Paleontoriano

New research sheds more light on the diet and home ranges of early hominins belonging to three different genera, notably Australopithecus, Paranthropus and Homo -- that were discovered at sites such as Sterkfontein, Swartkrans and Kromdraai in the Cradle of Humankind, about 50 kilometres from Johannesburg. Australopithecus existed before the other two genera evolved about 2 million years ago.

Scientists conducted an analysis of the fossil teeth, indicating that Australopithecus, a predecessor of early Homo, had a more varied diet than early Homo. Its diet was also more variable than the diet of another distant human relative known as Paranthropus.

An international team of researchers, including Professor Francis Thackeray, Director of the Institute for Human Evolution at Wits University, will be publishing their latest research on what our early ancestors ate, online in the journal, Nature, on August 8, 2012. The paper titled 'Evidence for diet but not landscape use in South African early hominins' was authored by Vincent Balter from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France; Jose´ Braga from the Université de Toulouse Paul Sabatier in Toulouse in France; Philippe Te´louk from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Lyon in France; and Thackeray from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in South Africa.

According to Thackeray, the results of the study show that Paranthropus had a primarily herbivorous-like diet, while Homo included a greater consumption of meat.
Signatures of essential chemical elements have been found in trace amounts in the tooth enamel of the three fossils genera, and the results are indicators of what South African hominins ate and what their habitat preferences were.

Strontium and barium levels in organic tissues, including teeth, decrease in animals higher in the food chain. The scientists used a laser ablation device, which allowed them to sample very small quantities of fossil material for analysis. Since the laser beam was pointed along the growth prisms of dental enamel, it was possible to reconstruct the dietary changes for each hominin individual.
Thackeray states that the greater consumption of meat in the diet of early forms of Homo could have contributed to the increase in brain size in this genus.

Australopithecus probably ate both meat and the leaves and fruits of woody plants. The composition of this diet may have varied seasonally.
Apart from the dietary differences, the new results indicate that the home-range area was of similar size for species of the three hominin genera.
The scientists have also measured the strontium isotope composition of dental enamel. Strontium isotope compositions are free of dietary effects but are characteristic of the geological substrate on which the animals lived.

According to the results all the hominids lived in the same general area, not far from the caves where their bones and teeth are found today.
Professor Vincent Balter of the Geological Laboratory of Lyon in France, suggests that up until two millions years ago in South Africa, the Australopithecines were generalists, but gave up their broad niche to Paranthropus and Homo, both being more specialised than their common ancestor.

Link:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120808132711.htm

The Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa more than 20,000 years earlier than previously believed -- about the same time humans were migrating from Africa to the European continent, says a new international study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.


The study shows the onset of the Later Stone Age in South Africa likely began some 44,000 to 42,000 years ago, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and lead study author. The new dates are based on the use of precisely calibrated radiocarbon dates linked to organic artifacts found at Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the border of South Africa and Swaziland containing evidence of hominid occupation going back 200,000 years.


The Later Stone Age is synonymous to many archaeologists with the Upper Paleolithic Period, when modern humans moved from Africa into Europe roughly 45,000 years ago and spread rapidly, displacing and eventually driving Neanderthals to extinction. The timing of the technological innovations and changes in the Later Stone Age in South Africa are comparable to that of the Upper Paleolithic, said Villa.
"Our research proves that the Later Stone Age emerged in South Africa far earlier than has been believed and occurred at about the same time as the arrival of modern humans in Europe," said Villa. "But differences in technology and culture between the two areas are very strong, showing the people of the two regions chose very different paths to the evolution of technology and society."


A paper on the subject was published July 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors included Sylvain Soriano of the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, or CNRS, at the University of Paris; Tsenka Tsanova of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany; Ilaria Degano, Jeannette Lucejko and Maria Perla Colombini of the University of Pisa in Italy; Thomas Highham of the University of Oxford in England; Francesco d'Errico of the CNRS at the University of Bordeaux in France; Lucinda Blackwell of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa; and Peter Beaumont of the McGregor Museum in South Africa.


A companion paper published in PNAS and led by d'Errico reports on organic materials found at Border Cave dating to the Later Stone Age, an indication that the San hunter-gatherer culture first thought to have begun about 20,000 years ago in the region probably emerged as early as 44,000 years ago, said Villa.
Organic artifact assemblages at Border Cave dating to the Later Stone Age included ostrich eggshell beads, thin bone arrowhead points, wooden digging sticks, a gummy substance called pitch that was used to haft, or attach, bone and stone blades to shafts and a lump of beeswax likely used for hafting. The assemblage also included worked tusks of members of the pig family, which likely were used to plane wood, and notched bones that may have been used for counting.


A wooden digging stick from Border Cave dated to about 40,000 years ago was found in association with bored but broken stones likely used to weight such sticks. The sticks and stone weights are similar to digging implements used by women of the prehistoric San hunter-gatherer culture in the region to unearth bulbs and termite larvae, a practice that continued into historic times, said Villa. "These digging sticks from Border Cave are the oldest artifacts of this kind known from South Africa or anywhere else in Africa."


The new PNAS study led by Villa also indicates big changes were occurring in hunting technology during the Later Stone Age at Border Cave, said Villa. They included a shift from spears hafted with stone points -- the main hunting weapon in the Middle Stone Age -- to the likely use of the bow and arrow, a technology that included very thin bone points that probably were tipped with poison, she said.


"The very thin bone points from the Later Stone Age at Border Cave are good evidence for bow and arrow use," said Villa. "The work by d'Errico and colleagues shows that the points are very similar in width and thickness to the bone points produced by San culture that occupied the region in prehistoric times, whose people were known to use bows and arrows with poison-tipped bone points as a way to bring down medium and large-sized herbivores."


Chemical analyses showed the poison used with such bone points was most likely ricinoleic acid, which can be derived from the seeds of castor oil plants and which has been identified as being used in South Africa at least 24,000 years ago. "Such bone points could have penetrated thick hides, but the lack of 'knock-down' power means the use of poison probably was a requirement for successful kills," said Villa.
The lump of beeswax from Border Cave also dating to about 40,000 years ago -- the oldest known beeswax used by humans ever discovered -- was wrapped in plant fibers that may have been similar to fibers used to make the strings for hunting bows, said Villa.


