a valid taxon sees different specimens as belonging or not belonging to the taxon. Many researchers deny any validity to the species at all. On the whole though, most researchers see too little difference between ergaster and erectus to form the basis of a species of the former, separated from the latter. As a general rule of thumb, one can consider most attributed ergaster specimens to be early erectus geographically confined to Africa (however, this is not a hard and fast rule). Even if ergaster specimens are considered as a different taxon than erectus, the erectus material is still closer to modern humans cladistically. In short at this time, ergaster basically means early H. erectus from Africa. http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/homoergaster.htm Artwork: Mauricio Anton http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Homo georgicus H. georgicus is a species of Homo that was suggested in 2002 to describe fossil skulls and jaws found in Dmanisi, Georgia in 1999 and 2001, which seem intermediate between Homo habilis and H. erectus. A partial skeleton was discovered in 2001. The fossils are about 1.8 million years old. Size differences in the fossil evidence led scientists to name Homo georgicus a new species, which would be the descendant of Homo habilis and ancestor of Asian Homo erectus. In Georgia the specimens with a brain half brain the size compared to anatomically modern humans were considered the smallest until the discovery of Homo floresiensis from the island of Flores in 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_georgicus
Dmanisi Hominids The skull and jawbone of a small, lightly-built individual, discovered at an archeological site in Dmanisi, Georgia, may call into question the prevailing idea that larger brain size was behind the migration of human ancestors out of Africa. The scientists found a petite new individual, with a small brain, thin brow ridge, short nose, and huge canine teeth. The specimens compare in size and morphology with Homo ergaster from Koobi Fora, Kenya. All three specimens are approximately 1.75 million years old. The little "people" have caused a lively debate amongst palaeoanthropologists. Many experts believe it was Homo erectus who first ventured out of Africa and spread around Asia but Dmanisi hominids were not typical of the tall-standing, big brained Homo erectus. This has led some to believe they may have been Homo habilis or H. georgicus but these relatively ape-like species were not thought to have lived outside Africa. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0504/feature2/multimedia.html
Daminisi Hominin Reconstruction Professor David Lordkipanidze, general director of the Georgia National Museum raised the prospect that Homo erectus may have evolved in Eurasia from the more primitive-looking Dmanisi population and then migrated back to Africa to eventually give rise to our own species, Homo sapiens – modern man. Although their brains were tiny compared to ours (600 cc compared to 1,000 cc) they were sophisticated tool makers with high social and cognitive skills. The only human fossil to predate the Dmanisi specimens are of an archaic species Homo habilis, or "handy man", found only in Africa, which used simple stone tools and lived between about 2.5 million and 1.6 million years ago. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-skull-that-rewrites-the-history-of-man-1783861.html Reconstruction: Mauricio Antón www.mauricioanton.com/
Homo rudolfensis Homo rudolfensis is a fossil human species discovered by a team led by anthropologist Richard Leakey and zoologist Meave Leakey in 1972 in Kenya. The scientific name Homo rudolfensis was proposed for the specimen skull that has an estimated age of 1.9 million years. Originally assigned initially to Homo habilis, the skull was at first incorrectly dated at nearly three million years old. The differences in this skull, when compared to others of the Homo habilis species, are too pronounced, leading to the presumption of a Homo rudolfensis species, contemporary with Homo habilis. It is not certain if H. rudolfensis was ancestral to the later species in Homo, or if H. habilis was, or if some third species yet to be discovered was. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rudolfensis
Homo rudolfensis H. rudolfensis is a fossil human species discovered in 1972, at Koobi Fora at Lake Turkana in Kenya with an estimated age of 1.9 million years. Originally thought to be a member of the species Homo habilis, the fossil was the center of much debate concerning its species. Assigned initially to Homo habilis, the skull was at first incorrectly dated at nearly three million years old. The differences in this skull, when compared to others of the Homo habilis species, are too pronounced, leading to the presumption of a Homo rudolfensis species, contemporary with Homo habilis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rudolfensis
Homo rudolfensis Homo rudolfensis: from Koobi Fora in the Lake Turkana basin, Kenya. It has one really critical feature: a braincase size of 775 cubic centimeters, which is considerably above the upper end of H. habilis braincase size. At least one other braincase from the same region also shows such a large cranial capacity. Originally considered to be H. habilis, the ways in which H. rudolfensis differs is in its larger braincase, longer face, and larger molar and premolar teeth. Due to the last two features, though, some scientists still wonder whether this ‘species’ might better be considered an Australopithecus, although one with a large brain!
Homo habilis H. habilis fossils were subjected to intense study by the multidisciplinary team of Louis Leakey, John Napier, and Phillip Tobias. They placed the material which fell outside the known range of A. africanus. Also, the large brain size and shape of the hand suggested a closer affinity with Homo. In January 1964, the team announced the new species Homo habilis. Leakey believed that habilis was a direct human ancestor, with erectus out of the picture. There are now at least two species of early Homo (whether habilis and rudolfensis or an undescribed species) living prior to 2.0 myr. In addition, H. erectus (which is almost universally accepted as a direct human ancestor) continues to be pushed further back into the paleontological record, making it possible that it is the first Homo ancestor of modern humans. http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/homohabilis.htm Credit: Paleoartist: John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Homo habilis at Lake Turkana Homo habilis ("handy man") is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately 2.3 to 1.4 million years ago at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. Homo habilis (or possibly H. rudolfensis) is the earliest known species of the genus Homo. In its appearance and morphology, H. habilis is thus the least similar to modern humans of all species in the genus (except possibly H. rudolfensis). H. habilis was short and had disproportionately long arms compared to modern humans; however, it had a less protruding face than the australopithecines from which it is thought to have descended. H. habilis had a cranial capacity slightly less than half of the size of modern humans. Despite the ape-like morphology of the bodies, H. habilis remains are often accompanied by primitive stone tools. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis Artist: Giovanni Caselli http://www.giovannicaselli.com/earlymannew1.html
Homo habilis Homo habilis has often been thought to be the ancestor of the more gracile and sophisticated Homo ergaster, which in turn gave rise to the more human-appearing species, Homo erectus. Debates continue over whether H. habilis is a direct human ancestor, and whether all of the known fossils are properly attributed to the species. However, in 2007, new findings suggest that the two species coexisted and may be separate lineages from a common ancestor instead of H. erectus being descended from H. habilis. Diorama at Nairobi National Museums: http://www.museums.or.ke/index.php
Australopithecus sediba In 2010, the richest collection of fossil skeletons ever found were discovered at a site called Malapa in South Africa and could represent the long-sought ancestor of the genus Homo. A. sediba remains date to 1.98 mya and may be an intermediate species between the primitive Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy - a millon years older) and early hominins. Many anatomical features hark back to earlier australopiths, such as A. africanus, from between two and three million years ago. On the human side of the ledger, long legs, a modern ankle and surprisingly humanlike pelvis built for a fully bipedal stride; smaller teeth and chewing muscles; a projecting nose and some other features of the face; and a remarkable, precision-grip hand - traits enough for the team to propose it as the australopith species most likely to have given rise to Homo. More: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/08/malapa-fossils/fischman-text Artwork: John Gurch http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Paranthropus boisei P. boisei was an early hominin and described as the largest of the Paranthropus species. It lived from about 2.6 until about 1.2 million years ago during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs in Eastern Africa. The brain volume is quite small, not much larger in comparison to Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus. It had a skull highly specialized for heavy chewing and several traits seen in modern day gorillas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei
Parenthropus boisei (previously Autralopithecus boisei) P. boisei is usually thought to descend from earlier P. aethiopicus (who inhabited the same geographic area just a few hundred thousand years before) and lived alongside several other species of early humans such as Homo habilis, during its 1.1 million year existence. However, H. habilis, possibly because of its early tool innovation and a less specialized diet, became the precursor of an entire line of new species, whereas Paranthropus boisei and its robust relatives disappeared from the fossil record. Homo habilis may also have coexisted with Homo erectus in Africa for a period of 500,000 years. H P. boisei belongs to just one of the many side branches of human evolution, which most scientists agree includes all Paranthropus species and did not lead to H.sapiens. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/paranthropus-boisei Reconstruction: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Australopithecus africanus A. africanus was an early hominid, an australopithecine, who lived between 2–3 million years ago in the Pliocene. In common with the older Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus was slenderly built, or gracile, and was thought to have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. Fossil remains indicate that A. africanus was significantly more like modern humans than A. afarensis, with a more human-like cranium permitting a larger brain and more humanoid facial features. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_africanus Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Australopithecus africanus Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Australopithecus africanus Perhaps one of the last members of his species to lose the struggle against extinction. Artwork: Mauricio Anton http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Paranthropus (or Australopithecus) robustus Paranthropus robustus (considered for a time by the scientific community as Australopithecus robustus) is generally dated to have lived between 2.0 and 1.2 million years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_robustus Artwork: Giovanni Caselli http://www.giovannicaselli.com/earlymannew1.html
Paranthropus robustus P. robustus (aka Australopithecus robustus) known from a 2 M year-old fossil find in South Africa, had a head shaped a bit like a gorilla's with a more massive built jaw and teeth in comparison to hominins within the Homo lineage. Males may have stood only 4 feet tall and weighed 120 lb while females stood just under 3 feet 2 inches tall and weighed only 90 lb, indicating a pronounced sexual dimorphism. P. robustus had large sagittal crests, jaws, jaw muscles, and post-canine teeth that were adapted to serve in the dry environment that they lived in. The average brain size of P. robustus measured to only 410 and 530 cc, about as large as a chimpanzee's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_robustus Artwork: Maricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com National Geographic, May, 2000
Australopithecus garhi National Geograhic magazine places Au. garhi in direct ancestral lineage to H. sapiens- midway between, Au. afarensis and H. erectus. It's teeth are described as having some Homo features but otherwise as a clever, two-legged primate eking out a furtive existence among larger, faster predators and avoiding their jaws long enough to pass on its ripening intelligence on to the next generation. Na Geo July 2010 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/archives Artwork: J. H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com
Australopithecus garhi Australopithecus garhi is a gracile australopithecine species whose fossils were discovered in 1996 by a research team led by Ethiopian paleontologist Berhane Asfaw and Tim White, an American paleontologist. Few primitive shaped stone tool artifacts closely resembling Olduwan technology were discovered with the A. garhi fossils, dating back roughly 2.5 and 2.6 million years old. The hominin remains are believed to be a human ancestor species and the final missing link between the Australopithecus genus and the human genus, Homo. A. garhi may be the first hominid whose diet included other animals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_garhi Artwork: Adrie and Alfons Kennis http://home.kpn.nl/alad/index2.html
Australopithecus garhi An alternative reconstruction showing a more primitive ape-like specimen. On open ground our Australopithecus ancestors were more likely to be prey for lions and hyenas than competitors for their kills. Then the game changed. Crude stone tools first appear 2.6 million years ago. Some 100,000 years later, hominids on the Bouri Peninsula in Ethiopia used stone tools to scavenge meat and marrow from large mammal carcasses. Such high-energy foods would be the perfect diet for evolving the metabolically expensive bigger brains characteristic of later Homo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_garhi
Paranthropus aethiopicus P. aethiopicus is an extinct species of hominid discovered in 1985 in West Turkana, Kenya. Known as the "Black Skull" due to the dark coloration of the bone, caused by high levels of manganese), it is one of the earliest examples of robust Pliocene hominids. The skull is dated to 2.5 million years ago, older than the later forms of robust australopithecines. The features are quite primitive and share many traits with Australopithecus afarensis; thus P. aethiopicus is likely to be a direct descendant but along with Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus and some other Austraopithicines is on an evolutionary branch of the hominid tree, distinctly diverging from the Homo (human) lineage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_aethiopicus Artwork: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com
Paranthropus aethiopicus Fossils of P. aethiopicus exhibit a mixture of features in the braincase (the parts of the skull that enclose the brain) that resemble Au. afarensis with facial and dental features that are very similar to those in Paranthropus boisei and Paranthropus robustus. Together with its age (which succeeds Au. afarensis and precedes P. boisei and P. robustus), these features of P. aethiopicus have helped scientists understand the origins of the robust australopiths but consensus on the precise evolutionary relationships among these species and between these species and earlier hominins has not been reached. The scarcity of fossil evidence leaves room for divergent reconstructions. http://www.steinershow.org/taxonomy/term/181?page=3 Artwork: Viktor Deak in book http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/reviews.asp?isbn=9780300100471 The Last Human
Australopithecus afarensis ("Lucy") A re-creation of the A. afarensis known as Lucy. Dated at 3.2 million years ago, the set of fossilized pelvic and leg bones found in the badlands of Hadar, Ethiopia indicated that she had walked upright. The species is believed to be the common ancestor of all later human species, including modern humans. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/photogalleries/afarensisancestors/photo2.html
Australopithecus afarensis Australopithecus afarensis is an extinct hominin which lived between 3.7 and 2.9 million years ago. A. afarensis was slenderly built, like the younger Australopithecus africanus. It is thought that A. afarensis was ancestral to both the genus Australopithecus and the genus Homo, which includes the modern human species, Homo sapiens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afarensis
