Indohyus and the Brain

A pre-frontal cortex, like fins and feathers, are developed by environmental pressures. The more time this animal spent under water, the more it developed its brain for imaging with sound rather than light, which doesn't penetrate very far into water. You do the math.

Precisely. So why this animal???

Hi Mrinny.

First I would like to say; A merry Cristmas to you and yours.

I don't believe that this animal was the precuser to the whale family of mammals! It has no whale-like distinctions at all?

I am a geologist and I have read Darwins; The Origins of the Species, but it does not explain the vast majority of species at the present time? Birds we now know originated from a type of lizard, or so we think.

Then there are the large scale destructions of whole species at various times in the Earths life? Then there is the small rodent type of animal that is supposed to have evolved over millions of years into Homo Sapiens as we know today?

So, NO I do not believe this animal evolved into a whale, there are plenty of other animals that could have done this anyway.

Spencer.

Let me second the Merry Christmas to all.

A comment you made: Birds we now know originated from a type of lizard, or so we think.
Is that the now prevailing theory? The last thing I remember hearing was that dinosaurs were feathered, or at least several fossils were indicating so. So which came first, the chicken or the alligator (er, egg).

The feather duster.

Kangaroos tried it but their pouch acted like a scoop and slowed them down too much.

Do a 30 minute search on the Net and you will find all the research. The skeletal remains of early primitive primates such as Euarchonta do not "support" a larger brain either, the brain development comes later with specialization and need. It is called evolution.

As whales developed echolocation and the need to communicate in groups their brains became more developed

Without God there would be no evolution, because that is how He does it.

I do not know whether I agree with your last line, however, I do think that the mammalian brain may be constructed such that one of its abilities is to grow larger. This genetic ability may be lacking in reptiles, fish, and fowl.

Hi Vermin,

why do you think that only mammalian brains are subject to evolution?

What about the birds?

Human and mammalian living at or in the sea have some common results of evolution.

So there is the theory that the transition to upright walking was learned at the seaside (the very hot climate that baked earth from 15 or 20 million years ago until 6 or 5 million years ago had destroyed all former habitats). Predators did drive our ancestors (no weapons, no long teeth, no claws) into the water.

On the next climatic change to cooler climate they entered -walking upright, with first primitive tools - the rivers and we find the fossils in the african rift valley: upright but small brain.

It took another 2 to 4 million years to develop the big brain - may be by another episode at the sea as the nutritional specialists say.

But if there is no proper use of the brain it will degenerate again - as this is happening since 100,ooo years. No longer any driving force in the evolution is existing today. (See Jared Diamond's book "The rise and the fall of the third chimpanzee" for details.)

There are more common traits that have humans together with sealiving mammals: tearglands, loss of fur, slowing of heartbeat frequency at diving, thermal insulation of woman breasts, babies adapted to swimming and may be many more.

So if any other species would be subject to continuous driving force of evolution - may be 300 to 1000 generations will do a considerable change - there will be the transformation in the direction of the driving force. (A good example are the very big eyes of the dinosaurs living in the nearly dark but warm antarctic region.)

A happy New Year to all

RHABE

Not only today, but as the fossil record shows, the big-brain solution appears in only one family of animals - mammals.

Evolution has had several hundred million years to try that trick, yet we see it only among mammals. Of course, size has always been an evolutionary tactic, but of the body and not of the brain.

Perhaps this is because the brain of a mammal contains a cerebral cortex (a very new experimental piece), which is missing in other animals. And the cortex (and associated components) is what has been growing in relation to evolution. Perhaps if your brain doesn't have a cerebral cortex, then you're not on the correct branch of the tree for a larger brain.

Hi Vermin,

you are right with "big brains" but big in mammals may not be big in birds.

Compare the big computers of the 50ies, 60ies, ... to the computers of 2050!

What is big?

We cannot compare the power of the brains as we do not know how birds brains function nor how these are organised.

I only suppose that 170million year of bird evolution did bring a considerable weight reduction tendency at constant or rising computing and memory power.

The only details I do know is the amazing memory power of birds that bury nuts as winter food, they can retrieve the nuts (hundreds if not thousands) by memory also if the field or garden or shrub is covered with snow! And also: the amazing quality of hearing and locating a sound (any radar specialist would be happy if he could be able to copy this). Owls can hunt at total dark and/or locate mice below 10cm of snow only be hearing the faint whispers. I have no estimate about the signal to noise ratio. But I know that birds have a hollow tubular air filled bone connecting their ears and this bone internally covered with sensoric cells: without any doubt the first part of a powerful correlator.

Another open question concerning the mammals family: higher speech only evolved in marine environments: whales, dolphins and ? humans?
I suppose that the 30 to 60 words that can be articulated and used properly by some apes are not enough in a situation where the dissolving power of the water is washing away any olfactory signals.

So this is not in agreement to official theories of evolution but may be you or some other brain in this forum has a good idea to have a proof.

Have a very good New Year

RHABE

You've got to remember that evolution takes many interesting twists and turns.

