Latest Cenozoic Stories
Youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia Fossils from two caves in south-west China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human evolution with startling implications for the early peopling of Asia. The fossils are of a people with a highly unusual mix of archaic and modern anatomical features and are the youngest of their kind ever found in mainland East Asia. Dated to just 14,500 to 11,500 years old, these...
The ancient sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, lived around 50 million years ago. It was very distinct in its appearance because it was only about the size of a modern day house cat, weighing in around 12 pounds. The horse lived in what is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000 year period where the Earth's atmospheric temperature rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, caused by a great release of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans. In response to the...
A recent study by an international group of evolutionary biologists has pointed to six broad yet distinct ‘waves’ of climate-induced mammalian diversity in the last 65 million years of evolution. Researchers say that extended periods of warming and cooling appear to signal the shift from one dominant grouping of mammals to the next. In the online version of the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Professor Christine Janis of Brown University and a...
The Biology Magazine Eurekamag.com publishes reviews on a wide range of topics within the biological sciences. The magazine publishes 1-4 such reviews every day and the latest inclusions cover the "handy man" Homo habilis and gender discrimination aka Sexism. (PRWEB) October 27, 2011 The Science Magazine EurekaMag.com covers a wide range of topics including biology, agriculture, horticulture, forestry, geography, environment and health. Drawing from this pool of scientific...
New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Arkansas. By analyzing microscopic pits and scratches on hominid teeth, as well as stable isotopes of carbon found in teeth, researchers are getting a very different picture of the diet habitats of early hominids than that painted by the physical...
Research at the University of Liverpool has found that periods of rapid fluctuation in temperature coincided with the emergence of the first distant relatives of human beings and the appearance and spread of stone tools. Dr Matt Grove from the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology reconstructed likely responses of human ancestors to the climate of the past five million years using genetic modeling techniques. When results were mapped against the timeline of human evolution, Dr...
CT scans of fossil skull fragments may help researchers settle a long-standing debate about the evolution of Africa's Australopithecus, a key ancestor of modern humans that died out some 1.4 million years ago. The study, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains how CT scans shed new light on a classic evolutionary puzzle by providing crucial information about the internal anatomy of the face. For decades scientists have disagreed about the...
From hot pink to traditional French and Lady Gaga's sophisticated designs, manicured nails have become the grammar of fashion.But they are not just pretty "” when nails appeared on all fingers and toes in modern primates about 55 million years ago, they led to the development of critical functions, including finger pads that allow for sensitive touch and the ability to grasp, whether it's a nail polish brush or remover to prepare for the next trend.In a new study co-authored by University...
Modern humans never co-existed with Homo erectus"”a finding counter to previous hypotheses of human evolution"”new excavations in Indonesia and dating analyses show. The research, reported in the journal PLoS One, offers new insights into the nature of human evolution, suggesting a different role for Homo erectus than had been previously thought.The work was conducted by the Solo River Terrace (SoRT) Project, an international group of scientists directed by anthropologists Etty Indriati...
Researchers have pinpointed the timing of the start of an ancient global warming episode known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM). The early part of the Cenozoic era witnessed a series of transit global warming events called hyperthermals. The most severe of these was the PETM at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, which took place around 56 million years ago. Over a 20,000-year period, ocean temperatures rose globally by about 41 degrees Fahrenheit. The team said one...
Latest Cenozoic Reference Libraries
Commonly known as the Eurasian cave lion or the European cave lion, Panthera leo spelaea is an extinct subspecies of lion. It is thought to have lived during the Pleistocene epoch, and may have lived in the Balkans in southeastern Europe until 2,000 years ago. The range of this cave lion would have included northwestern North America, Asia, and areas of Europe and would have extended from Germany, Spain, and Great Britain to the Yukon Territory. Its range also extended from Turkistan to...
Miracinonyx, commonly known as the American Cheetah, is an extinct genus of large cats. It was native to North America during the Pleiotocene era(1.8 million to 11,000 years ago). The American cheetah held at least two species in its genus that are similar to modern cheetahs, including Miracinonyx inexpectatus and M. trumani. Similarities distinguished by bone fragments include a short face and nose for better breathing, and elongated legs used for swiftly hunting prey. These similarities are...
The Paramyladon, an extinct genus of ground sloth, was native to North America. It lived from the Pliocene era to the Pleistocene era, a period of about 4.889 years. Remains of this creature have been found as far south as Guatemala, throughout North America, and even as far north as Alberta, Canada. Paramyladon has been easily mistaken with another ground sloth called Glossotherium, due to major similarities. Barnum Brown created the Paramyladon genus in 1903 with a species of P....
Megalonyx, meaning “Great claw,” is an extinct genus of giant ground sloths in the family Megalonychidae. The genus was endemic to North America from the Hemphillian stage of the Late Miocene to the Rancholabrean stage of the Pleistocene epoch (10.3 million to 11,000 years ago). The species, M. leptostomus, was named in 1893. It lived from Florida to Texas, north to Kansas and Nebraska, and west to New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Fossils have been discovered in numerous...
Holmesina is an extinct genus of pampathere, a group of armadillo-like mammals that were distantly related to modern armadillos. Fossils of members of this genus have been found mainly in Texas and Florida. Members of this genus often traveled north in the faunal interchange and were well adapted to the North American climate, like the ground sloths, glyptodonts, armadillos and other South American immigrants. Like armadillos, the shells of Holmesina members were made up of flexible...