Australopithecus afarensis One of the earliest of modern man's ancestors, Australopithecus afarensis lived between 4 million and 3.2 million years ago in eastern Africa. The teeth and jaws of two dozen hominids where uncovered at Laetoli in Tanzania along with a now famous set of footprints where two early hominids once walked along the shore of an ancient lake around 3.6 million years ago. More individuals were also found at Hadar in Ethiopia and another at Lake Turkana in Kenya. Among those discovered at Hadar was Lucy, a nearly complete skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis. Weighing about 60 pounds and standing about 3 and 1/2 feet high, Lucy lived about 2.9 million years ago when the eastern region of Africa was semiarid savanna with rainy and dry seasons. http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/afarensis.html
Lucy- Houston Museum A full-sized model of Dinqnesh (Lucy), the 3.2 million-year-old member of the Australopithecus afarensis, is displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Houston, Texas. http://www.hmns.org/files/marketing/lucy.5.lucyfacts.pdf Reconstruction: John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Australopithecus afarensis (Male) A reconstruction of an A. afarensis male exhibits what experts believe were the apelike features of our ancient ancestors. With a protruding jaw, strong chewing muscles, expansive cheekbones, and a heavy brow, such a skull is thought to have held a brain about one-third the size of a modern human's. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/photogalleries/afarensisancestors/photo4.html
Australopithecus afarensis Reconstruction of A. afarensis child named "Salem" even older than lucy. (National Museum) Lucy was also found in the Awash region, which is famed for its early human fossils. Many anthropologists think A. afarensis was ancestral to the genus Homo, though its exact position in the human family tree remains a matter for debate. Photo: National Geographic http://www.donsmaps.com/lucysbaby.html
Homo afarensis Group Signaling with waves and calls, an afarensis group warily moves on after foraging for food. Pollen evidence proves that these hominids lived in forests of juniper and olive trees. Their hips, knees, and ankles enabled a humanlike walk, But long, powerful forearms, curved fingers and toes, and upward tilting shoulders all indicate that afarensis also climbed trees, probably to search for fruits and nuts, possibly to escape predators or to sleep. Thickly muscled, males appear to have averaged five feet and a hundred pounds - at least a foot taller an two-thirds heavier than females. Artwork: National Geographic Magazine, March, 1996
Anancus arvernensis The order Proboscidea originated in Africa but by the late Miocene had spread over Eurasia. Gomphothere mastodon were endemic to Europe, Africa and Asia during the Pliocene. An A. arvernensis fossil tusk found in late Pliocene sediments (3.4 mya) Northern Pakistan had a length of 8 ft 11 inch so mature specimens could probably reach ten feet or more. It is almost certain that these mastodon and Australopithecus afarensis would have habituated to one another. more: Page 81 http://books.google.com/books?id=kSELAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=Anancus+Africa+Pliocene&source=bl&ots=Sx7RX4nXp_&sig=bMJKVsbtiruB3CaZHkuZLDT4SjY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VzVuT66QH4SbtwfrkrW2Bg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Anancus%20Africa%20Pliocene&f=false Artwork: Zdenek Burian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zden%C4%9Bk_Burian
Australopithecus afarensis A portrayal of a scene reminiscent of the Laetoli footprints where a pair of A. afarensis left fossil impressions as they walked over a volcanic ashbed. Here the scene is 50K years earlier before the Pliocene forests of the Rift Valley were transformed by cooler, more arid climate into vast grasslands. An A. afarensis couple leave their fleeting footprints in the mud shore of an upland lake. In background: Anacus arvernensis, a Gomphothere mastodon. Adaptive Artwork: http://evolution-involution.org
A. afarensis An alternative reconstruction of Lucy. Considering the dramatic differences in H. sapiens anatomies and facial features we are all familiar with, it should be expected that reconstructions that are often based on fossil evidence less than a complete jawbone, will present a variety of interpretations.
Australopithecus afarensis Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Kenyanthropus platyops K. platyops is a 3.5 to 3.2 million year old (Pliocene) hominin fossil that was discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1999 by Justus Erus, who was part of Meave Leakey's team. Leaky (2001) proposes that the fossil represents an entirely new hominin genus, while others classify it as a separate species of Australopithecus, Australopithecus platyops, and yet others interpret it as a individual of Australopithecus afarensis. According to anthropologist Daniel Lieberman, multiple species of hominin had been discovered from time periods earlier and later than Lucy and her kin, but the fossil record showed only one ancestor for the middle Pliocene, approximately 3.5 million years ago. Kenyanthropus platyops helps to fill in the picture of this period of evolution, said Lieberman. It indicates that multiple, different-looking species coexisted and filled different ecological niches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyanthropus
Kenyanthropus platyops Two isolated fossils (a fragmentary upper jaw and badly abraded skull) are all that can be clearly assigned to this species. The fossils were found in Kenya and are believed to have originated three million, three hundred thousand years ago. Kenyanthropus may not even represent a valid taxon, as the specimens are so distorted by matrix-filled cracks that meaningful morphological characteristics are next to impossible to assess with confidence. It may simply be a specimen of Australopithecus afarensis, which is known from the same time period and geographic area, or its own species within Australopithicus, A. platyops. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenyanthropus Artwork: Viktor Deak http://www.anatomicalorigins.com
Australopithecus anamensis A. anamensis is the earliest Austrolopithecine- dated to about 4.2 million years ago and evolved some 200 Ky after Ardi became extinct. He lived perhaps 200 Ky before Lucy had evolved but lived contemporaneously with her for some 200 Ky before his extinction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australopithecus_anamensis Reconstruction: Berlin Museum of Natural History
Australopithecus anamensis The fossil remains were initially recovered from a site on the west side of Lake Turkana in Kenya, a site called Kanapoi. For years the specimen's species was debated by those who saw it as Australopithecus, due to its age of approximately 4 Myr, and those who saw it as Homo. After 30 years, the fossil material was given the name Australopithecus anamensis by Meave Leakey et al, because of several important differences with A. afarensis that seem to distinguish it as a separate species. It seems fairly reliable to distinguish the Kanapoi material from A. ramidus, however, it is highly questionable that this material is a separate species from A. afarensis. This will undoubtedly be debated until more specimens are obtained and a clearer comparison between samples can be made. In any case, the similar but more primitive anatomy of anamensis relative to afarensis make it a good candidate for a precursor to afarensis. http://www.modernhumanorigins.net/anamensis.html
Ardipithecus ramidus and kadabba Substantial fossil specimens for A. ramidus have been found in Ethiopia's Afar Region that are dated to 4.4 million years ago. In 2009, paleontologists formally classified the remains of a small-brained 110 lb female, nicknamed "Ardi", first unearthed in 1994 that includes most of the skull and teeth, as well as the pelvis, hands, and feet. Ardi had a brain about the same size as a modern bonobo, but much smaller than the brain of australopithecines like Lucy. A. ramidus existed more recently than the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, and thus is not fully representative of that common ancestor. Ardipithecus kadabba although known only from teeth and bits and pieces of skeletal bones is a distinct species from A. ramadis, and is dated to approximately 5.6 million years ago. It has been described as a "probable chronospecies" (i.e. ancestor) of A. ramidus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus_ramidus
Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091001110548.htm Probable life appearance in anterior view Artist: J.H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com
Ardipithecus ramidus A ramidus is one of the earliest hominids and reconstructions show a wide range of interpretations of the fossil evidence. Our human phylogeny becomes more enigmatic with so many species existing so close to the origin of hominids suggesting that even then our family tree could be described as bushy, rather than having the single linear progression from species to species that is so often presented in images of human evolution. http://sci.waikato.ac.nz/evolution/HumanEvolution.shtml#Theearliesthominids Artist: Julius T. Csotonyi, Natural History Illustrator and Paleo-artist http://csotonyi.com/
Ardipithecus ramidus Ardipithecus ramidus is about half a million years older than the earliest Australopithecus afarensis and is a bit closer to the last common ancestor between living chimpanzees and humans. This interpretation of Ardi's fossil shows her as an ape-like knuckle-walker contrasting the majority view that she exhibited incipient bipedalism. http://scienceblogs.com/seed/2009/10/the_buzz_the_ardi_bandwagon.php
Ardipithecus ramidus Although having incipient bipedality, Ardi lived in a woodland rather than a savannas environment 4.4 million years ago. Even older hominid fossils from the Afar region include Ardipithicus kadabba extending back 5.8 my and likely a chronospecies of Au. ramidus bearing the same relationship to it that Au. anamensis bears to Au. afarensis. Included in this continuum are even older remains tentatively named Orrorin tugenensis (6 my) and Sahelanthopus tchadensis dated close to 7 million years. Between 23 and 5 million years ago a tremendous diversity of ape species evolved throughout most of Africa and Eurasia in the Miocene epoch. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com Artwork: Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com
Pliocene Pacific Marine Life Marine life off southern California 3.5 million years ago. San Diego Natural History Museum http://www.sdnhm.org Artwork: William Stout http://planetdinosaur.com/paleo_art/william_stout.htm
Sahelanthopus tchadensis S. tchadensis is an extinct hominid species that is dated to about 7 million years ago. Whether it can be regarded as part of the Hominidae tree is unclear; there are arguments both supporting and rejecting it. Another complication in its classification is that it is older than the human-chimpanzee divergence (estimated to 6.3 to 5.4 million years ago) seen in genetic data and that there are few if any specimens other than the partial cranium known as Toumaï. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelanthropus Reconstruction: Elizabeth Daynès http://www.daynes.com/en/home.php
Anthropopithecus troglodytes kooloo kamba (Bonobo) At first assumed to be a slightly smaller sub-species of chimpanzee, the bonobo was originally called a pygmy chimp. A few years after the Belgian discovery, however, the bonobo was accorded its place as a distinct species alongside the other great apes: gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan. The bonobos' body proportions, however, compare more favorably than any other living ape to the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of Australopithecus afarensis, that transitional creature between ape and man that anthropologists named Lucy. About 6 million years ago, the human lineage split off from the rest of the primate family tree. Three million years ago, the bonobo went its separate way. http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/bonobo.html Photo: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/pix/sdz3/Bonobo2.html
Common Chimpanzee Recent DNA evidence suggests the Bonobo and Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) species separated from each other less than one million years ago (similar in relation between between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals). The chimpanzee line split from the last common ancestor of the human line approximately six million years ago. Because no species other than Homo sapiens has survived from the human line of that branching, both chimpanzee species are the closest living relatives of humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chimpanzee Photo: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=7&search=Origins%20blog
Oreopithecus bambolii Oreopithecus bambolii evolved in isolation from other animals for at least two million years on an island in the Mediterranean where Tuscany in Italy is found today. A cooling phase around 9 million years ago transformed a tropical island into a temperate one characteristic of middle European biomes at the time. There were no large predators on the island and the apes didn't have any natural enemies. Later, probably during the ice age when the sea level dropped all over the world, a land bridge emerged and connected the island with the mainland. New species, among them large predators, were then free to invade this isolated environment where animals like the Swamp Ape were easy prey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreopithecus
Anoiapithecus brevirostris Researchers have discovered a fossilized face and jaw from a previously unknown hominoid primate genus in Spain dating to the Middle Miocene era, roughly 12 million years ago. Nicknamed “Lluc,” the male bears a strikingly “modern” facial appearance with a flat face, rather than a protruding one. The finding sheds important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans. The find raises the possibility that pongines (orangutans and related forms) and hominines (African apes and humans) separately evolved in Eurasia and Africa, respectively, from different kenyapithecine ancestors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoiapithecus Reconstruction: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Ramapithicus Ramapithecus (Sivapithecus) dated from the Middle and Late Miocene epochs (about 16.6 to 5.3 million years ago). Sivapithecus was about 4.9 ft in body length, similar in size to a modern orangutan. In most respects, it would have resembled a chimpanzee, but its face was closer to that of an orangutan. The shape of its wrists and general body proportions suggest that it may have spent a significant amount of its time on the ground, as well as in trees. It had large canine teeth, and heavy molars, suggesting a diet of relatively tough food, such as seeds and savanna grasses. Specimens once assigned to the genus Ramapithecus are now considered by most researchers to belong to one or more species of Sivapithecus. It is no longer regarded as a likely ancestor of humans and may have been the ancestor to the modern orangutans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramapithecus
Proconsul africanus (Hopwood, 1933) The 18-million-year-old fossil species has been considered a possible ancestor of both great and lesser apes, and of humans but the exact classification of Proconsul currently favors a position between the monkeys and the apes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proconsul_africanus
Proconsul africanus http://www.magicgroup.cz/Portfolios.php?gid=33&by=
Miocene Epoch The Miocene is a geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.33 million years before the present. The Miocene follows the Oligocene Epoch and is followed by the Pliocene Epoch. The Miocene is the first epoch of the Neogene Period. The Earth went from the Oligocene Epoch through the Miocene and into the Pliocene as it cooled into a series of Ice Ages. Of the modern geologic features, only the land bridge between South America and North America was absent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miocene Artwork: Mauricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Notharctus tenebrosus With the beginning of modern climates, marked by the formation of the first Antarctic ice in the early Oligocene around 30 million years ago. A primate from this time was Notharctus. Fossil evidence found in Germany in the 1980s was determined to be about 16.5 million years old, some 1.5 million years older than similar species from East Africa and challenging the original theory regarding human ancestry originating on the African continent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