Fundamentally speaking, birds have had a lot longer time to develop big thinking machines than humans have, yet they did not. Instead, they went down the trail of brains beautifully designed to fly. You can ask my friend about this... The one that decided to give up hang-gliding because he kept crashing.

Another example, the line of canines decided they could be successful if they put their evolutionary motion into less brains and much greater olfactory and hearing facilities. Worked for them.

Yes, there are very smart birds, but if you really want to see smarts among the animal would, then you have to look at encephalopods. Cuttlefish and (especially) octopus are very intelligent. Zoologists assume that it's a by-product of having eight legs to think about. Anyway, these animals are very bright and even learn from each other!!! Kind of scary if they ever decide to come ashore.

Keep in mind that a big "thinking" part of the brain is not the summit of evolution. The summit of evolution is SURVIVAL!!! So dogs developed by nose, and owls developed by hearing, and dolphins developed by imaging echos. Funny, the mammals (and in a few cases the encephalopods) all seem to evolve on brain or neuro-specialization, but even that has its different tactics... And that's cool!!!

Hi Vermin,

you are absolutely right about survival is deciding on success or not.

So what do you think about early humans: why did they develop upright walking and later a big brain (in many steps).

Why not the other apes or any other mammal except whales and dolphins?

Where was the driving force to walk upright, use more words, use first tools, loose fur, need a big amount of high quality food rich in marine fattyacids at the earlyest months to let the brain grow, adopt to low oxygen use at diving?

The Intel stacked computer sounds interesting, did they publish anything about cooling?

RHABE

"use first tools, loose fur,"

I've often wondered: did we learn to make clothes or loose our fur first. Being almost naked seems to be unique in mammals like us, so, did we only ditch our fur after we learned to replace it temporarily.

I suppose that our ancestors first lost their fur
(very warm time, often in shallow water to evade the predators, women with long legs were the best and men still love them),

then the climate changed to cooler (with the mediterranean sea filling up again),

then they had either to stay in the few very warm places or invent either clothing or adaption to the cold at night and in winter.

Clothing may have a start with one fur only or a big leaf or ?

Adaption for living in the cold without clothing was existing in the south american indians from fireland.

Only if there is a need there may be a change.

1. Need to loose the fur, 2. need to keep warm, 3. invent clothing.

Or may be : any adaption is existing, then environment is changing quickly, then fittest survive and others go extinct.

Plurality is a quality in itself!

Let the foreigners come in our country, may be they (their genes) help us to survive.

I do not know any country that has not seen large back and forth movements of parts of their population.

The story of mankind is a story of wandering and relocation, driven or not.

RHABE

What if clothing was based on the hiding of certain body parts that women either liked or disliked.

I'm jsut sayin' think about it.

An interesting question... Whenever a "wolf-child" is found, they seem to strip off their clothing and happily run around in the snow as if the temperature didn't bother them. Sensitivity to cold may just be a learned reaction.

Well, I'll have to ask Del about that (perhaps his cousin here might know)

Sorry Del! Forgot to sign it. I'll scratch your back next time, even if it is hairless!

I really can't speak for Mother Nature... However, monkeys can put their hands up, but they can't turn their palms forward. Apes can put their hands up and turn their palms forward, but they can't touch their thumb to their little finger... Only man can do that. And that simple movement makes the difference whether one can construct sophisticated tools (as opposes to simple tools) or not. Also, which came first - the ability to touch your thumb to Your little finger or your mental desire to... I don't know.

As far as the fatty-acid thing. I have no idea how this was derived, but it's true that a fetus will strip it's mother's brain for just about all the fatty-acids it needs to complete its own brain if it isn't available in its mother's diet... Perhaps, in extended families the mother didn't get a chance to throttle her own child in a fit of post-partum depression.

As far as upright walking, the only thing I can think of is it makes one look bigger - it's somewhat more nimble when dealing with predators and being a predator... Check out the flesh eating dinosaurs.

As far as the Intel Core 80 is concerned, I'm sure they can always come up with cooling strategies. I read an article in SCI AM about seven years ago that said that whoever came up with the 3-D technology first (and there were major problems) would own the chip market! In 2005, Intel said they had cracked the problem, and could build 3-D chips! It's important to remember that we're not talking about Pentium on op of Pentium, but rather a Pentium, then a GPU, then some other specific chip, and another, and then possibly another Pentium to tie it together, which communicates with the first Pentium. This is a real significant paradigm shift!!!

1. Survival of the Fattest – The Key to Human Brain Evolution, World Scientific Publishing Co, New Jersey, États-Unis, 2005. En anglais seulement. www.worldscibooks.com.
2. Voir notre fiche sur les acides gras essentiels pour en savoir plus.

3. Holliday, M.A., 1971. Metabolic rate and organ size during growth from infancy to maturity and during late gestation and early infancy. Pediatrics 47, 169–172.

http://www.usherbrooke.ca/liaison_vol38/n14/a_cunnane.html

Hi Vermin,

The source for the information on fatty acids is from Stephen Cunnane whom I contacted (2002) after reading an article in SciAm. He then was at university of Toronto, later changed to another canadian university (Sherbrooke).

