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We don’t know about Sasquatch, but we know a giant ape we call Gigantopithecus roamed South Asia until about 300,000 years ago. Gigantopithecus resembled a ten-foot-tall orangutan and weighed about three times as much as a large gorilla. What happened to these great apes?
The features of the dentition—large, flat molars, thick dental enamel, a deep, massive jaw—indicate Gigantopithecus probably ate tough, fibrous plants (similar to Paranthropus). More evidence came in 1990, when Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, and colleagues (PDF) placed samples of the ape’s teeth under a scanning electron microscope to look for opal phytoliths, microscopic silica structures that form in plant cells. Based on the types of phyoliths the researchers found stuck to the teeth, they concluded Gigantopithecus had a mixed diet of fruits and seeds from the fig family Moraceae and some kind of grasses, probably bamboo. The combination of tough and sugary foods helps explain why so many of the giant ape’s teeth were riddled with cavities. And numerous pits on Gigantopithecus‘s teeth—a sign of incomplete dental development caused by malnuntrition or food shortages—corroborate the bamboo diet. Ciochon’s team noted bamboo species today periodically experience mass die-offs, which affect the health of pandas. The same thing could have happened to Gigantopithecus.
Read more about Gigantopithecus at Smithsonian’s Hominid Hunting blog. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Lindsay Holmwood)
Scientists know how to do it. Cloning the extinct mammoth is just a matter of inserting mammoth DNA into an elephant egg cell, prodding it to divide into more cells, and implanting it into an elephant for gestation. Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev announced a joint Russian/Japanese project to do it starting next year, using the bone marrow from a recently-discovered mammoth femur. It makes you wonder why they haven’t done this already.
What’s been missing is woolly mammoth nuclei with undamaged genes. Scientists have been on a Holy Grail-type search for such pristine nuclei since the late 1990s. Now it sounds like the missing genes may have been found.
In an odd twist, global warming may be responsible for the breakthrough.
Warmer temperatures tied to global warming have thawed ground in eastern Russia that is almost always permanently frozen. As a result, researchers have found a fair number of well-preserved frozen mammoths there, including the one that yielded the bone marrow.
We are getting nearer to the “can we do it?” part, but the question “should we do it?” remains. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Wikipedia user WolfmanSF)
Nearly extinct in the Middle East, the rare Sand Cat has finally been bred in captivity–and the results are cute as can be! I mean, really. Cute cute cute!
After 63 days of gestation, a rare Sand Cat Kitten was born at Israel’s Zoological Center Tel Aviv Ramat Gan – Safari. Once plentiful in numbers in the dunes of Israel, the Sand Cat has become extinct in the region. This is Safari Zoo’s first successful Sand Cat birth and it is hoped this kitten will join Israel’s Sand Cat Breeding Program in order to help reintroduce the species into the wild.
Three weeks ago, the kitten’s mother Rotem refused to go into the night chamber at the end of the day. Keepers let her stay outside and the next night she gave birth to a tiny baby in the den in the outdoor enclosure. Keepers first saw the kitten when it poked it’s tiny head and looked out from the den.
The thylacine, or “Tasmanian tiger” is considered to have gone extinct in 1936, when the last known specimen died at a zoo. But occasional sightings are reported, if not confirmed. Last year, Murray McAllister caught this nine seconds of footage among hours of recordings in the Australian wilderness. Could this be a thylacine? Read his story of searching for the creature on his blog. Link -via Animal Planet
Previously: Thylacine Video
A family of giant armored turtles called meiolaniid flourished millions of years ago and was thought to have gone extinct 50,000 years ago. But now evidence from an archaeological dig on the island of Vanuatu shows a species called Meiolania damelipi survived until about 3,000 years ago.
The shell of one early meiolaniid species, known from fossils recovered in South America and named Stupendemys for its size, was 11 feet long and seven feet wide. The more modern Meiolania platyceps, found in Australia and Melanesia, had a relatively small five-foot-diameter shell, and weighed an estimated half-ton. All had armored club tails and horned heads.
(One species is even named Ninjemys, in honor of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, though M. platyceps looks much more like Super Mario Brothers 3-vintage Bowser, the King Koopa).
According to the fossil record, Meiolania damelipi flourished 3,000 years ago and were extinct 200 years later, possibly because of human hunting. The size of the newly-discovered species is not specified in the article. Pictured is Meiolania platyceps. Link -via Unique Daily
(Image credit: Australian National Museum)
How do you study an extinct virus? They don’t leave fossils behind! But some of them have left their DNA in other living things, including humans.
Over the expanse of evolutionary time, the genomes of virtually every animal species have become riddled with these proviral sequences, the so-called endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Most ERV sequences have been degraded by the accumulation of mutations but are still recognizable as retroviral in origin. The human genome alone contains hundreds of thousands of HERVs (Human ERVs), outnumbering our genes. Extrapolate these numbers across the entirety of the animal kingdom, and collectively ERV loci may well comprise a “fossil” collection numbering in the hundreds of millions of specimens.
Find out more about paleovirology, the study of extinct viruses, at Small Things Considered. Link -via Boing Boing
Scientists keep discovering extinct species that hardly seem possible outside of cartoons. If they were still around, we might not be! Web Urbanist shows us some of the biggest, fiercest, and weirdest of animals that are no more. For instance, the whorl shark had its own “jaw saw”!
Whorl Sharks
were similar to their modern cousins despite jetting along almost 300 million years ago. While modern sharks have rows of serrated teeth ready to replace any that fall out, the whorl shark has an interesting lower jaw that looked like a circular saw, where newer teeth would push older teeth further along the line. There’s some debate about the placement of the tooth structure, but regardless of its location in the mouth or deeper in the throat, it had a startlingly unique appearance.
The Bubal Hartebeest was a magnificent, tough beast which was once domesticated by the ancient Egyptians as a food source and for sacrificial purposes. The creature was even mentioned in the Old Testament.
Although it once roamed throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East, the deep-rooted mythology which surrounded the animal was not enough to save it from European hunters who began hunting them for recreation and meat. The last Bubal Hartebeest was probably a female which died in the Paris Zoo in 1923.
Animals are going extinct at a much higher rate now than through most of the earth’s history. Many species have disappeared since the development of photography. Take a good look, because this is all you’ll see of these eleven species as they were. Link -via Digg
Previously at Neatorama: Video of a Thylacine and an attempt to resurrect the Quagga.
These modern fossils are hand-made in Austin by artist Christopher Locke. Each one represents a different piece of "modern" technology that has already become extinct.
The artist has also collaborated with the local Goodwill computer and electronics recycling program, insuring that there is zero e-waste from this project.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by HeartlessMachine.
An extremely rare bird was photographed by a TV crew in the Philippines in January, just before it was sold at a poultry market.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct.
The buttonquail is a reclusive bird, and no one knows how many may remain hidden. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Arnel B. Telesforo)
The Pyrenean ibex, a form of mountain goat, was deemed extinct in 2000. Using tissue recovered from its body, however, scientists were able to successfully clone this creature. Although the cloned ibex died shortly after birth due to physical defects, the event is considered a breakthrough in cloning and has raised hopes for cloning of other extinct species, such as the mammoth, and possibly even dinosaurs!
“I think this is an exciting advance as it does show the potential of being able to regenerate extinct species.
“Clearly there is some way to go before it can be used effectively, but the advances in this field are such that we will see more and more solutions to the problems faced.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gabbierose.