Extinct Primates top: (Section of mural at AMNH (by J.H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com) depicts [from left]: putative orangutan relative Sivapithecus - proconsul - squirrellike Plesiadapis ) Image at right - ramapithecus. bottom: dryopithicus - pliesiadapis (by Keiji Terakoshi http://www.terakoshi.com/Enindex.html) Image at right - tarsierfoss While most living primates fall fairly neatly into two main groups- the Strepsirrini (the suborder that embraces lemurs, lorises and galagos) and the Haplorrhini (the one that includes monkeys,apes and humans) - tarsiers seem to belong to both at once. Their lineage is believed to have separated from all other Haplorrhini as early as 78 Mya. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/humanorigins/past/extinct.php
Aegyptopithecus About 37 million years ago, the primates split into two branches that evolved separately, the prosimians and the anthropoids. The prosimians evolved into the present-day lemurs, eye-eyes, lorises, bush babies, and tarsiers. Anthropoid primates resembling some current monkeys first appeared about 37 million years ago, near the end of the Eocene epoch. Early anthropoids were arboreal and vegetarian. They lived in forests, ate mostly seeds and fruits, and had tails, shorter snouts and forward-looking eyes. During the Oligocene epoch, 34 to 23 million years ago, newly-evolved monkey species replaced many of the older primates, the prosimians. Some early monkeys, like Aegyptopithecus, were larger than their prosimian ancestors and weighed about 16 pounds. Anthropoids developed independently in the separated African and South American continents. Two types emerged, the New World monkeys, the platyrrhini, and the Old World monkeys, the catarrhini. http://internetlooks.com/humanorigins.html
Chesapeake Impact An artist's rendering shows a giant asteroid or comet plunged into Earth near what is now the Chesapeake Bay 35 million years ago. Researchers are simulating comet impacts to see if they might help proliferate the left-handedness in molecules that life on Earth depends upon. There is evidence from meteorite studies that amino acids may have been delivered repeatedly to early Earth from space. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33008390/ns/technology_and_science-space/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay_impact_crater
Weasel Lemurs The evolutionary history of lemurs occurred in isolation from other primates on the island of Madagascar for at least 40 million years. Lemurs are prosimian primates belonging to the suborder Strepsirrhini, (lemurs, lorises, galagos, aye-aye, and relatives) which branched off from other primates less than 63 mya (million years ago). They share some traits with the most basal primates, and thus are often confused as being ancestral to modern monkeys, apes, and humans. Instead, they merely resemble ancestral primates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemur_evolutionary_history
Galago senegalensis PT (Bush Baby) May be a living primate with superficial features closely resembling one of our early ancestral primate relatives. A low-coverage genomic sequence of the Northern Greater Galago, Otolemur garnettii, is in progress. As it is a 'primitive' primate, the sequence will be particularly useful in bridging the sequences of higher primates (macaque, chimp, human) to close non-primates such as rodents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_baby Artwork: Carl Buell http://www.carlbuell.com/
Aye aye The Aye-aye (Daubentonia madagascariensis) is a lemur, a primate native to Madagascar that combines rodent-like teeth with a long, thin middle finger to fill the same ecological niche as a woodpecker. Due to its derived morphological features, the classification of the Aye-aye has been debated since its discovery. The possession of continually growing incisors (front teeth) parallels those of rodents, leading early naturalists to mistakenly classify the Aye-aye within mammalian order Rodentia. The Aye-aye's classification with the order Primates has been just as uncertain. It has been considered of indeterminate relation to all living primates. In 2008, the Aye-aye family (Daubentoniidae) was confirmed to be mostly closely related to the Malagasy lemurs, likely having descended from the same ancestral population that colonized the island. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aye-aye
Early Oligocene - N. America The transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene epoch, occurring approximately 47 to 30 million years ago, was the most dramatic episode of climatic and biotic change since the demise of the dinosaurs. The mild tropical climates of the Paleocene and early Eocene were replaced by modern climatic conditions and extremes, including glacial ice in Antarctica. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligocene The Terrestrial Eocene-Oligocene Transition in North America: This book summarizes the latest information in the dating and correlation of the strata of late middle Eocene through early Oligocene age in North America. http://www.amazon.com/Terrestrial-Eocene-Oligocene-Transition-North-America/dp/0521433878 Artwork: J.H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu/ Species Legend: http://maya-gaia.angelfire.com/early_oligocene_text.html
Oligocene Epoch The Oligocene is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 34 million to 23 million years before the present. The name Oligocene comes from the Greek (oligos, few) and (kainos, new), and refers to the sparsity of additional modern mammalian faunas after a burst of evolution during the Eocene. The Oligocene follows the Eocene Epoch and is followed by the Miocene Epoch. The start of the Oligocene is marked by a major extinction event, a faunal replacement of European with Asian fauna except for the endemic rodent and marsupial families called the Grande Coupure. During this period, the continents continued to drift toward their present positions. There appears to have been a land bridge in the early Oligocene between North America and Europe since the faunas of the two regions are very similar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligocene Artwork: Mauricio Antón http://www.mauricioanton.com/
Andrewsarchus Mesonychia ("Middle Claws") are an extinct order of medium to large-sized carnivorous mammals that were closely related to artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates), and to cetaceans (dolphins and whales). Some experts unite Mesonychia with the whales to form the clade "Cete." They first appeared in the Early Paleocene and went into a sharp decline at the end of the Eocene and died out entirely when the last genus, Mongolestes became extinct in the Early Oligocene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus
Cenozoic Era The Cenozoic Era is the most recent of the three classic geological eras and covers the period from 65.5 million years ago to the present. It is marked by the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous that saw the demise of the last non-avian dinosaurs and the end of the Mesozoic Era. In the earlier part of the Cenozoic, the world was dominated by the birds, terrestrial crocodiles and a handful of primitive large mammal groups But as the forests began to recede and the climate began to cool, during the Cenozoic, mammals diverged from a few small, simple, generalized creatures into a diverse collection of terrestrial, marine, and flying animals. Pictured in foreground are one of many species of small protoprimates radiating out from Plesiadapis-type ancestors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenozoic
Middle Eocene - N. America The global warming events that heralded the onset of the Eocene caused tropical habitats in the interior of North America to deteriorate creating more open woodlands beginning about 42 million years ago. See Species Legend: http://maya-gaia.angelfire.com/middle_eocene_text.html http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S003101821000458X The Eocene Epoch, lasting from about 56 to 34 million years ago, is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The start of the Eocene is marked by the emergence of the first modern mammals. The end is set at a major extinction event called Grande Coupure (the "Great Break" in continuity), which may be related to the impact of one or more large bolides in Siberia and in what is now Chesapeake Bay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene Artwork: J.H. Matternes http://www.jay-matternes.com Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu/
Darwinius masillae ("ida") Darwinius masillae named "Ida", a 47-million-year-old primate skeleton of an immature female from Messel, Germany represents the most complete fossil primate ever found, including both skeleton, soft body outline and contents of the digestive tract. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723 Illustration: Bogdan Bocianowski
Darwinius masillae Scientists have presented D. masillae, a superbly preserved fossil from the world famous Messel fossil site in Germany, as evidence to support the idea that anthropoids could have evolved from adapoids, a group of arboreal quadrupeds that lived over 55 million years ago. On the other side of the debate are scientists who see evidence that the adapoids were the ancestors of lemurs and lorises, not anthropoids. Instead, they argue that the ancestor of anthropoids evolved from the omomyoids, another group of arboreal quadrupeds that lived at the same time as the adapoids during the Paleocene and Eocene epochs (66 to 35 million years ago). http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/05/darwinius-and-the-real-missing-link.html Artwork: Julius T. Csostonyi http://csotonyi.com
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - Detail 1 ...56 mya a mysterious surge of carbon into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In a geologic eyeblink life was forever changed. Earth was hot and free of ice at the end of the Paleocene epoch, with sea level 220 feet higher than now, the Americas not yet joined were smaller. Scientists call this fever period that lasted 150,000 years the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM and it triggered an explosion of mammalian evolution. More: http://http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/hothouse-earth/kunzig-text Legend 1: http://meta-gaia.angelfire.com/mammal_rise1_legend.html Artwork: Aldo Chiappe for National Geographic Magazine October, 2011
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - Detail 2 ...56 mya the carbon released in the atmosphere equaled that which would result if Earth's total fossil fuel reserve were used up in 100 years - temperatures at the North Pole hit 74 degees F. Humans, along with every primate living tody, are descended from a PETM primate- just as perissodactyl such as horses, camels and rhinos are descended from another PETM ancestor, and ruminants such as deer, cows and sheep from still another. Some species that suddenly showed up in North America may have migrated from Asia across a forested arctic landbridge. More: http://http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/hothouse-earth/kunzig-text Legend 2: http://meta-gaia.angelfire.com/mammal_rise2_legend.html Artwork: Aldo Chiappe for National Geographic Magazine October, 2011
Pen-Tailed Tree Shrew The Pen-tailed Treeshrew (Ptilocercus lowii) is the extant species with the closest resemblance to our earliest primate ancestor- Dryomommys. It is a species of treeshrew in the Ptilocercidae family found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The Pen-tailed Treeshrew exhibits an instinct very close to our human nature as it is one of seven known wild mammals that chronically consume alcohol. A study of the treeshrew in Malaysia found that it spends several hours consuming the equivalent of 10 to 12 glasses of wine with an alcohol content of up to 3.8% every night drinking naturally-fermented nectar of the bertam palm. Despite consuming relatively large amounts of alcohol, the Pen-tailed Treeshrew does not become intoxicated. Measurements of a biomarker of ethanol breakdown suggest that they may be metabolizing it by a pathway that is not used as heavily by humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen-tailed_Treeshrew
Carpolestes We're getting close to your ultimate primate grandparents. But first, meet one of your most primordial ancestors, who may have looked like this mole-sized critter. Your Ancestor's Profile. Carpolestes is a very early (55 Mya) primate, but it has features that set it apart from the most primitive primates of all, including a nail rather than a claw on its big toe. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0303/02-mya-08.html
Dryomomys Dryomomys is the most primitive primate known from good fossil material. (The first known primate, Purgatorius, dating back as far as 65 million years ago, is known only from isolated teeth and jaw fragments.) The animal most like Dryomomys today is a wee being called the pen-tailed tree shrew. We've now arrived at one of your very earliest precursors, 55 million years ago. Something like this creature begot something that begot something that, after that eternity of time, begot you. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0303/02-mya-09.html
Scene at the end of the Cretaceous- our mammalian ancestors, having survived the great extinction, foraging a Triceratops skull. http://www.terakoshi.com/item/dinoEn5.html Artwork: Keiji Terakoshi http://www.terakoshi.com/Enindex.html
Extinction Non-avian dinosaur fossils are found only below the K–T boundary indicating that non-avian dinosaurs became extinct immediately before, or during the Cretaceous mass extinction event. A very small number of dinosaur fossils have been found above the K–T boundary (K is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous period, and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary period). Today, many scientists think the evidence indicates a sixth mass extinction is under way. The blame for this one, perhaps the fastest in Earth's history, falls firmly on the shoulders of humans. By the year 2100, human activities such as pollution, land clearing, and overfishing may have driven more than half of the world's marine and land species to extinction. http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/mass-extinction/
End of the Cretaceous Early mammals, Pliesiadapis forage the remains of a victim of the great extinction. Credit: Karen Carr
Chicxulub Asteroid Impact Scientists had theorized that the K–T extinctions were caused by one or more catastrophic events, such as massive asteroid impacts or increased volcanic activity. Several impact craters and massive volcanic activity, such as that in the Deccan traps, have been dated to the approximate time of the extinction event. These geological events may have reduced sunlight and hindered photosynthesis, leading to a massive disruption in Earth's ecology. Other researchers believe the extinction was more gradual, resulting from slower changes in sea level or climate. On March 4, 2010, a panel of 41 scientists agreed that the Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered the mass extinction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event
Deccan Traps A current theory about the end of the non avian dinosaurs is that extinction was accelerating near the end of the Cretaceous likely because of climatic stress caused by the ongoing series of massive volcanic eruptions in India called the Deccan Traps and other factors including the Chicxulub impact event in Central America which hit the Yucatan about 300,000 years before the last of the dinosaurs vanished. The quantity of gas injection from the main phase of Deccan eruptions was 30 to 100 times larger than the Chicxulub impact and occurred over as little as 10,000 to 100,000 years, with each pulse lasting about 10 years or more. At least four additional massive Deccan eruptions about 200 Ky after the KT extinction delayed the recovery of Earth's ecosystem and the radiation of mammals for another 300 Ky. more: http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=112784&preview=false Dinosaur Artwork: Zina Deretsky/National Science Foundation
K-T Extinction Event An intimate drama in the daily hazards our mammalian ancestors survived is depicted 65 Mya at the moment a major extinction event will cause the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and give rise to the mammalian lineage resulting in us. Artwork: Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D. http://biochemicalsoul.com/2010/05/artistic-depiction-of-the-k-t-extinction-event/
Cretaceous Life This rendering of Cretaceous life shows the diverse range of dinosaurs that lived between 145 and 65 million years ago, including maiasaurs (front left); tarbosaurs (top right), and pterosaurs (top center). In the foreground are depicted the first flowering plants which developed during this period and one of the earliest mammal relatives which went on to survive the dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/cretaceous-period/#cretaceous-collection_907_600x450.jpg Artwork by Publiphoto/Photo Researchers, Inc.
