CEBU, Philippines (AP) — The death toll from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck the central Philippine island of Bohol on Tuesday rose to 93, as rescuers struggled to reach patients in a collapsed hospital. Centuries-old stone churches crumbled and wide areas were without power.
Bohol police chief Dennis Agustin said 77 of the deaths came from the province. At least 15 others died in nearby Cebu province and another on Siquijor Island.
The quake struck at 8:12 a.m. and was centered about 33 kilometers (20 miles) below Carmen city, where many small buildings collapsed.
Many roads and bridges were reported damaged, making rescue operations difficult. But historic churches dating from the Spanish colonial period suffered the most. Among them was the country's oldest, the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, which lost its bell tower.
Nearly half of a 17th-century limestone church in Loboc town, southwest of Carmen, was reduced to rubble.
The highest number of dead — 18 — were in the municipality of Loon, 42 kilometers (26 miles) west of Carmen, where an unknown number of patients were trapped inside the Congressman Castillo Memorial Hospital, which partially collapsed. Rescuers were working to reach them, said civil defense spokesman Maj. Reynaldo Balido.
As night fell, the entire province was in the dark after the quake cut power supplies. Windy weather and rain also forced back a military rescue helicopter.
Authorities were setting up tents for those displaced by the quake, while others who lost their homes moved in with their relatives, Bohol Gov. Edgardo Chatto said.
Extensive damage also hit densely populated Cebu city, across a narrow strait from Bohol, causing deaths when a building in the port and the roof of a market area collapsed.
The quake set off two stampedes in nearby cities. When it struck, people gathered in a gym in Cebu rushed outside in a panic, crushing five people to death and injuring eight others, said Neil Sanchez, provincial disaster management officer.
"We ran out of the building, and outside, we hugged trees because the tremors were so strong," said Vilma Yorong, a provincial government employee in Bohol.
"When the shaking stopped, I ran to the street and there I saw several injured people. Some were saying their church has collapsed," she told The Associated Press by phone.
As fear set in, Yorong and the others ran up a mountain, afraid a tsunami would follow the quake. "Minutes after the earthquake, people were pushing each other to go up the hill," she said.
But the quake was centered inland and did not cause a tsunami.
Offices and schools were closed for a national holiday — the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha — which may have saved lives.
The earthquake also was deeper below the surface than a 6.9-magnitude temblor last year in waters near Negros Island, also in the central Philippines, that killed nearly 100 people.
Aledel Cuizon said the quake that caught her in her bedroom sounded like "a huge truck that was approaching and the rumbling sound grew louder as it got closer."
She and her neighbors ran outside, where she saw concrete electric poles "swaying like coconut trees." It lasted 15-20 seconds, she said.
Cebu city's hospitals quickly moved patients into the streets, basketball courts and parks.
Cebu province, about 570 kilometers (350 miles) south of Manila, has a population of more than 2.6 million people. Cebu is the second largest city after Manila. Nearby Bohol has 1.2 million people and is popular among foreigners because of its beach and island resorts and famed Chocolate Hills.
President Benigno Aquino III said he would travel to Bohol and Cebu on Wednesday.
Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said he recalled soldiers from holiday furlough to respond to the quake. He said it damaged the pier in Tagbilaran, Bohol's provincial capital, and caused some cracks at Cebu's international airport but that navy ships and air force planes could use alternative ports to help out.
___
Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski, Oliver Teves, Teresa Cerojano and Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this report.
DMANISI, Georgia (AP) — The discovery of a 1.8-million-year-old skull of a human ancestor buried under a medieval Georgian village provides a vivid picture of early evolution and indicates our family tree may have fewer branches than some believe, scientists say.
The fossil is the most complete pre-human skull uncovered. With other partial remains previously found at the rural site, it gives researchers the earliest evidence of human ancestors moving out of Africa and spreading north to the rest of the world, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.
The skull and other remains offer a glimpse of a population of pre-humans of various sizes living at the same time — something that scientists had not seen before for such an ancient era. This diversity bolsters one of two competing theories about the way our early ancestors evolved, spreading out more like a tree than a bush.
Nearly all of the previous pre-human discoveries have been fragmented bones, scattered over time and locations — like a smattering of random tweets of our evolutionary history. The findings at Dmanisi are more complete, weaving more of a short story. Before the site was found, the movement from Africa was put at about 1 million years ago.