The unresolved issue with mobility of fingers I would assume that in apes there will be a chance of 1:1000 up to 1:1million that there is this "aberration" from normal physiology and if selection pressure is existing will become a widespread feature.

Tools can be grasped with the more primitive hands of other primates and the tools of the first 4million years were not so developed. (Did you see the movie showing chimpanzees using wooden sticks to knack nuts?)

Chimps and gorillas cannot swim - so why men?

Unfortunately we will not find the relics of our early ancestors unless we search around 100m down in the sea at ancient coastlines or rivers may be below some more meter of accumulated sediments. At the time before first humans came up there was a very very warm period (the mediterranean sea was down -4000m in level acting as a hughe heat trap- and the boosted evaporation was partially accumulating in the still cool antarctic region.)

Concerning the new Intel processor: do you have an estimate about power and size, if so I would like to speculate about cooling: copper planes, diamond planes, channelled micro-coolers with fluid?

RHABE

Hi RHABE.

There is one primate that swims, in fact it is at home in the sea as on land, it lives in Japan. I cannot remember it's name, but I have seen them swim in the sea when I as working in Japan.

As for Homo Sapiens, well they were also around at the same time as Neanderthals? Here in the UK scientists have discovered that their genes never realy died out, as they have found people with a tiny amount of the Neanderthal gene still exist!!!

As they have pointed out, it is more than likely that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals intermixed occasionally. Another intriguing fact is that we have yet to find a missing link between us and the real apes, also if man is a decendant or branch of the great apes, the question remains, WHY?

Spencer.

Hi Scapolie,

do you know a publication on intermixing sapiens with neandertals?

This would be a most exciting news as the genetic difference between both seems to be really big.

And sapiens and neandertals divided roughly 1million years from now but erectus came into olduvai roughly 5million years from now, then gained much later (1 to 2 million years from now) the big brain, then split into many lines (all that are found on the non-african continents are not sapiens and no longer existing, sapiens originated 200thousand years ago (once more in Africa) and then spread (100thousand years ago) all over the world. There was an exciting article in SciAm some years ago that compared the fossil, the genetic and the linguistic evidence of this exodus and spreading.

We will not find the missing link (soon) as these are buried 80 to 120 m deep below sealevel and may be some more meters deep under mud and sediments.

Africa was a terrible hot place at the time 20million years from now until first homo erectus fossils around 5million years. So there remained the three big rivers, the upper regions of the big volcanoes and the shores as habitable places.

As it took minimum some 100 years until the hot climate was fully established after the closure of the strait of Gibraltar there has been a terrible pressure towards possible survival areas.

Pavians, gorillas and chimpanzees were strong enough to defend against the big cats,
(I beg for pardon Del),
but early protohumans were driven to the only place where they could survive : the shorelines.

The same situation that today exists with orcas hunting for seals did exist then with the big cats hunting for humans.

So they escaped into the shallow water: learning there to survive. This was especially necessary (and thus developed) with women and children and babies.)

The rest is known roughly.

RHABE

RHABE,

I think your timeline for the split between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon is a little off. Furthermore, there wasn't as much difference between these two species as you might think.

Turns out that up until about 30 years ago, Neanderthal was thought to be more ape-like. This was based on a single skeleton, which subsequently was correctly identified as an aged Neanderthal with severe arthritis and other bone conditions. Eventually, more specimens were discovered, and using modern forensic techniques they were able to reconstruct a face. Surprisingly, if a Neanderthal walked past you on the street, you probably wouldn't give him a second glance - they looked quite modern.

One interesting trait of Neanderthal was that the bottom part of their legs (the part under the knee) is somewhat longer than modern man's. You can still see this trait today. I have two friends whose legs are constructed like that, and I take great pleasure in telling them that one of their ancestors was probably a Neanderthal!

Hi Vermin,

when do you think did the lines of Neandertal and CroMagnon split?

There is the German site that gave the name and may be 40 or so related sites and all of these are timed (not my work) between 300thousand and 30thousand years ago, and despite occasionally mentioning of intermixing there was never conclusive evidence - may be you know something more.

There may have been not much difference as you state, but may be the genetic difference was large enough to prevent fertile children.

There are some groups working now on research projects to establish genetic evidence of similarity and as far as I heard the difference is much larger than estimated.

So if you have the source of your statement I am very interested.

RHABE

The source of my statement was SCIAM (who else) several years ago. I think the real branching and diversity of neo-humans occurred on the hundreds of thousands of years scale and not on the million year scale... At the million year scale, pro-humans were branching out from each other.

The modern evidence is that Neanderthal had recessive genes compared to Cro-Magnon, and was assimilated - as opposed to being hunted into extinction as earlier paleontologists would have you believe. Let's face it, sex is sexy!!!

