In the News

Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:234–236 DOI 10.1007/s12052-008-0033-z INTERNET COLUMN In the News Sidney Horenstein Published online: 15 February 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008 Introduction In the June 26, 2007 issue of the New York Times, www. nytimes.com, a special issue of Science Times was devoted to evolution. In a lengthy article, Carol Kaesuk Yoon discusses “From a Few Genes, Life’s Myriad Shapes” and interviews, among other scientists, Dr. Sean B. Carroll (University of Wisconsin) about the relatively new field of evo-devo, that is, “evolutionary developmental biology”. In addition to a variety of graphics meant to illustrate various aspects of evolution, there is a video in which Dr. Carroll expounds on the “Science of Evolution” and a column containing his answers to a reader’s questions. The issue also includes Douglas H. Erwin’s essay on “Darwin Still Rules, but Some Biologists Dream of a Paradigm Shift”. Nicholas Wade writes about “Humans Have Spread Globally, and Evolved Locally”, that is, modern humans appeared 50,000 years ago, but genetic drift and natural selection have recently remolded the human clay. To round out the scope of the subject, John Noble Wilford writes “The Human Family Has Become a Bush with Many Branches”, Dennis Overbye has an essay on “Human DNA, the Ultimate Spot for Secret Messages,” and Carl Zimmer discusses “Fast-Reproducing Microbes Provide a Window on Natural Selection”. The New York Times web page also directs readers to previous articles about evolution and recommended blogs. It does not happen often that paleontologists can match fossil vertebrate animals with trackways, but the excellent specimens found in the Tambach Formation in central S. Horenstein (*) American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA e-mail: Germany, about 290 Ma old, is such a case. Two reptilelike species left their footprints in soft sediments and excellently preserved skeletons nearby in the same layers, clearly matching each other. Ker Than of www.livescience. com reported on the paper published in Vertebrate Paleontology by David Berman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg on September 12, 2007, which describes these oldest identifiable footprints. As indicated above, most tracks are without the associated fossil animal. Take the tyrannosaur footprint found in Montana in the Hell Creek Formation well known for Tyrannosaurus rex fossils. The footprint, about 2.5 ft in length, was discovered by a team including Phillip Manning of the University of Manchester in England. Jeanna Bryner of Live Science, www.livescience.com, wrote on October 11, 2007, as a result of an interview with him, that predatory dinosaurs have “much more gracile toes than their dumpy hadrosaur friends.” Although the footprint was surely a type of tyrannosaur its species, for the time being, remains unknown because the only way you would know who left the trail is to “find the animal dead in its tracks.” Speaking of feet, Shane Van Loon was walking along the riverbank in Tsiigehtchic in Canada’s Northwest Territories and saw in the adjacent cliff a probable carcass of a steppe bison peering out of exposed permafrost. The specimen is probably older than the last glaciation, making it more than 20,000 years old. Reported on September 12, 2007 in www. cbc.ca/, the specimen consisted of the animal’s hide and bone and a large-horned skull, 1 m wide from horn to horn. Analysis of the preserved intestine could provide information about the food the animal ate and some aspects of the ecology of the area. Not all life forms are steak or vegetable eaters. Nicola McLoughlin, a post-doctoral student at the University of Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:234–236 Bergen, is looking for microbes that eat volcanic glass and may have lived 3.5 billion years ago, the same kinds that are found on the seafloor today on the mid-Atlantic Ridge. As the microbes eat the glass, they leave behind small cavities shaped like tiny bubbles or pipes. The problem is that the oldest sea floors are generally not older than 170 Ma. So she is looking for rocks in South Africa and Australia that were once ancient seafloor but have been thrust onto and sutured to continents. The report by Lars Holger Ursin on September 4, 2007 in http://nyheter.uib.no/ indicates that these studies may have application in finding ancient life on Mars, where there is a great deal of volcanic rock. Getting back to permafrost and ice age animals, Dmitry Solovyov reports in http://news.scotman.com on September 18, 2007 from a report by Reuters that, rather than fossils serendipitously, in Siberia there are ice animal hunters. Melting permafrost yielded a treasure trove of mammoths, wooly rhinos, and lions and as a result, bone-prospectors are making a living finding and selling specimens to private collectors and scientific institutions. He points out, for example, that local tribesmen in Chersky spread out across the vast tundra looking for specimens that now poke out of the soil or sometimes just lie on the surface. Mammoths are most prized and can fetch large sums of money, and many of the specimens end up not only in the Ice Age Museum in Moscow but also in the United States and South Korea. And Siberia is not the only a place where local people search for fossils. In Chaoyang, in northeast China, where paleontologists discovered feathered dinosaurs in the mid1990s and numerous other well-preserved fossils perhaps as many as 500 new species — business is booming. On Ancient Street, over 60 stores sell fossils in what has been described as the largest commercial fossil market in the world. But to get the fossils, farmers and dealers working together destroy sites to find the specimens, as reported by Jerry Guo in www.time.com on August 27, 2007. He tells about one dealer who was exposing a 120-Ma-old fish that was going to fetch about $3. Not only do casual buyers frequent the shops who see the specimens as curiosities but also paleontologists who are not above finding some exquisite specimen to purchase and then study. On the other hand, an article in the Las Vegas Sun, www. lasvegassun.com, on September 13, 2007 reports that the Bureau of Land Management in Las Cruces did not renew a mining permit for a rock quarry near Las Cruces to “better protect a repository of pre-dinosaur fossil tracks.” Not only will this offer some protection to Permian tracks of amphibian and reptiles in the Robledo Mountains, Senators Jeff Bingaman and Peter Domenici have co-sponsored legislation to designate 5,367 acres in the mountains as a national monument. As usual, there are some oppositions to the designation, in this case by off-road groups who drive 235 their recreational vehicles in the Robledos. But there are also groups who support the designation, to make the fossils more accessible to public viewing. Fossil looting is unfortunately an international problem, as indicated by a report in the New Zealand H (...truncated)