When examined with the earlier Georgian finds, the skull "shows that this special immigration out of Africa happened much earlier than we thought and a much more primitive group did it," said study lead author David Lordkipanidze, director of the Georgia National Museum. "This is important to understanding human evolution."
For years, some scientists have said humans evolved from only one or two species, much like a tree branches out from a trunk, while others say the process was more like a bush with several offshoots that went nowhere.
Even bush-favoring scientists say these findings show one single species nearly 2 million years ago at the former Soviet republic site. But they disagree that the same conclusion can be said for bones found elsewhere, such as Africa. However, Lordkipanidze and colleagues point out that the skulls found in Georgia are different sizes but are considered to be the same species. So, they reason, it's likely the various skulls found in different places and times in Africa may not be different species, but variations in one species.
To see how a species can vary, just look in the mirror, they said.
"Danny DeVito, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal are the same species," Lordkipanidze said.
The adult male skull found wasn't from our species, Homo sapiens. It was from an ancestral species — in the same genus or class called Homo — that led to modern humans. Scientists say the Dmanisi population is likely an early part of our long-lived primary ancestral species, Homo erectus.
Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, wasn't part of the study but praised it as "the first good evidence of what these expanding hominids looked like and what they were doing."
Fred Spoor at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, a competitor and proponent of a busy family tree with many species disagreed with the study's overall conclusion, but he lauded the Georgia skull discovery as critical and even beautiful.
"It really shows the process of evolution in action," he said.
Spoor said it seems to have captured a crucial point in the evolutionary process where our ancestors transitioned from Homo habilis to Homo erectus — although the study authors said that depiction is going a bit too far.
The researchers found the first part of the skull, a large jaw, below a medieval fortress in 2000. Five years later — on Lordkipanidze's 42nd birthday — they unearthed the well-preserved skull, gingerly extracted it, putting it into a cloth-lined case and popped champagne. It matched the jaw perfectly. They were probably separated when our ancestor lost a fight with a hungry carnivore, which pulled apart his skull and jaw bones, Lordkipanidze said.
The skull was from an adult male just shy of 5 feet (1.5 meters) with a massive jaw and big teeth, but a small brain, implying limited thinking capability, said study co-author Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich. It also seems to be the point where legs are getting longer, for walking upright, and smaller hips, she said.
"This is a strange combination of features that we didn't know before in early Homo," Ponce de Leon said.
___
Borenstein reported from Washington.
___
Online:
Journal Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
___
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
>> SQUARE CASH: The money is in the email, by Walt Mossberg: "Say you want to send $47.12 to your sister. You just compose an email with her email address in the 'To' field and, in the 'CC' field, you enter 'cash@square.com.' In the subject field, you enter the amount you're sending -- in this case, '$47.12.'... If this is your first time using the service, Square will email you a link to its service, where you'll be asked to enter your debit-card information.... Your sister will receive two emails: The one from you and a second from Square saying you're sending her the money. If she accepts the payment and it's her first time using the service, she will be asked to click a link to Square and enter her debit-card information. Once that's verified, the transfer is made, and the money will show up in her bank account in one to two days.... No other account setup is required. You never need to create, or enter, a login or password. And the money goes straight from bank to bank." AllThingsD
>> NYSE TICKER TWTR: Twitter doubled revenue, saw deeper losses in Q3, by Martyn Williams: "The company's highly anticipated IPO will take place on the New York Stock Exchange... revenue in the three-month period was US$169 million, just over double that achieved during the same period a year earlier and a quarterly record for the fast-growing company. But just as revenue climbed, losses were also sharply higher. Twitter racked up a net loss of $64 million in the three-month period... the company saw its average monthly users climb to 231.7 million, up from 167.1 million in the same period of 2012." PCWorld
>> BIG DATA ENGINE: Apache Software Foundation unveils Hadoop 2, replacing MapReduce with YARN, by Loek Essers: "The Apache Software Foundation unveiled its latest release of its open source data processing program, Hadoop 2... Most notable is the addition of YARN, (Yet Another Resource Negotiator), which is a successor to Hadoop's MapReduce... YARN sits on top of the HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System) and serves as a large-scale, distributed operating system for big data applications, enabling multiple applications to run simultaneously for more efficient support of data throughout its entire lifecycle." InfoWorld >>>> Hadoop 2.0 goes GAZDNet
>> FOR THE WIN: Intel meets estimates, posts third quarter revenue of $13.5 billion: "The company generated approximately $5.7 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $1.1 billion, and used $536 million to repurchase 24 million shares of stock." Electronista >>>> Intel's Bay Trail chips to hit 10 tablets, hybrids next monthInfoWorld >>>> Intel says hardware bargains to multiply this fall: $99 tablets, $299 Haswell laptops, $349 2-in-1 hybridsVentureBeat >>>> Intel delays 14-nm Broadwell chips for PCs and hybrids to early 2014PCWorld
