The Earth Story

The Cradle of Humankind

Located 65 Km south west of South Africa’s capital city, Pretoria, is The Cradle of Humankind. The site includes the Sterkfontein Caves, where the famous 2.3 million year old fossil “Mrs. Ples” was discovered. The discovery was made by Dr Robert Broom and John T Robinson. Prior to 2010, the Sterkfontein Caves produced over 30% of hominid fossils ever found.

Including the Sterkfontein Caves and a massive complex of limestone caves, the site currently occupies over 45 000 hectares. There are close to 40 fossil-bearing caves across the site.

A massive number of homonin fossils have thus far been excavated from the many sites comprising the Cradle of Humankind, including some of the oldest ever discovered. A few of these fossils have been found to be almost 3.5 million years old.

It is theorized that hominins may have lived all across the African continent, but their fossils can only be found where the conditions for fossil formation are optimal. The hominin fossils found in dolomitic caves at the Cradle are often enclosed in a blend of limestone and breccia.

hominid – “group consisting of all modern and extinct Great Apes”

hominin- “the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all our immediate ancestors”

Breccia – clastic sedimentary rocks made up of angular fragments. Often there are gaps between the angular fragments. These gaps are filled with a medium consisting of smaller particles that binds the rock together.

Renesh T

Image Source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Copy-of.mrs-ples-maropeng.jpg

References/Further Reading:

Kashmira Raghu BSc. Hons. MSc http://bit.ly/1lyU3b6 http://bit.ly/1IpOH9d http://bbc.in/1LSB6Nd http://bit.ly/1EN4f5U http://bit.ly/19hfUyi http://bit.ly/1xeqCAZ

https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/tag/rising-star-expedition/

naturehi

🦍🦍😂😂😂😂😂

Video by

@gorilla_iro_no

Awesome wildlife expedition through Uganda

Fast paced but neat trip through Indonesia featuring a couple volcano visits, a couple waterfalls, and some wildlife.

Specially adapted to life in the mountains, geladas use cliff ledges for escape from predators & safe places to sleep. They are found only in the highlands of Ethiopia.

Gigantopithecus: a Jungle VIP

If you've seen the new live-action/CGI Jungle Book film which came out this year, and if your nostalgia for the Disney original runs deep, you may have noticed a lyrics update in one of the movie's iconic songs. In "I Wanna Be Like You," Christopher Walken as King Louie sings about wanting to be human, with lines about “Oh, how magnificus it would be,/A gigantopithecus like me/Could learn to do like you humans do.” That’s because he’s had a species upgrade from the animated version; instead of an orangutan, King Louie is now a Gigantipithecus, an extinct ape that lived in Asia several million years ago.

Filmmakers made the change both to make the character as imposing as possible compared to little Mowgli, and to fix a mistake from the original animated film. While all of the other animals are natives of the Seoni Jungle in India, orangs like King Louie are not found in India at all. The character was created by Disney when they adapted the Kipling classic. Animators searched for a more realistic substitute, and found Gigantopithecus. The ancient creature lived in India, China and Southeast Asia, ranging from 6.5 million years ago until several hundred thousand years ago, overlapping with the presence of human ancestor Homo erectus. The accuracy of the movie version is questionable, as much as one can ask for accuracy in a movie about talking animals; the ancient ape is only known from fossil jawbones and teeth. No full skeleton has ever been found, but researchers are able to estimate skull size from the jawbones, and from skull size, overall body weight, which scales with the skull in primates. Gigantopithecus was thought to be 800 to 900 pounds, and about 9 feet tall. The new King Louie towers over not just Mowgli but the full grown bear Baloo as well; he is at least 12 feet tall, with reddish fur and flaring cheeks similar to an orangutan, Gigantopithecus’ closest living relative. The details may be from the imagination of the animators, but Louie’s royal gravitas dominates the screen; we can only be glad he never gets the secret of the red flower, or the Jungle Book sequel may have to be called “Planet of the Apes.” -CEL

Source: http://bit.ly/1UiKRso Image: http://bit.ly/1WXrUMh

India, Monkey, and dipping stratigraphy in the background. This is my kind of post.

Phuket province in Thailand

“Person of the Forest”

The only one of the great apes found outside of Africa, orangutans are the largest arboreal (tree-dwelling) mammals in the world. Once ranging as far as northern India, southern China, and Java, orangutans are now found only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. There are two recognized species: Pongo pygmaeus and Pongo abelii, with the Bornean apes, Pongo pygmaeus, being further classified into three subspecies. The gentle, intelligent creatures live 35-40 yrs. in the wild, reaching puberty at around the age of 8 yrs. Although technically ready to conceive at that age, young females typically don’t have their first baby until they reach their teens, spending the intervening time learning proper maternal behavior. Female orangutans generally only give birth to a single offspring every 8 yrs., the longest period of time between births found in any mammal on the planet. This slow rate of reproduction keeps the populations from being able to rebound after disasters.

Another behavioral record held by the orangutans is the amount of parental care given to their offspring, with mothers often nursing their young for 6-8 yrs. While the young females remain with the mother until their teens, males may stay only a few years after attaining puberty and thereafter become solitary when not seeking a mate. Primatologists believe that this long parent-child relationship, rivaled only by that of humans, is due to how much the young need to learn in order to survive on their own.

