Latest news with #PleistoceneEpoch
Miami Herald
27-05-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
10-foot-tall sloths with ‘large' teeth roamed modern-day Kansas. Now bones found
At the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, a ground sloth that stood 8 to 10 feet tall went extinct. Now, bones belonging to one have been found in Kansas. A partial skull of the extinct sloth, known as Megalonyx jeffersonii, was found in Ellis County on the Great Plains, according to a study published May 26 in the peer-reviewed journal Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science. The partial skull was made up mostly of braincase, and it provided a 'better understanding of the distribution of this species in Kansas,' the study said. The ground sloth was 'a large, heavily built animal' with 'a large skull with blunt snout, massive jaw, well-developed chewing muscles, and large, blunt, peg-like teeth,' according to the Illinois State Museum. Unlike modern-day sloths that typically stay in trees, this sloth spent most of its time on the ground, walking on its flat feet and at times standing on its hind legs, the Illinois State Museum reported. They had 'very large claws on their forelimbs' and were 'covered with thick hair,' the museum said. The age of the partial skull was not able to be determined, but because of its presence in the Peoria Loess sediment deposit, it's believed to be from the late Wisconsian between 21,000 and 12,000 years before present. The research team included H. Gregory McDonald, Laura E. Wilson and Melissa Macias Ellis County is about a 170-mile drive northwest from Wichita.
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Has the Dire Wolf really returned? Colossal scientist finally tells the truth
Image credits: Instagram/ It seems filters are not just limited to social media anymore. They can be created in organisms in real life to make them resemble a more beautiful yet extinct version of them. Colossal Biosciences, an American biotechnology and genetic engineering company announced on April 7, 2025, the birth of "dire wolf" pups which went extinct over 10,000 years ago. The company explicitly announced the "rebirth of the once extinct dire wolf" a species that was mostly unknown, unheard of and unseen by humans, thus getting them excited about the possibility of seeing an animal from the past alive in the present. But has the dire wolf really returned? Read on to find out what the chief scientist at Colossal has to say. Who are Dire wolves? Dire Wolf, scientifically known as Aenocyon dirus are canines that existed during the Pleistocene Epoch, around 2.6 million to 11700 years ago. According to the species was spread throughout North America and parts of western South America. Its skeletal remains have been found in Florida, the Mississippi River valley, Valley of Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela. These wolves that had gone extinct thousands of years ago were said to have been made 'de-extinct' by Colossal who announced the birth of three dire wolf pups named Romulus, Remulus and Khaleesi. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Buy Brass Idols - Handmade Brass Statues for Home & Gifting Luxeartisanship Buy Now Undo When the company announced the same, it was believed by people across the globe that a new success had been achieved in biotechnology and humans had once again been able to achieve a task that was thought to be impossible. However, there were many researchers who stated that the claim made by Colossal of reviving an extinct species was false and that they were just genetically modified gray wolves. Now, Colossal's chief science officer, Beth Shapiro has finally revealed the true identity of these pups. Has the Dire Wolf truly returned? Image credits: Instagram/kitharringtonig In a new interview with New Scientist, Shapiro confirmed that the "dire wolves" created by the company are indeed just gray wolves with 20 modified genes. "It's not possible to bring something back that is identical to a species that used to be alive. Our animals are grey wolves with 20 edits that are cloned," said Shapiro. "And we've said that from the very beginning. Colloquially, they're calling them dire wolves and that makes people angry," she added. "In our press release, we stated we made 20 gene edits to grey wolf cells," a spokesperson for the company said to Live Sciences. "Grey wolves are the closest living relative to the dire wolves, as we showed in our paper. With those edits, we have brought back the dire wolf…" "We have also said that species are ultimately a human construct and that other scientists have a right to disagree and call them whatever they want to call them. Khaleesi, Romulus and Remus are the first dire wolves to walk the Earth in 12,000 years. They are doing amazingly well and are a testament to what we can achieve as we continue on our goal of bringing back the dodo, thylacine, and woolly mammoth, among other species. " The contention between Colossal and other scientists lies in different definitions of a species. Shapiro previously shared that Colossal is using the "morphological species concept" which defines a species on the basis of its morphology or appearance. However, most scientists follow the "biological species concept" which defines a species on their capability of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. How did Colossal create the new "dire wolf"? In order to create the new dire wolves, Colossal scientists found fossils of the real dire wolves, their teeth and skulls that had been buried for 13,000 to 72,000 years. These bones still had tiny fragments of DNA that they used to build the creatures. Next, they required a closest living relative of the dire wolves to use as a template. This is where the gray wolves entered the situation as their closest living cousins. They compared the DNA of both to figure out the differences which revealed that the dire wolves were larger, had a more massive skull, smaller brain and larger teeth than the modern day gray wolves. Then, the scientists embarked on the process of gene editing through the tool CRISPR which essentially helped them change certain parts of the gray wolf's DNA and insert in the place, aspects of the dire wolf DNA. In total, they made about 20 edits across 14 genes. This means that out of the 20,000 genes they just changed 14 to make the wolves morphologically look like dire wolves but the rest of them are still gray wolves. To produce the dire wolves, they took an empty egg cell from a big dog, removed its own DNA and inserted the edited gray wolf DNA. This egg was planted into a surrogate large domestic dog who carried them and gave them birth. Thus, while Colossal's dire wolves are truly a master of science and technology and have become a symbol of achieving the unimaginable, they are not really dire wolves but just modified gray wolves.