>> VIRTUAL LAND GRAB: VMware expands management of Amazon, Microsoft, OpenStack clouds, by Brandon Butler: "VMware has rolled out expanded support for non-VMware workloads in its management tools, including the added ability to manage OpenStack clouds, and providing better visibility into Amazon and Microsoft clouds." NetworkWorld >>>> VMware looks to UK for launch of European public cloud "Hybrid cloud strategy could cause lock-in problems for customers." Computerworld UK
>> WORKS FOR POLITICIANS: Microsoft's Google-bashing TV campaign is actually working, by Alex Kantrowitz: "The Scroogled ads, negative to the core, are a rarity for consumer tech. Even the mean-spirited 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' variety featured a product comparison at least. But while the tactics may be ugly, the ads are working, according to two ad effectiveness firms, and research commissioned by Microsoft, which finds the ads are tarnishing Google's image in the eyes of viewers and putting Microsoft products -- including underdogs such as Bing -- into the consideration set." AdAge >>>> Scroogled my assInfoWorld
>> NOT CHEAP ENOUGH: Apple and China, by John Gruber: "When the iPhone 5C came out last month and was not 'low cost', many took it as a sign that Apple was somehow ignoring China. I would say it's just the opposite: they're skating to where the puck is heading, not where it is, and positioning their products to thrive as China's upper class grows. From Apple's perspective, there's no such thing as an 'emerging market'. There are certainly cultural differences between consumers in different countries, but the bottom line is that there are people who can afford iPhones and iPads, and people who can't. The class of people who can afford Apple products is growing faster in China than it is anywhere else." Daring Fireball >>>> Apple said to be trimming iPhone 5C production while increasing 5S ordersThe Verge >>>> As iPhone 5C fades, Firefox OS and Android square off in emerging marketsReadWrite
>> STAT DU JOUR: Top 10 most pirated movies of the week, by Jerry Brito, Eli Dourado, Matt Sherman: "Do people turn to piracy when the movies they want to watch are not available legally? Over the past 3 weeks, 53% of the most-pirated movies have been available legally in some digital form. Over the same period, only 20% have been available for rental or streaming. In addition, 0% have been available on a legal streaming service." Mercatus Center/GWU >>>> Can digital rentals block piracy? New site gathers the dataArs Technica
>> ESCAPE VELOCITY: Greenwald exits Guardian for new Omidyar media venture, by Mark Hosenball: "Glenn Greenwald, who has made headlines around the world with his reporting on U.S. electronic surveillance programs, is leaving the Guardian newspaper to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidya.... Greenwald, who is based in Brazil and was among the first to report information provided by one-time U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.... Omidyar, who is chairman of the board at eBay Inc but is not involved in day-to-day operations at the company." Reuters
>> BUMPING ALONG: Earnings and revenue down -- Yahoo delivers on expected lackluster third quarterAllThingsD >>>> Alibaba earnings more than double on surging e-commerce "Yahoo, which owns about 24 percent of [Alibaba], said yesterday that the maximum number of shares it's required to sell in an Alibaba IPO fell to 208 million from 261.5 million." BloombergBusinessweek
>> DEPARTURE LOUNGE: Steve Ballmer is right, and I was wrong, by Joe Wilcox: "For all Microsoft's CEO might have done wrong, he was right about something dismissed by many -- and I among them: Google. Ballmer started treating the search and information company as a competitive threat about a decade ago. Google as Microsoft competitor seemed simply nuts in 2003. How could search threaten Windows, particularly when anyone could type a new web address to change providers? Ballmer was obsessed, chasing every Google maneuver, often to a fault. Execution could have been better, but his perception was right." Beta News
>> NEOMONEY: Chinese Internet giant Baidu now accepts Bitcoin, by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai: "Baidu, also known as the 'Google of China,' is now accepting Bitcoin payments for Jiasule, its anti-DDoS (distributed denial of service) and firewall security product.... For Bitcoin, this partnership comes at a crucial time. After the feds busted the online drug bazaar Silk Road and seized all its Bitcoins -- roughly 5% of the total in circulations -- some speculated that it was the end of the virtual currency. But after dropping dramatically, Bitcoin's price has recovered, reaching a five-month high." Mashable
>> LIBERTY & JUSTICE: A court order is an insider attack, by Ed Felten: "Commentators on the Lavabit case, including the judge himself, have criticized Lavabit for designing its system in a way that resisted court-ordered access to user data. They ask: If court orders are legitimate, why should we allow engineers to design services that protect users against court-ordered access? The answer is simple but subtle: There are good reasons to protect against insider attacks, and a court order is an insider attack." Freedom to Tinker
>> SHOT: HTC rumored to be making the Amazon phoneTechHive
>> CHASER: HTC gives up on budget phones "Jeff Gordon, HTC's marketing boss, told CNET UK that the company isn't going to suddenly shift its strategy to become a budget smartphone maker. 'Competing against Huawei, ZTE, and eventually Amazon, for low end, razor-thin margins is a fool's game.'" CNet Asia
>> Irish budget proposes an end to Apple tax shelterThe Street
>> 5 new and improved tools for Exchange and Office 365InfoWorld
Tantalizing semi-doc is not for the literal-minded.
