Genetic Archaeology News Archives Page 16

Another Sexual Attraction Is Possible (6/24/2007)

The coming summer vibrates with expressions of insect love and desire. The cicada's songs or the butterflies' bright colours are examples of how an emitting sex attracts conspecific members of the responding sex. Moth odours (pheromones), though less conspicuous for us humans, are also signals by which females guide males towards them, even on the darkest nights. Such mating recognition systems tend to be very specific, hence they are thought to play a major role in the evolution of mating barriers and in the formation of new species. ...> Full Article

Male Twins Can Reduce Their Sister's Fertility (6/23/2007)

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have discovered that a twin brother's testosterone in the uterus can reduce his female twin's chances of marrying and having children. ...> Full Article

Everyday Text Shows That Old Persian Was Probably More Commonly Used Than Previously Thought (6/23/2007)

For the first time, a text has been found in Old Persian language that shows the written language in use for practical recording and not only for royal display. The text is inscribed on a damaged clay tablet from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, now at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. The tablet is an administrative record of the payout of at least 600 quarts of an as-yet unidentified commodity at five villages near Persepolis in about 500 B.C. ...> Full Article

Moss Genes Provided Fuse For Plant Life Explosion (6/23/2007)

Scientists from the John Innes Centre have identified the genes that control the development of root hairs on plants. Published in the journal Science, Professor Liam Dolan reports that these genes are also found in moss, a finding that changes our understanding of how the plants we see today evolved over 400 million years ago. ...> Full Article

Wild Sheep Descended From Single Pair Show Surprising Genetic Diversity (6/23/2007)

Scientists at Université du Québec à Montréal have reconstructed the genetic history of a population of mouflons (wild sheep) descended from a single pair. The researchers demonstrated that the animals’ genetic diversity increased over time, contrary to what the usual models predict. These results contradict the belief that a population descended from a small number of individuals will exhibit numerous deficiencies and reduced genetic diversity. ...> Full Article

Archaeologists Discover Gold Processing Center (6/22/2007)

Archaeologists from the University of Chicago have discovered a gold processing center along the middle Nile, an installation that produced the precious metal sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The center, along with a cemetery they discovered, documents extensive control by the first sub-Saharan kingdom, the kingdom of Kus ...> Full Article

Researchers Demonstrate Way To Genetically Engineer The Height Of Trees (6/22/2007)

Forest scientists at Oregon State University have used genetic modification to successfully manipulate the growth in height of trees, showing that it's possible to create miniature trees that look similar to normal trees - but after several years of growth may range anywhere from 50 feet tall to a few inches. ...> Full Article

Neanderthal Man Was An Innovator (6/21/2007)

Research challenges myth of primitive and backward species ...> Full Article

Why Starling Females Cheat (6/21/2007)

While humans stray from their mates for any number of reasons, superb starling females appear to stray for the sake of their chicks, according to recent Cornell research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. ...> Full Article

Circadian Rhythms Dominate All Life Functions, Plays Significant Role In Metabolism (6/21/2007)

New research from Colorado State University shows that the function of all genes in mammals is based on circadian - or daily - rhythms. The study refutes the current theory that only 10 percent to 15 percent of all genes were affected by nature's clock. While scientists have long known that circadian rhythms regulate the behavior of the living, the study shows that daily rhythm dominates all life functions and particularly metabolism. The new study presents oscillation as a basic property of all genes in the organism as opposed to special function of some genes as previously believed. ...> Full Article

Study Reveals Insect Supersociety (6/20/2007)

How social or altruistic behavior evolved has been a central and hotly debated question, particularly by those researchers engaged in the study of social insect societies of ants, bees and wasps. ...> Full Article

Anthropologist Discovers Remains Of Earliest Giant Panda (6/20/2007)

Although it may sound like an oxymoron, a University of Iowa anthropologist and his colleagues report the first discovery of a skull from a "pygmy-sized" giant panda -- the earliest known ancestor of the giant panda -- that lived in south China some two million years ago. ...> Full Article

Study Seeks Children Of Vietnam Veterans For Genetic Study (6/19/2007)

Research to uncover heritable links between post traumatic stress disorder in parents and disorders such as ADHD and autism in their children is being conducted by Queensland University of Technology PhD student Ken O'Brien. ...> Full Article

New Approach Offered On Reconstructing Biology Of Extinct Species (6/19/2007)

An international research team has documented the link between the way an animal moves and the dimensions of an important part of its organ of balance, the three semicircular canals of the inner ear on each side of the skull. The team's article on its research will be published on June 26 in the print edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in the journal's online early edition during the week of June 18 to 22. ...> Full Article

Mutating the Entire Genome (6/18/2007)

