From analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from a pinky finger bone, scientists have identified a new species of human ancestor. The 40,000-year-old bone fragment was found in a cave in the Altay mountains in Russia. The mitochondrial DNA shows that the person (they believe it was a child) it belonged to was neither Neanderthal nor Homo sapiens, but shared a common ancestor to both. University of Manchester geneticist Terry Brown co-authored an article released with the report in the journal Nature.

The new-human discovery implies that there was a wave of human migration out of Africa, the birthplace of humanity, that was completely unknown to science.

"We think Homo erectus"—an upright-walking but small-brained early human, or hominid—"was the first [hominid] to leave Africa two million years ago," Brown explained. After that the record went blank until about 500,000 years ago, until now.

"This hominid seems to have left about a million years ago, so it fills in a bit of a gap," he said.

Researchers will try to extract nuclear DNA from the bone, which carries more information than mitochondrial DNA. Link

(image credit: Johannes Krause)

Scientific jobs can be glamorous and certainly are interesting, but they often a lot of hard work, and possibly gross work. Popular Science has published its annual list of the ten worst jobs in science. One of the less offensive is "armpit detective".

Groups at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia and at Florida International University hope to isolate the compounds that give us each a unique aroma. The problem is that our diet, medications, toiletries and other factors make it difficult to discern natural scent from manufactured odorants. And so, since 1973, George Preti of Monell has collected human odors, recently focusing on the underarm, the mouth and urine.

You won't want to read this while eating. However, as a bonus you'll see what the best job in science is! http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2010-03/10-worst-jobs-science -via Digg

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The sequel will be even more original than the first! -via YesButNoButYes

Edit 4/5/10 by Alex - updated the video to a working embed and link.

Now here's a clever lamp, with a light bulb as a wrecking ball! It's made of solid bronze. See it and a companion piece the Crane Lamp at Designboom. Link -via Laughing Squid

...but the cat came back. The old song came true in the case of Alfie, an orange tom that belongs to Angelo Petrillo of Milnrow, Greater Manchester, England. Petrillo buried a cat he was sure was Alfie after a car hit the cat near his home last year. Then the Petrillo family moved to a new house. Nine months later, a friend from the old neighborhood called to tell Petrillo that a ginger cat was at their old house trying to get in!

Mrs Petrillo, 35, a manager for a wine company, returned to the couple's old home a mile away - and immediately recognised the cat as Alfie.

The three-year-old had lost the collar he used to wear and had put on weight, suggesting someone else had been looking after him while he was being mistakenly mourned.

Mr Petrillo said: 'It was just unbelievable - the cat I had buried nine months earlier, the cat we spent about a month grieving over, was back, and my wife just couldn't believe what she was seeing.'

The Petrillos still don't know whose cat they buried, or where Alfie has been all that time. Link -via Digg

Dan Coyne of Evanston, Illinois didn't know anything about Myra de la Vega, except that she was his favorite cashier at the grocery store where he shopped. Two years ago, he noticed her growing thin and asked about her health. She explained that she was on dialysis. Coyne offered to donate one of his kidneys to help her! De la Vega didn't know if he was serious, but when her sister turned out to be a poor match for a transplant, Coyne insisted on being tested. He was a match.

So, Friday morning, surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital will remove one of Coyne's healthy kidneys and transplant it to de la Vega, a 49-year-old Filipino immigrant and mother of two who was diagnosed with renal failure three years ago and has continued to work even as she's undergone dialysis ever since.

The transplant "will give me another 25 or 30 years of life," de la Vega, clearly still astounded by her customer's generosity, said Tuesday as she sat with Coyne at Pershing East Magnet School, 3113 S. Rhodes, where he works. "It's unbelievable: a complete stranger offering his kidney to me."

Coyne is a social worker at the school. His principal declared Tuesday as "Dan Coyne Day" at the school. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: Jean Lachat/Sun-Times)

Webcomic artist Giant Hamburger illustrated this children's book mashup of Winnie the Pooh and the Alien movie series. Silliness ensues when Pooh mistakes an alien egg for a honey pot! Link -via Buzzfeed

For years, two nations have both claimed the territory of an uninhabited island the Bangladeshis called South Talpatti Island and the Indians called New Moore Island. The dispute is now moot, as the island has vanished underwater.

"What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Professor Sugata Hazra of the School of Oceanographic Studies at Jadavpur University in Calcutta.

Anyone wishing to visit now, he observed, would have to think of travelling by submarine.