While stone tools continued to be manufactured in the Later Stone Age at Border Cave, stone spear points from the Middle Stone Age gave way to tiny, thin flakes known as microliths that were probably hafted on shafts, much like the bone points, with pitch made from the bark of a common type of coniferous tree found in the region.


While a 2011 study co-authored by Villa and Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in the Netherlands showed that Neanderthals mastered the manufacture of pitch in Europe 200,000 years ago, it was not a particularly simple task since the process involved burning peeled bark in the absence of air, said Villa. The Later Stone Age inhabitants of South Africa probably dug holes into the ground and inserted bark peels, then lit them on fire and covered the holes tightly with stones. "This is the first time pitch-making is demonstrated in South Africa," said Villa.


The Upper Paleolithic Period in Europe that corresponds to the Later Stone Age in South Africa also spurred complex new technologies that helped humans survive and thrive in much different environments. Artifacts from the Upper Paleolithic included spear-throwers, bone needles with eyelets for sewing furs, bone fishing hooks, bone flutes and even ivory figurines carved from mammoth tusks.


Villa said that a fundamental rearrangement of human behavior that had its beginnings 50,000-60,000 years ago in Africa and spread to Europe -- an idea first proposed by Stanford University archaeologist Richard Klein -- appears quite plausible.

Scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have investigated the extensive collection of fruits and seeds from the Messel pit. They found 140 different plant species, 65 of which were previously unknown.

The results were published July 27 in the series "Abhandlungen der Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung." They show that Messel had one of the world's most diverse floras of the Paleogene -- the era between about 65 and 23 million years ago.
Dwarf-horses, the primate Ida and jewel beetles -- the spectacular findings from the fossil site at Messel near Darmstadt are known worldwide. However, the plant fossils from Messel are also unique in their diversity. A team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, the University of London and the Florida Museum of Natural History now provides an overview of the wealth of plant life 47 million years ago in a 250-page monograph.


Altogether the international team described 140 plant species from the collections of Senckenberg and the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt. The seeds and fruits, as well as many leaves, flowers and pollen grains were recovered during excavations by both institutions in the previous decades but they had not been studied in detail before. "We have found numerous remains of a diversity of flowering plants and some conifers," says Dr Volker Wilde, head of the palaeobotany section at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt. "More than 60 types of plants could not be assigned to any known family -- they are genuine new discoveries."


Ten of the recently described families of flowering plants were previously unknown at Messel, three genera were even described for the first time for the Palaeogene. The monograph proves that Messel is one of the world's richest sites for fossils of flowering plants.
"We are impressed not only by the large number of different plant families but also by the variety of dispersal strategies they had developed even at that time," adds Wilde. Some developed wings on their seeds and relied on wind, some depended on animals to spread them, while others developed exploding capsules to scatter their seeds over a wide area.


"From the flora described we are also able to draw conclusions about the diet of animals 47 million years ago," the Frankfurt palaeobotanist explains. "Fruits and seeds in the digestive tracts of vertebrates indicate that they were an important part of their food. Tiny holes in seeds also show that the famous Messel weevils also fed on certain plants."


The flora is also ideal for reconstructing climatic and environmental conditions of the Paleogene. Having analysed around 30,000 plant remains, the scientists conclude that there was a warm tropical climate with slight seasonal variations. The palaeobotanists' work therefore confirms the previous studies on the palaeoclimate at the time of the Messel lake.
"We believe the Messel lake was surrounded by a more or less tropical multi-storey rainforest, similar to those in areas with a comparable climate today. We also identified a high proportion of lianas and several marsh plants -- virtually on our doorstep, it was a real jungle out there at Messel 47 million years ago," says Wilde.


Read More:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120727082523.htm

Researchers analyzing meteorite fragments that fell on a frozen lake in Canada have developed an explanation for the origin of life's handedness -- why living things only use molecules with specific orientations. The work also gave the strongest evidence to date that liquid water inside an asteroid leads to a strong preference of left-handed over right-handed forms of some common protein amino acids in meteorites. The result makes the search for extraterrestrial life more challenging.


"Our analysis of the amino acids in meteorite fragments from Tagish Lake gave us one possible explanation for why all known life uses only left-handed versions of amino acids to build proteins," said Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Glavin is lead author of a paper on this research to be published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.


In January, 2000, a large meteoroid exploded in the atmosphere over northern British Columbia, Canada, and rained fragments across the frozen surface of Tagish Lake. Because many people witnessed the fireball, pieces were collected within days and kept preserved in their frozen state. This ensured that there was very little contamination from terrestrial life. "The Tagish Lake meteorite continues to reveal more secrets about the early Solar System the more we investigate it," said Dr. Christopher Herd of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, a co-author on the paper who provided samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite for the team to analyze. "This latest study gives us a glimpse into the role that water percolating through asteroids must have played in making the left-handed amino acids that are so characteristic of all life on Earth."


Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins. Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Although life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, they can't be mixed. "Synthetic proteins created using a mix of left- and right-handed amino acids just don't work," says Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard, co-author of the study and head of the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory, where the analysis was performed.


Since life can't function with a mix of left- and right-handed amino acids, researchers want to know how life -- at least, life on Earth -- got set up with the left-handed ones. "The handedness observed in biological molecules -- left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars -- is a property important for molecular recognition processes and is thought to be a prerequisite for life," said Dworkin. All ordinary methods of synthetically creating amino acids result in equal mixtures of left- and right-handed amino acids. Therefore, how the nearly exclusive production of one hand of such molecules arose from what were presumably equal mixtures of left and right molecules in a prebiotic world has been an area of intensive research.


The team ground up samples of the Tagish Lake meteorites, mixed them into a hot-water solution, then separated and identified the molecules in them using a liquid chromatograph mass spectrometer. "We discovered that the samples had about four times as many left-handed versions of aspartic acid as the opposite hand," says Glavin. Aspartic acid is an amino acid used in every enzyme in the human body. It is also used to make the sugar substitute Aspartame. "Interestingly, the same meteorite sample showed only a slight left-hand excess (no more than eight percent) for alanine, another amino acid used by life."
"At first, this made no sense, because if these amino acids came from contamination by terrestrial life, both amino acids should have large left-handed excesses, because both are common in biology," says Glavin. "However, a large left-hand excess in one and not the other tells us that they were not created by life but instead were made inside the Tagish Lake asteroid." The team confirmed that the amino acids were probably created in space using isotope analysis.


