HOME |
RSS | 
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)
Given the low birth rates of some countries (I'm looking at you, Hong Kong* and Singapore), it's only a matter of time before they simply depopulate themselves out of existence. But how long do they have?
The Economist did the (wild) projection:
In Hong Kong, for example, a cohort of 1,000 women is now expected to give birth to just 547 daughters. If nothing changed, those 547 daughters would be succeeded by 299 daughters of their own, and so on. Extrapolating wildly, it would take only 25 generations for Hong Kong’s female population to shrink from 3.75m to just one. Given that Hong Kong’s average age of childbearing is 31.4 years, the territory would expect to see the birth of its last woman in the year 2798.
By the same unflinching logic, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and Spain will not see out the next millennium. Even China has only 1,500 years left.
*Yes, I know that Hong Kong is not an independent country, but it operates like one.
We often post about endangered animals, but plants can go extinct as well. Plant species’ fortunes are affected by the actions of humans and other animals. Consider the strange case of the plant pictured here known as Cabbage on a Stick:
Cabbage on a stick is pretty much what it sounds like: a tuft of leaves that looks like a head of cabbage sitting on top of a thick stick. It’s also known as alula. In the wild, this plant is only found on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and without the work of botanists, it would be extinct. Because the only insect that could pollinate the cabbage on a stick, a type of hawk moth, doesn’t exist anymore, the plant species can only reproduce if humans hand-pollinate it. Botanists repelled down cliffs to reach the existing alula, pollinate it, and bring some back with them to grow in nurseries.
Other plants are endangered because of over harvesting, environmental encroachment, or even poaching. Link
The snail shells above are simply gorgeous, as are the jewelry made from them. The only problem? The snails are being driven to extinction just so people can makes earrings and necklaces from them. That’s not the only idiotic reason humans have been driving certain creatures to extinction, read the rest over at Cracked. Warning: some of the language is NSFW.
Comments Off
When you’re a kid, you know the dinosaurs went extinct, but it seems weird that a creature alive today could suddenly be wiped off the earth tomorrow. I remember the first time I really realized what extinction meant when I went to the San Diego Zoo and saw a picture of the dodo bird on a sign talking about extinction. I was familiar with the bird from Alice and Wonderland and asked my mom if we could see it while we were at the zoo. When she explained to me that the bird didn’t exist any more, my heart sank.
Even today I am saddened whenever I learn about a species becoming extinct, but the worst part is when you know it was caused by human activity. Here are seven such animals that are no longer on earth thanks to mankind.
Also known as the Tasmanian tiger, this carnivore wasn’t related to dogs, tigers or hyenas, as many people believe. It was actually a marsupial, closer related to kangaroos and wallabies than any of those other animals. It was originally found in Australia and New Zealand, but its was essentially extinct in those areas long before Europeans discovered it. Even so, it thrived on the island of Tasmania until European settlers issued began fearing that the animals were eating their livestock. Like wolves, the Tasmanian tiger was often accused of slaughtering sheep in the fields. As a result, the Van Dieman’s Land Company issued a bounty on the creature, offering one pound per adult and ten shillings for each pup.
Scientists have still not been able to verify accusations of the animals eating livestock, but it would be too late to help the thylacines anyway, as the last known individual was captured in 1933 and died in a zoo in 1936. That’s her in the video. Sadly, she died two months before the Tasmanian government enacted a law dedicated to protecting the animals.
While it looks like a strange cross between a horse and a zebra, a quagga was actually a subspecies of a typical plains zebra with a brown rear end and a striped head. It was once found in great numbers in southern Africa until Europeans started hunting the animals for their meat and their hides. It is believed that the last wild quagga was shot in the late 1870s. A number were sent to zoos before that point though and the last captive individual was killed in 1883. At the time, people still believed these were the same as other zebra species, the individuals just had different markings. It wasn’t until after the subspecies was eradicated that people realized the animal had become extinct. Some historians have noted, the story is particularly sad because if the same thing happened in modern times, the breeding programs of zoos could help rebuild the population of the animal and release them back into the wild.