Opened
Friday, Oct. 11 (Pen & Banjo Films, Nonchalance)
Director
Spencer McCall
Half put-on and half document of a fantastically elaborate, gamelike art project, Spencer McCall's The Institute takes viewers on a journey that was shared (to greater and lesser extents) by thousands of San Francisco and Oakland residents from 2008 to 2011. Intentionally hard to decipher, the film will frustrate viewers who insist on knowing which interviewees are recounting real experiences and which are perpetuating fictions hatched by the game's creator, Jeff Hull. But mystery is part of the appeal, and the film's special-engagement rollout, currently expanding beyond California, seems likely to carry it to its most receptive, multiplex-averse audiences.
Our first exposure to the game is through the eyes of a man who stumbled across it accidentally -- seeing odd flyers around San Francisco that advertised science-fictional products. Finally intrigued enough to call a phone number on the flyers, he was directed to a bland corporate office concealing secret rooms, cryptic instructions, and a scavenger hunt-like path leading him back out onto streets he now found to be full of mysterious signs.
This was Chapter One of a sprawling, three-year fiction incorporating the lore of cults, pseudo-science self-help, and individual characters like Eva, a runaway whose father reputedly discovered an "Algorithm" to "reduce all human conflict."
Eva's father "is a real person," insists one of the interviewees here, whose own tale of playing the game starts believably but veers into obvious fiction. These interludes in which McCall seems to be taking direction from Hull instead of chronicling his creation lead one to suspect The Institute is just one more chapter in an artwork that, despite reports to the contrary, will continue to sprout new subplots indefinitely.
More likely, the film aims to give viewers some part of the "what am I seeing here?" thrill afforded to the game's players, while eventually making a stab at summarizing the entire, no-really-it's-over-now, project. That summary isn't straightforward enough to stand as the definitive account of a creative effort cross-breeding the Happenings of the 60s with New York City's Improv Everywhere antics and Lost-style mythology, but it's quite an introduction for those of us unlucky enough not to have seen it first-hand.
Production Company: Pen & Banjo Films, Nonchalance
Have people ever been more excited about superheroes? Over the last few years, the comic-book fervor has only grown, so that now it doesn’t feel like summer if you don’t see someone in a cape at the cinema, and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is one of the most talked-about TV shows of the season.
A new documentary, Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, premieres tonight at 8pm on PBS, and it seeks to answer why caped crusaders are having such a moment. We chatted with director Michael Kantor to get a little preview.
The documentary features appearances from Spiderman creator Stan Lee, original Batman star Adam West, original Wonder Woman Lynda Carter, Pulitzer-Prize winner Michael Chabon, and loads of writers, artists, and executives at Marvel Entertainment and DC Comics. “We tried to focus, because it is a huge history, on the key moments in the evolution of superheroes,” Kantor explains.
The doc is in three parts.
“The first part covers really the origin of a number of superheroes including Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, and goes from the 1930s until the late 1950s,” says Kantor. “The second one goes from 1959-1977 and covers the creation of the Marvel universe. The third one is the modern era in superheroes, beginning with the Superman movie in the late 70s.”
PBS
Superhero creators admitted when they’ve copied someone else.