Cimolestes Cimolestes ("Bug Thief") a genus of early eutherians whose species are found primarily in North America, where they first appeared during the Late Cretaceous, and died out during the Paleocene. Insectivore-like mammals have long been known to occur in the Late Cretaceous. Cimolestes, for instance, flourished in the Latest Cretaceous of North America, and this archaic genus even made it into the Early Paleocene. Most species of Cimolestes were mouse- to rat-sized, but the Late Cretaceous Cimolestes magnus reached the size of a marmot, making it one of the largest Mesozoic mammals known. Closest living relative- Pangolin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimolestes http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/insectivores.htm Digital Diorama: http://evolution-involution.org
Mosasaurs During the last 20 million years of the Cretaceous Period, with the extinction of the ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs, mosasaurs became the dominant marine predators. They shared the fate of the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. These ferocious marine predators are now considered to be the closest relatives of snakes, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosasaur
Steropodon A Monotremes from the early Cretaceous Period. A mammal-like reptile whose fossils were discovered in Australia in 100 million-year-old strata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steropodon Artwork: Jon Hughes & Russ Gooday
Cretacious Mammals top: Purgatorius - Maotherium middle: Ralambdelestes - Alphadon bottom: Jeholodens - Repenomamus A new statistical method (2002), based on an estimate of species preservation derived from a model of the diversification pattern, suggests a Cretaceous last common ancestor of primates, approximately 81.5 Myr ago, close to the initial divergence time inferred from molecular data. It also suggests that no more than 7% of all primate species that have ever existed are known from fossils. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v416/n6882/full/416726a.html
Sinodelphys szalayi S. szalayi, also known as Chinese opossum, is an extinct creature with close affinities with the family of mammals known as metatherians, which includes the marsupials. It is the oldest metatherian fossil known, estimated to be 125 million years old and lived next to the dinosaurs. In 2002, Co-author of the Science paper Dr Zhe-Xi Luo, curator of vertebrate palaeontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History also described the earliest fossil placental mammal - Eomaia scansoria - which was discovered in the same quarry in northeastern China as Sinodelphys. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3311911.stm Artwork: Mark A. Klingler/CMNH http://www.carnegiemnh.org/
Yanoconodon Yanoconodon is an early mammal whose representative species Yanoconodon allini lived 125 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous in what is now China. It is considered to be a transitional fossil due to the formation of its middle ear, which is a cross between those of modern mammals and their nearest relatives, the mammaliaformes. Yanoconodon was a small mammal, barely 5 inches long. It was lightly-built and probably fed on insects, worms and other invertebrates. Like other Eutriconodonts, Yanoconodon probably hunted at night out of the danger posed by predatory dinosaurs during the day, like most early mammals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanoconodon_allini
Eomaia Eomaia ('dawn mother') is an extinct fossil mammal, discovered in rocks that were found in the Yixian Formation, Liaoning Province, China, and dated to the Lower Cretaceous about 125 million years ago. The fossil is 3.9 in in length and although the fossil's skull is squashed flat, its teeth, tiny foot bones, cartilages and even its fur are visible. It is a eutherian, a member of a group of mammals consisting of placental mammals plus all extinct mammals that are more closely related to living placentals (such as humans) than to living marsupials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eomaia A contrary view is that the living insectivores and their close fossil relatives form a separate branch on the evolutionary tree of the placental mammals, just like the rodents or the primates, and should not be mixed up with unrelated archaic mammals. http://www.paleocene-mammals.de/insectivores.htm
Honey Possum Bearing a strong resemblance to its insectivore ancestors that survived the KT extinction, an Australian honey possum pollinates a mottlecah eucalyptus as it feeds on nectar. Two billion years after single-celled life first appeared, muticellular organisms- plants and animals began their symbiotic partnerships when cyanobacteria raised the oxygen level of Earth's atmosphere to where advanced life forms could flourish. Most dramatic in this co-evolution was the appearance of flowering plants 130 Mya in the Lower Cretaceous. This provided the nutrition essential for the insectivore mammal evolution and later in the Cenozoic for the exponential acceleration of mammalian radiation. Walter Judd, a botanist at the U. of Florida says, "If it weren't for flowering plants, we humans wouldn't be here". National Geographic Magazine, July 2002 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ Photograph: Jonathan Blair http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-jonathan-blair.html
Jurassic Landscape Depicting a clash between Jurassic dinosaurs Apatosaurus and Saurophaganax (a carnivorous dinosaur similar to Allosaurus). Other animals depicted include Stegosaurus, Camptosaurus, Archaeopteryx and an early possum-like mammal. Karen Carr's Jurassic mural at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is two stories tall and more than 60 feet in length. http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/ Artwork: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com
Gobicondon - a Triconodont A carnivorous mammal that belonged to the Triconodonta (also known as Eutriconodonta) the generic name for a group of early mammals that lived between the Triassic and Cretaceous which were close relatives of the ancestors of all present-day mammals. It weighed 10–12 pounds and measured 18-20 inches, and might have resembled a large and robust opossum. They are one of the groups that can be classified as mammals by any definition. Several other extinct groups of Mesozoic animals that are traditionally considered to be mammals (such as Morganucodonta and Docodonta) are now placed just outside Mammalia by those who advocate a 'crown-group' definition of the word "mammal". They had the typical morphology of the proto-mammals: small, furry, tetrapod animals with long tails. They probably had a nocturnal life style to avoid dinosaur predators, coming out from their burrows after dusk to hunt for small reptiles and insects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triconodont
Mesozoic Mammals and Mammaliaforms (Showing three reconstruction versions from the fossil evidence for Megazostgrodon) top: Oligokyphus - Sinoconodon middle: Megazostrodon1 - Cynognathus - Morganucodon bottom: Megazostrodon2 - Halanodon - Megazostrodon3
Jurassic Landscape The Jurassic period (199.6 million to 145.5 million years ago) was characterized by a warm, wet climate that gave rise to lush vegetation and abundant life. Archaeopteryx is shown threatening a mammaliform in an unlikely encounter in broad daylight. http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world
Castorocauda Castorocauda is a genus of small, semi-aquatic relative of mammals living in the mid Jurassic period, around 154 million years ago, found in lakebed sediments of the Daohugou Beds of Inner Mongolia. It was highly specialized, with adaptations evolved convergently with those of modern semi-aquatic mammals such as beavers, otters, and the platypus. Because few fossilized remains had been found, it was previously thought that, until the KT boundary, all mammals were tiny, ground-dwelling or tree-dwelling, nocturnal animals akin to shrews, hedgehogs, treeshrews, or tenrecs. This notion has now been falsified by the armadillo-like Fruitafossor, the dinosaur-eating Repenomamus, the flying squirrel-like Volaticotherium and now the otter-like Castorocauda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castorocauda Artwork: Mark Klingler http://www.carnegiemnh.org/
Triconodon Genus of extinct mammals found in European deposits of the late Jurassic Period (about 161 million–146 million years ago). Triconodon is representative of the triconodonts, known from fossils throughout North America, Europe, Africa, and China. About the size of a domestic cat. Triconodonts also known as Eutriconodonta)- a group of early mammals which were close relatives of the ancestors of all present-day mammals. Triconodonts lived between the Triassic and the Cretaceous. They are one of the groups that can be classified as mammals by any definition. Several other extinct groups of Mesozoic animals that are traditionally considered to be mammals (such as Morganucodonta and Docodonta) are now placed just outside Mammalia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triconodont Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
Flowering Plants The angiosperms, as botanists call the plants that form flowers and encased seeds were believed to be already diverse and found in most locations by the middle of the Cretaceous period… 146 million years ago. Flowers changed everything. They appeared and spread over the Earth with stunning rapidity coevolving with insects to evoke a diversity of insectvore mammaliaforms and mammals. The latter survived the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs and in a radiation bloom- produced the primates that resulted in our homonid evolution. Without the food resources that grasses and other flowering plants provided directly or as food for prey animals- we humans would not exist. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowering_plant Artwork: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com Houston Museum of Natural Science http://www.hmns.org/
Hadrocodium wui This miniature Jurassic mammal lived almost 200 million years ago and is one of the closest known relatives to living mammals. It's ancestors survived another major extinction event that occurred between the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods. Scientific Illustrator: Mark A. Klingler http://www.carnegiemnh.org/vp/cv/klingler.htm Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Triassic Dinosaurs The burst of new life that occurred in the early- to mid-Triassic period. Massive extinctions at the end of the preceding period gave rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs, early crocodilians and a thriving diversity of early mammals issuing from mammaliforms that arose in the late Permian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic Artwork by Highlights for Children/Oxford Scientific/JupiterImages
Herrerasaurus and Megazostrodon Herrerasaurus is depicted lurking in a forest in what is now Argentina as megazostrodon (early mammaliaform) hide in the undergrowth. Herrerasaur fossils are among the oldest ever discovered, dating back about 228 million years to the mid-Triassic. Credit: Paleoartist John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Fleeing Nothosaurs An artist's rendering shows hatchling nothosaurs heading for the safety of water as a hungry but terrestrial Ticinosuchus attacks near a lagoon in ancient Switzerland. Nothosaurs lived during the mid- and late Triassic period and were among the earliest reptiles to take to the sea. http://science.nationalgeographic.com Artwork by DAMNFX http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x45ea4_film-demo-hd1080-damnfx_creation
Lystrosaurus About the size and weight of a small pig, Lystrosaurus is from a taxon of therasids or mammal-like reptiles from the Permian that survived the great extinction event 300 Mya to dominate southern Pangea during the Early Triassic, for millions of years. In the absence of predators and other herbivorous competitors, it went on to thrive and re-radiate into a number of species within the genus, becoming the most common group of terrestrial vertebrates during the Early Triassic. For a while 95% of land vertebrates were Lystrosaurus. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lystrosaurus#cite_note-Benton2006WhenLifeNearlyDied-10 Artwork: John Sibbick http://www.johnsibbick.com
Permian Extinction Event The Siberian Traps form a region of volcanic rock in Russia. The super-massive eruptive event 250 Mya, continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary. It is considered to be the likely cause of this "Great Dying". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps This was Earth's most severe extinction event available from the fossil records, with up to 96 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct; it is the only known mass extinction of insects. After the extinction, one genus of land vertebrate dominated: a medium-sized herbivore called Lystrosaurus. Only one genus of sea life is common after the extinction as well: a brachiopod called Lingula. Veranops- considered one of our basal reptilian-mammaliaforms from the Perman is pictured about to be consumed by a pyroclastic flow. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event Artwork: http://evolution-involution.org
Dvinia prima The cynodont Dvinia was a therapsid mammal-like "reptile" of the family Dviniidae found in Sokolki on the Northern Dvina River near Kotlas in Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. Its fossil remains date from the Late Permian and were found with Inostrancevia, Scutosaurus and Dicynodon trautscholdi. The species was small omnivore containing an extremely large temporal opening typical of advanced therapsids, with a thin bone separating the eye and muscle attachment. It is very close in the evolutionary line to mammals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvinia_prima