New articles I'm reading is NewScientist seem to indicate that we are currently on another bing of evolution, and that we're evolving faster than we ever thought possible. So are you Homosapien or are you something else?

"Me fear you! Me get spear and hunt you down!!!"

Scapolie,

If I remember correctly, the human branch is a different branch than the one that produced the great apes. The common ancestor is the splitting point for both of man and ape.

Also, as far as swimming goes, I think we just figured it out - another factor in have a more advanced brain. That, plus the fact that we don't stay in one place, such as the Congo. Long ago, we decided to move out and go everywhere, whether is was tough going or not.

Hi vermin and RHABE.

Yes you are right of course, but as you stated the different so-called sub species of Homonids most likely did interbreed? Last year while at the university of Nottingham I got talking to two graduates who were studying the human genes, their professor told me that scientists had long been puzzled by various parts of our genome that did not quite relate to Homo Sapiens.

This professor together with three other scientists had produced a paper saying that these parts of our genitic make up were retro genes, that had worked out that their only cause could be that they came from a sub species of Homonid ie. Neanderthal!

Thus they said, homo sapiens must have interbred with neanderthals somewhere along the line. To prove their point that said that there was many neanderthal traits in some modern humans! Another thing they pointed out, was that there is no eveidence whatsoever to point to the fact that Neanderthals were hunted to extinction.

Spencer.

Here's a somewhat feasible connection between the ol' T-Rex and southern fried chicken: "More recently, Schweitzer's work has shown molecular similarities in Tyrannosaurus remains and chickens, providing further evidence of the bird-dinosaur connection.^[4]" (Excerpted from this Wiki article).

The January 08 issue (pg. 32) of Discover magazine published a short article on the above research by Schweitzer.

John Asara, a team member of Harvard, did point out however, that the finding does not mean that chickens are the closest tyrannosaur relatives among modern birds, since he was only able to compare the T-Rex [protein] sequences to species present in public protein databases.

Makes one wonder about a deep fried T-Rex drumstick with mashed potatoes and gravy. Yes Martha! I'm sure one drumstick will feed all your relatives, even cousin Fred!

Was that Alfalfa Schweitzer?

Regarding upright walking. I've heard that the first upright walking human species were in Africa and a result of the natural habitat changing from jungles to savannas (grasslands). The idea is that there is a distinct advantage to walking upright in savannas in that you can see over the grass and more easily identify water, food, and predators. If you think about it, ancient humans grew to be about 5 to 5.5 ft tall, which is just tall enough to see over wild grass.

Regarding the Pentium discussion, I agree that Intel is going to be kicking AMDs around the next couple of years. I'm disappointed that there is more emphasis on multicore chips than clock times. I want a 10 GHz chip. I'm sure once programmers get better at parallel computing and the multicores get to 100+ cores they will prove invaluable, but can't they improve clock times as well? Like vermin said, they can come up with better cooling strategies.

Also, reason #1476 that I like CR4 is the fact that I get to talk about evolution and chip development in the same thread.

Hi Roger Pink,

the story of the proto-humans once lived on trees and switched to the savannas is the mainstream of todays explanation.

But I don't believe in this explanation: no one of the savanna creatures lost their fur, no one learned to speak, no one learnt permanent tools ...

And: there was no savanna in the Africa of 20 to 5 million years ago. Fossil evidence is missing from this time interval as sea-level was much lower then (despite horrible warm climate!!!)

The gigantic heat trap of the empty Mediterranean sea did rise the temperature so high that only at the elevated mountains some suitable land existed and this was defended by many others that were much stronger or predating on our ancestors.

So I believe (not my theory) that our ancestors were driven to the shores and if cats attacking then the only direction to evade these hungry beasts was into the shallow water. There any of the changes made sense and is logical.

RHABE

RHABE,

Most large cats don't mind a dip in the water, especially, if it means a meal - In fact, there are lions that specialize in hunting the sea shore in Southern Africa.

I think you've been watching too many Warner Bros. cartoons - I know I have!

You Wrote: "no one of the savanna creatures lost their fur"

Actually, elephants lost their fur, and hippos don't have fur either, two animals found in the savanna climate.

You Wrote: "no one learnt permanent tools"

Permanent is an interesting distinction you're making, regardless though, I was only making the case for upright walking. Everything that makes us human took millions of years and a myriad of circumstances to develop.

You Wrote: "And: there was no savanna in the Africa of 20 to 5 million years ago."

I assure you you're wrong. The borders of the African savanna may vary a bit, but the main bulk of it has been present for tens of millions of years. You must understand that 5 million years represents 0.1% of the age of the Earth. You must also understand that the climate wasn't that much warmer 5 million years ago. You heat trap theory is wrong.

(empty? see link http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/paleogeographic_alps.html)

At the time Mediterranean was connected to the Atlantic.

Hi,

elephants lost their fur also in aquatic environment, not known when this happened as fossils give no evidence of fur. Elephants are fantastic good swimmers (10km is not a problem).

Look for the peculiar genitalia of elephants: very different if compared to other savanna animals.

