Latest on Evolution

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How did life on Earth originate?
Did life arrive from space? Rather than developing here, could the first life forms have
been catapulted to Earth on a chunk of rock from outer space? Investigations show that
microbes are capable of surviving just such a journey.

At the mention of life forms from other planets, images of green Martians, ET-like
creatures or Klingons immediately spring to mind, largely influenced by the film
industry. They travel through space in UFOs in order to conquer the Earth. Something
similar may well have happened a long time ago: The ‘UFOs’ could have been lumps of
rock that broke off from a planet when it was hit by a meteorite, and their ‘crews’ could
have been microbes. This is the assumption on which the panspermia hypothesis is based.
However, assuming that there are microbes on other planets, Mars for example, would
they be able to withstand the pressure that arises when a meteorite crashes into their
planet and catapults their rocky UFO into space – a pressure that is 400,000 times higher
than that of the Earth’s atmosphere?

Researchers at the
Fraunhofer Institute for
High-Speed Dynamics,
Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI
have systematically
investigated this question
for the first time: “We
simulate the shock wave
that occurs when a
meteorite crashes into
Mars,” says Dr. Ulrich
Hornemann, who is in
charge of the
experiments at the EMI.
“To do that, we detonate
an
explosive cylinder that
accelerates a metal plate.
This metal plate then hits
a steel canister
containing two thin stone
plates between which
there is a thin layer of microbes.” When the metal plate crashes into the container, a
shock wave is generated that passes through the stone plates and the layer of microbes.
The astonishing thing is that even at 400,000 times atmospheric pressure, one ten
thousandth of the microbes survive the impact of the metal plate; the main reason for this
being that the inhospitably high pressure only lasts for a fraction of a second just like the
impact of a meteorite.

Because the rocks that are broken off by meteorites usually have small cracks and
crevices in them, the experts have also investigated the feasibility of porous rocks as
‘UFOs’. The result: Microorganisms can also survive here. And the small fissures are
also advantageous to the tiny organisms in other ways, providing them with protection on
their journey through space against UV radiation, solar wind and the icy cold and thus
increasing their chances of survival, as the EMI’s project partners at the German
Aerospace Center (DLR) found out. “It is therefore possible,” says Hornemann, “that life
on Earth came here from other planets.”
When fish first started biting
Before fish began to invade land, about 365 million
years ago, they had some big problems to solve. They
needed to come up with new ways to move, breathe,
and eat.

Take the latter, for example. Fish usually pucker up

and suck prey into their mouths. But air is 900 times
less dense than water, so land-livers must bite into
their food to get a meal. Researchers at Harvard
University have just completed a study that gives a
clear picture of how that change was made.

“Aquatic creatures developed the tools they needed to

feed on land before they completely left water,” notes
Molly Markey, a lecturer on earth and planetary
sciences. “Our research suggests that these first
tetrapods, four-footed animals, bit on prey in shallow
water or on land. Although they may have occasionally captured a meal by suction.”

To become biters, the invaders had to change their teeth and skulls, and learn to walk.
Along with Charles Marshall, a professor of biology and of geology at Harvard’s
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Markey compared the boney remains of a 365-
million-year-old fish named Eusthenopteron, two ancient tetrapods called Acanthostega
and Phonerpeton, and a modern fish. The salamanderlike Acanthostega spent much of its
life in the water, Phonerpeton lived on land. Both Acanthostega and Eusthenopteron
possessed lungs and gills, so they could breathe air or water, like today’s lungfishes. All
three ancients boasted pointed teeth, indicating that they were meat-eating predators.

Studies done by Jenny Clark at Cambridge University in England show that Acanthostega
had short legs that stuck out to its sides, ending in what look like webbed toes. Such
limbs would not be very supportive, so it’s likely that the old tetrapod slithered or
scooted, rather than walked, when it ventured on land.