Cynognathus Cynognathus- Phylogeny Order Therapsida- was a metre-long predator of the Lower Triassic. It was one of the more mammal-like of the "mammal-like reptiles", a member of a grouping called Eucynodontia. Cynodontia or cynodonts ("dog teeth") are a taxon of therapsids endemic to all seven continents beginning during the Early Triassic 256 Ma that bridged the Permian mass extinction. This taxon includes modern mammals and their extinct close relatives. They were one of the most diverse groups of therapsids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynodont Digital Diorama: http://evolution-involution.org
Permian Therapsidia top: Veranops - Gorgonops bottom: Procynosuchus - Dimetrodon (Veranops is thought to be the basal Therapsid in the Cynodont to mammaliaform lineage and therefore very close to our reptilian ancestor.) Artwork - Veranops: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com Artwork - Dimetrodon: Jon Hughes & Russ Gooday http://critters.pixel-shack.com
Gorgonops Gorgonops (literally "Gorgon' face") is the name given to an extinct genus of therapsid which lived about 255-250 million years ago, during the latest part of the Permian Period. It was a typical representative of the Gorgonopsia, the dominant predators of their day, which in the largest forms grew to over four meters long. They shared a common descendant with reptiles, but were on a line that gave rise to mammals rather than dinosaurs, lizards, turtles or birds. They were wiped out in the world's most severe extinction, the Permo-Triassic mass extinction that killed 80 percent to 90 percent of all species on Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgonops Illustration: http://www.bbc.co.uk
Edaphosaurus Edaphosaurus is a genus of prehistoric reptile which lived around 303 to 299 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous to early Permian periods. Edaphosaurus is one of the earliest known large plant-eating pelecosaur (sailback) tetrapods. Early descriptions, referring to its sharp teeth, suggest that the reptile may have fed on small invertebrates, such as mollusks, although paleontologists now point out that Edaphosaurus also shows herbivore characteristics. It may have been prey for the fierce carnivorous pelecosaur Dimetrodon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edaphosaurus Artwork by Zdeněk Burian
Permian River Mural A pair of Dimetrodon contest over a meal of Diplocaulis as Edaphosaurus and other vegetarian Pelycosaurs look on. Artist: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/
Permian River Mural A pair of Dimetrodon contest over a meal of Diplocaulis. Some Pelycosaur is thought to be a direct antecedent of mammals. Artist: Karen Carr http://www.karencarr.com Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History http://www.snomnh.ou.edu/
Diplocaulus magnicornis An early permian lepospondyli known for the long protrusions on the sides of its skull, which cause the skull to be shaped similar to a boomerang. Judging from its weak limbs and relatively short tail, it is presumed to have swum with an up-and-down movement of its body, not unlike cetaceans today. The wide head could have helped the creature glide through the water. Also, it is thought to have had defensive purposes as any predator (even the large-headed Eryops) would have a hard time trying to swallow a creature with such a wide head. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplocaulus
Permian Seafooor The Permian period saw the creation of the supercontinent Pangaea, where shallow seas in and around the huge landmass offered a home to an abundance of life. This diorama at the University of Michigan's Museum of Natural History shows some of the flora and fauna that thrived in Permian seas, including trilobites, gastropods, clams, nautiluses, and corals. http://science.nationalgeographic.com
Carboniferous to Permian Continental Drift During the Carboniferous (bottom), the hot, humid climate supported vast forests of giant club mosses and ferns in Gondwanaland for millions of years. By the time the land masses had drifted northward and consolidated into Pangea in the Permian (top), biota had evolved to adapt to the cooler climate and vast deserts spreading over the landscape. Chicago Field Museum http://www.fieldmuseum.org/evolvingplanet Source: Plate tectonic reconstructions by C.R. Scotese, PALEOMAP Project http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm
Mesothelae Stalks Petrolacosaurus Mesothelae was depicted as a human head sized spider from the Carboniferous period in "Walking with Monsters" shown hunting lizards such as Petrolacosaurus, one of the first reptiles. Its fossil is now known to have been a sea scorpion that lived in swamps; however, this was not found out until after animation for the series had been finished. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrolacosaurus Illustration: http://www.bbc.co.uk
Pennsylvanian Period Life With much more land surface exposed in the Pennsylvanian time, as compared to the Mississippian time, extensive tropical forests were formed. These would eventually be fossilized into extensive coal deposits in Pennsylvania as well as other parts of the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvanian_period
Proterogyrinus Fights Aarthropleura Proterogyrinus was an anthracosaur, which means it belonged to a group of advanced amphibians- also referred to as reptiliomorphs or basal reptiles from the Upper Carboniferous. Proterogyrinus, like other reptiliomorphs, could venture further away from water than amphibians, but still had to stay reasonably close by the water. In "Walking with Monsters", a Proterogyrinus was depicted fighting an Arthropleura (giant millipede). http://walkingwith.wikia.com/wiki/Proterogyrinus Illustration: http://www.bbc.co.uk
Carboniferous Forests 350 Mya, lush forests of tree ferns and towering Leidodendron scale trees host the evolution of Paleothyris, an early reptile. 370 Mya, vertebrates like Ichthyostega began to haul themselves out of the water- beginning a million-year period where amphibians like the 8-foot-long Megalocephalus ruled the land. Detail - The Tower of Time- a 27 foot mural in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu/explore.html Artwork: John Gurche http://www.gurche.com/main_frameset.htm
Mississippian Marine Life Mississippian marine life was marked by extensive shallow reef communities, including Crinoids- members of the phylum Echinodermata. This is the phylum that brings you starfish, sea urchins, and sand dollars. The crinoids are a breed apart however, they resemble an underwater flower. Some even have parts that look and act like roots anchoring them to the ocean floor. They are commonly called sea lilies. http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/crinoids.html
Hylonomis Hylonomus was a very early reptile. It lived 312 million years ago during the Late Carboniferous period. As of 2006, it is the earliest confirmed reptile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylonomus
Extant Anolis carolinensis (male-female) It would take a high degee of paleontological skill to differentiate future partial fossil remains among Archaeothyris and Holonomis and a variety of extant anoles and other small reptiles such as these A. carolinensis specimens that seem to have not evolved at all from their ancestors from over 312 Mya. http://www.wildlifenorthamerica.com/ylang/nl/Reptile/Green-Anole/Anolis/carolinensis.html
Hylonomus lyelli Hylonomus is the oldest vertebrate recognized as a reptile. Unlike most of the amphibians, these animals were generally not tied to water for reproduction, but laid eggs that were able to survive in a terrestrial environment. Hylonomus had an unbroken expanse of bone behind each eye opening. Other reptiles had one or more gaps, the temporal openings, occupying various positions and enclosed by various bones. Though these patterns vary in details, the gaps themselves - or the lack of them - are the basis for splitting the reptiles into four major groups. http://jogginsfossilcliffs.net Artwork: John Sibbick http://www.johnsibbick.com/
Carboniferous Swamp Characteristic of the Carboniferous period (from about 360 million to 300 million years ago) were its dense and swampy forests, which gave rise to large deposits of peat. Over the eons the peat transformed into rich coal stores in Western Europe and North America. The name "Carboniferous" refers to this coal. http://science.nationalgeographic.com/wallpaper/science/photos/carboniferous-period/carboniferous-swamp Artwork: Dorling Kindersley
Archaeothyris Archaeothyris was a very early mammal-like reptile, which lived in the late Carboniferous period. Dated to 306 million years ago, it is the oldest undisputed synapsid known and belonged to the series of primitive synapsids which are conventionally grouped as pelycosaurs. Synapsids ('fused arch') are a class of animals that includes mammals and everything more closely related to mammals than to other living amniotes. More advanced mammal-like synapsids are called therapsids. Synapsids are one of the two major groups of the later amniotes, the other being the sauropsids (reptiles and birds).Today, there are 5,400 species of living synapsids known as the mammals, including both aquatic (whales) and flying (bats) species). Humans are synapsids as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapsid Illustration: Nobu Tamura http://www.palaeocritti.com/by-group/eupelycosauria/archaeothyris
Early Amphibian Sterkfontein Exhibition http://www.maropeng.co.za/index.php/exhibition_guide/life/
Carboniferous Amphibians top: Silvanerpeton middle: Ophiderpeton - Balanerpeton bottom: Microbrachis Fossil remains of air-breathing insects, myriapods and arachnids are known from the late Carboniferous, but so far not from the early Carboniferous. Amphibians were diverse and common by the middle of the period; some were as long as 6 meters. One of the greatest evolutionary innovations of the Carboniferous was the amniote egg, which allowed for the further exploitation of the land by certain tetrapods. These included the earliest sauropsid reptiles (Hylonomus), and the earliest known synapsid (Archaeothyris). These small lizard-like animals quickly gave rise to many descendants and by the end of the Carboniferous period, reptiles underwent a major evolutionary radiation, possibly in response to an increasingly drier climate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous Artwork by Zdeněk Burian
Acanthostega Acanthostega (meaning Spiny Roof) is an extinct tetrapod genus, among the first vertebrate animals to have recognizable limbs. It appeared in the Upper Devonian (Famennian) about 365 million years ago, and was anatomically intermediate between lobe-finned fishes and the first tetrapods fully capable of coming onto land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthostega Artist: Raul Martin http://www.raul-martin.net
Tetrapod Evolution top: pederpes middle: hynerpeton - seymouria Fossil bottom: panerichthys Pederpes is the most basal Carboniferous tetrapod and is the earliest-known tetrapod to show the beginnings of terrestrial locomotion and despite the probable presence of a sixth digit on the forelimbs it was at least functionally pentadactyl. The so-called Romer's gap is the 20 million year period which separates the Late Devonian early tetrapod fossil record to the middle Carboniferous one, where no tetrapod fossil has been found until Pederpes. Contrary to the polydactyl late devonian tetrapods, it had robust 5-digit feet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederpes
Late Devonian River Scene - Pictured: Eusthenopteron, Diplacanthus, Acanthostega, Bothriolepis, Rhacophyton Somewhere between the Early and Middle Devonian Periods, one of the five major mass extinctions occurred, mainly effecting marine life, whose cause is open to wide speculation. Chicago Field Museum http://www.fieldmuseum.org Artist: Karen Carr http://karencarr.com
Hyneria Hyneria was a prehistoric predatory lobe-finned fish that lived during the Devonian period around 360 million years ago. It was approximately 4 meters in length and weighed as much as two tons. There is evidence from bones that it had very strong fins and maybe could surf onto shore like modern orca. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyneria Illustration: http://www.bbc.co.uk
Amphibamus Amphibamidae is an extinct family of dissorophoid Euskelian Temnospondyls. Amphibamus grandiceps, a dissorophoid - Late Carboniferous (Moscovian) of Illinois. This animals is considered to have been close to the ancestry of modern amphibians. Length about 20 cm. http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/160Temnospondyli/160.000.html Life reconstruction, by Arthur Weasley
Tiktaalik Tiktaalik is a genus of extinct lobe-finned fish that lived approximately 375 million years ago from the late Devonian period, with many features akin to those of tetrapods (four-legged animals). It is an example from several lines of ancient fish developing adaptations to the oxygen-poor shallow-water habitats of its time, which led to the evolution of amphibians. Paleontologists suggest that it is representative of the transition between fish such as Panderichthys, known from fossils 380 million years old, and early tetrapods such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, known from fossils about 365 million years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiktaalik Artwork: Carl Buell http://www.carlbuell.com/
Lobe-fin Fish Lobe-fin fishes form one of the two known lineages of bony fishes (the Osteichthyes). Ray-fin fishes (Actinopterygii), which form the other lineage, are arguably the most successful of vertebrates and certainly the most successful "fishes". One group of lobe-fins gave rise to the tetrapods, which have become other most successful group of vertebrates. Strictly speaking, since tetrapods evolved from lobe-fins, all tetrapods –including us— are also lobe-fins. http://www.devoniantimes.org/who/pages/lobe-fins.html
