Fossils of possible new human species found in China

[AquaEyes]

I also noticed thier claws are unique they are shaped like a fish hook unlike grizzly or black bears.

Yes, another phenotypic difference attributable to small differences in genes. Polar bears are actually more closely related (on a genetic basis) to their Kodiak bear neighbors than the Kodiak bears are to the grizzlies in the lower 48. Hybrids between polar bears and brown bears show some traits being dominant, and some intermediate traits, in the F1 generation. When interbred, the F1's show offspring with a wider range of variability, some being more brown bear-like and others more polar bear-like. This has happened a few times in zoos, and (at least according to documentation) a few times in the wild. The polar bear, while appearing to our eyes as so distinct from the Kodiak brown bears, might be more the result of a few "loud" genetic differences -- not a lot of genes, but those that have large phenotypic results.

 

[AquaEyes]

Just out of curiosity, if you can think of any now-extinct species that we know from fossils (or, in the case of recently-extinct species, actual specimens) to have lived at the same time as our species, which would you most like to somehow magically bring back to life, or have rediscovered in some remote area? I don't know if I can pick just one, but I'd love to see living elephant birds and moas -- the idea of birds that huge walking around would be truly awesome.

 

[chickened]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

Would like to have seen this one. Some did.

 

[GardenerGal]

Oh yeah... there are so many hit-over-the-head signs that there has been vast climate change on Earth over the billions of years. All of the oil they drill for in Alaska is the remains of plantlife that flourished in the arctic long ago.

A buddy of mine works on an oil drilling site in the Arctic ocean and he told me they drill through burnt and unburnt tropical vegetation and wood all the time at about 200' to 400'.

 

[GardenerGal]

AquaEyes,

Evolution is Tao.

 

[chickened]

What intrigued me is it was tropical which as I understand things means that there were no seasons the earth would not have been on an axis as one article I read said. It compared equatorial vegetation that could never survive at the poles due to the variences in the seasons are more extreme even if it was an overall warmer earth the plants they found could not have survived. In short the theory was that the earth was not always on it's present axis.

Oh yeah... there are so many hit-over-the-head signs that there has been vast climate change on Earth over the billions of years. All of the oil they drill for in Alaska is the remains of plantlife that flourished in the arctic long ago.

 

[AquaEyes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

Would like to have seen this one. Some did.

Yes, that one would have been really interesting if it persisted to the present day. I remember seeing a documentary on dodos, and ideas about what specifically caused their extinction. While human hunting played a large part, it seems their fate was sealed when rats from ships invaded the islands. Nesting on the ground, dodos had little ability to protect eggs and nestlings from this new ground predator which didn't exist in their environment until European exploration.

A lot of flightless birds met similar fates when people brought in foreign species. I remember reading about the Stephens Island wren in a book on extinct birds (by Erroll Fuller) I have. At the time of discovery, it lived on just one island. Only a small number of people lived there, but they brought cats. This was to result in one of the most rapid "discovery to extinction" periods thus far documented.

 

[chickened]

I am sure feral hogs never helped. There was a rail that was actually better eating on the islands but hogs were often stocked on tropical islands for food for sailors.

What intrigued me is it was tropical which as I understand things means that there were no seasons the earth would not have been on an axis as one article I read said. It compared equatorial vegetation that could never survive at the poles due to the variences in the seasons are more extreme even if it was an overall warmer earth the plants they found could not have survived. In short the theory was that the earth was not always on it's present axis.

Yes, that one would have been really interesting if it persisted to the present day. I remember seeing a documentary on dodos, and ideas about what specifically caused their extinction. While human hunting played a large part, it seems their fate was sealed when rats from ships invaded the islands. Nesting on the ground, dodos had little ability to protect eggs and nestlings from this new ground predator which didn't exist in their environment until European exploration.

A lot of flightless birds met similar fates when people brought in foreign species. I remember reading about the Stephens Island wren in a book on extinct birds (by Erroll Fuller) I have. At the time of discovery, it lived on just one island. Only a small number of people lived there, but they brought cats. This was to result in one of the most rapid "discovery to extinction" periods thus far documented.

 

[AquaEyes]

I am sure feral hogs never helped.  There was a rail that was actually better eating on the islands but hogs were often stocked on tropical islands for food for sailors.

Feral "anything" never helped. Islands are special because they are isolated from mainland colonization. What happens is that a piece of land happens to receive random vagrants over time that gradually colonize the island. Due to genetic drift accounted for by the founder effect, the populations on the islands begin to differ over time from the parent population elsewhere, and in a new environment with different selective pressures, different phenotypes will be favored. What results is a new ecology based upon a novel collection of species that adapted to live together, and did not adapt to live with species that didn't exist there. When you throw in a new species, the balance changes.

While this would continue to occur naturally, the input would be small -- a few vagrant individuals over long periods of time, and not all would be able to survive and reproduce. When people bring species into new environments, the effect is more extreme -- typically vigorous, prolific species are introduced that quickly overtake the environment. Sea explorers a few hundred years ago would often drop pigs and goats on islands to serve as food resources for later visits. There wasn't as much of an interest in preserving unique things in new lands as there is today -- typically, the attitude was that anything not familiar was somehow "inferior", and that introducing species from their homeland served to "improve" this newly discovered landscape. Meanwhile, all the interesting plants and animals that evolved in isolation and could be found nowhere else were obliterated.

Sometimes the introductions are accidental, but the effects can be just as devastating. Most of the Hawaiian native birds are now believed to have succumbed largely to the introduction of mosquitoes which carried avian malaria -- a disease completely foreign to these islands previously. On Guam, the brown tree snake got there by crawling into airplane landing gear in its homeland, and now, the only native birds that aren't extinct are kept in zoos -- the island's forests are eerily silent because there are no wild birds left.

 

[GardenerGal]

I think that the term "tropical" means that area around the Earth's equator. We associate that with lush jungle vegetation that needs hot climate to live, but over time it seems that the term "tropical" has come to mean any plant/animal life that comes from a hot or warm climate - not just the stuff around the Earth's "middle belt."

The warm-hot climate at the poles may have been caused by high CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that created the so-called greenhouse effect, plus warm ocean currents, which have powerful influence on land climate. As an example, England is much farther north than where I live in coastal Massachusetts, yet southern England has palm trees and balmy winter weather, while my region is much colder, and the Puritans and Pilgrims that settled here froze their butts off because they mistakenly assumed that because Plymouth and Salem, Mass. were way farther south than where they had come from, that it must be warmer here. Turned out to be a fatal error for many of those unfortunate colonists.

What intrigued me is it was tropical which as I understand things means that there were no seasons the earth would not have been on an axis as one article I read said. It compared equatorial vegetation that could never survive at the poles due to the variences in the seasons are more extreme even if it was an overall warmer earth the plants they found could not have survived. In short the theory was that the earth was not always on it's present axis.