It seems natural that theories over mysterious creatures sometimes intermingle. Two odd creatures that seemed destined for this sort of juxtaposition are Bigfoot and aliens. There's volumes of published material that explores the idea that Bigfoot and extraterrestrials are interrelated, that Bigfoot might be assisted by extraterrestrials in remaining hidden, that the big hairy guy might have received alien implants that give him paranormal abilities, or that he might just be an alien himself. One book suggests that Bigfoots are the inhabitants of another planet and that they regularly visit Earth through teleportation instead of a spaceship. Another theory claims that Bigfoots are alien abductees snatched from the past and returned to the planet at the wrong period of history. Maybe the aliens were experimenting with creating a human being and screwed up? That theory's been suggested to explain Bigfoot as well. The mash-up of cryptids and aliens isn't exclusive to Bigfoot either. Many think that Mothman and the Chupacabra are simply unknown animals independent of UFOlogy. But hey, until the smoking gun of a body arrives, it's all just speculation anyway. What not put the extra- in terrestrial? More on Bigfoots and Aliens
Sunday, 18 February 2007
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Ancient chimps 'used stone tools'
Chimpanzees in West Africa used stone tools to crack nuts 4,300 years ago. The discovery represents the oldest evidence of tool use by our closest evolutionary relative. The skill could have been inherited from a common ancestor of chimps and humans, the authors say, or learnt from humans by imitation. Alternatively, humans and chimps may have developed tool use independently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reports. Chimpanzees were first observed using stone tools in the 19th century. Julio Mercader and colleagues found stone tools at the Noulo site in Ivory Coast, the only known prehistoric chimpanzee settlement. The excavated stones showed the hallmarks of use as tools for smashing nuts when compared with ancient human or modern chimpanzee stone tools.
Also, several types of starch grains were found on the stones, which the researchers say is residue derived from cracking local nuts. "Chimpanzee material culture has a long prehistory whose deep roots are only beginning to be uncovered," write the researchers in Proceedings. The tools were found to be 4,300 years old, which, in human terms, corresponds to the later Stone Age, before the advent of agriculture. The age of the tools was determined by subjecting charcoal from the same ground layers to the technique of radiocarbon dating.
View: Full Article | Source: BBC News
Signs Of Early Chimps’ Tool Use
In the rain forest of the Ivory Coast 4,300 years ago, chimpanzees gathered in groups and cracked nuts the best they could–the Stone Age way.
Place the nut on a hard, flat rock. Take a heavy hammer rock, and pound the nut. The chimps must have feasted well and often there under the trees by a black-water river.
Stones excavated from a forest in the Ivory Coast, at 4,300 years old, have use patterns consistent with what is seen in modern chimp sites.
Archaeologists digging in the Ivory Coast's Tai National Park reported on Monday the discovery of several sites where such nut-cracking chimps long ago left broken and discarded stones that were used as natural tools. Starch residues from nuts were lodged in crevices of the stones.
This was the earliest strong evidence of chimpanzee tool use, researchers say in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery team included scientists from Canada, Britain, Germany and the United States.
Chimps in the wild were first observed using stone tools in the early 19th century, and earlier remains of their material culture are scant. No artifacts have come to light showing that chimps have ever deliberately made stone tools by chipping, flaking and other methods, as prehuman species were doing as early as 2.6 million years ago.
The archaeologists, led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Canada, said the findings in Ivory Coast, in West Africa, indicated that these chimps developed the nut-cracking behavior without human influence. The stones are unlike any food-processing implements used by humans in the region today, and they have use and wear patterns consistent with what is seen in modern chimp sites. The sizes and shapes of the stones appear to be more suited to the large, strong hands of chimps than to human hands.
The remains at the sites, moreover, are virtually identical to what today's tool-using chimps leave behind. The material was buried as much as 3 feet deep and mixed with charcoal from natural forest fires. Radiocarbon analysis of the charcoal determined the age of the site.
So if chimps 4,300 years ago were not mimicking humans, the research group suggested that their capacity for tool use could have been inherited from the last ancestor that the chimp and human lineages have in common. In interviews, Mercader and John W. K. Harris of Rutgers University, another team member, contended that the new findings gave substance to that hypothesis.
Other experts in early stone tool technology said the analysis of the chimpanzee tool use sites appeared to be sound, but they had reservations about the interpretations linking the behavior to common ancestors.
Mercader said extreme care was taken to separate pieces of stone that had been modified through use as a nutcracker from those that are naturally fractured stones often found in streams. He said independent experts, including Harris, were called in for blind tests, and they scored about 95 percent correct in recognizing the stones the chimps had used as tools.
In any case, other archaeologists agreed with the research team's concluding observation: "that nut-cracking behavior in the Tai forest has been transmitted over the course of more than 200 generations, and that chimpanzee material culture has a long history whose deep roots are only beginning to be uncovered." [link]
Tuesday, 13 February 2007
If whales are telepathic, are humans ?