Devonian Fish In the Early Devonian (416 - 397 Mya), the sarcopterygians split into two main lineages — the coelacanths and the rhipidistians. The Placodermi were a class of armored prehistoric fish, known from fossils, which lived from the late Silurian to the end of the Devonian Period. Their head and thorax were covered by articulated armored plates and the rest of the body was scaled or naked, depending on the species. Placoderms were among the first jawed fish. The first identifiable Placoderms (armored fish) evolved in the late Silurian; they began a dramatic decline during the Late Devonian extinctions, and the class was entirely extinct by the end of the Devonian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobe-finned_fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_fish
Devonian Marine Mural Pictured: Dunkleosteus Artist: © 2010 by Karen Carr and Karen Carr Studio, Inc. http://karencarr.com Indiana State Museum Foundation http://www.indianamuseum.org
Devonian Marinescape Devonian life in the shallow inland seas continued much as it had in the Silurian, with extensive coral reefs and ocean plants. http://www.geology.wisc.edu/homepages/g100s2/public_html/history_of_life.htm Artwork: Carl Buell http://www.carlbuell.com/
Dunkleosteus With an estimated size reaching 10 meters and its powerful crushing jaws, Dunkleosteus was the top predator of its time, the Late Devonian. Dunkleosteus had a worldwide distribution. D. terrelli, the best known species, is known from numerous remains in North America, while other species have been described from Belgium, Poland and Morocco. Illustration: Nobu Tamura http://www.palaeocritti.com/
Sharks, or Chondricthyes, developed during the Devonian also. Sharks are thought to be descendants of the large Placoderms, but they lost the ability to form the bony armor on the outside of the body and were unable to form bones on the inside also. Their body is supported by cartilage. Because of the skeletons of cartilage, very little fossil evidence is available. They did leave behind their teeth. Illustration: http://universe-review.ca/R10-19-animals.htm
Early Devonian Marine Biota The Late Devonian extinction only impacted marine life. Brachiopods, trilobites, and other families were heavily affected. This was one of five major extinction events in the history of the Earth's biota. Reef-building organisms were almost completely wiped out, so that coral reefs returned only with the development of modern corals in the Mesozoic. The causes of these extinctions are unclear. The leading theories suggest that changes in sea level and ocean anoxia, possibly triggered by global cooling or oceanic volcanism, were most likely responsible, although the impact of an extraterrestrial body such as a comet has also been considered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction
Stethacanthus is an extinct genus of shark which lived in the Late Devonian and Early Carboniferous epochs, around 360 million years ago. Fossils have been found in Europe and North America. Stethacanthus was around 2.3 ft long, and in many respects, had a typical shark-like appearance. However, it is best known for its unusually shaped dorsal fin, which resembled an anvil or ironing board. Small spikes (enlarged versions of the dermal denticles commonly covering shark skin) covered this crest, and the shark's head as well. The crest may have played a role in mating rituals, or used to frighten potential predators. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stethacanthus Artwork: Karen Carr http://karencarr.com
Guiyu Guiyu is an extinct genus of bony fish, and is the earliest known one. Fossil range: Late Silurian. It is the earliest known representative of a very large vertebrate group, the "bony fishes" or Osteichthyes, the class of vertebrates that includes everything from humans to halibut. There are more than 60,000 living species of Osteichthyes today, including almost all the fish that we eat (except sharks) and all land vertebrates. The find may lead the focus of research on the early evolution of vertebrates to a earlier period in geologic time (the Silurian period rather than the former Devonian period ). http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-03/26/content_7620346.htm
Early Plants on Land The first unambiguous record of land plants is from the Silurian period. They were mostly small, primitive forms, dependent on the proximity of water, and with the most rudimentary stem and leaf structure. True vascular plants evolved and began to diversify during the Latest Silurian and Early Devonian. The earliest evidence of land plants and fungi appears in the fossil record around 480 million years ago. Before that, the Earth's landscape was believed to consist of barren rocks, home to bacteria and possibly some algae. But Plants colonized land hundreds of millions of years earlier than the fossil record suggests, according to scientists in North America. Genetic evidence gleaned from living species puts the date when land plants first evolved at about 700 million years ago. http://www.palaeos.com/Plants/default.htm Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
Climatius Climatius is an extinct genus of spiny shark - Fossil range: Late Silurian–Early Devonian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatiubs
Paleozoic Marine Life The Paleozoic or Palaeozoic Era ("ancient life") is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Paleozoic spanned from roughly 542 to 251 million years ago, and is subdivided into six geologic periods; from oldest to youngest they are: the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian. Fish populations exploded in the Devonian. During the late Paleozoic, great forests of primitive plants thrived on land forming the great coal beds of Europe and eastern North America. By the end of the era, the first large, sophisticated reptiles and the first modern plants (conifers) had developed. The Paleozoic Era ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth's history, the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleozoic Artwork: Zdeněk Burian
Silurian Marinescape Pictured: Eurypterids, chain coral, fish Indiana State Museum Foundation http://www.indianamuseum.org Artwork: Karen Carr http://karencarr.com
Cephalaspis Like its immediate osteostracan ancestors, Cephalaspis was heavily armored, presumedly to defend against predatory placoderms and eurypterids, as well as to serve as a source of calcium for metabolic functions in calcium-poor freshwater environments. It had sensory patches along the rim and center of its head shield, which were used to sense for worms and other burrowing organisms in the mud. The documentary Walking With Monsters suggested that Cephalaspis, or one of its relatives was an ancestor to jawed fish and other gnathostomes (ultimately to Hominim) however, Cephalaspis belongs to the Osteostraci, a group which is widely believed to be the sister group to all jawed vertebrates. So whilst Cephalaspis was not a direct ancestor of the jawed vertebrates, Cephalapsis nevertheless shared a common ancestor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalaspis
Placodermi It was originally thought that the placoderms went extinct due to competition from the first bony fish, as well as the early sharks, due to a combination of the supposed inherent superiority of the bony fish and sharks, as well as the presumed sluggishness of the placoderms themselves. Since then, though, as more accurate summaries of prehistoric organisms have been developed, it is now presumed that the last placoderms died out one by one as each of their ecological communities suffered due to the environmental catastrophes during the Devonian/Carboniferous extinction event. http://www.palaeos.com/Vertebrates/Units/Unit060/060.100.html Illustration: http://www.isegretidelmare.eu/pesci_origini2.asp
Earliest Fish clockwise: astrapis - Myllokunmingia - Haikouichthys - flussneunauge - pikia - euconodonts Myllokunmingia is a chordate from the Lower Cambrian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myllokunmingia Haikouichthys is an extinct genus of craniate (creatures with backbones and distinct heads) believed to have lived c. 530 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion. Haikouichthys was featured in the BBC documentary Walking with Monsters as the ancestor to all vertebrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haikouichthys
The Ordovician Extinction The Ordovician–Silurian extinction event or quite commonly the Ordovician extinction, was the third-largest of the five major extinction events in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct and second largest overall in the overall loss of life. Between about 450 Ma to 440 Ma, two bursts of extinction, separated by one million years, appear to have happened. This was the second biggest extinction of marine life, ranking only below the Permian extinction. At the time, all known life was confined to the seas and oceans. More than 60 per cent of marine invertebrates died including two-thirds of all brachiopod and bryozoan families. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician_extinction_event
Ordovician marine environment Endocerida comprises a diverse group of cephalopods that lived from the Early Ordovician possibly to the Late Silurian. Their shells varied in form. Some were straight others curved. Some long-shelled forms like Endoceras attained lengths as much as 12 ft. The related Cameroceras is reported to have reached lengths approaching (30 feet), but these claims are not unproblematic. In any event they were the largest animal that, up until that time, had ever lived. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocerida Artwork: Karen Carr http://karencarr.com
Ordovician life included a larger diversity of predators, including straight-shelled "nautiloid-like" or "squid-like" creatures. http://www.geology.wisc.edu/homepages/g100s2/public_html/history_of_life.htm
Extant Echinoidea (sea urchins, sand dollars) Echinoderms first appear in the fossil record during the mid-Cambrian. Arkarua, a possible echinoderm, has been described from the Vendian (latest Proterozoic). http://tolweb.org/Echinodermata Illustration: Ernst Haeckel's KUNSTFORMEN DER NATUR (Artforms of Nature) 1904
Haikouichthys Haikouichthys is an extinct genus of craniate (creatures with backbones and distinct heads) believed to have lived c. 530 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion. Haikouichthys had a defined skull and other characteristics that have led paleontologists to label it a true craniate, and even to be popularly characterized as one of the earliest fish, but it does not possess sufficient features to be included uncontroversially even in the stem group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haikouichthys
Branchiostoma lanceolatum (Lancelet or Amphioxes) The lancelets, also called amphioxus, (along with the larvae of Tunicates and Seasquirts) are the extant basal representatives of the phylum Chordata, subphylum Cephalochordata. They are usually found buried in sand in shallow parts of temperate or tropical seas. In Asia, they are harvested commercially as food for humans and domesticated animals. They are an important object of study in zoology as they have notochords and provide indications about the origins of the vertebrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelet
Pikia Pikaia gracilens is an extinct animal known from the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale of British Columbia. 16 specimens of Pikaia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise 0.03% of the community. It resembles a living chordate commonly known as the lancelet and perhaps swam much like an eel. During his re-examination of the Burgess Shale fauna in 1979, paleontologist Simon Conway Morris placed P. gracilens in the chordates, making it perhaps the oldest known ancestor of modern vertebrates, because it seemed to have a very primitive, proto-notochord. The status of Pikaia as a chordate is not universally accepted; its preservational mode suggests that it had cuticle, which is uncharacteristic of the vertebrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikaia
Cambrian Sea The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from 542 Mya to 488 Mya; it is succeeded by the Ordovician. Its subdivisions, and indeed its base, are somewhat in flux. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätten. These are sites of exceptional preservation, where 'soft' parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. This means that our understanding of the Cambrian biota surpasses that of later periods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian Artwork: Karen Carr http://karencarr.com Chicago Field Museum http://www.fieldmuseum.org
Anomalocaris Anomalocaris ("abnormal shrimp") is an extinct genus of anomalocaridid, which are, in turn, thought to be closely related to the arthropods. The first fossils of Anomalocaris were discovered in the Ogygopsis Shale by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves, with more examples found by Charles Doolittle Walcott in the famed Burgess Shale. Originally several fossilized parts discovered separately (the mouth, feeding appendages and tail) were thought to be three separate creatures. it took several more years for researchers to realize that the continuously juxtaposed Peytoia, Laggania and feeding appendage actually represented a single, enormous creature. For the time in which it lived, Anomalocaris was a truly gigantic creature, reaching lengths of up to one meter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalocaris Artwork: John Sibbick http://www.johnsibbick.com/
Cambrian Brachiopods Over 30,000 species of brachiopods are believed to have evolved over the years. Some extant brachiopods like the lampshells produce freeswimming larvae so considering that ontogeny may recapitulate phylogeny it is not surprising that these Cambrian brachiopods are represented as swimming freely.
