New Ancient Ape Species Rewrites the Story of Bipedalism and Humans

New Ancient Ape Species Rewrites the Story of Bipedalism

When Madelaine Böhme, a researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany, unearthed the partial skeleton of an ancient ape at the Hammerschmiede clay pit in Bavaria, she knew she was looking at something special. Compared to fragments, an intact partial skeleton can tell paleoanthropologists about a creature’s body proportions and how its anatomy might have functioned. A relative newcomer to the field and a paleoclimatologist by trade, Böhme enlisted Begun’s expertise in analyzing the fossil ape.

Böhme and colleagues determined that the bones they found came from a dryopithecine ape, an extinct ancestor of humans and great apes that once lived in the Miocene epoch. The fossils are approximately 11.6 million years old and came from at least four individual apes, including one partial skeleton. The team described the newfound ancestor, named Danuvius guggenmosi, in a study published today in Nature.

‘D. guggenmosi’ was likely a small primate about the size of baboon, with long arms like a bonobo. The creature had flexible elbows and strong hands capable of grasping, which suggests that it could have swung from tree to tree like a modern great ape. But the similarities with known apes stop there. The animal’s lower limbs have much more in common with human anatomy. With extended hips and knees, D. guggenmosi was capable of standing with a straighter posture than that of living African apes, and its knees and ankles were adapted to bear weight. The animal’s locomotion would have therefore shared similarities with both human and ape movement, and D. guggenmosi may have been able to navigate the forest by swinging from tree limbs and walking on two legs.

A 3.8-Million-Year-Old Skull Puts a New Face on a Little-Known Human Ancestor

A 3.8-Million-Year-Old Skull Puts a New Face on a Little-Known Human Ancestor

Spotting the intact Australopithecus skull in the Ethiopian dirt caused paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie to literally jump for joy. “It was something that I’ve never seen before, and I’ve seen a lot of cranial fossils,” he says.

The chance discovery by Haile-Selassie and an Ethiopian shepherd has created a captivating portrait of 3.8-million-year-old face, providing an unprecedented look at a hominin species from a key stage of human evolution. Experts say the extraordinary fossil can help redefine the branches of humans’ evolutionary tree during a time when our ancestors had just evolved efficient ways to walk upright.

“This cranium looks set to become another celebrated icon of human evolution,” Fred Spoor, a human evolution researcher at the Natural History Museum in London, writes in a News & Views article that accompanied Haile-Selassie and colleagues’ new study in the journal Nature.

Who Were the Mysterious Neolithic People That Enabled the Rise of Ancient Egypt?

Who Were the Mysterious Neolithic People That Enabled the Rise of Ancient Egypt?

To many, ancient Egypt is synonymous with the pharaohs and pyramids of the Dynastic period starting about 3,100BC. Yet long before that, about 9,300-4,000BC, enigmatic Neolithic peoples flourished. Indeed, it was the lifestyles and cultural innovations of these peoples that provided the very foundation for the advanced civilisations to come.

But who were they? As it turns out, they haven’t actually been studied much, at least relative to their successors. But our excavations of six burial sites – with some of the analyses recently published – have now provided important insights into their mysterious ways of life.

One reason why we know so little about Neolithic Egypt is that the sites are often inaccessible, lying beneath the Nile’s former flood plain or in outlying deserts.

Red Sea Stone Tool Find Hints At Hominins’ Possible Route Out of Africa

Red Sea Stone Tool Find Hints At Hominins’ Possible Route Out of Africa

Dams Can Mimic The Free Flow Of Rivers, But Risks Must Be Managed

Dams Can Mimic The Free Flow Of Rovers, But Risks Must Be Managed

In recent decades, humans have built many dams. These are designed to regulate flow for irrigation, hydropower and water supply. Most major rivers in the world are dammed.

But there are detriments to damming rivers. Many people depend on the natural ebb and flow of unrestricted rivers that swell with water in the rainy season and wane in the dry season. When the natural flow is changed, people and ecosystems are affected: globally, an estimated 472 million people living downstream of dams have suffered adverse effects from changes to the rivers’ flows.

A Jewelry Design Journey From Fashionable Omo Valley Arbore Women To Mario Gerth To INIVA Miami

A Jewelry Design Journey From Fashionable Omo Valley Arbore Women To Mario Gerth To INIVA Miami

Serendipity seems to be always at play at Anne of Carversville and in my GlamTribal Jewelry. Close friends think the powers are actually stronger than serendipity in my case, but let me stick with the facts here. The DNA of my GlamTribal collection lies in East Africa, in an area extending from southern Ethiopia’s Omo Valley into the Lake Turkana region, South Sudan and northern Kenya, with a final destination in Nairobi and specifically Kibera. This is not to say that there aren’t more pieces in my puzzle, but my life has wound in and around these pillars for decades.

Hans Silvester’s monumental book ‘Natural Fashion’ (2009) introduced me to the Omo Valley people in 2012, inspiring the first major turn in my vision for GlamTribal. These precious people are living in grave danger of extinction in a modern world, In particular the Gilgel Give III damn threatens their very existence. For five years Italian photographer Fausto Podavini has charted the progress of the damn and its impact on one of Africa’s most remote frontiers. National Geographic updates the story of perhaps epic change in the Omo Valley.

Five Reasons Why 2018 Was A Big Year For Palaeontology

Five Reasons Why 2018 Was A Big Year For Palaeontology

By Julien Benoit, Postdoc in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand. First published on The Conversation Africa.