New Way to Hunt for Illness-Causing Mutants in non-Gene DNA ...> Full Article

Ancient Etruscans Were Immigrants From Anatolia, Or What Is Now Turkey (6/18/2007)

The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all, a geneticist will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today. Professor Alberto Piazza, from the University of Turin, Italy, will say that there is overwhelming evidence that the Etruscans, whose brilliant civilization flourished 3000 years ago in what is now Tuscany, were settlers from old Anatolia (now in southern Turkey). ...> Full Article

Color Pattern Spurs Speciation In Tropical Fish (6/18/2007)

A team of researchers from McGill University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) has provided the first example of how colour patterns on a coral reef fish species can drive its evolution into many distinct species. ...> Full Article

New Findings Challenge Established Views About Human Genome (6/17/2007)

A team of researchers led by University of Virginia Health System geneticists has uncovered a major secret in the mystery of how the DNA helix replicates itself time after time. It turns out that it is not just the sequence of the bases (building blocks) in the DNA, but also how loosely or tightly the chromatin (the material that makes up chromosomes) is packed at different points of the chromosome that is critical. ...> Full Article

Early Roadrunner Like Dinosaur Discovered (6/16/2007)

A new, primitive dinosaur species has been discovered by University of Cambridge palaeontologist Dr David Norman during an expedition in South Africa. ...> Full Article

Bomb Lance Found In Neck Of Large Bowhead Whale In Alaska (6/15/2007)

A nineteenth century bomb lance fragment, similar to lances manufactured in New Bedford, was found in a large bowhead whale in Barrow, Alaska, suggesting the whale was struck by the fragment around 1890. ...> Full Article

Important Secret In Gene Replication Uncovered (6/15/2007)

A team of researchers led by University of Virginia Health System geneticists has uncovered a major secret in the mystery of how the DNA helix replicates itself time after time. It turns out that it is not just the sequence of the bases (building blocks) in the DNA, but also how loosely or tightly the chromatin (the material that makes up chromosomes) is packed at different points of the chromosome that is critical. ...> Full Article

CT Scan Reveals Ancient Long-Necked Gliding Reptile (6/14/2007)

The fossilized bones of a previously unknown, 220 million-year-old long-necked, gliding reptile may remain forever embedded in stone, but thanks to an industrial-size CT scanner at Penn State's Center for Quantitative Imaging, the bone structure and behavior of these small creatures are now known. ...> Full Article

Physicist Cracks Women's Random But Always Lucky Choice Of X Chromosome (6/14/2007)

A University of Warwick physicist has uncovered how female cells are able to choose randomly between their two X chromosomes and why that choice is always lucky. ...> Full Article

Scientists Propose The Kind Of Chemistry That Led To Life (6/13/2007)

Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage - so experts believe. But what preceded these pre-life steps? ...> Full Article

Lizard Mothers Control The Patterning Of Skin In Children (6/13/2007)

Mothers know best when it comes to dressing their children, at least among side-blotched lizards, a common species in the western United States. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have found that female side-blotched lizards are able to induce different color patterns in their offspring in response to social cues, "dressing" their progeny in patterns they will wear for the rest of their lives. ...> Full Article

Medaka Fish Genome Completed (6/13/2007)

The medaka fish (Oryzias latipes), a popular pet in Japan and model organism in the laboratory, has had its genome sequenced. The data, reported in this week's Nature, offer novel insights into vertebrate genome evolution. ...> Full Article

Volcanic Eruptions Preserve Ancient History (6/12/2007)

Case assistant professor harvests the fossilized bones of animals from South America ...> Full Article

Agonized Pose Tells Of Dinosaur Death Throes (6/12/2007)

The peculiar pose of many fossilized dinosaurs, with wide-open mouth, head thrown back and recurved tail, likely resulted from the agonized death throes typical of brain damage and asphyxiation, according to two paleontologists. ...> Full Article

Caribbean Frogs Started With A Single, Ancient Voyage On Raft From South America (6/11/2007)

Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands, including the coqui frogs of Puerto Rico, originated from a single frog species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30 million to 50 million years ago, according to DNA-sequence analyses led by a research group at Penn State ...> Full Article

Ancient DNA Traces The Woolly Mammoth's Disappearance (6/11/2007)

Some ancient-DNA evidence has offered new clues to a very cold case: the disappearance of the last woolly mammoths, one of the most iconic of all Ice Age giants, according to a recent article. DNA lifted from the bones, teeth, and tusks of the extinct mammoths revealed a "genetic signature" of a range expansion after the last interglacial period. After the mammoths' migration, the population apparently leveled off, and one of two lineages died out. ...> Full Article