Whales possess a form of communication that allows them to signal other whales hundreds of miles away. Some experts say it is indeed a form of telepathy. Does human telepathy exist? Is there scientific evidence for this particular form of extra-sensory perception (ESP)?Certainly if human telepathy existed we could explain many weird human experiences. Telepathy would account for, according to a recent newspaper account, a mother "saw" her daughter miles away roll her car over in a traffic accident and "saw" her daughter injured and trapped within the wreckage. It would explain the Australian woman who "felt" her mother die suddenly at the precise moment she passed away half way around the world in London. Telepathy would explain many strange little happenings such as these, or even something that is very common: we hear the telephone ring and we know who's ringing before we pick up the phone.The fact remains that there is no scientific proof that human telepathy exists.Telepathy means direct communication from one mind to another. It refers to the supposed ability to perceive the thoughts of others without the use of recognised senses. The term was first used in 1882 by psychologist, F W Myers.If telepathy existed, it would dramatically violate several established laws of physics. For instance, with telepathy, it doesn't seem to matter how far apart two people are or how many other people there are in between them when the "communication" takes place. The messages seem to be able to span great distances, slide around corners, penetrate walls, and travel under water. The process does not seem to be strictly bound by time either.Those who have attempted to account for so-called telepathic experiences usually cite one of two explanations.The first is the Radio Wave Theory. According to this idea, telepathy works like radio waves. People often speak of "vibes" as though there were telepathic "brain-waves" going from one person to another. The problem with this theory is that if there were some kind of wave, we ought to be able to detect it coming from people's brains. But we cannot. The brain's electrical activity can be detected at best only a few centimeters away from the skull.
There would also need to be a "vibes" transmitter in one brain and a "vibes" receiver in the other brain. No sign of either has ever been detected in any human brain. Also, the strength of the "signal" ought to decay with distance. But it seems it does not.The second is the Timeless/Spaceless Psychic Field theory. According to this idea, there is some unknown "psychic field" in which the impressions of every thought are stored for all time. Telepathy involves somehow picking-up these vibes from this psychic field.However, no evidence for any such psychic field has ever been discovered. Furthermore, if it did, we would be inundated with the trillions of thoughts left behind by every human who ever existed - everyone from Alexander the Great to Hitler's tailor.It is inconceivable to imagine how one brain could pick up only those messages it needed and ignore all the rest. And if it could select which messages to read, what would be the basis for the selection? What brain mechanism would be employed for this, etc.?Scientists have attempted to obtain evidence for telepathy. A pioneer in this effort was Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University. In 1927, Rhine began conducting what are still considered the most famous experiments in this area. Rhine tested hundreds of people using cards specially designed by his colleague, Karl Zener.
View: Full Article | Source: The Register
Friday, 2 February 2007
Europe's first stegosaurus discovered
A Stegosaurus fossil has been discovered in Europe, marking the first time the famous plated dinosaur has been found outside of North America. The find supports a widely accepted idea that the two continents were once connected by a series of temporary land bridges which surfaced when sea levels dipped, allowing dinosaurs to cross.Both coasts were very close and the basins between them could emerge occasionally, said study leader Fernando Escaso of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain.During the first half of dinosaurs 185-million-year reign on Earth, all of the worlds continents were clumped together into one giant landmass called Pangaea. At the end of the Jurassic Period, about 150 million years ago, the supercontinent began slowly splintering: North America, Europe and Africa began to drift apart, and in the widening rift between them, the Atlantic Ocean was born.At times during this million-years long transformation, sea levels rose and fell, and land bridges occasionally emerged between the newly sundered landmasses. During times of connectedness, dinosaurs like Stegosaurus would have been able to cross.
Well-known to any dinosaur enthusiast, Stegosaurus was a bizarre-looking herbivorous creature that had a back adorned by a double row of vertical plates and a tail studded with spikes. It was once thought these strange accessories were for protection or used to radiate heat from the dinosaurs body. But now most scientists think the body armor was probably just extreme example of the elaborate and colorful displays animals use to recognize each other as the same species.The scientists unearthed the new Stegosaurus fossilswhich included a tooth and parts of the animals spinal column and leg bonesnear the city of Batalha, in central Portugal. Preliminary analyses show the fossils to be indistinguishable from a species previously found only in North America, called Stegosaurus ungulatus. While the similarity bolsters the land-bridge case, it provides no information on the distribution and duration of those bridges.
View: Full Article | Source: MSNBC
Dinosaur Evolved Opposable Fingers 75 Million Years Ago
Bambiraptor evolved opposable fingers 75 million years ago, long before primates developed opposable thumbs.
Phil Senter at Lamar State College in Orange, Texas, US, who made the discovery, said the arm movement would have allowed the Bambiraptor to hold prey with both arms, or use its long arms to bring objects to its mouth.
But even more surprising was that it was possible for the dinosaur to put the tips of the outer two of its three fingers together, the way a human is able to touch the tip of the thumb to the tip of the third finger - a trait not known in any other dinosaur.
Working with models of the bones, Senter found that while most predatory dinosaurs grabbed prey with their mouths, Bambiraptor might have grabbed prey like a frog or small mammal with one hand.