Slithering and chewing

One big question is why Acanthrostega and its relatives left their aquatic domain in the
first place. Were they trying to get away from bigger predators, or were they looking for
new prey to feed on? “It’s likely that both reasons are true,” Markey says.

Markey and Marshall compared models of the ancient tetrapods and Eusthenopteron, the
fish that stayed at home. They published their findings in the April 16 online edition of
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The comparison found that the key to evolving from sucking to biting lay in the tops of
the animals’ skulls. These boney skull roofs, rather than being solid, were made up of lots
of different pieces. Markey compares them to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “Imagine that
skull bones are puzzle pieces,” she explains. “Places where they touch each other are
known as sutures, and the bones can move around them a bit. The sutures get wider or
narrower depending on motions such as chewing.”

By analyzing sutures in the skulls of the ancient tetrapods and fish, then comparing them
with those in a living fish, the researchers could determine how the skull roof deformed
under the compression and tension of eating. Such analyses led to the conclusion that
Eusthenopteron was a sucker and the awkward-moving Acanthostega was a biter —
perhaps the first one in the animal kingdom.

Think of that next time you suck in strands of spaghetti or chew on a piece of chicken.
Ancient T. rex and Mastodon Protein Fragments
Discovered, Sequenced
Scientists have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil
bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old
mastodon.

Their results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a
new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as
cancer.

When an animal dies,

protein immediately
begins to degrade and, in
the case of fossils, is
slowly replaced by
mineral. This substitution
process was thought to
be complete by 1 million
years. Researchers at
North Carolina State
University (NCSU) and
Harvard Medical School
now know otherwise.

The researchers’ findings appear as companion papers in this week’s issue of the journal
Science.

“Not only was protein detectably present in these fossils, the preserved material was in
good enough condition that it could be identified,” said Paul Filmer, program director in
the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the
research. “We now know much more about what conditions proteins can survive in. It
turns out that some proteins can survive for very long time periods, far longer than
anyone predicted.”

Mary Schweitzer of NCSU and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
discovered soft tissue in the leg bone of a T. rex and other fossils recovered from the Hell
Creek sediment formation in Montana.

After her chemical and molecular analyses of the tissue indicated that original protein
fragments might be preserved, she turned to colleagues John Asara and Lewis Cantley of
Harvard Medical School, to see if they could confirm her suspicions by finding the amino
acid used to make collagen, a fibrous protein found in bone.
Bone is a composite material, consisting of both protein and mineral. In modern bones,
when minerals are removed, a collagen matrix–fibrous, resilient material that gives the
bones structure and flexibility–is left behind. When Schweitzer demineralized the T. rex
bone, she was surprised to find such a matrix, because current theories of fossilization
held that no original organic material could survive that long.

“This information will help us learn more about evolutionary relationships, about how
preservation happens, and about how molecules degrade over time, which could have
important applications in medicine,” Schweitzer said.

To see if the material had characteristics indicating the presence of collagen, which is
plentiful, durable and has been recovered from other fossil materials, the scientists
examined the resulting soft tissue with electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy.
They then tested it against various antibodies that are known to react with collagen.
Identifying collagen would indicate that it is original to T. rex–that the tissue contains
remnants of the molecules produced by the dinosaur.

“This is the breakthrough that says it’s possible to get sequences beyond 1 million years,”
said Cantley. “At 68 million years, it’s still possible.”

Asara and Cantley successfully sequenced portions of the dinosaur and mastodon
proteins, identifying the amino acids and confirming that the material was collagen.
When they compared the collagen sequences to a database that contains existing
sequences from modern species, they found that the T. rex sequence had similarities to
those of chickens, and that the mastodon was more closely related to mammals, including
the African elephant.

The protein fragments in the T. rex fossil appear to most closely match amino acid
sequences found in collagen of present-day chickens, lending support to the idea that
birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related.

“Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that’s based on the
‘architecture’ of the bones,” Asara said. “This finding allows us the ability to say that
they really are related because their sequences are related.”