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
West Texas road project digs up Ice Age-era sloth tooth, here's what else they found
After a West Texas road project unearthed ancient remains of Ice Age era animals, more details have come to light on what else was found and what will happen next. On May 13, 2025, the Texas Department of Transportation announced the discovery of a tooth belonging to a Giant Ground Sloth in Lubbock. This tooth, along with a mix of other bones, was found during an archeological survey for Loop 88 between Jan. 27, 2025 – Feb. 5, 2025. 'We know we've found Giant Ground Sloth by its distinctive tooth,' said Chris Ringstaff, project planner with TxDOT's environmental affairs division, in a news release. 'We're here to get the road built. But who doesn't love digging up big ol' animals?' The remains are now being preserved and studied by the Museum of Texas Tech, 3301 4th St. The team has already learned that the excavation included more than the sloth tooth. Cool find: Giant Ground Sloth tooth found during Lubbock road project Dr. Eileen Johnson offered further insight into the find, and more details about what was found. Johnson is the museum's curator of anthropology, the director of the Lubbock Lake Landmark and the Texas Tech University chair for the Heritage and Museum Sciences Masters degree. "This is an exceedingly rare discovery for the southern plains and Llano Estacado," Johnson said. "We have a lot of work ahead of us, but it's very exciting, because it is such a rare and important find." The remains are estimated to be between 18,000-36,000 years old, placing it in the Last Glacial Maximum, the later part of the Pleistocene Epoch. This epoch is more commonly known as the Ice Age. "This is a major, major find for this time period, and we're still working with all of the remains," Johnson said. "They're very, very fragile, and it's going to take months and months to work with them, to do the conservation work, to get them stable enough to even handle them before I can begin to to do the work I need to do to determine species." Behind-the-scenes: Museum of Texas Tech gives tour of Paleontology, dinosaurs, Antarctic items Even though it is early in the process, Johnson did confirm other ancient creatures were in the mix. "We have at least another species represented, and possibly two others," Johnson said. "We do have some what are called micro-vertebrates. Tiger salamanders were inhabiting these lakes at this particular time. We have big animals and very tiny animals. It's really a nifty little locality." This article continues after the gallery. These helped paint a picture of what the excavation site would have looked like at this time. Johnson said it would have been the edge of a small lake with woody vegetation. "We do know that hackberry is a native tree, it goes back about five million years in the region, so the vegetation is probably associated with that, or something of that sort," Johnson said. Samples of the materials have been sent to be tested for age, sediments and other data. It will be months, possibly at least a year before a report with the findings could be published, Johnson said. For science: Here's what to know about Natural Sciences Research Laboratory at Texas Tech "It takes time, but it's going to be well worth it," Johnson said. "We don't know the species, we don't know the animals, there's still a lot of additional discoveries. You've got the first chapter. We're just beginning that story." TxDOT and the museum are working on a transfer of ownership, so the excavated materials will eventually belong to the museum. This isn't the first discovery of an ancient animal in West Texas this year. In March, a mammoth tusk was found on a ranch in far West Texas and is in the care of Sul Ross State University. 'We live in an amazing region that has great discoveries found all the time,' Pan said. 'It's not unusual, but it is always fantastic.' Alana Edgin writes about business, and occasionally historic discoveries, for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Got a news tip? Contact her via email at aedgin@ This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: West Texas roadwork finds Ice Age sloth, what happens next
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
First fossil hyena tracks found in South Africa – how expert animal trackers helped