Historically, the indigenous populations of Indonesia and Malaysia did not hunt or kill orangutans, thinking they were just people who were trying to avoid being made slaves. This earned them their Malay name, “person of the forest,” or “orang hutan”.

Like many of the great apes, the orangutans are gradually being driven out of their natural habitats. The booming palm oil industry has spurred farmers to chop down and burn the native forest in order to plant illegal palm plantations. Currently, Borneo and Sumatra are riddled with thousands of forest fires that were intentionally set. Because the orangutans’ diet depends on ready sources of high calorie foods (bark, leaves, flowers, insects, and over 300 kinds of fruit), relocating to new areas is already problematic and now most of the alternative habitats are going up in smoke. Government officials in those countries have stated that the fires are unlikely to stop burning until the rainy season arrives.

Image by the author

Sources

https://orangutan.org/

http://www.orangutan.com/orangutans/orangutan-facts/

Humans and Monkeys (Part 1 of 3): Prosimians and Simians

Back early in our education if you remember, we were taught that humans evolved from monkeys or apes and that they were our closest ancestors. Yet, that was about all we were taught, but really there’s a lot more to it! In this series of 3 posts, we’re going to explore in detail just how this happened.

First came the lower primates, which are known as the Prosimians. The Prosimians can be divided into two groups, the Strepsirrhines and the Haplorrhines. The Strepsirrhines are named due to their ‘curly’ nostrils on their straight snouts. Strepsirrhines have wet noses as they are connected to their upper lip and gum. Examples today of Strepsirrhines include Lemurs (picture 1) and Bush Babies. The Haplorrhines, however, have dry noses as they are not connected to their gums. Haplorrhine eye sockets are also slightly different to strepsirrhines’ as bones completely enclose their eye socket. An example of a Haplorrhine is the Tarsier which evolved in 58 million years ago.

The next major group of primates are the Simians. Between these two groups, a transitional form is needed to link the pair. In the modern day there are no living examples of such a creature, however in 1994 Eosimias (known as the dawn monkey) was discovered in China (dated to 40 million years ago). Eosimias was tiny, it weighed only 100g and could have fit in the hand of a human.

Finally, there are the simians, which can be divided into New World Monkeys and Old World Monkeys, which separated from each other 40 million years ago. The New World Monkeys are Platyrrhines (they have a flat nose with sideways pointing nostrils). They are small to mid-sized (ranging from the Pygmy Marmoset up to the Southern Muriqui as seen in picture 2) and are thus mostly arboreal (live in trees). Unlike Old World Monkeys they tend to lack trichromatic vision (seeing in colour as humans do) and opposable thumbs (can be placed opposite fingers on the same hand which is essential for holding tools for example). Despite this, New World Monkeys have a prehensile tail which can grasp and hold objects, which suits their arboreal lifestyle.

Old World Monkeys differ in several ways to New World Monkeys. This difference can be attributed to the fact that they live in differing environments and thus are adapted in other ways. Old World Monkeys are medium to large in general with the smallest being the Talapoin Monkey and the largest the male Mandril. These monkeys can be arboreal such as the Colobus Monkey (picture 3) or terrestrial (live on the ground) such as the Baboon. We are far more closely related to this group than any discussed above due to their opposable thumbs, which have been essential for human evolution. ~SA

Pictures: http://bit.ly/1FbTqMv Lemur by Alex Dunkel, http://bit.ly/1zWUIdC Southern Muriqui by Sinara Conessa and http://bit.ly/1KFWbpf Colobus Monkey by Cacophony Further Reading: http://bit.ly/1HfclIp Lemurs by Dennis O’Neil

Animal Self-Awareness: The Mirror Test

The mirror test was developed by Gallup in 1977 as a method of determining if other species were self-aware.

His testing began with chimpanzees: an individual would be placed into a solitary holding facility with a mirror. The mirror would be removed once threat displays by the chimp ceased. The chimp would be anesthetised and painted with bright red paint on its face in an area that the chimp could only see in the mirror. The mirror was replaced in the cage, and once the chimp awoke, the researchers tracked it's behaviour. The chimps would stare in the mirror, touch the red spot on their face, and then look down at their hand/smell their hand. This behaviour could possible serve as acknowledgement that they can identify themselves in the mirror.

Mirror testing has been done on many species. For the most part, it has mostly been primates, but there are also many cases of trying it on dolphins. Dolphin testing is more difficult though, because they cannot touch their own face. The mirror test has also been used on human children to try to identify when humans become self-aware. So far, tests estimated human children gain self awareness at around 24 months of age.

The mirror test is riddled with assumption. There's a lot of potential for it being completely wrong. For example, another team of researchers provided a similar mirror test to pigeons, which successfully used the mirror to preen debris from their feathers. Since most behavioural ornithologists will agree that birds are not self-aware, this study serves as a rebuttal to Gallup's tests.

~Rosie

Image: http://bit.ly/1F2ro6g

References: http://bit.ly/1F2zewF

http://bit.ly/1F2ro6g

An addictive little video and music combination from Earth Day a couple years ago. Chimpanzees!