Brights News Feed

From the Guardian:

The discovery of a new species of great ape that roamed Africa 10m years ago has forced scientists to rethink the earliest steps of human evolution.

Fossil hunters working along the Afar rift in central Ethiopia unearthed remnants of teeth they claim belonged to the primitive ape, a previously unknown species of gorilla they named Chororapithecus abyssinicus.

The finding, if confirmed, will redraw the evolutionary tree of primates, suggesting that humans and chimpanzees must have split from their gorilla-like ancestors 3m years earlier than thought. Geneticists have previously put the date at which the human and chimpanzee lineage split from gorillas at around 7m years ago, with humans and chimps diverging more recently, at 5m years ago.

Two amazing stories today testify both to the grandeur of nature, and to the power of humanity in understanding its intricacy and appreciating its power.

New Scientist reports on the discovery that particles of dust immersed in ionized gas can behave as information-transmitting replicators, essentially meaning that they could support “genetic” inheritance, and perhaps even support a full, living, evolutionary process.

Also, widely linked across the internet an on television news, the world has watched amateur nature video. A pride of lions attack a herd of water buffalo, but events take two unexpected twists leaving the spectators aghast and amazed. The video is on YouTube here.

The Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, recently maligned in the media for comments to the effect that the UK’s current bout of flooding was God’s punishment for society tolerating homosexuality, attempted to deny that he had said any such thing today.

But judge for yourself…

He [Bishop of Carlisle, Graham Dow] said: “I did not say that the Yorkshire floods were God’s action or because of recent legislation.

“Sadly, that was what was written. The way I see it is that all through Scripture - from Genesis 3, through Noah’s flood, the period of Old Testament kingship, right through to Revelation - God views life as a whole; that is, our morality and the health of the land are all one piece.

“The land is not neutral to us; it is God’s, and for us to steward. If we want to enjoy its fruits then we must live God’s way. That is the message all through Scripture.”

The Bishop said: “Of course we know that disasters have physical causes; but I believe that at such times we also do well to ask questions about our morality, as the book of Revelation does.”

(From the Bishop’s local newspaper.)

Dogs learn from each other in a manner that is more closely related to human learning than even some of our closely related primate cousins.

Being able to imitate other members of the same species has long been recognised as a key to higher intelligence and a defining feature of “cultural” transmission. But not all imitation is equal. Human infants practice “selective imitation”, putting the actions of others’ into context — such as the goal intended by the action — before deciding whether or not to copy it. Researchers at the University of Vienna have now established similar intelligently selective imitation in dogs.

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An anthropological team in Senegal has reported new observations (Current Biology: Savanna Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus, Hunt with Tools), published yesterday, of chimps they have been studying and earning the trust of since 2001. The chimps were repeatedly observed stripping the branches from straight sticks about a meter long, and sharpening the ends to form point-tipped spears. The Senegalese chimps then used the spears to stab the hollows of trees, where bush babies sleep during the day. A successfully skewered bush baby could then be eaten.

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Kent “Doctor Dino” Hovind was sentenced to ten years in prison last Friday. He was the controversial leader of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry and owned Pensacola Florida’s Dinosaur Adventure Land, a creationist theme park which “documents” the days when humans and dinosaurs lived side by side. Hovind was found guilty in November on many and various charges of financial wrongdoing. (His wife is due to be sentenced in March, probably much more leniently.)

Hovind had claimed that there are no laws that tax “God’s” property or work. The judge said the case was nothing to do with religion, but insisted that churches are not exempt from all forms of taxation. Hovind’s business empire must now pay hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the government, which may put Dinosaur Adventure Land itself in peril. Not as much peril as people would have been in if they lived with dinosaurs, though.

The US National Center for Science Education has a good short summary of events, and relays local Pensacola press responses to the sentencing, which are scornful of this minister who is now a convicted criminal. (Via. Image source.)

British scientists have developed GM chickens which lay eggs containing proteins needed to make cancer-fighting drugs. The news was announced today by the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, the same group which produced Dolly, the first cloned sheep, and has a flair for publicity.

Bacteria have long been used to harvest insulin in a similar way, but the more complicated cells of larger organisms are necessary to produce some more complex proteins. Other complex proteins have been made in sheep, goats, cows and rabbits. But turning chickens into “biofactories” for the production of anti-cancer eggs has taken 15 years’ work, lead by Dr Helen Sang.

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Following on from similar efforts in the US which have failed, Russia has its own problems with the teaching of evolution being challenged in courts of law. A student has sued the St. Petersburg city education committee, claiming the biology textbook used in his school was offensive to believers and infringes her human rights, and that teachers should offer an alternative to Darwin’s theory.

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Cambridge University (UK) has launched a new website which will make available all of Charles Darwin’s writings for the first time online. Along with earlier editions of published works that have not been available online before, the collection will also include some notebooks and diary entries have never been published before, including notes from the Beagle voyage that were used as material for The Voyage of the ‘Beagle’. The site is http://darwin-online.org.uk/

David, one of the brightsOnline bloggers, points out (Science and sensibility: “Blogging about the natural world“) two recent “blog carnvials“.

Tangled Bank #59 is at ScienceAndReason.blogspot.com (all issues of Tangled Bank can be found here).

And the invertebrates’ Circus of the Spineless latest carnival is at Roger Butterfield’s Words & Pictures.

Butterfield links for example to Via Negativa and Dave Bonta’s original photographs of various spineless critters, including these Monarch butterflies (“Love and death at the milkweed saloon”).