A fossil unearthed in the Panama Canal Basin has lead scientists to discover that monkeys entered North America much earlier than previously thought.

The fossil, discovered by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, as well as the University of Florida and New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, is thought to belong to a species of monkey related to today’s capuchins and points to vast migration millions of years earlier than first thought.

The previous theory was that the monkeys did not migrate until after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama 3.5 million years ago, however, discovering this fossil has proved that this was not the case.

According to Nature, the monkeys travelled across the ocean from Africa to South America on vegetation ending up and colonizing in South America around 35-million years ago. Jonathan Bloch, a palaeontologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville and who lead the study into the fossil, has found that the monkeys then crossed water barriers to North America almost 18-million years earlier than first thought.

“Somehow they made a transoceanic journey from Africa, then they dispersed throughout South America. Now we see that they, as far as we know, are the only mammal that successfully crossed the early Miocene Central American Seaway into present day Panama. So how were monkeys able to do this? Hopefully future fossil discoveries will help us better understand this extraordinary history.”

Although the expansion of the Panama canal lead to this extraordinary discovery, it has now set the timer for scientists to investigate and find more possible fossils that could provide further knowledge on how exactly mammal migration happened. Up until now there has been very little fossil evidence to show migration from South America to North America.

Space travel has allowed man to explore the mysteries of the universe but new research has shown that this could come at a cost to the liver.

The team of scientists from University of Colorado, discovered that mice who had been travelling on the space shuttle Atlantis have early signs of liver damage.

The mice spent a total of 13.5 days on the trip into space which is a significant percentage of their overall lifespan. This indicates that long-term space missions such as those to Mars, could cause liver damage to astronauts taking part in the expeditions.

Karen Jonscher, who is an associate professor of anesthesiology and a physicist at UC Anschutz, and also lead the study, explains that tests on the mice revealed a type of fatty acid disease and certain indications of early stage fibrosis, according to The Telegraph.

“If a mouse is showing nascent signs of fibrosis without a change in diet after 13.5 days, what is happening to humans?

The study, published in the journal Plos One also revealed several other changes including reduced amount of lean muscle mass in the mice. The stress of space travel itself needs to be taken into account but the findings indicate the need to investigate whether space travel is safe for the people involved and whether damage to health can be prevented.

“Further study in this area is merited and analysis of tissues harvested in space from mice flown aboard the International Space Station for several months may help determine whether long-term spaceflight might lead to more advanced hepatic injury and whether damage can be prevented”

This adds to previous research on the effects of space travel where links have been made between microgravity and metabolism as well as the impact it has on muscles, bones, brain function and cardiovascular health. However, this is the first study to look into the implications to the liver.

Climate experts have analysed data that show March saw the hottest average global temperatures on record this year.

From January to March temperatures averaged out at 1.48 degrees with February seeing 1.55 degrees – well over the Paris climate goal set in December last year.

Global leaders are set to meet in New York to sign the Paris climate agreement that looks to make efforts to keep the global temperature at well below 2 degrees with an aim to limit it to 1.5 degrees, as reported in Scientific American.

Scientists at Climate Central analysed data from the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) together with data collected by NASA and found that this temperature rise is the longest run in nearly 140 years when records first begun.

“This was the highest for March in the 1880–2016 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.54°F. March 2016 was also the highest monthly temperature departure among all months on record, at 0.02°F higher than the previous record set just last month. This also marks the 11th consecutive month a monthly global temperature record has been broken, the longest such streak in the 137-year record.”

According to Scientific American, NASAs data, independent from that of NOAAs, shows February’s temperature as being even higher at a staggering 1.63 degrees.

This comes after earlier reports that the ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic are significantly melting and climate experts predicting a much faster melt rate than previously predicted resulting in the treat of severe sea level rises.

The war on climate change is a big issue with global leaders who see that the world needs to dramatically accelerate emission reductions if they want to meet their goal of a 1.5 degree limit.

 

A new genetic study has revealed that the humans limbs may have evolved from the gill arches of sharks, skates and rays.

This may be down to a “Sonic the hedgehog” gene that is responsible in the formation and development of limbs, fins and gill arches.