Isotopes are versions of an element with different masses; for example, carbon 13 is a heavier, and less common, variety of carbon. Since the chemistry of life prefers lighter isotopes, amino acids enriched in the heavier carbon 13 were likely created in space.
"We found that the aspartic acid and alanine in our Tagish Lake samples were highly enriched in carbon 13, indicating they were probably created by non-biological processes in the parent asteroid," said Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper who performed the isotopic analysis. This is the first time that carbon isotope measurements have been reported for these amino acids in Tagish Lake. The carbon 13 enrichment, combined with the large left-hand excess in aspartic acid but not in alanine, provides very strong evidence that some left-handed proteinogenic amino acids -- ones used by life to make proteins -- can be produced in excess in asteroids, according to the team.


Some have argued that left-handed amino acid excesses in meteorites were formed by exposure to polarized radiation in the solar nebula -- the cloud of gas and dust from which asteroids, and eventually the Solar System, were formed. However, in this case, the left-hand aspartic acid excesses are so large that they cannot be explained by polarized radiation alone. The team believes that another process is required.
Additionally, the large left-hand excess in aspartic acid but not in alanine gave the team a critical clue as to how these amino acids could have been made inside the asteroid, and therefore how a large left-hand excess could arise before life originated on Earth.


"One thing that jumped out at me was that alanine and aspartic acid can crystallize differently when you have mixtures of both left-handed and right-handed molecules," said Dr. Aaron Burton, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard and a co-author on the study. "This led us to find several studies where researchers have exploited the crystallization behavior of molecules like aspartic acid to get left-handed or right-handed excesses. Because alanine forms different kinds of crystals, these same processes would produce equal amounts of left- and right-handed alanine. We need to do some more experiments, but this explanation has the potential to explain what we see in the Tagish Lake meteorite and other meteorites."


The team believes a small initial left-hand excess could get amplified by crystallization and dissolution from a saturated solution with liquid water. Some amino acids, like aspartic acid, have a shape that lets them fit together in a pure crystal -- one composed of just left-handed or right-handed molecules. For these amino acids, a small initial left- or right-hand excess could become greatly amplified at the expense of the opposite-handed crystals, similar to the way a large snowball gathers more snow and gets bigger more rapidly when rolled downhill than a small one. Other amino acids, like alanine, have a shape that prefers to join together with their mirror image to make a crystal, so these crystals are composed of equal numbers of left- and right-handed molecules. As these "hybrid" crystals grow, any small initial excess would tend to be washed out for these amino acids. A requirement for both of these processes is a way to convert left-handed to right-handed molecules, and vice-versa, while they are dissolved in the solution.


This process only amplifies a small excess that already exists. Perhaps a tiny initial left-hand excess was created by conditions in the solar nebula. For example, polarized ultraviolet light or other types of radiation from nearby stars might favor the creation of left-handed amino acids or the destruction of right-handed ones, according to the team. This initial left-hand excess could then get amplified in asteroids by processes like crystallization. Impacts from asteroids and meteorites could deliver this material to Earth, and left-handed amino acids might have been incorporated into emerging life due to their greater abundance, according to the team. Also, similar enrichments of left-handed amino acids by crystallization could have occurred on Earth in ancient sediments that had water flowing through them, such as the bottoms of rivers, lakes, or seas, according to the team.


The result complicates the search for extraterrestrial life -- like microbial life hypothesized to dwell beneath the surface of Mars, for example. "Since it appears a non-biological process can create a left-hand excess in some kinds of amino acids, we can't use such an excess alone as proof of biological activity," says Glavin.


Read More:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725120706.htm

An analysis of newly sequenced polar bear genomes is providing important clues about the species' evolution, suggesting that climate change and genetic exchange with brown bears helped create the polar bear as we know it today.


The international study, led by the Pennsylvania State University and the University at Buffalo, found evidence that the size of the polar bear population fluctuated with key climatic events over the past million years, growing during periods of cooling and shrinking in warmer times.
The research also suggests that while polar bears evolved into a distinct species as many as 4-5 million years ago, the animals may have interbred with brown bears until much more recently.
These intimate relations may be tied to changes in Earth's climate, with the retreat of glaciers bringing the two species into greater contact as their ranges overlapped, said Charlotte Lindqvist, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of biology at UB.


"Maybe we're seeing a hint that in really warm times, polar bears changed their life style and came into contact, and indeed interbred, with brown bears," said Stephan Schuster, co-lead author, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, and a research scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
The findings will be published online in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 23. The study is the most extensive analysis to date of polar bear DNA, scientists say. The research team, representing 13 institutions in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia, as well as Mexico's Laboratorio Nacional de Genomica para la Biodiversidad (Langebio), sequenced and analyzed the nuclear genomes of 28 different bears, with many DNA samples provided by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Norwegian Polar Institute.


"We generated a first-rate set of data, including deep sequence coverage for the entire genomes of a polar bear, three brown bears and a black bear, plus lower coverage of 23 additional polar bears, including a 120,000-year-old individual; very few vertebrate species have such comprehensive genomic resources available," Schuster said. Using this vast amount of data, the scientists discovered that polar bears are actually an older species than previously thought -- indeed, far more ancient than suggested by a recent study that placed the species' age at 600,000 years old. That analysis looked only at small segments of DNA.
"We showed, based on a consideration of the entire DNA sequence, that earlier inferences were entirely misleading," said study co-lead author Webb Miller, a Penn State professor of biology and computer science and engineering. "Rather than polar bears splitting from brown bears a few hundred thousand years ago, we estimate that the split occurred 4-5 million years ago."


