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Categories: Biology: Developmental, Paleontology: Climate
Published Malformed seashells, ancient sediment provide clues about Earth's past
(via sciencedaily.com) Shrunken seashells and unusually dark sediment cores have helped geoscientists better understand the chronology and character of events that led to Ocean Anoxic Event 2, nearly 100 million years ago.
Published In the Neanderthal site of Combe-Grenal, France, hunting strategies were unaffected by changing climate
(via sciencedaily.com) Neanderthals in Combe-Grenal (France) preferred to hunt in open environments, and their hunting strategies did not alter during periods of climatic change, according to a new study.
Published An Old Yellow Enzyme helps algae combat photooxidative stress
(via sciencedaily.com) Old Yellow Enzymes (OYEs) were discovered in the 1930s and have been the subject of much research ever since. This is because these biocatalysts -- coloured yellow by an auxiliary molecule -- are capable of performing reactions that are very valuable for the chemical industry, such as producing drug precursors or fragrances. Even though OYEs are found in many organisms, their natural role for these organisms has hardly been understood so far -- possibly because the research focus has been on their biotechnological application. Researchers have now shown that an OYE of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is vital for this plant microorganism to protect itself from photooxidative stress.
Published Global warming reaches central Greenland
(via sciencedaily.com) A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today's warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced. The most recent decade surveyed in a study, the years 2001 to 2011, was the warmest in the past 1,000 years, and the region is now 1.5 °C warmer than during the 20th century, as researchers report. Using a set of ice cores unprecedented in length and quality, they reconstructed past temperatures in central-north Greenland and melting rates of the ice sheet.
Published New study decodes one of the living world's fastest cell movements
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Heliozoan axopodia are important for their motility. However, the underlying mechanism of their axopodial contraction has remained ambiguous. Recently, researchers have reported that microtubules are simultaneously cleaved at multiple sites, allowing the radiating axopodia in a heliozoan, Raphidocystis contractilis, to disappear almost instantly. They have now identified the gene set and proteins involved in this microtubule disruption. This research can help develop a method to detect water pollution and evaluate the efficacy of new anticancer drugs.
Published Modified CRISPR-based enzymes improve the prospect of inserting entire genes into the genome to overcome diverse disease-causing mutations
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Many genetic diseases are caused by diverse mutations spread across an entire gene, and designing genome editing approaches for each patient's mutation would be impractical and costly.
Published Study offers most detailed glimpse yet of planet's last 11,000 summers and winters
(via sciencedaily.com) An international team of collaborators have revealed the most detailed look yet at the planet's recent climactic history, including summer and winter temperatures dating back 11,000 years to the beginning of what is known as the Holocene.
Published Rodent extinctions in Hispaniola may have been caused by humans
(via sciencedaily.com) Hispaniola once had among the highest diversity of rodents in the Caribbean. Today, only one rodent species remains, and its prospects for survival are uncertain. New carbon dates place the blame squarely on humans.
Published Climate change could cause 'disaster' in the world's oceans
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Climate change will slow down deep overturning ocean circulation in the coming centuries. Using three dozen Earth system models, researchers have concluded that the Southern Meridional Overturning Circulation could completely shut down by 2300, causing disaster to the marine ecosystem on a large portion of the planet.
Published Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during last ice age
(via sciencedaily.com) A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). The findings indicate that the growth of the ice sheets -- and the resulting drop in sea level -- occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested.
Published Early forests did not significantly change the atmospheric CO2
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists have discovered that the atmosphere contained far less CO2 than previously thought when forests emerged on our planet, the new study has important implications for understanding how land plants affect the climate.
Published New theory on timing for human settlement of some parts of tropical Pacific
(via sciencedaily.com) Spread across vast distances, the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean are thought to have been populated by humans in two distinct migrations beginning approximately 3,330 years ago. The first followed a northern route out of what is today the Philippines and the second followed a southern route from Taiwan and New Guinea. People arrived on the islands between these routes -- now making up the Federated States of Micronesia -- about 1,000 years later. But a new finding by sea-level researchers suggests that the islands in Micronesia were possibly settled much earlier than supposed and that voyagers on the two routes may have interacted with one another.
Published Linking fossil climate proxies to living bacteria helps climate predictions
(via sciencedaily.com) Fossilized microbial skins can give us a glimpse of how the climate was in the deep geological past. By discovering the 'missing link' between such fossil skins and the skins of living bacteria, researchers have greatly improved the accuracy of climate reconstructions and predictions.
Published Climate change played key role in dinosaur success story
(via sciencedaily.com) Climate change, rather than competition, played a key role in the ascendancy of dinosaurs through the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods.
Published Increasing forest cover in the Eifel region 11,000 years ago resulted in the local loss of megafauna
(via sciencedaily.com) Sediment cores obtained from Eifel maar sites provide insight into the presence of large Ice Age mammals in Central Europe over the past 60,000 years: Overkill hypothesis not confirmed. Herds of megafauna, such as mammoth and bison, have roamed the prehistoric plains in what is today's Central Europe for several tens of thousands of years. As woodland expanded at the end of the last Ice Age, the numbers of these animals declined and by roughly 11,000 years ago, they had completely vanished from this region. Thus, the growth of forests was the main factor that determined the extinction of such megafauna in Central Europe.
Published Changes in Earth's orbit may have triggered ancient warming event
(via sciencedaily.com) Changes in Earth's orbit that favored hotter conditions may have helped trigger a rapid global warming event 56 million years ago. Researchers found the shape of Earth's orbit, or eccentricity, and the wobble in its rotation, or precession, favored hotter conditions at the onset of the PETM and that these orbital configurations together may have played a role in triggering the event.
Published Assessing El Nino 'flavors' to unravel past variability, future impact
(via sciencedaily.com) By assessing so-called 'flavors' of El Nino events in past climate records and model simulations, researchers have a clearer picture of El Nino patterns over the past 12,000 years and are able to more accurately project future changes and impacts of this powerful force.
Published Climate whiplash increased wildfires on California's west coast about 8,000 years ago
(via sciencedaily.com) Researchers have been studying the effects of the sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred about 8,200 years ago, the so-called 8.2-kiloyear event, with the help of mineral deposits present in White Moon Cave in Northern California. New indications show that oscillations between extreme wetness and aridity in California were closely linked with the occurrence of wildfires. The researchers have concluded that such events are likely to become more common in the face of human-induced climate change.
Published Climate archives under the magnifying glass
(via sciencedaily.com) How is the weather changing as a consequence of global warming? Climate archives provide valuable glimpses into past climate changes, especially into the processes that drive our planet from one climate setting to the next. For humans and ecosystems, however, time spans of just weeks to years, which are the scope of weather events, are often most important. Using an newly developed and tested analytical method these two aspects have now been merged, and the impacts of the most recent global warming on seasonal temperature fluctuations have been described.
Published Discovery of world's oldest DNA breaks record by one million years
(via sciencedaily.com) Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified -- opening a 'game-changing' new chapter in the history of evolution. Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, researchers discovered the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change.