For hippos it is self explaining that aquatic life is equivalent to be better without fur.

(Seals managed with fur by specialising in another direction of short haired well fatted fur).

I don't think it took million of years to develop upright walking. But the first fossils we know with upright walking are 5 to 6 million years old.

Why do you think that the heat trap theory is wrong? There is no doubt that the strait of Gibraltar was closed, there has been drilling in the Nile delta that revealed gigantic gorges and canyons where the Nile water fell down 4000m in a few km, the only unresolved question is: how fast can this take place.

The heat trap is well established (any depression region is much hotter than the rest of land: death valley, dead sea, Afar) and that depression was much bigger than any we do know. You are right with climate 5 million years ago but the millions before it was much hotter, generating the deserts of southern and northern Africa to merge and only ?how much? savanna to remain.

Reconnection to the Atlantic took place some 5 to 6 million years ago, and shortly after this event we find the fossils.

There is not a single fossil of a pre hominid found in Africa in the time 20 to 6 or 5 million years ago. Why? They lived at the seaside now submerged in 100m of sea.

Your link is indicating snapshots, think about it and transform these maps into a continuous movie.

RHABE

Rhabe,

Elephants are not even close to an aquatic animal and there were elephants with hair only 12,000 years ago (wooly mammoths) which doesn't support your timeline at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth

You are probably right about the hippos, though I think the heat had something to do with it too.

The Mediterranian Sea did dry up for 600,000 years starting about 5.9 million years ago and ending 5.3 million years ago. All this happened long before bipedal apelike creatures (precursors to man) lived. The earliest bipedal apes are dated to 4.1 million years ago. In other words, 1.2 million years after the end of the .6 million year Mediterranian drying spell. Also, if you read the wikipedia link below, you'll see that the effects of the drying were not that dramatic on central Africa (Kenya). You're really getting you're scales (time scale, distance scale) messed up.

And regarding your idea that the sea levels swamped Africa, I think you better get caught up on the elevation of Africa. In general africa is pretty high in elevation, and the evaporation of the mediterranian sea would result only in a 10 meter rise in ocean levels (see wiki link below) meaning there would be very little penetration into the African continent by the oceans. In other words, the monkeys were no where near the sea.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v422/n6932/abs/nature01553.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_Salinity_Crisis
http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/biped.html

Your link states:

a deep dry basin with a bottom at some places 2 to 3 miles (3.2 to 4.9 km) below the world ocean level

Hi Roger Pink,

thank you for bringing more clarity on the time scale, my data were much older.

The earliest bipedal hominids (not apes) are dated in between 6 and 5 million years as far as I know. (The 6 is debated if a hominid).

The text in Wiki does not say anything about climate in central Africa and it is definitely incorrect in the statement about the sea-level. The calculation of volume is not at all adequate. There has been a survey of old shorelines and some found 80 to 100m below nowadays level and associated with the dry Mediterranean sea!

Think about a good explanation why human babies can be born without problems in warm water, think about the fact that around 8% of the newborn babies still have an extra skin between thumbs and first finger to help swimming!

I did never think about the sea inside Africa but our ancestors going to the shores to survive and have easy access to good food and adopt to super-fast brain growth of newborns by access to a lot of omega3-fatty-acids abundant only in seafood!

I don't think the mammoth is a problem but likely a second adaption towards cooler and cold climate.

Elephants are pretty close to aquatic: compare to Giraffes, both would have the possibility to cross rivers without swimming but only elephants do.

RHABE

No, no, no, no, no....

As one biologist put it, "If you raised a cow on REAL grass and all the other natural foods it would eat, you would find that the cow's meat (fat) contained lots of omega fatty acids!!!"

The lack of these nutrients in modern beef, chicken, pork, whatever is really due to the way they are commercially raised and fed. We're talking a real witched-brew. If you don't believe me, take a ride out to your local feed yard and get ready to puke!

Hi Vermin,

Yes and No at the same time.

Omega3 fatty acids are a group of many examples and those that are produced by plants are found in terrestrial animals and those that are produced by algae (especially in cold seawaters) we find in fish and seafood.

You are right with feeding bad fats will result in bad fats in the animal. (Soja and peanuts in salmons!)

Terrestrial sources are primrose, flax and borrage for example but none has DHA or EPA. (Omega 3 is only an indication that the chemical double bind is at the 3rd carbon atom.)

The sea derived EPA and DHA are used since the times our early ancestors first put their nose above water as essential precursors of endocrine signaling - this system that includes the cellular immune system has apparently not changed very much since then.

More good reading on the complicated and not fully understood pathways of endocrine hormonal synthesis and its actions including insulin and arachidonic acid is found in: Barry Sears, The Omega-RX Zone. (Naturally B.S. wants to sell his highly purified fish-oil, but I think nearly everybody can learn a lot about food and the consequences of good and bad food from this book. I did run across it 5 years ago and I profited a lot.)

RHABE

Ok, that's a lot of info Rhabe, here are my responses.