“Scientists had long assumed that the material in fossil bones would not be preserved
after millions of years of burial,” said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in NSF’s
Division of Earth Sciences. “This discovery has implications for the study of similarly
well-preserved fossil material.”

The research was also funded by grants from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation,
the Paul F. Glenn Foundation and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Paleontologists Discover New Mammal from
Mesozoic Era
An international team of American and Chinese paleontologists has discovered a new
species of mammal that lived 125 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, in what is
now the Hebei Province in China.

The new mammal, documented in the March 15 issue of the journal Nature, provides
first-hand evidence of early evolution of the mammalian middle ear–one of the most
important features for all modern mammals. The discovery was funded by the National
Science Foundation (NSF).

“This early mammalian

ear from China is a
rosetta-stone type of
discovery which
reinforces the idea that
development of complex
body parts can be
explained by evolution,
using exquisitely
preserved fossils,” said
H. Richard Lane,
program director in
NSF’s Division of Earth
Sciences, which co-
funded the discovery with NSF’s Division of Environmental Biology and its Assembling
the Tree of Life (AToL) program.

Named Yanoconodon allini after the Yan Mountains in Hebei, the fossil was unearthed in
the fossil-rich beds of the Yixian Formation and is the first Mesozoic mammal recovered
from Hebei. The fossil site is about 300 kilometers outside of Beijing.

The researchers discovered that the skull of Yanoconodon revealed a middle ear structure
that is an intermediate step between those of modern mammals and those of near relatives
of mammals, also known as mammaliaforms.

“This new fossil offers a rare insight in the evolutionary origin of the mammalian ear
structure,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
(CMNH) in Pittsburgh, Pa. “Evolution of the ear is important for understanding the
origins of key mammalian adaptations.”
Mammals have highly sensitive hearing, far better than the hearing capacity of all other
vertebrates, scientists have found. Consequently, paleontologists and evolutionary
biologists have been searching for more than a century for clues to the evolutionary
origins of mammal ear structure.

Mammalian hearing adaptation is made possible by a sophisticated middle ear of three

tiny bones, known as the hammer (malleus), the anvil (incus) and the stirrup (stapes),
plus a bony ring for the eardrum (tympanic membrane).

The mammal middle ear bones evolved from the bones of the jaw hinge in their reptilian
relatives. However, paleontologists long have attempted to understand the evolutionary
pathway via which these precursor jaw bones became separated from the jaw and moved
into the middle ear of modern mammals.

“Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully preserved fossil split on

two rock slabs,” said Luo. “Yanoconodon clearly shows an intermediate condition in the
evolutionary process of how modern mammals acquired their middle ear structure.”

Yanoconodon is about 5 inches (or 15 cm) long and estimated to weigh about 30 grams.
Its teeth are notable for the three cusps in a straight line on molars (thus known as a
triconodont) for feeding on insects and worms. It has a long body, short and sprawling
limbs and claws that were ideal for either digging or living on the ground.

In addition to its unique ear structure, Yanoconodon also has a surprisingly high number
of 26 thoracic (”chest”) and lumbar (”waist”) vertebrae, unlike most living and extinct
terrestrial mammals that commonly have 19 or 20 thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. The
extra vertebrae give Yanoconodon a more elongated body form, in contrast to its
relatively shorter and very primitive limb and foot structures. The new mammal also has
lumbar ribs, a rare feature among modern mammals.

“The discoveries of exquisitely preserved Mesozoic mammals from China have built the
evidence such that biologists and paleontologists are able to make sense of how
developmental mechanisms have impacted the morphological evolution of the earliest
mammals,” said Luo.

The article is authored by Luo and his collaborators, Peiji Chen and Gang Li of Nanjing
Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, China, and graduate student Meng Chen of
Nanjing University.