"This means polar bears definitely persisted through warming periods during Earth's history," UB's Lindqvist said. She cautions, however, that the species' endurance over several million years doesn't guarantee its future survival.
To model historical populations of the polar bear, the scientists used computer simulations to analyze a deeply sequenced polar bear genome.
"This is the first time we can see, from their genes, how the population history of polar bears tracked Earth's climate history," Lindqvist said. "We see an increase in polar bears at the end of the Early Pleistocene as the Earth became much colder, and a continuous decline in the size of the population during warmer times.
"We also found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that polar bears occur in much smaller numbers today than during prehistory," Lindqvist continued. "They have indeed lost a lot of their past genetic diversity, and because of this, they are very likely more sensitive to climate change threats today."


Discrepancies between the estimated age of polar bears in the new study and past studies could be explained by interbreeding between polar bears and brown bears since the species split from each other.
The new analysis uncovered more genetic similarities than previously known between polar bears and ABC brown bears, an isolated group from southeastern Alaska -- suggesting that these animals have exchanged genes since becoming separate species.


"The ABC brown bears' mitochondrial sequences are much more like polar bears' than like other brown bears'," Miller said. "This made us wonder what other parts of their genomes are 'polar-bear-like.' We mapped such regions, which constitute 5 to 10 percent of their total DNA, onto the genomes of two ABC brown bears. As such, brown/polar bear hybridization, which has been observed recently in Arctic Canada, has undoubtedly contributed to shaping the modern polar bear's evolutionary story."
This intermingling between species is just one interesting finding emerging from the enormous trove of data that the PNAS study produced. Another question that the research is beginning to address: What makes a polar bear a polar bear?


Polar bears have genetic differences from brown bears that let them survive in an Arctic climate with very different diets, and the new study identified genes that may be responsible for traits such as polar bears' pigmentation and the high fat content of their milk.

Until recently Neanderthals, who disappeared between 30,000 and 24,000 years ago, were thought to be predominantly meat-eaters. However, evidence of dietary breadth is growing as more sophisticated analyses are undertaken.

Researchers from Spain, the UK and Australia combined pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry with morphological analysis of plant microfossils to identify material trapped in dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) from five Neanderthals from the north Spanish site of El Sidrón.
Their results, published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature this week, provide another twist to the story -- the first molecular evidence for medicinal plants being used by a Neanderthal individual.
The researchers say the starch granules and carbohydrate markers in the samples, plus evidence for plant compounds such as azulenes and coumarins, as well as possible evidence for nuts, grasses and even green vegetables, argue for a broader use of ingested plants than is often suggested by stable isotope analysis.

Lead author Karen Hardy, a Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) Research Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of York, UK, said: "The varied use of plants we identified suggests that the Neanderthal occupants of El Sidrón had a sophisticated knowledge of their natural surroundings which included the ability to select and use certain plants for their nutritional value and for self-medication. While meat was clearly important, our research points to an even more complex diet than has previously been supposed."
Earlier research by members of this team had shown that the Neanderthals in El Sidrón had the bitter taste perception gene. Now trapped within dental calculus researchers found molecular evidence that one individual had eaten bitter tasting plants.

Dr Stephen Buckley, a Research Fellow at the University of York's BioArCh research facility, said: "The evidence indicating this individual was eating bitter-tasting plants such as yarrow and camomile with little nutritional value is surprising. We know that Neanderthals would find these plants bitter, so it is likely these plants must have been selected for reasons other than taste."

Ten samples of dental calculus from five Neanderthals were selected for this study. The researchers used thermal desorption and pyrolysis gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify both free/unbound and bound/polymeric organic components in the dental calculus. By using this method in conjunction with the extraction and analysis of plant microfossils, they found chemical evidence consistent with wood-fire smoke, a range of cooked starchy foods, two plants known today for their medicinal qualities, and bitumen or oil shale trapped in the dental calculus.

Professor Matthew Collins, who heads the BioArCh research facility at York, said: "Using mass spectrometry, we were able to identify the building blocks of carbohydrates in the calculus of two adults, one individual in particular having apparently eaten several different carbohydrate-rich foods. Combined with the microscopic analysis it also demonstrates how dental calculus can provide a rich source of information."
The researchers say evidence for cooked carbohydrates is confirmed by both the cracked/roasted starch granules observed microscopically and the molecular evidence for cooking and exposure to wood smoke or smoked food in the form of a range of chemical markers including methyl esters, phenols, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons found in dental calculus.

Professor Les Copeland from the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, University of Sydney, Australia, said: "Our research confirms the varied and selective use of plants by Neanderthals."
The study also provides evidence that the starch granules reported from El Sidrón represent the oldest granules ever to be confirmed using a biochemical test, while ancient bacteria found embedded in the calculus offers the potential for future studies in oral health.

The archaeological cave site of El Sidrón, located in the Asturias region of northern Spain, contains the best collection of Neanderthal remains found in the Iberian Peninsula and one of the most important active sites in the world. Discovered in 1994, it contains around 2,000 skeletal remains of at least 13 individuals dating back around 47,300 to 50,600 years.

Antonio Rosas, of the Museum of Natural History in Madrid -- CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), said: "El Sidrón has allowed us to banish many of the preconceptions we had of Neanderthals. Thanks to previous studies, we know that they looked after the sick, buried their dead and decorated their bodies. Now another dimension has been added relating to their diet and self-medication."

La dieta del Australopithecus anamensis, un homínido que vivió en el este del continente africano hace más de cuatro millones de años, era muy especializada e incluía tanto alimentos típicos de ambientes abiertos (semillas, juncos, hierbas, etc.) como frutos y tubérculos, según un estudio científico que tiene como primer autor a Fernando Estebaranz, del Departamento de Biología Animal de la Universitat de Barcelona, en España. El trabajo, publicado en la revista Journal of Anthropological Sciences, está dirigido por el profesor Alejandro Pérez Pérez, de la Unidad de Antropología del Departamento de Biología Animal de la UB, y tiene como coautores al catedrático Daniel Turbón y a los expertos Jordi Galbany y Laura M. Martínez.


 El Australipithecus anamensis es una especie de homínido fósil descrita en 1995 por el equipo dirigido por la investigadora Meave Leakey y está considerado el ancestro directo del Australopithecus afarensis -la conocida Lucy-, que habitó en la misma región medio millón de años después. Las reconstrucciones paleoecológicas de los yacimientos con restos fósiles del A. anamensis son muy similares a las del A. afarensis, y perfilan un escenario con diferentes hábitats, desde bosques abiertos hasta formaciones vegetales espesas, con estratos herbáceos y bosques en galería. 