You Wrote: "The earliest bipedal hominids (not apes) are dated in between 6 and 5 million years as far as I know. (The 6 is debated if a hominid)."

My previous post I provided a link that dates them back to no later than 4.1 million years ago. (see link below). However, I certainly believe its possible that there may have been bipedal apes 5 million years ago, there just is no evidence for it yet as far as I know.

http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/biped.html

You Wrote: "The text in Wiki does not say anything about climate in central Africa and it is definitely incorrect in the statement about the sea-level. The calculation of volume is not at all adequate. There has been a survey of old shorelines and some found 80 to 100m below nowadays level and associated with the dry Mediterranean sea!"

First of all, Kenya, which is the region where the earliest bipedal humans have been found, is 2500 km from the Mediterranean sea, Kenya gets its weather (rain) from the Indian Ocean, just like the upper Nile does. We know it was still raining in the upper Nile because of the erosion found in the lower Nile during the building of the Aswan Dam, as you pointed out earlier. As for the old shorelines, Rhabe, here you're not making any sense. When the Mediterranean dried out, all the other seas rose from the added water, so the sea levels then were higher then, not lower like you're saying.

You Wrote: "Think about a good explanation why human babies can be born without problems in warm water, think about the fact that around 8% of the newborn babies still have an extra skin between thumbs and first finger to help swimming!"

Sure, here's an explanation. The human fetus developers in the womb of its mother, which is fluid filled, for 9 months. Babies are born into warm water to simulate the womb and reduce the shock of birth. Your whole 8% stat, why don't you provide a link for that, alright, because I've heard that 80% of statistics are made up.

You Wrote: "I did never think about the sea inside Africa but our ancestors going to the shores to survive and have easy access to good food and adopt to super-fast brain growth of newborns by access to a lot of omega3-fatty-acids abundant only in seafood!"

Actually, fresh water fish, along with walnuts and other nuts, have fatty acids. You don't need to be anywhere near the ocean, just a water source. I will confess, I didn't realize that a baby's brain triples in size in its first year, that was fascinating and true (I looked it up).

http://www.ific.org/publications/factsheets/omega3fs.cfm

You Wrote "Elephants are pretty close to aquatic: compare to Giraffes, both would have the possibility to cross rivers without swimming but only elephants do."

No, they really aren't aquatic at all. Neither are Rhinos, which have no hair either and are found on the savanna.

Hi Roger Pink,

"Kenya, which is the region where the earliest bipedal humans have been found, is 2500 km from the Mediterranean sea, Kenya gets its weather (rain) from the Indian Ocean, just like the upper Nile does"

I can agree on this although there is a debate now about the new findings in Chad and I don't know if it is Kenya and/or Tanzania.

But despite the still existing rain, why do you think that the place of fossil finding is the place of bipedal evolution?

The added water paradox is easily solved by more evaporation and more ice stored in the still cold regions. I have no idea about the extent of glaciation at that period but may be Siberia including Mongolia was covered with ice? Actually the sea-level was much lower at the time preceding the first bipedal walking homo erectus.

Babies born into warm water is not explainable as you think as then it should work with any mammal! Try and report!

The figure of 8% of the babies having these extra skin to help swimming came from my mother, she was a children's doctor. So I don't know any reported data. But may be a good idea to ask at the nearest hospital.

"fresh water fish, along with walnuts and other nuts, have fatty acids"

Look at my other post (some minutes ago) where I explained that land derived omega3 fatty-acids are of other types and not sufficient. Nor is the amount sufficient that can be derived from land based food.

Rhinos (?) and Giraffes have "ordinary" mammal sexual organs but elephants and we do have quite different ones! Please explain. (Look at the Amati, you will find more astonishing similarities.)

The very best to you and all other readers for the New Year

RHABE

Rhabe,

I don't want to go back and forth on all these points, I've stated where I stand.

One note though regarding lower sea levels. Please see map below:

As you can see, sea levels were higher 3 million years ago, not lower

5 million years ago it was the same.

This is a difficult matter. As land masses move at a rate of about 1" annual and temperatures cause sea levels to rise and fall it is inaccurate to reference all coast lines when referencing these large geo-time frames.

So where a coast might have been during a low sea level event might not be the same location 2 million years later during a high sea level event.

Rodinia and Pangaea and the continuing drift should be recognized.

Hi

I did not do the research that stated low sealevel at that time by detecting the old shorelines (not by calculation), the shorelines being clearly recognizable.

I will ask Stephen Cunnane for some article to post here.

Read his book inbetween.

Then lets start discussing again.

RHABE

Correction, Roger Pink - Woolly mammoths existed as late as 5,000 years ago! They are called mini-mammoths because environmental pressure favored smaller specimens. These carcasses (not fossils) are found in Greenland...

Strange to think there were still mammoths during the reign of the Pharaohs!!!