Opabinia ediacara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale_type_fauna
Marella splendens The “Lace crab” reconstruction is from fossil specimens recovered from Cambrian deposits laid down in the Burgess Shale 543-490 million years ago. The name arthropod comes from Greek arthron (“joint”) and pod (“foot”). http://www.fieldmuseum.org/evolvingplanet/ Reconstruction: Phlesch Bubble Productions http://www.phleschbubble.com
Smithsonian Burgess Shale Community Pictured: Pikia, Marrella, Anomalocaris, Yohoia, Opabinia Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu
Burgess Shale Cambrian Community The Burgess Shale Formation — located in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia — is one of the world's most celebrated fossil fields, and the best of its kind. It is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of its fossils. It is 505 million years old (Middle Cambrian), one of the earliest soft-parts fossil beds. Free-swimming organisms are relatively rare, with the majority of organisms being bottom dwelling — either moving about or permanently attached to the sea floor. About two-thirds of the Burgess Shale organisms lived by feeding on the organic content in the muddy sea floor, while almost a third filtered out fine particles from the water column. Under 10% of organisms were predators or scavengers, although since these organisms were larger, the biomass was split equally between each of the filter feeding, deposit feeding, predatory and scavenging organisms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgess_Shale
Annelida Extant representatives of a form our ancestor once may have resembled. The first systematic investigation of an annelid genome has revealed that the genes of the marine worm Platynereis dumerilii are more closely related to those of vertebrates than to those of insects or nematodes. For hundreds of millions of years vertebrates have preserved exon-intron structures descended from their last common ancestor with the annelids. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1431714/ Illustration: Ernst Haeckel KUNSTFORMEN DER NATUR (Artforms of Nature) 1904
Ottoia Ottoia, showing muscle bands and gut. Ottoia is a priapulid predatory worm found commonly in the Burgess Shale of the Cambrian period. The Cambrian is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, lasting from 542 to 488.3 Mya. It is succeeded by the Ordovician. Illustration: http://www.phleschbubble.com/album/cambrian_sea.html
Platynereis dumerilii Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) now reveal that the hypothalamus and its hormones are not purely vertebrate inventions, but have their evolutionary roots in marine, worm-like ancestors. http://www.embl.de/aboutus/communication_outreach/media_relations/2007/070629_heidelberg
Vetulicolia An extinct phylum of several Cambrian organisms that lack preserved appendages of any kind. They may represent stem- and crown-group arthropods, stem-group vertebrates, and early deuterostomes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetulicolia Credit: Stanton F. Fink http://www.palaeocritti.com/contact-info
Bilateria The Bilateria are all animals having a bilateral symmetry, i.e. they have a front and a back end, as well as an upside and downside. Radially symmetrical animals like jellyfish have a topside and downside, but no front and back. The bilateralians are a major group of animals, including the majority of phyla; the most notable exceptions are the sponges and cnidarians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateria Photo of the annelid Platynereis dumerilii: Nicolas Dray http://mimas.ijm.univ-paris-diderot.fr/ijm/recherche/equipes/metazoaires
Tunicate Chordates (phylum Chordata) are animals which are either vertebrates or one of several closely related invertebrates. They are united by having, for at least some period of their life cycle, a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail. The phylum Chordata consists of three subphyla: Urochordata, represented by tunicates; Cephalochordata, represented by lancelets; and Craniata, which includes Vertebrata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chordate Illustration: http://www.bethel.edu/~johgre/bio114d/LowerVerts.html
Extant Actiniae Sea anemones are seemingly primitive animals that, along with corals, jellyfish, and hydras, constitute the oldest eumetazoan phylum, the Cnidaria. Illustration: Ernst Haeckel KUNSTFORMEN DER NATUR (Artforms of Nature) 1904
Hydra Perhaps the best-known hydrozoan, familiar to most students of introductory biology, is Hydra. Hydrozoan may date back to the Vendian (late Precambrian). Hydra never goes through a medusoid stage and spends its entire life as a polyp. However, Hydra is not typical of the Hydrozoa as a whole. Most hydrozoans alternate between a polyp and a medusa stage — they spend part of their lives as "jellyfish". http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/cnidaria/hydrozoa.html
Scyphozoa Scyphozoa is a class within the phylum Cnidaria, sometimes referred to as the "true jellyfish". Scyphozoans range in geological time from the Ediacaran period through the Recent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scyphozoa Illustration: Ernst Haeckel KUNSTFORMEN DER NATUR (Artforms of Nature) 1904
Achaeocyatha (calcium sponges) Sponges, the oldest known living animal group, have no neurons, no synapses, no internal organs and consist of only a limited number of discrete cell types. Sponges are regarded as animals without true tissues and therefore may represent the earliest stage in the evolution of animal multicellularity (Boero et al., 2007). http://journalofcosmology.com/Cosmology7.html Illustration: Ernst Haeckel KUNSTFORMEN DER NATUR (Artforms of Nature) 1904
Ediacaran Fauna - The Vendian Period 650 to 543 Mya the latest part of the Proterozoic. The main and most conspicuous elements of the Vendian biota belong to the Ediacara fauna named for a locality in Australia where fossils were identified. This is the time when the earliest-known animals (metazoan) evolved, and the continents had merged into a single super continent called Rodinia. The fauna is entirely soft-bodied and was probably adapted to relatively low oxygen conditions in a variety of both earlier, deeper and later nearshore marine environments. center: Dickinsonia a metazoan that grew to a length over 1.5 feet - bottom: microdictyon (a bilateral worm) Adaptive Image: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History http://www.mnh.si.edu/
Ediacaran The organisms of the Ediacaran Period (formerly Vendian Period) first appeared around 580 million years ago and flourished until the cusp of the Cambrian 542 million years ago when the characteristic communities of fossils vanished. Trace fossils of these organisms have been found worldwide, and represent the earliest known complex multicellular organisms. Most macroscopic fossils are morphologically distinct from later life-forms: they resemble discs, tubes, mud-filled bags or quilted mattresses. Due to the difficulty of deducing evolutionary relationships among these organisms some paleontologists have suggested that these represent completely extinct lineages that do not resemble any living organism so determining where Ediacaran organisms fit in the tree of life has proven impossible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ediacaran_biota Illustration: http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobookpaleo2.html
Ediacaran - Peaceable Kingdom of the Precambrian Between 600 million and 540 million years ago, no predators hunted with claws and teeth; softer, economical life styles prevailed. Some of the world's widely scattered Ediacaran fauna may simply have fed on plankton that drifted by in abundance. The large body surfaces of others may have served as greenhouses for colonies of photosynthetic bacteria that functioned as internal food factories. Some probably grazed on bacterial carpets or algae mats growing on the seafloor. Specimens as long as two feet are known but none has both ends intact. Biota Index: http://meta-gaia.angelfire.com/ediacaran_index.html Credit: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com National Geographic Magazine, April,1997 Artwork: John D. Dawson
Trichoplax adhaerens Could slimy, shapeless creatures called placozoans resemble the last common ancestor of all animals? For the last 100 years a primordial sponge was favored to represent the "urmetazoan" (or "first animal") a creature that has inspired countless studies and debate. A recent molecular analysis may knock the sponge off its throne as the most primitive living animal in favor or a flat, gnat-sized, amoeba-like blob called Trichoplax adhaerens. Sometime before 600 mya, the first animals evolved from protists - mainly single-celled microorganisms. What happened next is open for debate. Bernd Schierwater posits a new theory of the animal family tree that a hypothetical predecessor of Trichoplax adhaerens called the placula was the first animal, and that diploblasts and the more comples triploblasts evolved separately from it. more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080820163002.htm Micrography: Ana Signorovitch, Yale University
Global Vulcanism The single-celled prokaryotic bacteria that built stromatolites is known from 3.5 billion years ago. It wasn't until around 800 Mya that these cyanobacteria had raised the level of oxygen in the atmosphere to support higher energy eukaryotic life forms that evolved into multi-cellular versions. One theory suggests that oxidizing iron in early Earth's crust was binding so much of the O2 that it delayed this enrichment. Eventually the photosynthesis of so much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere caused the greenhouse protective layer of CO2 to collapse, ushering in a period known as the Sturtian glaciation or "Snowball Earth" in which the planet froze over completely, subjecting early metazoan to extreme conditions. Around 630 Mya the onset of global vulcanism, re-established the layer of greenhouse gases- the ice melted and the combination of events in the Late Precambrian led to the famously diverse Cambrian taxa around 500 Mya. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142228.htm
Snowball Earth Early mass extinctions: Breakup of a single landmass 770 million years ago in the Precambrian Period, leaves small continents scattered near the equator. Global temperatures fall, and large ice packs form in the polar oceans. The white ice reflects more solar energy driving temperatures even lower. This feedback cycle engulfs the planet in ice within a millennium. The oceans ice over to an average depth of more than a kilometer, limited only by heat from the earth's interior. Most microscopic marine organisms die, but a few cling to life around volcanic hot springs. The cold, dry air arrests the growth of land glaciers, creating vast deserts of windblown sand. As carbon dioxide accumulates from volcanoes, the planet warms and sea ice slowly thins. 70 million years later, the same thing happened again. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-of-a-snowball-e Illustration: http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2010/03/omans_view_of_the_snowball_ear.php
Earth Deep Freeze Drs. Paul Hoffman and Daniel Schrag of Harvard propose that roughly 700 million years ago, the Earth's climate cooled and the polar ice caps expanded. As the ice advanced, more and more sunlight was reflected back into space, causing the temperature to drop even further. By the time the ice caps covered roughly half of the globe, the cooling process was rapid and unstoppable. Soon the Earth was completely entombed in ice one kilometer thick. In fact, the geologic record indicates the global climate flip-flopped not just once, but two to five times. But what's most remarkable about the idea is not that the Earth ever froze over, but when. The last thaw occurred about 585 million years ago, just about the same time multicellular animal life proliferated on this planet. The timing of the last worldwide glacial retreat and the Cambrian explosion is simply too much to over look. http://www.pbs.org/saf/1103/segments/1103-1.htm
Eukaryotic Fossil The rise of oxygen and the oxidation of deep oceans between 635 and 551 million years ago may have had an impact on the increase and spread of the earliest complex life, including animals. Pulsed oxidation and biological evolution in the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation. 2008. K. A. McFadden et al. The photo (field of view about 0.15 millimeter in width) is of an exceptionally preserved eukaryotic fossil from the Doushantuo Fm (635–551 million years old) in South China. http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html Photo: Shuhai Xiao
From Single Cells, a Vast Animal Kingdom Arose About 800 million years ago an ecological revolution began. Animals devoured the microbial mats that had dominated the oceans for more than two billion years and created their own habitats, like coral reefs. Lurking in the genome of a tentacled, amoebalike, single-celled creature called Capsaspora owczarzaki is a gene nearly identical to an ancestral animal gene named brachyury. Our ancestors a billion years ago probably were a lot like Capsaspora. They use the brachyury gene, along with other transcription factors, to switch genes on to check out their environment; they have to mate with other organisms; they have to eat prey. A lot of the genes once thought to be unique to the animal kingdom were already present in our single-celled ancestors. more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15evolve.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fscience%2Findex.jsonp Photo: Arnau Sebé-Pedrós http://www.pnas.org/content/107/22.cover-expansion
Paramecium Paramecium is an example of a unicellular Eukarya animal-like protist with cilia that evolved in the Precambrian after the Prokaryotes archaebacteria. http://plantphys.info/organismal/lechtml/protista.shtml
Amoebozoan Vase-shaped microfossils (VSMs) discovered around the world show that amoebozoans have existed since the Neoproterozoic Era- the terminal Era of the formal Proterozoic Eon (or the informal "Precambrian"). Amoeba is an example of an unicellular animal-like protist Eukarya with pseudopods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoebozoa
Bacillus anthracis vegetative (Anthrax) Almost certainly the first living bodies were microscopic in size, being single-celled. Bacteria were the dominant, perhaps the only, major life forms. The current consensus is that Archaebacteria emerged at least 3.5 billion years ago and are the oldest life forms. Most researchers would add the nucleus to the list of 'new' eukaryotic features, but its interesting to note that all RNA world fossils are found in the nucleus. The assumption that the nucleus is recent is based on the argument that evolution drives towards complexity, but we know this isn't always so. It is also a possibility that the nucleus is old, and prokaryotes bacteria have lost it. http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/jeffares_poole.htmlhttp://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/jeffares_poole.html
Living Stromatolite Stromatolites were much more abundant on the planet in Precambrian times. While older, Archean fossil remains are presumed to be colonies of single-celled blue-green bacteria, younger (that is, Proterozoic) fossils may be primordial forms of the eukaryote chlorophytes (that is, green algae). One genus of stromatolite very common in the geologic record is Collenia. The earliest stromatolite of confirmed microbial origin dates to 2.724 billion years ago. A recent discovery provides strong evidence of microbial stromatolites extending as far back as 3.4 billion years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite
Cyanobacteria (formerly called Blue-Green Algae) The most common cyanobacterial structures in the fossil record include stromatolites and oncolites with evidence in the geologic record indicating that the transforming event of photosynthesis took place early in our planet's history, at least 2450-2320 million years ago (mya), and probably much earlier. Cyanobacteria are primitive algae that are largely responsible for the Earth having an oxygenated atmosphere. Cyanobacteria are not plants and are more similar to bacteria. Unlike plants and animals, cyanobacteria do not have a cell nucleus. Cyanobacteria can be unicellular, colonial, or form filaments and their cells are often much smaller than other algae. Some cyanobacteria produce toxins that damage human liver and nervous systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanobacteria Photo: http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~schauder/cyanos/cyanos.html
Solar Flare Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite have spotted a stellar flare on a nearby star 11 Pegasi in constellation Pegasus so powerful that, had it been from our sun, it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth. The flare was perhaps the most energetic magnetic stellar explosion ever detected and is evidence of the hazards in space for prebiotic life forms. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/monster_flare.html
Sulfolobus tengchongensis spindle-shaped virus 1 (STSV1) Cell of the Archaean Sulfolobus infected by virus STSV1 observed under microscopy. Two spindle-shaped viruses were being released from the host cell. The strain of Sulfolobus and STSV1 were isolated by Xiaoyu Xiang and his colleagues in an acidic hot spring in Yunnan Province, China. At present, STSV1 is the largest archaeal virus that has been isolated and studied. Its genome sequence has been sequenced. http://tolweb.org/Life_on_Earth/1 Photo: Xiaoyu Xiang
Single Celled Life By the start of the Archean Eon 4 billion ya, the Earth's crust had cooled. The atmosphere was composed of volcanic gases, including nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and possibly low levels of oxygen. Water vapor was abundant and the first oceans had formed. A complex set of chemical reactions in these early oceans transformed carbon-containing molecules into simple, single-celled life forms around 3 billion ya- the highest lifeforms for some 2.5 billion years.