 Tradicionalmente, la reconstrucción de la dieta del A. anamensis se hacía mediante indicios indirectos (en concreto, el estudio de la microestructura y el espesor del esmalte, y el tamaño y la morfología dental). En el nuevo estudio, el equipo de la UB analiza el patrón de microestriación de la dentición postcanina, a partir de las trazas microscópicas que dejan en el esmalte dentario algunos componentes estructurales de los vegetales (fitolitos) y otros elementos externos (arena, polvo, etc.) durante la masticación de los alimentos. Por lo tanto, se trata de un análisis directo sobre el resultado de la interacción de la dieta con los dientes.


 El trabajo publicado en el Journal of Anthropological Sciences estudia el patrón de microestriación de todos los especímenes del A. anamensis recuperados hasta el año 2003, de los cuales sólo cinco muestran un buen estado de preservación. Según el estudio del patrón de microestriación, la dieta del A. anamensis era similar a la de otros primates cercopitécidos actuales, como los géneros Papio (babuinos) y Chlorocebus (mono verde), que habitan en sabanas arbustivas con una marcada estacionalidad. El trabajo llega a la conclusión de que la dieta del A. anamensis era bastante abrasiva y rica en semillas, hojas y cormos, como lo es la de los babuinos actuales. Este homínido fósil también se habría alimentado de fruta, pero en menor proporción que el A. afarensis. 


Los resultados del estudio sobre la paleodieta del A. anamensis coinciden con los rasgos de la morfología dental y el aumento de la robustez de la dentición y del aparato masticador en comparación con su ancestro, el Ardipithecus ramidus. Las nuevas incógnitas se centran ahora en la dieta del A. afarensis -descendiente directo del A. anamensis-, que presenta una dieta frugívora y mucho más blanda, como la de los actuales chimpancés y gorilas de Camerún. Como explica el investigador Fernando Estebaranz, «el patrón de microestriación del A. anamensis y del A. afarensis es claramente diferente. Esto podría indicar que el primero consumía productos mucho más duros, mientras que el segundo tenía una dieta básicamente frugívora, de carácter estacional, más similar a la del ancestro directo de las dos especies, el Ardipithecus ramidus»

The diet of Australopithecus anamensis, a hominid that lived in the east of the African continent more than 4 million years ago, was very specialized and, according to a scientific study whose principal author is Ferran Estebaranz, from the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Barcelona, it included foods typical of open environments (seeds, sedges, grasses, etc.), as well as fruits and tubers.


The work, published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences, is directed by lecturer Alejandro Pérez Pérez, from the Anthropology Unit of the Department of Animal Biology at the UB, and its co-authors are professor Daniel Turbón and experts Jordi Galbany and Laura M. Martínez.
Australipithecus anamensis is a fossil hominid species described in 1995 by a team led by the researcher Meave Leakey and it is considered to be the direct ancestor of Australopithecus afarensis, known as Lucy, which lived in the same region half a million years later. The paleoecological reconstructions of the sites with Australipithecus anamensis fossil remains are quite similar to those of Australipithecus afarensis, and suggest a scene with different habitats, from open forests to thick plant formations, with herbaceous strata and gallery forests.


Traditionally, the reconstruction of the diet of Australipithecus anamensis was carried out by means of indirect evidence (specifically, studies of microstructure and enamel thickness, and the dental size and morphology). In this new study, the team of the UB analyzes the pattern of microstriation of the post-canine dentition, from microscopic traces that some structural components of plants (phytoliths) and other external elements (sand, dust, etc.) leave in the dental enamel during the chewing of food. It is, therefore, a direct analysis of the result of the interaction of the diet with the teeth.
A cercopithecoid model for the study of the diet


The work published in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences studies the microstriation pattern of all the specimens of Australipithecus anamensis recovered up to the year 2003, of which only five are in a good state of preservation. According to the study of the microstriation pattern, the diet of Anthropological anamensis was similar to other present day species of cercopithecoid primates, such as Papio genus(baboons) and Chlorocebus (green monkey), which live in shrubby savannah areas with a marked seasonal influence. The work arrived at the conclusion that the diet of Australipithecus anamensis was quite abrasive and rich in seeds, leaves and corms, as it is with the baboons of today. This fossil hominid must also have fed on fruit, but in smaller proportions than Australipithecus afarensis.
What did Australopithecus afarensis eat?


The results of the study on the palaeodiet of Australipithecus anamensis match the characteristics of dental morphology and increased robustness of the dentition and the masticatory apparatus compared with its ancestor, Ardipithecus ramidus. The new questions now focus on the diet of Australipithecus afarensis, direct descendent of Australipithecus anamensis, which has a frugivorous and much softer diet, like present day chimpanzees and gorillas in Cameroon.


As explained by the researcher Ferran Estebaranz,"the microstriation pattern of Australipithecus anamensis and Australipithecus afarensis is clearly different. This could indicate that the former consumed much harder foodstuffs, whereas the latter had a basically frugivorous diet, of a seasonal character, more similar to the direct ancestor of the two species, Ardipithecus ramidus."

High-tech technology, traditionally usually used to design racing cars and aeroplanes, has helped researchers to understand how plant-eating dinosaurs fed 150 million years ago.
A team of international researchers, led by the University of Bristol and the Natural History Museum, used CT scans and biomechanical modelling to show that Diplodocus -- one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered -- had a skull adapted to strip leaves from tree branches.


The research is published today (July 16, 2012) in the natural sciences journal Naturwissenschaften.(WTF!)
The Diplodocus is a sauropod from the Jurassic Period and one of the longest animals to have lived on Earth, measuring over 30 metres in length and weighing around 15 tonnes.
While known to be massive herbivores, there has been great debate about exactly how they ate such large quantities of plants. The aberrant Diplodocus, with its long snout and protruding peg-like teeth restricted to the very front of its mouth, has been the centre of such controversy.
To solve the mystery, a 3D model of a complete Diplodocus skull was created using data from a CT scan. This model was then biomechanically analysed to test three feeding behaviours using finite element analysis (FEA).