The researchers also received support from the National Natural Science Foundation
(China), Ministry of Science and Technology (China), and National Geographic Society.
Human Ancestors had Short Legs for Combat, not Just
Climbing
Ape-like human ancestors known as
australopiths maintained short legs for 2 million
years because a squat physique and stance
helped the males fight over access to females, a
University of Utah study concludes.

“The old argument was that they retained short

legs to help them climb trees that still were an
important part of their habitat,” says David
Carrier, a professor of biology. “My argument is
that they retained short legs because short legs
helped them fight.”

The study analyzed leg lengths and indicators of

aggression in nine primate species, including
human aborigines. It is in the March issue of the
journal Evolution.

Creatures in the genus Australopithecus –

immediate predecessors of the human genus
Homo – had heights of about 3 feet 9 inches for
females and 4 feet 6 inches for males. They lived
from 4 million to 2 million years ago.

“For that entire period, they had relatively short

legs – longer than chimps’ legs but shorter than
the legs of humans that came later,” Carrier says.

“So the question is, why did australopiths retain short legs for 2 million years? Among
experts on primates, the climbing hypothesis is the explanation. Mechanically, it makes
sense. If you are walking on a branch high above the ground, stability is important
because if you fall and you’re big, you are going to die. Short legs would lower your
center of mass and make you more stable.”

Yet Carrier says his research suggests short legs helped australopiths fight because “with
short legs, your center of mass is closer to the ground. It’s going to make you more stable
so that you can’t be knocked off your feet as easily. And with short legs, you have greater
leverage as you grapple with your opponent.”
While Carrier says his aggression hypothesis does not rule out the possibility that short
legs aided climbing, but “evidence is poor because the apes that have the shortest legs for
their body size spend the least time in trees – male gorillas and orangutans.”

He also notes that short legs must have made it harder for australopiths “to bridge gaps
between possible sites of support when climbing and traveling through the canopy.”

Nevertheless, he writes, “The two hypotheses for the evolution of relatively short legs in
larger primates, specialization for climbing and specialization for aggression, are not
mutually exclusive. Indeed, selection for climbing performance may result in the
evolution of a body configuration that improves fighting performance and vice versa.”

Great Apes’ Short Legs Provide Evidence for Australopith Aggression

All modern great apes – humans, chimps, orangutans, gorillas and bonobos – engage in at
least some aggression as males compete for females, Carrier says.

Carrier set out to find how aggression related to leg length. He compared Australian
aborigines with eight primate species: gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, black
gibbons, siamang gibbons, olive baboons and dwarf guenon monkeys. Carrier used data
on aborigines because they are a relatively natural population.

For the aborigines and each primate species, Carrier used the scientific literature to obtain
typical hindlimb lengths and data on two physical features that previously have been
shown to correlate with male-male competition and aggressiveness in primates:

• The weight difference between males and females in a species. Earlier studies
found males fight more in species with larger male-female body size ratios.

• The male-female difference in the length of canine teeth, which are next to the
incisors and are used for biting during fights.

Carrier used male-female body size ratios and canine tooth size ratios as numerical
indicators for aggressiveness because field studies of primates have used varying criteria
to rate aggression. He says it would be like having a different set of judges for each
competitor in subjective Olympic events like diving or ice dancing.

The study found that hindlimb length correlated inversely with both indicators of
aggressiveness: Primate species with greater male-female differences in body weight and
length of the canine teeth had shorter legs, and thus display more male-male combat.

There was no correlation between arm length and the indicators of aggression. Carrier
says arms are used for fighting, but “for other things as well: climbing, handling food,
grooming. Thus, arm length is not related to aggression in any simple way.”

Verifying the Findings

Carrier conducted various statistical analyses to verify his findings. First, he corrected for
each species’ limb lengths relative to their body size. Primates with larger body sizes tend
to have shorter legs, humans excepted. Without taking that into account, the correlation
between body size and aggression indicators might be false.