Asteroid Impact Extinction Events Since life began on Earth, asteroid impacts were probably implicated in many of possibly dozens of major mass extinction events. Most likely occurred in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event with strong evidence that it resulted from asteroid impact, occurred 65 mya, that marks the extinction of nearly all dinosaur species. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died with the Permian-Triassic being the most devastating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event
Rapid Extinction for Emergent Life Most geologists agree that plate tectonics began as the Earth's crust cooled and cracked into separate tectonic plates several hundred million years or more after its fiery genesis 4.6 billion years ago. Volcanic eruptions from the heated interior and external heavy bombardment by small bodies may have extinguished emerging life on a rapid timescale. The oldest known fossilized prokaryotes were possibly laid down over 3.5 billion years ago, less than 1 billion years after the formation of the Earth's crust. The prokaryotes are a group of organisms that lack a cell nucleus or any other membrane-bound organelles. They differ from the eukaryotes, which have a cell nucleus. The prokaryotes are divided into two domains: the bacteria and the archaea. Even today, prokaryotes are perhaps the most successful and abundant life forms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prokaryote
Lost City A spectacular tower- a hydrothermal vent - harboring anaerobic deepsea life at the Lost City of - rov lights in background. http://www.morning-earth.org/Graphic-E/Biosphere/Bios-PL-BenthicBiomes2.htm Photo Credit: NOAA
Black Smokers Some theories indicate that life originated at hydrothermal vents from inorganic precursors. Extant submarine hydrothermal vents create life support for chemosynthetic bacteria that grow into a thick mat which attracts other organisms such as amphipods and copepods which graze upon the bacteria directly. Larger organisms such as snails, shrimp, crabs, tube worms, fish, and octopuses form a food chain of predator and prey relationships above the primary consumers. The main families of organisms found around seafloor vents are annelids, pogonophorans, gastropods, and crustaceans, with large bivalves, vestimentiferan worms, and "eyeless" shrimp making up the bulk of non-microbial organisms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
Black Smoker A diverse community of anaerobic benthic marine life feed on the sulfurous/methane gases and mineral precipitates pouring from a hydrothermal vent. A hydrothermal vent is a fissure in a planet's surface from which geothermally heated water issues. Hydrothermal vents are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart, ocean basins, and hotspots. It is suggested that it was in such an environment in early Earth where life first established. http://www.morning-earth.org/Graphic-E/Biosphere/Bios-PL-BenthicBiomes2.htm
Pompeii-Worm This extremophile keeps a cool head even in extreme temperatures. The Pompeii Worm finds a habitat on or near Black Smokers, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, which give the worm its volcanic name. Nestled within its cozy tube, its body stays at a very toasty 175º F, while its plume-like head protrudes from the tube into water that is a much more temperate 72º F. Weirder still, its fleecy coat is actually a colony of bacteria that lives in a symbiotic relationship with the worm, fed by mucus secretions produced by the worm. Truly an oddity, the Pompeii worm (and its living coat) obviously has a lot to teach us about living in an extreme range of temperatures.
Riftia pachyptila A ventimiferan tubeworm exists deep in the ocean near hydrothermal vents. It can grow to over 2 meters. It is a worm with no mouth, no guts, and no anus. http://www.morning-earth.org/Graphic-E/Biosphere/Bios-PL-BenthicBiomes2.htm
Extremophile Extremophilic microbes can be found thriving in some of the most hostile environments imaginable - swimming in near-boiling water, eating rocks, lounging in subzero temperatures and hanging out where radiation levels rival nuclear reactors. The European Mars Express mission detected hints of methane in Mars’ atmosphere, and some astrobiologists have speculated that the methane could be a by-product of extremophilic methanogens or some other form of microbial life. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6928753/ns/technology_and_science-science
Glycogen Carbohydrate Scientists have demonstrated that a five-nucleotide-long ribozyme can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins, bearing implications for the origin of life on Earth. Their findings present further evidence that the first catalytic macromolecules could have been RNA molecules. Since they are simpler than protein-based enzymes, they “were likely to exist early in the formation of the first life forms, and are capable of catalyzing chemical reactions without proteins being present. http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/c0ee6af5a20b68989c68119b16468aa8.html
Late Heavy Bombardment The late heavy bombardment of asteroids that clobbered Earth and the rest of the inner solar system for 20 to 100 million years, ending 3.85 billion years ago, is generally regarded as one of the most hostile eras in our planet's history. However new studies are turning this view on its head, hinting that the ancient rain of asteroids may actually have established a more favorable environment for life to take hold. Researchers propose that if early bacteria were living more than 2.5 miles deep, the impacts could have helped life by creating more hot-water filled cracks for microbes to inhabit. http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/late_heavy_bombardment.html
Massive Rocky Bodies Collide This artist's rendering shows what the environment around HD 23514 might look like. Heat radiating from dust around the star indicates that there may have been a recent collision between two large, rocky bodies - similar to the collision that formed the Earth's Moon. http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2527/pleiades-planets Credit: Gemini Observatory Artist: Lynette Cook http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/space.html
Murchison Meteorite A rocky meteorite 4.5 billion years old found in Murchison, Australia, in 1969 This is a fragment of the meteorite that gave scientists the first evidence of extraterrestrial organic compounds. Scientists found that it contains sugars, amino acids, and other organic compounds. It is pictured here in a fanciful impression of the asteroid belt- a region of the Solar System located roughly between the orbits of the planets Mars and Jupiter. It is occupied by numerous irregularly shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The asteroid material is so thinly distributed that multiple unmanned spacecraft have traversed it without incident so the illustration which pictures the Murchison meteorite among closely-packed bodies is unrealistic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt http://www.fieldmuseum.org/evolvingplanet/precambrian_9.asp
Organic Molecules in Early Universe This artist's conception symbolically represents complex organic molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, seen in the early universe. These large molecules, comprised of carbon and hydrogen, are considered among the building blocks of life. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is the first telescope to see polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons so early -- 10 billion years further back in time than seen previously. Spitzer detected these molecules in galaxies when our universe was one-fourth of its current age of about 14 billion years. These complex molecules are very common on Earth as they form any time carbon-based materials are not burned completely such as sooty exhaust from cars and airplanes. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are pervasive in galaxies like our own Milky Way, and play a significant role in star and planet formation. http://www.nasaimages.org
Water Bears Dr. Daiki Horikawa from NASA Ames Research Center has been examining strange creatures called tardigrades, nicknamed "water bears", small invertebrate animals that live in terrestrial mosses, soil, or lichens. They also inhabit ocean and polar regions." Recent research has shown that water bears can survive the dangerous conditions of space. Previously, the only organisms that have been exposed to the radiation and vacuum of space and lived to tell the tale are certain types of bacteria and lichen. Tardigrades have the ability to enter a suspended animation-like state when they cannot find enough water. That simple animals like tardigrades also can survive gives more credence to the theory of panspermia, which claims that organisms could move from world to world after traveling though space. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,442001,00.html
Goldilocks Planet Gliese 581g is one of six planets in orbit around a dwarf star Gliese 581- about one-third the strength of our sun. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark. Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather". It's about about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. In the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us. It is unknown whether there is water there. video: http://www.jodcast.net/amp/news_in_space.html#news_in_space_5 Artist: Lynette Cook http://extrasolar.spaceart.org/space.html
Life on Europa? Europa, one of Jupiter's satellites is another possible candidate within our solar system where conditions may exist that are generally considered to be necessary for life. These include the following: Orbit around a yellow star (like the Sun), a red dwarf, or a stable combination of those stars; Presence of water, carbon and other organic elements (believed to be fairly common.); Orbit within the habitable zone (distance from star where the temperatures allow water to exist as ice, liquid water and vapor); Presence of an active core that causes volcanic and tectonic activity as well as a magnetic field to protect the surface from cosmic and solar radiation; The size and density of the planet have to be such that the planet's gravity can hold an atmosphere, but is not too strong to crush lifeforms. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Exobiology
Titan Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. The moon itself is primarily composed of water ice and rocky material. Much as with Venus prior to the Space Age, the dense, opaque atmosphere prevented understanding of Titan's surface until new information accumulated with the arrival of the Cassin-Huygens mission in 2004, including the discovery of liquid hydrocarbon lakes in the satellite's polar regions. These are the only large, stable bodies of surface liquid known to exist anywhere other than Earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28moon%29
Origin of Life from Early Mars An alternative hypothesis, proposed to explain the presence of life on Earth so soon after the planet had cooled down, with apparently very little time for prebiotic evolution, is that life formed first on early Mars. Due to its smaller size Mars cooled before Earth (a difference of hundreds of millions of years), allowing prebiotic processes there while Earth was still too hot. Life was then transported to the cooled Earth when crustal material was blasted off Mars by asteroid and comet impacts. Mars continued to cool faster and eventually became hostile to the continued evolution or even existence of life (it lost its atmosphere due to low volcanism); Earth is following the same fate as Mars, but at a slower rate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life
Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring the Planets (ASTEP) is a NASA initiative of relevant projects for developing technology related to the study of astrobiology and terrestrial extreme environments. http://ranier.hq.nasa.gov/astep/title.html
Fledgling Solarsystem NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observed a fledgling solar system like the one depicted in this artist's concept, and discovered deep within it enough water vapor to fill the oceans on Earth five times. This water vapor starts out in the form of ice in a cloudy cocoon (not pictured) that surrounds the embryonic star, called NGC 1333-IRAS 4B (buried in center of image). Material from the cocoon, including ice, falls toward the center of the cloud. The ice then smacks down onto a dusty pre-planetary disk circling the stellar embryo (doughnut-shaped cloud) and vaporizes. Eventually, this water might make its way into developing planets. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/news/spitzer-20070829_prt.htm
Deadly Neutron Stars As on Earth, emergent life everywhere in the universe faces what would appear to be insurmountable odds against survival. Neutron stars that may number in the billions in our Milky Way have extremely energetic and ultrapowerful magnetic fields and occasionally unleash flares that pack more energy in a fraction of a second than the Sun will emit in tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years. The flares are probably ignited when a massive shift in the crust (a starquake) triggers a large-scale untwisting and rearrangement of magnetic-field lines, causing them to snap and release vast amounts of pent-up magnetic energy in the form of gamma rays, X rays, and particles. Such episodes would likely cause mass extinction of any life over vast regions of space. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/science/neutron_stars.html
Amino Acids Detected in Comet NASA has announced it has discovered an amino acid in samples it took from comet Wild 2 with its Stardust probe. Glycine is used by living organisms to make proteins and scientists say its presence backs up the theory that life's ingredients were delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts. It also boosts the chances of life being common throughout the universe. Proteins are made up of chains of amino acids arranged to make everything from your eyes to your hair. One of the most studied rocks on Earth is the Murchison meteorite. It fell in Australia back in 1969 and is jam-packed with organic compounds. One of the most studied rocks on Earth is the Murchison meteorite. It fell in Australia back in 1969 and is jam-packed with organic compounds- building blocks of life that rained down on our planet to give the primordial soup its extra life-creating potential. http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/weirdscience/2009/08/building-block-of-life-found-i.html#more
Andromeda Andromeda (M31) is the nearest spiral galaxy to our own, the Milky Way. The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching our Sun at about 100 to 140 kilometres per second so the two galaxies are expected to collide in perhaps 4.5 billion years. This suggests that if no other cataclysmic event intervenes- life on Earth may have a chance to evolve over the same span of time since its creation 4.5 billion years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy Credit & Copyright: Robert Gendler http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061126.html
Carina Nebula A ground-based view of the giant star-forming region. The bright star at the center of the image is eta Carinae, one of the most massive and luminous stars known. Credit: N. Smith and NOAO/AURA/NSF Panspermia and Exogenisis Panspermia is the hypothesis that "seeds" of life exist already all over the Universe, that life on Earth may have originated through these "seeds", and that they may deliver or have delivered life to other habitable bodies. The related but distinct idea of exogenesis proposes life on Earth was transferred from elsewhere in the Universe but makes no prediction about how widespread it is. Studies of bacteria frozen in Antarctic glaciers have shown that DNA has a half-life of 1.1 million years under such conditions, suggesting that while life may have moved around within the Solar System it is unlikely that it was from an interstellar source although environments in meteors or comets are somewhat shielded from these hazards. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia
Carina Nebula Hubble's view of the Carina Nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born. http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0707a/
The Light of Cosmic Consciousness Creates and Sustains the Phenomenal Universe A map of the early universe made 2006, using the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). Thanks to advanced astro technology, cosmologists are intruding on mysteries previously confined to the realms of philosophy, metaphysics and religious faith. These audacious seekers seem on the verge of answering fundamental questions about the origins, scale and fate of the observable universe, the nature of its contents, the prevalence of other Earth-like worlds - and the potential for kindred consciousness on some of them. [Unveiling the Universe - Kathy Sawyer, Na Geog Mag, Oct, 1999] More: http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/resources/featured_images.html
A graphical symbolism for reality as revealed in my Nirvikalpa Samadhi bottom: translocation between two worlds middle: experiencing duality of all material knowledge top: brief transformation to non-dual consciousness (Brahman) http://maya-gaia.angelfire.com/big_bang_involution.html#metaphysical