Joe Simon, who co-created Captain America and has since passed away, mentioned in the film that the way in which the character gets injected with a serum and gains powers was stolen right from the character of the Blue Beetle: “If something works, you use it eight times.”
You’ll learn the scientific origin of some of the characters.
How is Thor’s hammer that heavy, anyway? Could gamma rays really turn a person into the Hulk? No matter how silly, it’s essential fan viewing to see some sort of biological basis for these cool ideas.
Turns out, comic books aren’t just for boys.
The doc features Jennette Kahn, who was only 28 when she became the publisher, and eventually President, of DC Comics. She wound up running things for 26 years. “She was really good about talking about how the industry stopped being such a boys’ club,” says Kantor.
PBS
The filmmakers have a theory about why we love superheroes so much.
“Superheroes flourish when we are particularly fearful of something,” Kantor explains. “In the Great Depression, we were worried about putting food on the table; in the ’60s, the anxieties of the atomic age; and now with terrorism we are looking for these ideas that can reassure us that everything is going to be okay.” Maybe that’s why S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing so well? The Avengers could help the government shutdown, definitely.
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle airs tonight at 8pm on PBS.
Are you a big fan of superheroes? Who is your favorite? What’s the best superhero movie of the last few years? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @OKMagazine.
Complete skull from early Homo evokes a single, evolving lineage
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
17-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
The skull of an ancient human ancestor implies that all Homo species were one
This news release is available in French, Arabic, and Georgian.
What if the earliest members of our Homo genusthose classified as Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus and so forthactually belonged to the same species and simply looked different from one another? That's precisely the implication of a new report, which describes the analysis of a complete, approximately 1.8-million-year-old skull that was unearthed in Dmanisi, Georgia.
Unlike other Homo fossils, this skull, known as Skull 5, combines a small braincase with a long face and large teeth. It was discovered alongside the remains of four other early human ancestors, a variety of animal fossils and some stone toolsall of them associated with the same location and time periodwhich makes the find truly unique. The site has only been partially excavated so far, but it's already providing the first opportunity for researchers to compare and contrast the physical traits of multiple human ancestors that apparently coincided in the same time and geological space.
David Lordkipanidze from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, along with colleagues from Switzerland, Israel and the United States, say that the differences between these Dmanisi fossils are no more pronounced than those between five modern humans or five chimpanzees.
Traditionally, researchers have used variation among Homo fossils to define different species. But in light of these new findings, Lordkipanidze and his colleagues suggest that early, diverse Homo fossils, with their origins in Africa, actually represent variation among members of a single, evolving lineagemost appropriately, Homo erectus.
Their report is published in the 18 October issue of Science.
"Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species," said Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerlanda co-author of the Science report. That's because Skull 5 unites some key features, like the tiny braincase and large face, which had not been observed together in an early Homo fossil until now.
Given their diverse physical traits, the fossils associated with Skull 5 at Dmanisi can be compared to various Homo fossils, including those found in Africa, dating back to about 2.4 million years ago, as well as others unearthed in Asia and Europe, which are dated between 1.8 and 1.2 million years ago.
"[The Dmanisi finds] look quite different from one another, so it's tempting to publish them as different species," explained Zollikofer. "Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species."
The hominid fossils from Dmanisi represent ancient human ancestors from the early Pleistocene epoch, soon after early Homo diverged from Australopithecus and dispersed from Africa. The jaw associated with Skull 5 was found five years before the cranium was discovered but when the two pieces were put together, they formed the most massively built skull ever found at the Dmanisi site. For this reason, the researchers suggest that the individual to whom Skull 5 belonged was male.
The braincase of Skull 5 is only about 33.3 cubic inches (546 cubic centimeters), however, which suggests that this early Homo had a small brain despite his modern human-like limb proportions and body size.
"Thanks to the relatively large Dmanisi sample, we see a lot of variation," continued Zollikofer. "But the amount of variation does not exceed that found in modern populations of our own species, nor in chimps and bonobos."
"Furthermore, since we see a similar pattern and range of variation in the African fossil record it is sensible to assume that there was a single Homo species at that time in Africa," he concluded. "And since the Dmanisi hominids are so similar to the African ones, we further assume that they both represent the same species."
Skull 5 seemingly indicates that, rather than several ecologically specialized Homo species, a single Homo speciesable to cope with a variety of ecosystemsemerged from the African continent. And accordingly, our classification system for these early human ancestors may never be the same.