Another analysis corrected for the fact different primate species are related. For example,
if three closely related species all have short legs, it might be due to the relationship – an
ancestor with short legs – and not aggression.

Even with the corrections, short legs still correlated significantly with the two indicators
of aggressiveness.

The study also found that females in each primate species except humans have relatively
longer legs than males. “If it is mainly the males that need to be adapted for fighting, then
you’d expect them to have shorter legs for their body size,” Carrier says.

He notes there are exceptions to that rule. Bonobos have shorter legs than chimps, yet
they are less aggressive. Carrier says the correlation between short legs and aggression
may be imperfect because legs are used for many other purposes than fighting.

Humans “are a special case” and are not less aggressive because they have longer legs,
Carrier says. There is a physical tradeoff between aggression and economical walking
and running. Short, squat australopiths were strong and able to stand their ground when
shoved, but their short legs made them ill-suited for distance running. Slender, long-
legged humans excel at running. Yet, they also excel at fighting. In a 2004 study, Carrier
made a case that australopiths evolved into lithe, long-legged early humans only when
they learned to make weapons and fight with them.

Now he argues that even though australopiths walked upright on the ground, the reason
they retained short legs for 2 million years was not so much that they spent time in trees,
but “the same thing that selected for short legs in the other great apes: male-male
aggression and competition over access to reproductively active females.”

In other words, shorter legs increased the odds of victory when males fought over access
to females – access that meant passing their genetic traits to offspring.

Yet, “we don’t really know how aggressive australopiths were,” Carrier says. “If they
were more aggressive than modern humans, they were exceptionally nasty animals.”

Why Should We Care that Australopiths Were Short and Nasty?

“Given the aggressive behavior of modern humans and apes, we should not be surprised
to find fossil evidence of aggressive behavior in the ancestors of modern humans,”
Carrier says. “This is important because we have a real problem with violence in modern
society. Part of the problem is that we don’t recognize we are relatively violent animals.
Many people argue we are not violent. But we are violent. If we want to prevent future
violence we have to understand why we are violent.”

“To some extent, our evolutionary past may help us to understand the circumstances in
which humans behave violently,” he adds. “There are a number of independent lines of
evidence suggesting that much of human violence is related to male-male competition,
and this study is consistent with that.”

Nevertheless, male-male competition doesn’t fully explain human violence, Carrier says,
noting other factors such as hunting, competing with other species, defending territory
and other resources, and feeding and protecting offspring.
Research shows how animals adapt their behavior to
the environment
Male Anole lizards signal
ownership of their territory
by sitting up on a tree
trunk, bobbing their heads
up and down and
extending a colorful throat
pouch.

They can spot a rival lizard

up to 25 meters away, says
National Science
Foundation (NSF)-funded
biologist Terry Ord of the
University of California at
Davis. Ord and colleagues
published their results this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The lizards’ signals need to be strong enough for a rival to see, but not vivid enough to
interest predators.

Their forest homes, however, can be “visually noisy” environments, with branches and
leaves waving in the breeze.

“They have to have a strategy to get their message across,” Ord says.

“We all know that people speak more loudly in a noisy party,” says John Byers, program
director in NSF’s division of organismal systems. “These researchers have shown that
lizards can do the same. We are only beginning to understand how perfectly adapted the
behavior of animals can be.”

Ord videotaped two species of Anole lizards, Anolis cristatellus and Anolis gundlachi, in
the Caribbean National Forest of Puerto Rico.He found that the more “noise” in the
background, the faster and more exaggerated the movements of the lizards.

Anole lizards are interesting to evolutionary biologists because different species are
found on different islands throughout the Caribbean. The lizards are not closely related
— they are separated by 30 million years of evolution — but they live in similar
environments with the same obstacles to communication.