Interestingly, because the animal was so closely related to other subspecies of zebra, South African researchers have attempted a selective breeding program to create a new stock of the animals. The third and forth generation animals created through this project do look similar to the extinct creatures, but scientists debate whether or not looks are enough to declare these animals quaggas.
As a slow-swimming marine mammal that never completely submerged itself and was loaded with blubber, the Steller’s sea cow was doomed from the beginning. These massive herbivores were once abundant in the North Pacific, but aboriginal peoples hunted them until their population was limited to only the Commander Islands. Unfortunately for the sea cow, they were then discovered in 1751 by George Wilhelm Steller on an expedition led by Vitus Bering.
The Stellar sea cows were over 25 feet long. They were slow swimmers who couldn’t submerge themselves. There were only about 1,500 when Europeans first laid eyes on them and it wasn’t long before those remaining were hunted down for food, pelts and blubber, which could be used in oil lamps. Within 27 years of Steller’s discovery, the animals were extinct.
Photo: De Agostini Picture Library/BBC
Scientists have put forth various theories to explain the extinction of the giant Elephant Bird, the largest bird to ever live on Earth, including climate change and hunting by humans. The truth, it turns out, can be summed up in two words: yummy eggs.
Sir David Attenborough explains:
Recent archaeological evidence has revealed the fragments of elephant bird egg shells among the remains of human fires, suggesting that the eggs, which are 180 times bigger than a chicken egg, regularly provided food for entire families.
Sir David says: "I doubt it was hunted to extinction – anyone who has seen an ostrich in a zoo knows that it has a kick which can open a man’s stomach and an enraged elephant bird, many times the size of an ostrich, must have been a truly formidable opponent.
"I suspect it was its egg. They may not have been able to tackle an adult bird, but they could have taken its eggs which would have been a huge source of food.
"Even if the bird itself was held in awe or fear by the people here, it’s unlikely the eggs were – and that would have meant the gradual disappearance of this unique giant."
Since 1980, paleontologists have suggested that a terrible meteorite impact millions of years ago radically altered the Earth’s climate and killed off the dinosaur population. Now a study led by David Jolley of Aberdeen University proposes that there was a second major impact a few thousand years after the first:
In the current study, scientists examined the “pollen and spores” of fossil plants in the layers of mud that infilled the crater. They found that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly colonised the devastated landscape.
Ferns have an amazing ability to bounce back after catastrophe. Layers full of fern spores – dubbed “fern spikes” – are considered to be a good “markers” of past impact events.
However, there was an unexpected discovery in store for the scientists.
They located a second “fern spike” in a layer one metre above the first, suggesting another later impact event.
Link via reddit | Photo by Flickr user moonlightbulb used under Creative Commons license
Why did woolly mammoth go extinct? Scientists discovered that the none-too-smart animal enjoyed – and I quote – "poo-snack":
… a team led by Bas van Geel of the University of Amsterdam found fungus spores deep inside a piece of mammoth dung that can only grow on the outside of dung. Only way that can happen is if the mammoth eats the fungus, which means eating poo. Their work is in press in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
This is the second time evidence has been found that mammoths enjoyed poo-snacks — "coprophagy" to scientists — the first was in 2006. In some ways it’s even more important than the first discovery, though, because it means the initial finding wasn’t a fluke: mammoths made a habit of eating their own excrement.
It may sound gross to you or me, but coprophagia (that’s the fancy scientific word for eating poo) may actually serve a valid purpose:
Microbes that feasted on poo left behind high concentrations of vitamin K, B12, and B7, making mammoth pies a great way to get essential nutrients. That would’ve gone double for any time when food was scarce and/or the animals were stressed and in need of a prehistoric PowerBar.
"The indication that the adult mammoth had eaten feces (its own or that of another’s) is interesting, but not remarkably strange. Young elephants eat the feces of their mother to obtain the necessary bacteria for the proper digestion of the vegetation found on the savanna.