FEA is widely used, from designing aeroplanes to orthopaedic implants. It revealed the various stresses and strains acting on the Diplodocus' skull during feeding to determine whether the skull or teeth would break under certain conditions.
The team that made this discovery was led by Dr Emily Rayfield of Bristol University's School of Earth Sciences and Dr Paul Barrett of The Natural History Museum in London. Dr Mark Young, a former student working at both institutions, ran the analyses during his PhD.
Dr Young said: "Sauropod dinosaurs, like Diplodocus, were so weird and different from living animals that there is no animal we can compare them with. This makes understanding their feeding ecology very difficult. That's why biomechanically modelling is so important to our understanding of long-extinct animals."
Dr Paul Barrett added: "Using these techniques, borrowed from the worlds of engineering and medicine, we can start to examine the feeding behaviour of this long-extinct animal in levels of detail which were simply impossible until recently."


Numerous hypotheses of feeding behaviour have been suggested for Diplodocus since its discovery over 130 years ago. These ranged from standard biting, combing leaves through peg-like teeth, ripping bark from trees similar to behaviour in some living deer, and even plucking shellfish from rocks.
The team found that whilst bark-stripping was perhaps unsurprisingly too stressful for the teeth, combing and raking of leaves from branches was overall no more stressful to the skull bones and teeth than standard biting.

Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have just announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of 'Karabo', the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the Malapa Site in the Cradle of Humankind in 2009.


Professor Lee Berger, a Reader in Palaeoanthropology and the Public Understanding of Science at the Wits Institute for Human Evolution, will make the announcement at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in Shanghai, China on 13 July 2012.


"We have discovered parts of a jaw and critical aspects of the body including what appear to be a complete femur (thigh bone), ribs, vertebrae and other important limb elements, some never before seen in such completeness in the human fossil record," says Berger. "This discovery will almost certainly make Karabo the most complete early human ancestor skeleton ever discovered. We are obviously quite excited as it appears that we now have some of the most critical and complete remains of the skeleton, albeit encased in solid rock. It's a big day for us as a team and for our field as a whole."


The remains are invisible to the casual observer and are entrenched in a large rock about one metre in diameter. It was discovered almost three years ago, but lay unnoticed in the Wits laboratories until early last month. Prof. Berger and his wife Jackie Smilg, a radiologist at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, who is conducting her PhD on the CT scanning of fossil material embedded in rock, scanned the large rock in a state of the art CT scanner.


Berger added that negotiations had begun with the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom and the Smithsonian in Washington. "We have already donated casts of Australopithecus sediba to these three institutions, amongst others," says Berger.

Even the world's largest snake, Titanoboa, could probably not have swallowed this new, very round fossil turtle species from Colombia. Paleontologist Carlos Jaramillo's group at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and colleagues at North Carolina State University and the Florida Museum of Natural History discovered a new species of fossil turtle that lived 60 million years ago in what is now northwestern South America.

The team's findings were published in the Journal of Paleontology.
The new turtle species is named Puentemys mushaisaensis because it was found in La Puente pit in Cerrejón Coal Mine, a place made famous for the discoveries, not only of the extinct Titanoboa, the world's biggest snake, but also of Carbonemys, a freshwater turtle as big as a smart car.

Cerrejon's fossil reptiles all seem to be extremely large. With its total length of 5 feet, Puentemys adds to growing evidence that following the extinction of the dinosaurs, tropical reptiles were much bigger than they are now. Fossils from Cerrejon offer an excellent opportunity to understand the origins of tropical biodiversity in the last 60 million years of Earth's history.

The most peculiar feature of this new turtle is its extremely circular shell, about the size and shape of a big car tire. Edwin Cadena, post-doctoral fellow at North Carolina State University and lead author of the paper, said that the turtle's round shape could have discouraged predators, including Titanoboa, and aided in regulating its body temperature.

The width of the turtle's shell probably exceeded the maximum expansion of the Titanoboa's mouth. Its circular, low-domed shape would have increased the area of the body exposed to the sun, helping the cold-blooded turtle warm to a temperature at which it was more active.

Modern cats diverged in skull shape from their sabre-toothed ancestors early in their evolutionary history and then followed separate evolutionary trajectories, according to new research from the University of Bristol published in PLoS ONE.


The study also found that the separation between modern domestic cats and big cats such as lions and tigers is also deeply rooted.
Dr Manabu Sakamoto and Dr Marcello Ruta in the School of Earth Sciences studied the skull shape of extinct sabre-toothed cats, modern (conical-toothed) cats and prehistoric 'basal' cats (ancestors of modern cats). This is the first time these three different types of cats have been analysed together in a single dataset.
The researchers quantified skull shape by taking various measurements, adjusting these measurements for size differences, then investigating the distribution of cat skulls in shape-space. By estimating ancestral positions through shape-space and time, they investigated patterns of skull shape evolution across the cat family tree.


They found an early and conspicuous divergence between the conical-toothed cats and sabre-toothed cats, with all sabre-toothed cats being more closely related to each other than they were to modern conical-toothed cats.


There was also a marked separation between modern small-medium cats (that is, the domestic cat and its close relatives, the cheetah, puma, ocelot, serval and lynx) and modern big cats (such as the lion, tiger, leopard and jaguar), with a divergence in skull shape early in their evolutionary history. This means that small-medium cats and large cats followed different evolutionary trajectories with respect to skull shape.
Dr Sakamoto said: "Our study is the first to determine the interrelationships between modern conical-toothed cats, sabre-toothed cats, and some basal cats.


"It also highlights how simple measurements can be used not only to investigate shape-space distribution, but also to successfully discriminate and identify different cat species -- this could be useful for museums who may have as yet unidentified cat specimens in their collections.
"Lastly, our results show that differences in cat skull shape have deeply rooted evolutionary histories, first between the sabre-toothed and conical-toothed cats, and then between small-medium and large cats."