A lot happened in the world of palaeontology in 2018. Some of the big events included some major fossil finds, a new understanding of our reptile ancestors and a major controversy whose outcome could rewrite human history. The Conversation Africa asked Dr Julien Benoit to discuss five important moments in palaeontology you may have missed during 2018, and what they mean – particularly for Africa and its place in the story of human origins.

Does Burberry's Iconic Plaid Have Ties To The African Disaspora?

A quick search on the history of plaid brings us to this PS Magazine article, deeply rooted in British history and especially Scotland.  One look at the styling in this high-impact image of Burberry's iconic plaid featured now at Interview Magazine online takes us to a more familiar story, a GlamTribale journey older than Scotland, one that begins in Africa. Models Elizabeth Ayodele, Sarah Abney and Ana Pau signal "a revival of '90s cool ~ with a colorful, ultra-modern twist." 

Progress! We move on to CIAD, the Costume Institute of the African Diaspora, with a UK web addy. CIAD's mission "is to be the main port of call for information regarding costumes, fashion history, textiles and textiles construction from around the African Diaspora and in so doing create a bridge between cultural organisations worldwide."

There's nothing more important to GlamTribal than the stories of human history and humanity's deep connections to Africa. It makes no sense to me that the British Empire invented plaids. The true story must lie in the reality of the African Diaspora, and further investigation is required.

One of our featherweight GlamTribal decoupage beads uses an African tile pattern. Both necklace and earring sets shown here also feature woolly mammoth decoupage beads and woolly mammoth bone beads 10,000-100,000 years old.  Like the so-called Scottish plaid found on a long-buried, 3.000 year-old Caucasian Cherchen Man in China in 1978, these woolly mammoth bone beads are most-likely from Siberia. Both discoveries are a long way from the African continent; yet scientists believe they have deep roots in Africa.

This is our story of human history, and GlamTribal is sticking to it, until science makes paradigm-changing discoveries about our journey to now. 

Our shared cultural history is a fusion stew of borrowing, blending and sometimes outright stealing the creativity and beauty created by others.  This historical truth is lodged in immense pain, suffering and outright domination of some people for the success and privilege of others. We cannot rewrite that history -- the journey to now --but we can connect the record.

Equally important, we can acknowledge and also honor the birth of  humanity and human civilization in Africa. It's our shared DNA, and white nationalists -- reinforced by cultural and religious institutions -- can try to rewrite truth, but the scientific record is clear. GlamTribal is sticking to this story, too.  ~ Anne

Richard Leakey Plans Libeskind-Designed 'Cathedra' Honoring Human Evolution In Lake Turkana

Richard Leakey Plans Libeskind-Designed 'Cathedra' Honoring Human Evolution In Lake Turkana

Renowned Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey has commissioned a new museum in the desert near Lake Turkana. Designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, 'the cathedra' will be constructed at 400 miles north of Kenya's capital in Nairobi,  near the border with Ethiopia. 

It's in this region that the Leakey family and their decades old teams have uncovered many of the best-preserved fossils of humanity's ancient ancestors, some dated to 4 million years ago.

Lake Turkana is home to all the inspirations behind Anne of Carversville's Jewelry & Gift Collection, including Ethiopia's Omo Valley people, who live at the northern tip of the lake. It's the world's largest permanent desert lake and by volume the world's fourth-largest salt lake. 

We have many connections to LakeTurkana and Africa's Rift Valley both psychically and in our commitment to elephant conservation and the use of woolly mammoth bones in our jewelry. It's believed that woolly mammoths migrated out of the Rift Valley towards cooler climates and reliable water sources. 

Richard Leakey, the 72-year-old Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) chairman took Polish-American designer Daniel Libeskind to Lake Turkana to explore the project, now that financing has been secured for the design phase of the project. "Can we do something here that will absolutely stand-alone and wow?" Leakey asked the master planner of New York's post-September 11 World Trade Center redevelopment.

His vision is for a museum that is a "very creative" experience and not a fancy house for fossils. A museum pedigree is reason for eliminating people, not recruiting them for the project. The Kenyan powerhouse wants people from Silicon Valley or creative advertising professionals. "Why don't we have a room you come in to wearing a 3D headset and sit quietly in the middle of a band of Homo erectus moving all around you? That's much more interesting than a skeleton of Turkana Boy behind glass."

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Female Skull In Israel's Manot Cave Links Humans & Neanderthals 55,000 Years Ago

Female Skull In Israel's Manot Cave Links Humans & Neanderthals 55,000 Years Ago AOC Muse

Israeli researchers published a critical article this week, arguing that a 55,000 years-old, female skull found in the Manot Cave of Israel’s Western Galilee is a crucial link in understanding the evolution of the human species.  Scientists believe that the skull offers definitive proof that anatomically modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals in the same geographical area.

It’s widely accepted science that human origins date back about 200,000 years to Africa. However, there has not been agreement about which migration model of early Homo sapiens led to the population of our planet, accompanied by the extinction of Neanderthals.

The morphology of the skull indicates that it is that of a modern human of African origin, bearing characteristics of early European Upper Palaeolithic populations. This suggests that the Levantine populations were ancestral to earlier European populations,” said Prof. (Israel) Hershkovitz (of Tel Aviv University).  “This study also provides important clues regarding the likely inbreeding between anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals.”

The Manot Cave, where the skull was unearthed, was discovered accidentally in 2008 when a bulldozer struck the cave roof, revealing a time capsule tens of thousands of years old. “This is a goldmine,” said Prof. Hershkovitz. “Most other caves are ‘disturbed caves,’ but this is untouched, frozen in time — truly an amazing find. Among other artefacts found there, the skull, which we dated to 55,000 years ago using uranium thorium methods, was astonishing. It provides insight into the beginnings of the dispersal of modern humans all over the world.”