Co-authors of the paper are Richard Peters, Australian National University, Canberra, and
Barbara Clucas of the University of California at Davis. The work was also supported by
grants from the National Geographic Society and the Australian Research Council.
New dating evidence of skull suggests that modern
humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa
Oxford researchers have used new dating techniques on a
human skull to help find out where our most recent
common ancestor came from. The skull, which was
discovered more than 50 years ago near the town of
Hofmeyr in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, is
thought to be 36,000 years old, according to the study
published in the Science journal.

The finding by researchers from Oxford University in

collaboration with Stony Brook University, New York,
supports a growing body of genetic evidence, which
suggests that modern humans originated in sub-Saharan
Africa and migrated about this time to colonise the Old
World.

The international team of scientists relied on a new application of dating methods

developed by Dr Richard Bailey and his colleagues from the School of Geography and
the Environment, the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the Department of Earth
Science at Oxford University. Traditional radiocarbon dating of the Hofmeyr skull was
not possible because so much carbon had been leached from the bone while it lay buried
in sediment. Instead, the researchers measured the amount of radiation that had been
absorbed by sand grains that filled the inside of the skull’s braincase. Measurements of
radioactive isotopes in the sediment, combined with a sophisticated radiation transport
model using data from a CT scan of the skull, allowed them to calculate the yearly rate at
which radiation had been delivered to the sand grains. From this, the researchers were
able to determine that the Hofmeyr skull had been buried for 36,000 years.

Dr Richard Bailey, from Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, said:
‘Grains of sand have the ability to record the amount of radiation they have absorbed. It
is this remarkable property of crystals that makes this kind of dating possible.

‘ Many problems we face in understanding the evolution of humans and the evolution of
the wider natural environment can be expressed in terms of hypotheses related to the
timing of key events. This is why the range of dating techniques available to us is so
important in so many areas of science.’

This discovery is key to knowing more about a critical period in human evolutionary
history, given the lack of human fossils in sub-Saharan Africa between 70,000 and
15,000 years ago. During the middle of this period, sophisticated stone and bone tools
and artwork first appeared in sub-Saharan Africa, and anatomically modern people are
seen for the first time in Europe and western Asia in what archaeologists refer to as the
‘Upper Paleolithic’ period.

Research conducted in the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, established

similarities between the Hofmeyr skull and contemporaneous Upper Paleolithic skulls
from Europe. These findings, combined with the new dating evidence, provides strong
support for the genetics-based ‘Out of Africa’ theory, which predicts that modern humans
inhabiting western Asia in the ‘Upper Paleolithic’ period should also be found in sub-
Saharan Africa around 36,000 years ago. The skull from South Africa provides the first
fossil evidence in support of this prediction.

Lead author, Professor Frederick Grine of the Departments of Anthropology and

Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York, said: ‘The Hofmeyr skull
gives us insights into the morphology of such a sub-Saharan Africa, which means the
most recent common ancestor of all of us – wherever we come from.’
How did our Ancestors’ Minds really work?
How did our evolutionary ancestors make sense of their world? What strategies did they
use, for example, to find food? Fossils do not preserve thoughts, so we have so far been
unable to glean any insights into the cognitive structure of our ancestors.

However, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for

Psycholinguistics and their colleagues at the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology were
able to find answers to these questions using an
alternative research method: comparative psychological
research. In this way, they discovered that some of the
strategies shaped by evolution are evidently masked
very early on by the cognitive development process
unique to humans.

Being able to remember and relocate particular places

where there is food is an asset to any species. There are
two basic strategies for remembering the location of
something: either remembering the features of the item
(it was a tree, a stone, etc.), or knowing the spatial
placement (left, right, middle, etc.). All animal species
tested so far - from goldfish, pigeons and rats though to
humans - seem to employ both strategies. However, if
the type of recall task is designed so that the two
strategies are in opposition, then some species (e.g. fish,
rats and dogs) have a preference for locational
strategies, while others (e.g. toads, chickens and
children) favor those which use distinctive features.