Un equipo de investigadores de las Universidades de Oxford y Cambridge ha descubierto un nido de animales fosilizados en la reserva ecológica de Mistaken Point, en Newfoundland, Canadá. Estos animales fueron ahogados por una nube de ceniza de un volcán cercano, hace unos 579 millones de años, cuando los primeros animales empezaron a poblar la Tierra. La lava, los fosilizó y enterró para la posteridad.


El grupo de investigación ha encontrado unos 100 fósiles de animales pertenecientes al grupo de los Rangeomorfos. Los bebés fósiles, como los han bautizado los investigadores, poseen formas parecidas a los helechos. Sin embargo, las especies vivieron en las profundidades del oceáno, sin posibilidad de recibir luz, lo que hace refutar la posibilidad de que sean plantas. Curiosamente, su cuerpo en forma de hoja, que le permitía alimentarse y respirar hasta entonces, le impidió sobrevivir el periodo siguiente.


Por otro lado, esta fauna no tiene parecido alguno con ninguno de los animales vivos actualmente. Un grupo de animales inéditos en esta época. "Hasta ahora nunca habíamos encontrado esta fauna en rocas de esta Era", dice Alexander Liu, doctor de la Universidad de Cambridge.


Los animales, además, poseen una forma peculiar. "Los bebés fósiles son de unos 3 centímetros de largo y apenas miden unos 6 milímetros, mucho más pequeñas que especies de áreas cercanas", explica el profesor Martin Brasier de la Universidad de Oxford a la revista 'Science Daily'.


Los trabajos, llevados a cabo en colaboración con la Memorial University de Newfoundland, tienen como objetivo primordial el estudio del misterioso Periodo Ediacárico, en el cual aparecieron los primeros organismos multicelulares.


Pese a los descubrimientos, las investigaciones no se detienen aquí. "Estamos explorando aún más atrás en el tiempo para descubrir como aparecieron estos misteriosos organismos", asegura el Profesor Brasier.

A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study's authors, University of Chicago's Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski, will publish their findings in the August issue of the journal Geology.


Scientists expected to see an evolutionary explosion immediately following a mass extinction, but Krug and Jablonski's findings go far beyond that.
"There's some general sense that the event happens, there's some aftermath and then things return to normal," said Krug, a research scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. But in reality, Krug said, "Things don't return to what they were before. They operate at a different pace, sometimes more rapidly, other times more slowly. Evolutionary rates shift, and that shift is permanent until the next mass extinction."
Krug and Jablonski's suggestion that the potential for rapid speciation and expansion of survivors and new groups of organisms in the "emptier" world following a mass extinction "is a reasonable possibility as one source of rate change," said paleontologist Richard Bambach of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who was not directly involved in the UChicago study.


The long-term evolutionary patterns of species diversification following mass extinctions are poorly understood. Paleontologists have extensively debated whether diversity has increased over the last 251 million years, which followed the most devastating mass extinction in Earth history, Bambach said
Inconsistent classifications


Scientists have been putting Latin names on fossils since 1758, often inconsistently. Methods and tools have changed with the times, but old names often remain. The UChicago paleontologists have combed through seemingly endless volumes of research papers and countless museum drawers in an ongoing attempt to standardize these classifications.


For their Geology study, Krug and Jablonski analyzed contemporary groups of organisms from the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended approximately 10,000 years ago, to the Jurassic Period, which began approximately 200 million years ago. The availability of globally abundant data on bivalves, a group that includes clams, oysters and scallops, set the study's time boundaries.
"With some groups, like sea urchins or corals, you just couldn't do it because the numbers aren't big enough," said Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences. When he and Krug statistically plotted the origination rate of new bivalve species at 50 million-year intervals, they found that all the species evolved at a fairly steady rate for millions of years. Then the bivalve groups show a sudden increase or decrease in the rates at which new species evolved. These sudden shifts marked the occurrence of a mass extinction. "They settle back down to a different rate from what was before, and they do it multiple times, corresponding to each mass extinction," Jablonski said.


Theoretically, the origination rates of the organisms might have "been all over the map," with evolutionary rates varying in a random or chaotic style, but they didn't. "It's surprising how organized the pattern is," he said.
Krug and Jablonski's perspective of the data is somewhat different from Bambach's. These perspectives are "not contradictory, but complementary, ways of looking at the data," Bambach said. "One of the valuable things about their work is that they record the pattern and pattern change during intervals that I lump together."


Bambach bases his work on older data compilations that include the animal kingdom as a whole, while Krug and Jablonski use their new, carefully vetted data from bivalve mollusks.
Setting a new pace
"There's been a lot of talk about the evolutionary role of mass extinctions, but it's like the weather. Everyone talks about it, but no one does much about it," Jablonski joked.
"No one has really thought about it in terms of these downstream dynamics, once the smoke has cleared and ecosystems have found a new equilibrium, for want of a better word. But the wonderful thing is that when they find a new equilibrium, it's a different evolutionary pace from the one that prevailed for the preceding 50 million years. The survivors of the mass extinction, or the world they inherited, is so different from what went before that the rate of evolution is permanently changed."


Krug and Jablonski's research builds upon the work of UChicago's David Raup, the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Geophysical Sciences, and Michael Foote, professor in Geophysical Sciences.
In 1978, Raup published a method for determining the extinction rate of organisms. His method involved monitoring the survivorship of a group of organisms that had all originated during a specific time period and quantifying when they disappeared. It would be like collecting census data for all individuals born on Jan. 1, 1899, tracking their longevity, then finding that the 1918 influenza epidemic had produced a spike in this group's mortality.


Foote followed up in 2001, showing that Raup's method worked equally well for determining origination rates as it did for extinction rates. One simply needed to use the method in reverse, tracking the time since origination of a group of co-occurring lineages as opposed to the time until extinction. Now comes Krug and Jablonski's latest study, finding that the evolutionary "birth rate" was also reset at major catastrophes. "It's very Chicago-esque," Jablonski said.

A new species of feathered dinosaur discovered in southern Germany is further changing the perception of how predatory dinosaurs looked. The fossil of Sciurumimus albersdoerferi,which lived about 150 million years ago, provides the first evidence of feathered theropod dinosaurs that are not closely related to birds.