'The art of tracking may well be the origin of science.' This is the departure point for a 2013 book by Louis Liebenberg, co-founder of an organisation devoted to environmental monitoring. The connection between tracking in nature, as people have done since prehistory, and 'western' science is of special interest to us as ichnologists. (Ichnology is the study of tracks and traces.) We learned our skills relatively late in life. But imagine if we had learned as children and if, as adults, we tracked as if our lives depended on it? What additional visual and cognitive talents would we bring to our field work as scientists? Our mission is to find and document the fossilised tracks and traces of creatures that existed during part of the Pleistocene Epoch, between 35,000 and 400,000 years ago, on the Cape coast of South Africa. Since 2008, through the Cape South Coast Ichnology project, based in the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, more than 370 vertebrate tracksites have been identified. They have substantially complemented the traditional record of body fossils. Examples include trackways of giant tortoises and giraffe. Given the challenges inherent in identifying such tracks, we wondered how hunters who've been tracking all their lives would view our work, and how age-old indigenous expertise might align with our approach. Fortunately we could call on experts with these skills in southern Africa. The Ju/'hoansi (pronounced 'Juun-kwasi') San people of north-eastern Namibia are perhaps the last of southern Africa's indigenous inhabitants who retain the full suite of their ancient environmental skills. The Nyae Nyae conservancy in which they live gives them access to at least some of their historical land with its remaining wildlife. They still engage in subsistence hunting with bow and poisoned arrow and gather food that's growing wild. A handful among them have been recognised as Indigenous Master Tracker, a title created by Liebenberg's CyberTracker initiative in recognition of their top-flight hunter-gatherer status. And so, late in 2023, the Master Trackers #oma ('Komma') Daqm and /uce ('Tchu-shey') Nǂamce arrived in Cape Town. We were not the first to think along these lines. Ju/'hoansi Master Trackers have assisted scientists in the interpretation of hominin tracksites in French caves, and prehistoric tracks in the rock art record in Namibia. However, we knew that our often poorly preserved tracksites in aeolianites (cemented dunes) might present a stiffer challenge. Our purpose was to compare our own interpretations of fossil trackways with those of the Master Trackers, and possibly find some we had overlooked. As we've set out in a recently published paper with the Ju/'hoansi trackers and our colleague Jan De Vynck as co-authors, they did exactly this, confirming the first fossil hyena trackway ever to be found. The Late Pleistocene is not that far distant from the present (a mere 125,000 years), and many of the species that made tracks on the Cape south coast then are still with us. Some are extinct but have recognisable tracks, like the giant long-horned buffalo and giant Cape zebra. We knew, though, that tracking in Kalahari sand, like the Ju/'hoansi do, is not the same as tracking on Pleistocene rock surfaces. Many of our tracks are preserved on the undersides of ceilings and overhangs, or are evident in profile in cliff exposures. Our track-bearing surfaces are usually small, and present no associated signs. We can't follow the spoor for any distance. We don't know at what time of day the tracks were made or the role of dew, and we have never succeeded in actually tracking down our quarry. Coprolites – fossilised droppings – are seldom found conveniently beside the tracks of the depositor. We showed our new colleagues known fossil tracksites, without providing our own interpretations. #oma and /uce discussed these between themselves and presented their conclusions about what had made the tracks and how the animal had been behaving. We then shared our insights and our 3D photogrammetry data where applicable, and reached joint conclusions. Soon they were identifying freshly exposed tracksites without our input, and were providing fascinating, new interpretations for sites which had puzzled us. For example, they saw ostrich tracks which we had missed, beside ostrich egg remnants, and concluded that we were probably looking at a fossilised ostrich nest. On another occasion they pointed out the distinctive track pattern of a scrub hare on the hanging wall of an eroded piece of cliff. One of the most memorable experiences involved a 400,000-year-old trackway on a rock surface at Dana Bay, identified a few years earlier by local geologists Aleck and Ilona Birch. This rock had only been transiently exposed for a few days in the past decade, usually being covered by beach sand. Our earlier interpretation had been that the trackmaker might have been a hyena, probably the brown hyena. We were vindicated when our master tracker colleagues independently reached the identical conclusion. Examining our digital 3D images together fortified our collective judgement. This was a big deal: it was the first fossil hyena trackway to be confidently identified, as previous examples had involved only individual tracks or poorly preserved possible trackway segments. Hyena trackways are distinctive: the forefoot tracks are substantially larger than those of the hindfoot. Both of us are privileged to have university degrees and institutional affiliations. But there is another way in which acumen can be measured: the ability to use the ancient methods of discernment and pattern recognition to support and feed one's family and community through tracking, hunting and gathering. What we have demonstrated, we believe, is a novel confluence of old and new ways to reveal fascinating features of the past. We use geological understanding, satellite technology, paleontological databases, tracking manuals and sophisticated dating methods. But hunter-gatherers see what escapes us and our drones: obscure strokes and enigmatic configurations on time-beaten surfaces. They tap an alternative knowledge base, both culturally received and cultivated from childhood. The follow-through challenge must be to develop this partnership for mutual discovery and reward, understanding the past to better equip us for our uncertain future. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Charles Helm, Nelson Mandela University and Clive Thompson, Nelson Mandela University Read more: Tracking science: a way to include more people in producing knowledge African communities have a lot of knowledge to share: researchers offer alternatives to Eurocentric ways of doing things Traditional farming knowledge should be stored for future use: the technology to do this is available Clive Thompson is a trustee of the Discovery Wilderness Trust, a non-profit organization that supports environmental conservation and the fostering of tracking skills. Charles Helm does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Dinosaur tracks, made 140 million years ago, have been found for the first time in South Africa's Western Cape