Wow, you're right. They were living 4500 years ago in a place called Wrangel Island. That blows my mind a little bit. That's 2500 BC, when the Great Pyramid was built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island

As popular as sea side resorts are, I'm more inclined to believe that the true ancestors of modern man probably didn't start to evolve at the sea shore, and not until about 6 million years ago. Prior to that, a number of fossils of extinct early apes (or ape-like) creatures have been found by the Leakey's at the gorge.

Furthermore, otters, beavers, polar bears, and other aquatic mammals usually have distinct hair that helps with quick drying and loss of body heat. Shall we talk about Japanese macak monkeys that survive (all hairy) in hot springs in the winter? Sooner or later they have to come out, and they don't have little monkey saunas for them to dry off in.

Furthermore, this is the second time I think we've visited the concept that shallow water offers some protection to land based predators. Every land based predator I know of that makes its rounds down to shoreline are in no way intimidated by a little salt water.

Hi Vermin,

Leakey did find the first upright homo erectus but this is likely to be 4.5million years old.

Where are the publications of early 6Myears apelike creatures? I came only across the statement that the last were found 20Myears ago.

You are absolutely right that a lot of mammals have furs that are adapted to live partially in the water and this adaption is really very good.

You are also right that any land based predator will follow for some distance into shallow water if its prey tries to escape, but how far?

And how far these lions or other cats will follow in a situation when there are many of the early humans and they have learned to dive and to throw stones on them?

I estimate somewhere between 5 and 50m will be a limit to reach out into shallow water. And it was very useful if some have been caught and those with better upright walking, women with longer legs, better swimming and diving escaped and could gather more food.

Competition with a hard push towards better survival is the driving force of evolution, diversity in the genes is existing before.

All the best for the New Year

RHABE

Don't forget the woolly rhinoceros, and the death of the Beatle hair cut!

The human brain really took off with the invention of crossword puzzles!!!

Yeah! How'd that happen?!

Anyway, as far as clock speed is concerned, think about... You have a CPU, and on your graphics card you have a GPU capable of doing many millions (billions?) of float-point operations per second! However, all that bus crap that you have to go through really slows things down - not to mention that the GPU never gets to help out with tools like Photoshop or Illustrator!

If all these processors and their cache are all connected together such that everyone is in direct contact with everyone else, my guess is speed will never be an issue ever again!!! (except possibly for the DOD)

By the way, have you read that Intel is thinking about releasing a CORE 80 chip?

This will not be eighty cores spread out over a board, but because they have cracked the problem of building chips into the Z-direction, these will be cubic chips!

Keep in mind that these won't just be 80 Pentiums stacked on top of each other. Rather, one layer will be a CPU, while another will be a GPU, and another will be a "whatever," and again another Pentium if needed and so on...

Now that's intense!!!

"This will not be eighty cores spread out over a board, but because they have cracked the problem of building chips into the Z-direction, these will be cubic chips!"

So, brains get larger!

I wonder if they've solved the associated cooling problem(s) with the cubic chip?

Yep. The real problem to solve was how not to need to send a signal through the heart of a transistor on the next level up!!!

Yeah I heard about that. Really cool. I'm sure once the programmers get good at exploiting multicores, and they get up to hundreds of cores, I'll be singing there praises. It's just that they trained me to expect faster clock times every 2 years and now their letting a little thing like theoretical limits get in the way.

Just remember that since the days of the Commodore VIC 20, they've been selling us CPU accelerators that really made no difference whatsoever. Sure, the CPUs ran a little faster, but any boost in performance was nil. The dirty, little secret was you could fetch to memory only so fast and that never changed... At least not until they started publishing front-side bus speeds as a selling feature!

I've read the article in full. I, personally, abhor this type of reporting by both the researchers and the media.

To make an accurate connection takes many years.

But hey - they got some headlines and who knows, maybe they are right?

Hi,

as this beast is thought to be the first step from pure terrestrial to aquatic life it is not unlikely that it is really one of the links.

This beast is thought to have foraged the riversides specialising first in searching for prey inside shallow water then developing further until no way back.

Search for the excellent article in Scientific American on this topic, there is the analysis of the bones that are thought to give the conclusions. And the timescales of evolution and branching into the different lines. This evolution took nearly 50million years, so if you look at the fossils of other mammals during this time you see how far evolution can change a creature during this long time.

And look into some book on historic geology (Wicander I found by chance) where there are early Permian Therapods to be thought to be ancestors of all mammals so ours too. (This took around 300million years so do not expect any similarity, but there is.)

RHABE

Yes I agree with the above comments about evolution.

Look, the evolution can be explained by the 4 brain model....

The ancient brain was the reptilian brain which had only the first and primal behavior types i.e. Fight and Fright.

Later, a second brain formed as a covering on the first which allowed higher order cognition such as feelings and emotions. This second brain part is found in mammals and is hence also called the mammalian brain.

The third is the logical type which again enveloped the second brain and this was the logical brain. This can be seen in monkeys and apes. You can see that they show the logicality in using tools etc for their survival.

The highest type which is related to intuition etc turned out to be the fourth brain or the PFC. Now that is what dolphins and us humans show.

It is a simple 4-brain model of evolution.