###
The report by Lordkipanidze et al. was supported by the Rustaveli Georgian National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American School for Prehistoric Research, a Rolex Award for Enterprise, BP Georgia, the Fundacin Duques de Soria, the A.H. Schultz Foundation, and the Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Zurich.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Complete skull from early Homo evokes a single, evolving lineage
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
17-Oct-2013
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
Contact: Natasha Pinol npinol@aaas.org 202-326-6440 American Association for the Advancement of Science
The skull of an ancient human ancestor implies that all Homo species were one
This news release is available in French, Arabic, and Georgian.
What if the earliest members of our Homo genusthose classified as Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, Homo erectus and so forthactually belonged to the same species and simply looked different from one another? That's precisely the implication of a new report, which describes the analysis of a complete, approximately 1.8-million-year-old skull that was unearthed in Dmanisi, Georgia.
Unlike other Homo fossils, this skull, known as Skull 5, combines a small braincase with a long face and large teeth. It was discovered alongside the remains of four other early human ancestors, a variety of animal fossils and some stone toolsall of them associated with the same location and time periodwhich makes the find truly unique. The site has only been partially excavated so far, but it's already providing the first opportunity for researchers to compare and contrast the physical traits of multiple human ancestors that apparently coincided in the same time and geological space.
David Lordkipanidze from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia, along with colleagues from Switzerland, Israel and the United States, say that the differences between these Dmanisi fossils are no more pronounced than those between five modern humans or five chimpanzees.
Traditionally, researchers have used variation among Homo fossils to define different species. But in light of these new findings, Lordkipanidze and his colleagues suggest that early, diverse Homo fossils, with their origins in Africa, actually represent variation among members of a single, evolving lineagemost appropriately, Homo erectus.
Their report is published in the 18 October issue of Science.
"Had the braincase and the face of Skull 5 been found as separate fossils at different sites in Africa, they might have been attributed to different species," said Christoph Zollikofer from the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerlanda co-author of the Science report. That's because Skull 5 unites some key features, like the tiny braincase and large face, which had not been observed together in an early Homo fossil until now.
Given their diverse physical traits, the fossils associated with Skull 5 at Dmanisi can be compared to various Homo fossils, including those found in Africa, dating back to about 2.4 million years ago, as well as others unearthed in Asia and Europe, which are dated between 1.8 and 1.2 million years ago.
"[The Dmanisi finds] look quite different from one another, so it's tempting to publish them as different species," explained Zollikofer. "Yet we know that these individuals came from the same location and the same geological time, so they could, in principle, represent a single population of a single species."
The hominid fossils from Dmanisi represent ancient human ancestors from the early Pleistocene epoch, soon after early Homo diverged from Australopithecus and dispersed from Africa. The jaw associated with Skull 5 was found five years before the cranium was discovered but when the two pieces were put together, they formed the most massively built skull ever found at the Dmanisi site. For this reason, the researchers suggest that the individual to whom Skull 5 belonged was male.
The braincase of Skull 5 is only about 33.3 cubic inches (546 cubic centimeters), however, which suggests that this early Homo had a small brain despite his modern human-like limb proportions and body size.
"Thanks to the relatively large Dmanisi sample, we see a lot of variation," continued Zollikofer. "But the amount of variation does not exceed that found in modern populations of our own species, nor in chimps and bonobos."
"Furthermore, since we see a similar pattern and range of variation in the African fossil record it is sensible to assume that there was a single Homo species at that time in Africa," he concluded. "And since the Dmanisi hominids are so similar to the African ones, we further assume that they both represent the same species."
Skull 5 seemingly indicates that, rather than several ecologically specialized Homo species, a single Homo speciesable to cope with a variety of ecosystemsemerged from the African continent. And accordingly, our classification system for these early human ancestors may never be the same.
###
The report by Lordkipanidze et al. was supported by the Rustaveli Georgian National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the American School for Prehistoric Research, a Rolex Award for Enterprise, BP Georgia, the Fundacin Duques de Soria, the A.H. Schultz Foundation, and the Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Zurich.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world's largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science as well as Science Translational Medicine and Science Signaling. AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 261 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1 million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to "advance science and serve society" through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS.
[
| E-mail
| Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tmXBV739huAIcHpruaX5_U7gD3CW8_obEjKixcHHdhgLwiQpBIxU-EPR5gLq7aqQeV-h1FjAMoWqIvwWGkR708wSouNiiVZsCZr9DEoAA=s0-d){kind=small}
Share