"This behavior may have a marked effect upon the type and function of the intestinal flora. Coprophagy is an important means of making a variety of nutrients synthesized by intestinal microflora available to animals.
There’s no way of knowing whether the tiger that made a meal for five men was really the last Indochinese tiger in China, but no one has seen any others in years. Kang Wannian of Yunnan Province in China claims he killed the tiger in self-defense last February. Then he ate it.
The only known wild Indochinese tiger in China, photographed in 2007 at the same reserve, has not been seen since Kang’s meal, the Yunnan-based newspaper Life News reported earlier this month.
The paper quoted the provincial Forestry Bureau as saying there was no evidence the tiger was the last one in China.
A local court sentenced Kang to 10 years for killing a rare animal plus two years for illegal possession of firearms, the local web portal Yunnan.cn reported. Prosecutors said Kang did not need a gun to gather clams.
Four villagers who helped Kang dismember the tiger and ate its meat were also sentenced from three to four years for “covering up and concealing criminal gains”, the report said.
The Indochinese tiger is on the brink of extinction, with small populations in Laos, Vietnam. Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Cburnett)
First it was bluefin tuna, then Playboy bunnies, then the world’s wheat crop. Now the Great Barrier Reef is going to be gone in 20 years, according to marine scientist Charlie Veron:
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, told The Times: “There is no way out, no loopholes. The Great Barrier Reef will be over within 20 years or so.”
Once carbon dioxide had hit the levels predicted for between 2030 and 2060, all coral reefs were doomed to extinction, he said. “They would be the world’s first global ecosystem to collapse. I have the backing of every coral reef scientist, every research organisation. I’ve spoken to them all. This is critical. This is reality.”
Frank Pope of The Times Online has the interview: Link
Everything’s going extinct like it’s going out of style! What’s (or who’s) next? Miley Cyrus?
From the Neatoshop: Having Great Vocab Didn’t Save the Thesaurus From Extinction
The remarkable Rainbow Finch is found in Australia yet there are only around two thousand of them left in the wild. Although conservation attempts are ongoing the question now seems to be whether or not this beautiful species will persevere for very much longer in its own original habitat.
There is something about the Rainbow Finch that makes it look like an animal made up, using Photoshop, for an April Fool joke. The colors seem too bright to be real and each garish hue ends abruptly to be replaced by one equally as preposterous for a wild animal. The main part of its body looks like some psychedelic Neapolitan ice cream.
Link – via webphemera
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
Scientists have long pondered an event 12,900 years ago that caused the disappearance of the Clovis people of North America and the extinction of large mammals such as the mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed cat, and the North American camel. One theory is that a comet broke into fragments and showered burning material over the continent. Now there’s some evidence -a layer of nanodiamonds have been found at a layer of sediment buried 12,900 years ago. The diamonds could have only been formed by a high-pressure high-temperature event.
These diamonds are measured in nanometers — mere billionths of meters — and one of them would not suffice for an engagement ring unless the recipient had an extremely small finger. Indeed, these diamonds are visible only with the aid of the most advanced microscopes.
The wide distribution of the nanodiamonds could be a sign that the comet broke into pieces in space and that the fragments burned up explosively over a broad area of North America. The heat and pressure from the event transformed carbon on the planet’s surface into the tiny diamonds, the scientists said.
“Imagine these fireballs exploding in the air. A Clovis hunter standing and looking at these things would have seen a canopy of fire as these things came in and exploded,” said Allen West, a geophysicist and one of the paper’s co-authors. “There would have been no sound. There would have been massive explosions. Brilliant light, brighter than the sun. There would have been radiant heat — it would have been capable, at the very least, of giving him serious burns and, at the maximum, of incinerating him.”
This theory would explain the climate change at the time, when the warming planet was plunged into another, shorter ice age. Skeptics cite lack of a crater or other surface evidence in refuting the theory. Link -via Digg