Now.....

If this creature could be a connecting link, it must show some similar charecteristics. As far as I know, a connecting link is as clear as the Archeopteryx.

It clearly was a connecting link between reptiles and aves (birds). It had wings and scales and claws and teeth etc.

Basically, it wasn't a creature waiting to evolve to look like a connecting link. It was there.

Your image did not display so I posted these for Archaeopteryx

This is a decent link...here.......it is called "FRED"
( F ossil R ecord E lectronic D atabase)

and requires a login for the meat of it but I have come to like it.

cr3

Thanx

I am still waiting for someone to give me enough info to make me realize why this 'thing' has been called a 'connecting link'. It aint got anything similar to dolphins or whales. (except maybe chunks of DNA)

About 500 million years ago, the Earth was rather warm and a lot wetter than it is today. Sort of swamp-like, with lots of tangles and things to wriggle through. However, at that time fins were the only means for getting around.

Then, they started finding fossils of fish with oddly shaped fins that anatomically speaking would allow this animal to sort of crawl around and through its damp environment, and most likely evade predators. From that one, little animal that was developing the capability to move on land, came rhinos, elephants, tigers, lions, snakes, lizards and probably all of the terrestrial animals we know today.

Of course, this does not prove that Indohyus was the forerunner of whales and dolphins, but it could make it seem a little more possible.

So here is a point that bothers me.

All the animals evolved out of the water from single cell organisms to these unknown number of fish, insects, mammals, etc. Then, a handful evolve back into the water? How much time would this take? If in fact there was an out to back in evolutionary migration we should have record of this bi-directional movement - which we do not.

Where my mind becomes to small for this is when we start adding up the numbers of variations of ALL the different life forms and there are still the deep seas and oceans as well as all the microscopic life. The numbers are just hard for me to manage.

Hi CR3,

there is ample evidence that going back into the sea is not a really rare event.

There is a turtle whose ancestors have made it twice: back to the sea with degeneration of the hard shield, then back to land and evolving a new shield ontop of the degenerated and this procedure once more.

"All the animals evolved out of the water from single cell organisms".

This needs an interpretation:

The single cells needed around 2billion years to establish the highly specialised cells that then became multicellular.

This evolution into the multicellular organisms took place latest in the cambrian revolution, a short (70million year) period. (Some remarkable theories now indicate that the earth was almost totally covered with ice immediately before that time.)

After this it took minimum 100million more years to make the first steps onto land: first the plants and insects and much later (another 100million years) the vertebrates.

This conquering the land was not so easy as may be thought: there had to be invented the growth limiting mechanisms. Fish and swimming reptiles can grow unlimited but landliving animals need a maximum size. And there was much less oxygen in the atmosphere (the red sandstones from the Permian that can be found at many places around the world indicate the final oxidation of iron and this is n indicator of oxygen removal from the atmosphere).

I have no idea how many animals have it managed to go back into the sea. Biologists should know.

But today there are two remarkable animal behaviours near going back: in southern Portugal there are dogs that are trained to help fishermen at their work by diving for fish, and in Ireland there are sheep that graze not on land but in shallow water. I do not think these will have the chance to make it back to the seas but these examples show that unusual adaption is possible.

Not only your mind is too small to gather and store all these facts but many many more possibilities do exist.

May be a good idea to reserve some really restricted places to animal wildlife.

RHABE

Not only your mind is too small to gather and store all these facts but many many more possibilities do exist.

This statement needs clarification.

Oh, take it like a man!

Take what like a man?

Beats me...

First, digging out just the right piece of rock to discover just the right fossil is a pretty tall order!

Second, the idea that dolphins and whales were originally terrestrial has been around for a very long time. This was not based on the fossil record, but rather the fact that the skeletal structure of ocean going mammals is identical (though a little mushed around) to terrestrial mammals. This structure cannot be found in any fish or other creature that lives in the sea.

Finally, Indohyus is just a recent candidate for that creature (a distant relative) who ultimately gave rise to the cetaceans.

Hi Mrinny,

the outer appearance should not be compared to modern whales, dolphins...(cetaceans), but to the first known fully aquatic living whales some 50million years ago.

These are said to have looked alike a mixture of pig and dog.

Scientific evidence about Indohyus is coming from a peculiar form of a bone in the inner ear that has an appearance existing only in cetaceans and from the arrangement and form of the teeth.

RHABE

During one period, the Megalodon was the largest predator in the sea... A giant shark that lived off of whales that were much smaller than it was. Here's a picture of a tooth - I have one about this size...

Durring the cooling of the Earth, the whales went North and the sharkes got smaller, because their prey got smaller.

Here's a picture of a tooth - I have one about this size...

RHABE Hey!

you got any links to the articles???

Hi Mrinny,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7150627.stm

this will be an introduction, then search for the author: Thewissen.

RHABE

"What are we going to do tonight, Brain? Narf!"

"The same thing we do every night, Indohyus... Try to take over the world!!!"

-- Indohyus and the Brain