Dinosaurs have captured people's imagination ever since their bones and teeth were first scientifically described in 1822 by geologist and palaeontologist Gideon Mantell in England. Dinosaur bones have taught us a great deal about these animals from the 'age of dinosaurs', the Mesozoic Era, which stretched from approximately 252 million years ago to 65 million years ago. However, there's something especially appealing about a different kind of dinosaur fossil: their tracks, which show researchers what the animals were doing while they were alive. Ichnology is the study of tracks and traces and, since 2008, the Cape South Coast Ichnology Project has documented more than 370 vertebrate tracksites on South Africa's southern coast. These sites are from the Pleistocene Epoch, which stretched from approximately 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago, much more recent than the Mesozoic. We knew that this coastline contained Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, some of which include non-marine sediments that could potentially preserve dinosaur tracks. We are both familiar with dinosaur tracks from our research in Canada, so we decided to investigate the possibility of tracks in South Africa's Western Cape. We found some – and, once we knew what to look for, it was evident that the tracks were not rare. In a new paper published in the journal Ichnos, we describe our findings in detail, presenting evidence of tracks of sauropods (enormous plant-eating dinosaurs) and possibly ornithopods (another group of large herbivorous dinosaurs). The tracks were found in a rugged, remote, breathtakingly spectacular coastal setting. They were made by dinosaurs in a variety of estuarine settings. Some were walking on sandy, inter-tidal channel bars. Others walked on the bottom of tidal channels, their feet sinking down into soft mud forming the bed of the channel. Other vague 'squishy' structures were formed by dinosaurs wading, or even wallowing in the muddy fill of abandoned channels. These tracks are around 140 million years old, from the very beginning of the Cretaceous period when the African and South American tectonic plates were starting to pull apart. Southern Africa has an extensive record of Mesozoic vertebrate fossils, but that record ends at around 180 million years ago in the Early Jurassic with the eruption of voluminous lava flows. To the best of our knowledge, all the southern African dinosaur tracks known until now are from the Triassic and Jurassic periods, so they pre-date these eruptions. That means these tracks are not only the first from the Western Cape. They also appear to be the youngest – that is, the most recent – thus far reported from southern Africa. After deciding to hunt for potential dinosaur tracks, we visited a few likely sites on the Cape south coast in 2022, choosing areas with non-marine deposits of the appropriate age, mostly in the eastern coastal portion of the Western Cape. We found a few promising spots on that visit and, in 2023, undertook a dedicated examination. Large horizontal bedding surface exposures in this area are very rare. We knew that, if we were to find dinosaur tracks, they would be evident mostly in profile in vertical cliff exposures. Read more: In the public imagination a dinosaur trackway extends across a level surface and toe impressions are visible. Some may also know that the infill of dinosaur tracks can occur on what are today the ceilings of overhangs or cave roofs. However, there are also distinctive features that allow tracks to be identified in profile. That's because the animals' footfalls deformed underlying layers in a distinctive manner. The problem is that other mechanisms, such as earthquakes, are capable of generating broadly similar deformation structures. The deposits we were examining had probably also been affected by seismic activity. The challenge was for us to differentiate between the two types of deformation. The Early Cretaceous rocks that we examined had been studied and reported on decades ago, and the deformation structures had been attributed to origins such as earthquakes rather than living organisms. Since then, however, scientists have developed a better appreciation of what dinosaur tracks look like in profile. After careful examination, our conclusion was straightforward: both dinosaur-generated and earthquake-generated types of deformation were present in the Cretaceous rocks. Further evidence that we were looking at dinosaur tracks comes from the region's bone fossil record. Cretaceous bone material has been reported from the region, mostly in the Kirkwood area in the Eastern Cape province. Two dinosaur bones have also been reported from the Knysna area in the Western Cape. One of these, a theropod tooth, was found – and correctly identified – by a 13-year-old boy. Read more: Clearly, dinosaurs were present in the Western Cape area. That means our discovery of ichnological evidence of their presence is not entirely surprising, but it is still extremely exciting. Our team plans to keep exploring deposits of suitable age in the region for evidence of more dinosaur tracks. We also hope that our discovery will inspire a new generation of dinosaur trackers to continue the quest and keep exploring. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Guy Plint, Western University and Charles Helm, Nelson Mandela University Read more: Curious Kids: what was the biggest dinosaur that ever lived? How palaeontologists are uncovering dinosaur behaviour Asteroid has a very small chance of hitting Earth in 2032, but a collision could devastate a city The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