The fossil is described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 2.
"This is a surprising find from the cradle of feathered dinosaur work, the very formation where the first feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx was collected over 150 years ago," said Mark Norell, chair of the Division of Palaeontology at the American Museum of Natural History and an author on the new paper along with researchers from Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie and the Ludwig Maximilians University.


Theropods are bipedal, mostly carnivorous dinosaurs. In recent years, scientists have discovered that many extinct theropods had feathers. But this feathering has only been found in theropods that are classified as coelurosaurs, a diverse group including animals likeT. rexand birds. Sciurumimus -- identified as a megalosaur, nota coelurosaur -- is the first exception to this rule. The new species also sits deep within the evolutionary tree of theropods, much more so than coelurosaurs, meaning that the species that stem from Sciurumimus are likely to have similar characteristics.
"All of the feathered predatory dinosaurs known so far represent close relatives of birds," said palaeontologist Oliver Rauhut, of the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie. "Sciurumimus is much more basal within the dinosaur family tree and thus indicates that all predatory dinosaurs had feathers."


The fossil, which is of a baby Sciurumimus, was found in the limestones of northern Bavaria and preserves remains of a filamentous plumage, indicating that the whole body was covered with feathers. The genus name ofSciurumimus albersdoerferirefers to the scientific name of the tree squirrels,Sciurus, and means "squirrel-mimic"-referring to the especially bushy tail of the animal. The species name honours the private collector who made the specimen available for scientific study.
"Under ultraviolet light, remains of the skin and feathers show up as luminous patches around the skeleton," said co-author Helmut Tischlinger, from the Jura Museum Eichstatt.


Sciurumimusis not only remarkable for its feathers. The skeleton, which represents the most complete predatory dinosaur ever found in Europe, allows a rare glimpse at a young dinosaur. Apart from other known juvenile features, such as large eyes, the new find also confirmed other hypotheses.
"It has been suggested for some time that the lifestyle of predatory dinosaurs changed considerably during their growth," Rauhut said. "Sciurumimus shows a remarkable difference to adult megalosaurs in the dentition, which clearly indicates that it had a different diet."


Adult megalosaurs reached about 20 feet in length and often weighed more than a ton. They were active predators, which probably also hunted other large dinosaurs. The juvenile specimen of Sciurumimus, which was only about 28 inches in length, probably hunted insects and other small prey, as evidenced by the slender, pointed teeth in the tip of the jaws.
"Everything we find these days shows just how deep in the family tree many characteristics of modern birds go, and just how bird-like these animals were," Norell said. "At this point it will surprise no one if feather like structures were present in the ancestors of all dinosaurs.
The study was financed by the Volkswagen Foundation and the American Museum of Natural History.

Researchers from UAB and CSIC have discovered the oldest Neolithic bow in Europe at La Draga Neolithic site in Banyoles yields. The complete bow measures 108 cm long and was constructed of yew wood.


Archaeological research carried out at the Neolithic site of La Draga, near the lake of Banyoles, has yielded the discovery of an item which is unique to the western Mediterranean and Europe. The item is a bow dating from the period between 5400-5200 BCE, corresponding to the earliest period of settlement. It is the first bow to be found intact at the site. It can be considered the most ancient bow of the Neolithic period found in Europe.


The bow is 108 cm long and presents a plano-convex section. It is made out of yew wood (Taxus baccata) as were the majority of Neolithic bows in Europe.
In previous archaeological digs, fragments of two bows were found (in 2002 and 2005) also from the same time period, but since they are fragmented it is impossible to analyze their characteristics in depth. The current discovery opens new perspectives in understanding how these farming communities lived and organized themselves. These bows could have served different purposes, such as hunting, although if one takes into account that this activity was not all that common in the La Draga area, it cannot be ruled out that the bows may have represented elements of prestige or been related to defensive or confrontational activities. Remains have been found of bows in Northern Europe (Denmark, Russia) dating from between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE among hunter-gatherer groups, although these groups were from the Paleolithic period, and not the Neolithic.


The majority of bows from the Neolithic period in Europe can be found in central and northern Europe. Some fragments of these Neolithic bows from central Europe date from the end of the 6th millennium BCE, between 5200-5000 BCE, although generally they are from later periods, often more than a thousand years newer than La Draga. For this reason archaeologists can affirm that the three bows found at La Draga are the most ancient bows in Europe from the Neolithic period.
A new study will analyze aspects of the technology, survival strategies and social organization of the first farming communities which settled in the Iberian Peninsula.
The research carried out at the La Draga site is financed by the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness. This project is being conducted under the coordination of the County Archaeological Museum of Banyoles, with the participation of the UAB Department of Prehistory, the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of the CSIC Institute Milà i Fontanals, the National Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia and the Centre for Underwater Archaeology of Catalonia. The excavation includes the participation of archaeology students from UAB and other universities in Spain and Europe.


The Neolithic people of La Draga, Banyoles


La Draga is located in the town of Banyoles, belonging to the county of Pla de l'Estany, and is an archaeological site corresponding to the location in which one of the first farming communities settled in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula. The site is located on the eastern part of the Banyoles Lake and dates back to 5400 and 5000 BCE. The site occupies 8000 sq m and stretches out 100 m along the lake's shore and 80 m towards the east. Part of the site is totally submerged in the lake, while other parts are located on solid ground. The first digs were conducted between the years 1990 and 2005, under the scientific leadership of the County Archaeological Museum of Banyoles. Since 1994, excavations were also carried out by the Centre for Underwater Research (Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia).


The current project (2008-2013) includes participation by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Spanish National Research Council.


The site at La Draga is exceptional for several reasons. Firstly, due to its antiquity, which is considered to be one of the oldest of the Neolithic period existing in the Iberian Peninsula. Secondly, because it is an open-air site with a fairly continuous occupation. Lastly, and surely most remarkably, because of the exceptional conditions in which it is conserved. The archaeological levels are located in the phreatic layer surrounding Lake Banyoles, giving way to anaerobic conditions which favour the conservation of organic material.
 These circumstances make La Draga a unique site in all of the Iberian Peninsula, since it is the only one known to have these characteristics. In Europe, together with Dispilo in Greece and La Marmota in Italy, it is one of the few lake settlements from the 6th millennium BCE.