Fossils Bridge Gap in African Mammal Evolution

Reuters to My Yahoo! ^ | Wed Dec 3, 2003 | Patricia Reaney

[Pharmboy]

LONDON (Reuters) - Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved, a team of international scientists said on Wednesday.

Little is known about what happened to mammals between 24 million to 32 million years ago, when Africa and Arabia were still joined together in a single continent.

But the remains of ancestors of modern-day elephants and other animals, unearthed by the team of U.S. and Ethiopian scientists 27 million years on, provide some answers.

"We show that some of these very primitive forms continue to live through the missing years, and then during that period as well, some new forms evolved -- these would be the ancestors of modern elephants," said Dr John Kappelman, who headed the team.

The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.

"It continues to amaze me that we don't have more from this interval of time. We are talking about an enormous continent," said Kappelman, who is based at the University of Texas at Austin.

Scientists had thought arsinoithere had disappeared much earlier but the discovery showed it managed to survive through the missing years. The fossils from the new species found in Ethiopia are the largest, and at 27 million years old, the youngest discovered so far.

"If this animal was still alive today it would be the central attraction at the zoo," Tab Rasmussen, a paleontologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri who worked on the project, said in a statement.

Many of the major fossil finds in Ethiopia are from the Rift Valley. But Kappelman and colleagues in the United States and at Ethiopia's National Science Foundation (news - web sites) and Addis Ababa University concentrated on a different area in the northwestern part of the country.

Using high-resolution satellite images to scour a remote area where others had not looked before, his team found the remains in sedimentary rocks about 6,600 feet above sea level.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the ping back to this thread - I must have lost it when I had so much company!

And thank you for the link! I'm anxious to the see the details on their findings and the reactions from other scientists! They have a difficult task of challenging the concordance model itself with there being an alternative possibility involving the behavior of clusters/galaxies.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for the kudos, betty boop! And thank all of you for your replies!

I lost track of this thread along the way but it appears we resumed the discussion of biophotons, mystics and scientists from outside the U.S. over on this thread.

I very much look forward to reading the McTaggert book, betty boop! All of your book recommendations have been wonderful.

[bondserv]

I wonder if our resident Astronomer has anything to enlighten us with concerning these postulations?

Here is the Link again.

Thanks in advanced!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping to the discussion about Puthoff's zero-point energy research!

betty boop, you might find Paul Wesson's report on the subject rather interesting because he discusses ZPF objectively and has a number of recommendations.

Wesson is the lead researcher on the Space-Time-Matter consortium we've been tracking for several years.

[SunkenCiv]

Not a ping, just a GGG update. If anyone ever gets to page four (or 50+ for those on 20 messages per page), they may see this. :') Just remember, I didn't start, or participate in, the debate. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)