Andrew Gillis, a biologist and researcher at the University of Cambridge who conducted the study with his team, now poses the question of whether the presence of this gene means that human limbs evolved from the gills of sharks.

“The shared role of Sonic hedgehog in patterning branchial rays and limbs may be due to a deep evolutionary relationship between the two or it may simply be that two unrelated appendages independently use the same gene for the same function.”

The findings back up a similar theory by German anatomist Karl Gegenbaur who saw the connection back in 1878 but was disclaimed due to lack of fossil evidence at the time.

The main focus was on the gill support structures made of cartilage known as branchial rays, according to UPI. The team studied the development of embryos of skate fish and found that if they switched off the Sonic the hedgehog gene then branchial rays formed on the wrong side of the gill arch which would be a similar result in human limbs.

“Branchial rays will figure prominently in the story of the evolutionary origin of vertebrate animal appendages, either by shedding light on the evolutionary antecedent of paired fins, limbs, or by teaching us about the genetic mechanisms that animals can use to invent new appendages.”

Gillis and his team are currently conducting the study at Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole in Massachusetts and plan to delve more into the research later this year.

The findings were recently published in the journal Development.

 

 

A new study has been published that shows complex ecosystems exist in our urban buildings and they are unique to each different city.

The research has found that each city has its very own distinct microbial communities and it seems our offices are the hub for these microbiomes.

The researchers at Northern Arizona University Flagstaff conducted an investigation in San Diego and Toronto office spaces to discover what goes into the formation of microbes in nine chosen offices and were all selected for their different and varying climates.

Testing each office from floor to ceiling, they collected several samples over the course of a year and looked out for different environmental factors such as humidity and light variation.

What they found was that around 25 to 30 percent of the microbial samples were made up of human skin bacteria but also from outside, according to NPR. Bacterial migration from shoes and air ventilation systems are thought to be the culprits.

The most interesting result was that, although each office from each individual city had similar amounts of bacteria, once compared to offices from different cities, these varied greatly. It seems each city has its own unique ecosystem of microbiomes. Assistant professor Gregory Caporaso who lead the study says the results showed that the geographical location of the city played an important part in the composition of these bacterial ecosystems.

“This was especially interesting because even within each city, the offices we studied differed from each other in terms of size, usage patterns and ventilation systems suggesting that geography is more important than any of these features in driving the bacterial community composition of the offices within the ranges that we studied.”

The research team are hoping that the findings will help to design offices and other frequently used spaces to have more healthy microbial ecosystems that compliment the outside environment.

The study has been published in the journal mSystems.

 

A mysterious volcano that lies between North Korea and China has brought together western and North Korean forces to study possible future eruptions.

Mount Paektu, a dormant volcano for the time being, has brought together an international team of scientists to study whether or not the volcano is dangerous and if eruption is imminent.

The volcano first showed signs of an eruption in the beginning of the 2000s and it was at this point that the North Korean government decided to break its isolation from the rest of the world to ask for help from outside its borders. The concern came after North Korea feared a similar eruption to that of one back in 946 AD where massive amounts of ash and lava covered 96 cubic kilometers.

Since the more recent forewarning, the team of researchers from the United States, China and the United Kingdom have studied the volcano and published findings in Science Advances discussing in detail the first-ever survey of the volcano’s subsurface structure, according to The Washington Post. 

Seismologists have also been brought in to investigate the region and find out exactly how the volcano came to exist in this particular area. This is because the Mount Paektu volcano is not located where tectonic plates collide which is where volcanos, on Earth and also on other planets, tend to exist.

What they have found is that the volcano isn’t so dormant as first believed and have discovered melted crust and molten magma almost 20km across inside.

The authors suggest that with the amount of energy residing within the volcano will mean that it is getting ready to potentially become active.

“[The study] suggest that partial melt is present in the crust beneath Mt. Paektu. This region of melt represents a potential source of magmas erupted in the last few thousand years and may be associated with an episode of volcanic unrest observed between 2002 and 2005.”

The insularity of North Korea lead to this volcano becoming a great enigma with many volcanologists not even knowing it existed. It has now, however, allowed the rest of the world to see inside North Korea and form scientific ties with the country.