The island never rose more than about six feet above sea level. Professor Hazra predicts more islands in the Indian Ocean will vanish as sea levels rise. Link -via J-Walk Blog

An unidentified 6-year-old boy in Shenyang, China has a world record 31 digits: 15 fingers and 16 toes! He isn't able to use all the fingers, as three are fused together in the middle of each hand. He will soon undergo surgery to reduce the number of extra digits. The previous record was 25 fingers and toes, held by two children in India. Link -via Arbroath

For 26 years straight, New Zealand has defeated the US in rugby to win the Ross Island Cup. But these aren't professional rugby players -they are scientists and support staff who live and work in Antarctica! The national team back home in New Zealand are the All Blacks, but the team from Scott Base goes by the name Ice Blacks. The US team from McMurdo Station, well, most of them don't even know how to play rugby before they are recruited for the annual game. Yesterday's game is recounted in embarrassing detail at Discover Magazine. Link

See the New Zealand Antarctic team performing their customary haka in this video from a few years ago. Link

(image credit: Chaz Firestone)

Underwater caterpillars don't turn into butterflies or moths, because they are dead, right? Not so for twelve species of caterpillars that live in Hawaii. Evolutionary biologist Daniel Rubinoff, who has been studying moth genus Hyposmocoma for seven years, said he couldn't believe it the first time he spotted a caterpillar living underwater.

They usually eat algae or lichen, and build silk cases -- which one species even adorns with bird feathers -- for shelter and camouflage. They spin silk drag lines to withstand the high pressure of fast floodwaters.

Unlike other amphibious creatures that can survive underwater on stored oxygen but must come back up for air, these caterpillars can spend several weeks without ever breaking the surface, according to the paper, which was published online on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It isn't yet clear how the insects do it. Rubinoff and co-worker Patrick Schmitz of the University of Hawaii did not find any water-blocking stopper over the caterpillars' tracheae or evidence of gills. The animals drowned quickly when kept in standing water, so they seem to need the higher levels of oxygen present in running water, and probably absorb it directly through pores in their body, the scientists said.

Link -via Digg

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Edison Studios made the first movie version of Frankenstein in 1910. It was released 100 years ago last week. Frankensteinia has details and the story of how the film was lost and found a half-century later. Link -via Metafilter

Since wines range from dirt cheap to astronomically expensive, fraudulent wine dealers are raking in the dough by diluting expensive wines with cheaper varieties, or mislabeling the vintage. How to catch these crooks? Carbon dating! Scientists can detect a wine's vintage to within a year using methods to detect traces of radioactive carbon-14 released into the atmosphere by nuclear testing.

Almost all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contains the stable carbon-12 form of the element. Each atom of carbon-12 has six neutrons and six protons in its nucleus. But atmospheric atomic bomb tests, which ended in 1963, released vast amounts of radioactive carbon-14 into the air. A carbon-14 atom has two extra neutrons.

When grapes grow on the vine, they absorb carbon dioxide, which contains both stable carbon and traces of radioactive carbon-14 left over from bomb tests, from the air. As time goes by, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning dilutes the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere.

The proportions of the different types of carbon pinpoint the wine's age. This method could be used to date other consumables, if we didn't have expiration dates. Link -via Arbroath

The enormous stone orb that chased Indiana Jones in the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark is based on actual stone spheres found in Costa Rica. The mysterious stones are the focus of study for University of Kansas anthropology professor John Hoopes. Hoopes is evaluating whether the stones should be granted World Heritage Status for UNESCO.

"The earliest reports of the stones come from the late 19th century, but they weren't really reported scientifically until the 1930s -- so they're a relatively recent discovery," Hoopes said. "They remained unknown until the United Fruit Company began clearing land for banana plantations in southern Costa Rica."

According to Hoopes, around 300 balls are known to exist, with the largest weighing 16 tons and measuring eight feet in diameter. Many of these are clustered in Costa Rica's Diquis Delta region. Some remain pristine in the original places of discovery, but many others have been relocated or damaged due to erosion, fires and vandalism.

The KU researcher said that scientists believe the stones were first created around 600 A.D., with most dating to after 1,000 A.D. but before the Spanish conquest.

Hoopes says the stones are definitely man made, despite legends linking them to Atlantis or space aliens, but scientists don't know why they were created. Link -via Digg

There's a caterpillar in this photograph taken in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Can you see it? Better yet, can you identify it? From Flickr user WohinAuswandern. Link -via TYWKIWDBI