* Astronomy

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Homo antecessor

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RE: Homo Sapiens

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Humans First Acquired Malaria Parasites 2.5 Million Years Ago

Scientists have determined the evolutionary timeline for the microscopic parasites that cause one of the world's most widespread infectious diseases: malaria.
Having an understanding of the origins of the lineages of such pathogens, or disease-causing organisms, is fundamental to understanding emerging diseases, according to the researchers.
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Humans will be extinct within 100 years

An Australian scientist, who helped eradicate smallpox from the world, has created a new sensation by predicting that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and "unbridled consumption".
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A new study published this week in PNAS reveals that natural selection has enabled humans to better cope with living in Shangri La.
Shangri La here is not the mythical Eastern earthly paradise, but the very real province high up in the Tibetan plateau where the indigenous population lives at altitudes of 3,200m to above 4,000m.
The international team of researchers from the UK, Ireland, China and the US searched for evidence of selection at the genetic level among people living at these high altitudes where there is so little oxygen.
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East African Human Ancestors Lived in Hot Environments

East Africa's Turkana Basin has been a hot savannah region for at least the past 4 million years - including the period of time during which early hominids evolved in this area - says a team of researchers led by scientists at Caltech. These findings may shed light on the evolutionary pressures that led humans to walk upright, lose most of our body hair, develop a more slender physique, and sweat more copiously than other animals.
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The genetic secrets that allow Tibetans to thrive in thin air

A new study pinpoints the genetic changes that enable Tibetans to thrive at altitudes where others get sick.
The online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today reports on the work of an international team involving UCLs Professor Hugh Montgomery that has identified a gene that allows Tibetans to live and work more than two miles above sea level without getting altitude sickness.
A previous study published 13 May 2010 in Science reported that Tibetans are genetically adapted to high altitude. Now, less than a month later, a second study by scientists from China, England, Ireland, and the United States pinpoints a particular site within the human genome - a genetic variant linked to low haemoglobin in the blood - that helps explain how Tibetans cope with low-oxygen conditions.
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Title: Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya
Authors: David R. Braun, John W. K. Harris, Naomi E. Levin, Jack T. McCoy, Andy I. R. Herries, Marion K. Bamford, Laura C. Bishop, Brian G. Richmond, and Mzalendo Kibunjia

The manufacture of stone tools and their use to access animal tissues by Pliocene hominins marks the origin of a key adaptation in human evolutionary history. Here we report an in situ archaeological assemblage from the Koobi Fora Formation in northern Kenya that provides a unique combination of faunal remains, some with direct evidence of butchery, and Oldowan artifacts, which are well dated to 1.95 Ma. This site provides the oldest in situ evidence that hominins, predating Homo erectus, enjoyed access to carcasses of terrestrial and aquatic animals that they butchered in a well-watered habitat. It also provides the earliest definitive evidence of the incorporation into the hominin diet of various aquatic animals including turtles, crocodiles, and fish, which are rich sources of specific nutrients needed in human brain growth. The evidence here shows that these critical brain-growth compounds were part of the diets of hominins before the appearance of Homo ergaster/erectus and could have played an important role in the evolution of larger brains in the early history of our lineage.

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Ardipithecus ramidus

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Earth's colonisation