“Sharp claws on its fingertips could impale prey from both sides and prevent it from escaping. Caterpillars would be perfect to grab between claws and drop into its mouth,” New Scientist quoted Senter as saying.
Dromeosaurs, or flying dinosaurs were close relatives of birds, and the most primitive one yet found, Microraptor, had long feathers on both arms and legs.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Archaeologist digs for proof of Sasquatch
By day she's the Stanislaus National Forest's archaeologist. With a master's degree in anthropology, she makes sure prehistoric Native American sites in the woods are protected. She's also the forest's liaison with the Me-Wuk tribe. But it's what Kathy Strain does in her spare time that separates her from Forest Service colleagues. She's a Bigfooter. A student of Sasquatch. A yearner for Yeti. A true believer. "A strong case can be made that Bigfoot exists," said Strain, whose Jamestown-area home includes a room full of books, videos, cast footprints, notes and reports on the creature. "I've seen things I have no other explanation for." Not only that, but she says Tuolumne County and the forest she works on are among the huge creature's favorite haunts. She has catalogued scores of eyewitness accounts, has discovered a Sasquatch "nest" near Twain Harte and swears she was once close enough to the creature that dirt was still falling from the sides of deep,14-inch footprints it left behind. And get this: Strain is not crazy. In fact, her scientific credentials and employment by a huge, dead-serious and not terribly imaginative federal agency boost her stock as a guest speaker at Bigfoot conferences. But when she walks into the forest's Greenley Road headquarters, Strain leaves Sasquatch at the door. She doesn't demand that wide swaths of timberland be set aside as Bigfoot habitat.
Nor does she hector forest wildlife biologists with evidence or accounts she has collected. "Kathy has been an excellent archaeologist and employee," confirmed her boss, Forest Supervisor Tom Quinn. "And, at least in my four and a half years here, I have had no reports of Yeti conversations in the workplace." For the record, Quinn added, the forest has "no position" on Bigfoot. Which, less restrained Bigfooters might say, is like Australia having no position on kangaroos. NEXT TO THE deep woods near the Oregon border, Strain says, the Stanislaus Forest area is the nation's hottest Bigfoot spot. In the past six years she has documented more than 200 sightings and witness accounts. A few have come from co-workers looking to unburden themselves — after quitting time, of course — of long-held Bigfoot tales. Take the wildlife biologist who never forgot his 1993 trip to Bloomer Lake, above Pinecrest.
View: Full Article | Source: Union Democrat
Humans in America 45,000 Years Before Pyramids
Offering more evidence that our assumptions about history are completely off, an archaeologist in South Carolina is saying that radiocarbon tests on artifacts he's found along the Savannah River suggest that humans existed in North America as many as 50,000 years ago. The bold statement shatters the long-held notion that the earliest settlers arrived here about 13,000 years ago in Alaska via a lost land bridge. By comparison, the Egyptian pyramids at Giza are thought to have been built less than 5,000 years ago. Human beings in America 45,000 years before the Pyramids! That's pretty amazing and begs the question of lost civilizations in America possibly undiscovered. Considering that America up until a few centuries ago was largely covered with dense vegetation, there may be a great many things still buried deep in the soil waiting to be unearthed. Full Story
Saturday, 27 January 2007
Mega-Marsupials Once Roamed Australia
Marsupial lions, kangaroos as tall as trucks and wombats the size of a rhinoceros roamed Australia’s outback before being killed off by fires lit by arriving humans, scientists said on Thursday.The giant animals lived in the arid Nullarbor desert around 400,000 years ago, but died out around 50,000 years ago, relatively shortly after the arrival of human settlers, according to new fossil skeletons found in caves.
Fossilized remains were uncovered almost intact in a series of three deep caves in the center of the Nullarbor desert — east of the west coast city of Perth — in October 2002.
“Three subsequent expeditions produced hundreds of fossils so well-preserved that they constitute a veritable “Rosetta Stone for Ice-Age Australia”, expedition leader Gavin Prideaux said of the find, detailed in the latest edition of the journal Nature.
The team discovered 69 species of mammals, birds and reptiles, including eight new species of kangaroo, some standing up to 9 feet tall.
Protected from wind and rain, and undisturbed due to their remote location, the remains of the mega-beasts are in near-perfect condition, including the first-ever complete skeleton of a marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex.
“Unwary animals bounding around in the case of kangaroos, or running around in the case of marsupial lions and wombats, fell down these holes, as presumably most were nocturnal. It’s very difficult to see a small opening on a flat surface at night,” Prideaux said.
Research into the fossils challenges recent claims that Australia’s megafauna were killed off by climate change, pointing the finger instead at fires, probably lit by the first human settlers who transformed the fragile landscape.
The lands inhabited by the megafauna once supported flowers, tall trees and shrubs. But isotopes extracted from skeletal enamels show the climate was hot and arid, similar to today.
The plants, the scientists said, were highly sensitive to so-called fire-stick farming, where lands were deliberately cleared by fires to encourage re-growth.
“Australian megafauna could take all that nature could throw at them for half-a-million years, without succumbing,” said Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong.
“It was only when people arrived that they vanished.” [link]
Birds Dropping Dead All Over The World