Until now, no studies had systematically investigated

these preferences along the phylogenetic tree. Recently,
however, Daniel Haun and his colleagues have carried
out the first research of its kind into the cognitive
preferences of a whole biological family, the hominids. They compared the five species
of great apes - orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and humans - to establish
which cognitive strategies they prefer in order to uncover hidden characteristics. The
researchers worked on the assumption that if all five species share particular preferences,
these are very probably a part of the evolutionary legacy of our most recent common
ancestors, who died out some 15 million years ago.

At the Wolfgang Koehler Primate Research Center at the Leipzig Zoo, the researchers hid
coveted items using two different strategies (see the above picture): In the place
condition, the item remained in the same place it was hidden in previously, but under a
different object (e.g. a stone); in the feature condition the object remained the same, but
the place changed. It was established that all four great ape species and one-year-old
children actually use the location as a way of finding something hidden, even if it is
hidden under a completely different object. This outcome suggests that this preference
has been part of our cognitive structure for 15 million years.

The researchers then investigated three-year-old children and discovered a difference:

Unlike younger children, they considered the object under which the item was hidden to
be the most reliable indication of its whereabouts, even if the location had changed
completely. The scientists have sufficient evidence to conclude that 1-year-old children
and great apes do not lack the capability to develop a feature-based strategy, but simply
prefer to use a place-based strategy. Evidently, humans reassess these preferences as their
cognitive development continues.

“The unique human cognitive development seems to mask some of our evolved strategies
even before we reach the age of three,” says Daniel Haun. “In future experiments, we
therefore want to find out which areas of cognitive development in humans, for example
language acquisition, are responsible for this restructuring of cognitive preferences.” The
new methodical approach and the results it yields pave the way for the systematic study
of the cognitive structures of our evolutionary ancestors and thus ultimately to an
improved understanding of the origins of human thinking.
Life finds a way in unlikely circumstances
Australian and US scientists have discovered a new group of organisms living in the pH
equivalent of battery acid at a Californian mine.

University of Queensland scientist Rick Webb was working with scientists from the
University of California when they uncovered the extraordinary life forms in acid mine
drainage at the Richmond Mine on Iron Mountain in California.

He said the existence of these organisms was

nothing short of remarkable considering the
harsh environment they were found in.

“The samples for our project were collected

from acid mine drainage which is at a pH of
about 0.5 to 1,” he said.

“This is the equivalent of battery acid…so the

fact that these organisms are living in this extreme environment is no mean feat in itself.”

Even more astounding is the minute size of the organisms.

“When observed with the electron microscope it became apparent to us that they are
small - smaller than other organisms in the mine, and they appear to be similar in size to
viruses,” he said.

“In fact they are so tiny that they are smaller than the minimum size expected on the basis
of theoretical considerations for free-living cells.”

Had it not been for the use of a new method of studying the entire genomic information
of the samples, this new group of organisms would have gone undiscovered.

Rick Webb and his colleagues did not isolate the microbes in the laboratory or use
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the methods typically employed to identify new
microbes in the environment.

“Instead, we found them by directly isolating genomic DNA from the mine and
sequencing the genomes of the organisms present,” he said.

“We have called these new organisms ARMAN - Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic
Nanoorganisms.”
Rick Webb, who was called into the project on the back of his expertise in the field of
electron microscopy, said the discovery could open the possibilities for discovering new
groups of organisms in different environments around the world.

“One of the important things about this study is that it illustrates that direct genomic
sequencing of the environment is beginning to reveal entirely new groups of life
overlooked using common methods,” he said.

In this case, the research could also have significant environmental implications, helping
scientists to develop their understanding of the forces involved in acid mine drainage.

“Here, we discovered new groups of microorganisms, present everywhere we look in the

mine, which significantly increases our understanding of life associated with this
worldwide environmental problem known as acid mine drainage.”

The Iron Mountain site, which was mined for iron, silver, gold, copper, zinc and pyrite
until it was closed in 1963, is well known for its problem with acid mine drainage.

“Historic mining activity has fractured the mountain, exposing its minerals to surface
water, rain and oxygen.

“When pyrite is exposed to moisture and oxygen, sulfuric acid runs through the mountain
and leaches out copper, cadmium, zinc and other heavy metals.

“These heavy metals, along with the acid run-off, drain into the local water system and
eventually into the Sacramento River, causing a serious environmental problem.”

The research was part of a project to identify bacteria living within the acid mine
drainage, [that are] involved in the reaction that releases heavy metals from the pyrite
deposits.

Rick Webb said further study would be required for scientists to get a firm grip on the
existence of the newly discovered organisms.

“We will need to isolate these ARMAN cells and grow them in the laboratory to be
certain they are viable,” he said.

The research will be published in the December 22, 2006 edition of the prestigious
international journal SCIENCE.
UCLA Geneticists Aim to Unravel Where Chimp and
Human Brains Diverge
Six million years ago, chimpanzees and humans diverged from a common ancestor and
evolved into unique species. Now UCLA scientists have identified a new way to pinpoint
the genes that separate us from our closest living relative and make us uniquely human.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the study in its Nov. 13
online edition.

“We share more than 95 percent of our genetic blueprint with chimps,” explained Dr.
Daniel Geschwind, principal investigator and Gordon and Virginia MacDonald
Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
“What sets us apart from chimps are our brains: homo sapiens means ‘the knowing
man.’”

During evolution, changes in some genes altered how the human brain functions, he
noted.

“Our research has identified an entirely new way to identify those genes in the small
portion of our DNA that differs from the chimpanzee’s,” Geschwind said.

By evaluating the correlated activity of thousands of

genes, the UCLA team identified not just individual
genes, but entire networks of interconnected genes
whose expression patterns within the brains of humans
varied from those in the chimpanzee. Gene expression
is the process by which a gene’s DNA sequence is
converted into cellular proteins.

“Genes don’t operate in isolation — each functions within a system of related genes,”
said first author Michael Oldham, UCLA genetics researcher. “If we examined each gene
individually, it would be similar to reading every fifth word in a paragraph — you don’t
get to see how each word relates to the other. So instead we used a systems biology
approach to study each gene within its context.”

The scientists identified networks of genes that correspond to specific brain regions.
When they compared these networks between humans and chimps, they found that the
gene networks differed the most widely in the cerebral cortex — the brain’s most highly
evolved region, which is three times larger in humans than chimps.

Secondly, the researchers discovered that many of the genes that play a central role in
cerebral cortex networks in humans — but not in the chimpanzee — also show
significant changes at the DNA level.
“When we see alterations in a gene network that correspond to functional changes in the
genome, it implies that these differences are very meaningful,” said Oldham. “This
finding supports the theory that variations in the DNA sequence contributed to human
evolution.”

Relying on a new analytical approach developed by corresponding author Steve Horvath,

UCLA associate professor of human genetics and biostatistics, the UCLA team used data
from DNA microarrays — vast collections of tiny DNA spots — to map the activity of
virtually every gene in the genome simultaneously. By comparing gene activity in
different areas of the brain, the team identified gene networks that correlated to specific
brain regions. Then they compared the strength of these correlations between humans and
chimps.

Many of the human-specific gene networks identified by the scientists related to learning,
brain cell activity and energy metabolism.

“If you view the brain as the body’s engine, our findings suggest that the human brain is
like a 12-cylinder engine, while the chimp brain is more like a 6-cylinder,” explained
Geschwind. “It’s possible that our genes adapted to allow our brains to increase in size,
operate at different speeds, metabolize energy faster and enhance connections between
brain cells across different brain regions.”

Future UCLA studies will focus on linking the expression of evolutionary genes to
specific regions of the brain, such as those that regulate language, speech and other
uniquely human abilities.