Possible New Hominid Species Discovered, Thanks To Google Earth 86
mindbrane writes "The BBC is reporting on fossil finds 'uncovered in cave deposits near Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg.' The fossils of a mature female and juvenile male have '...small teeth, projecting nose, very advanced pelvis, and long legs ...' suggesting more modern forms. 'And yet its very long arms and small brain case might echo the much older Australopithecine group to which Professor Berger and colleagues have assigned it.' Aside from the debate as to classification, the find is noteworthy in that its discovery came about 'thanks to the "virtual globe" software Google Earth, which allowed the group to map and visualise the most promising fossil grounds in the World Heritage Site.' Further, the find in a cave bears the hallmarks of chance that often plays so large a part in fossilisation. 'Their bones were laid down with the remains of other dead animals, including a sabre-toothed cat, antelope, mice and rabbits. The fact that none of the bodies appear to have been scavenged indicates that all died suddenly and were entombed rapidly.'"
Re:Why Google Earth? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you'd be suprised, there seems to be a similar trend in other universities, I think it's because many departments run on shoe string budgets, and GIS was often an expense they couldn't afford.
Now it's available free to them, and cross platform so they can make use of it anywhere from their desktop to their laptop at home to their mobile phone/PDA in the field.
A friend who is a botanist working at a university in Brazil makes heavy use of it along with the rest of his department to map various plant species, and their spread and decline as a tool for helping map the discovery and decline of species, as well as acting as an aid to give clues as to how newly discovered, or previously poorly classified species might be classified or re-classified taxonomically. It helps give clues to where hybridisation may have led to new distinct species and so forth.
It's a tool his department simply didn't have before, but perhaps that's part of it too. Those who are experts in one field, don't necessarily know enough to know tools like this even exist, until companies like Google make them popular and put them in the public eye. When those experts do see these tools they realise how utterly useful they are- remember, not everyone knows enough about computers to know what's out there, or to realise the many ways in which they can assist their day to day work.
Advancement of the tools matters too- phones/pdas with built in GPS and access to these applications, cameras that tag photos with GPS coordinates, cheaper than ever GPS devices and so on all increase the attractiveness and ease of use of these apps where people may previously have found them too difficult or too much hassle to work with over their existing methods too I suppose.
Probably not the missing link (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a number of issues that have some scientists skeptical that the newly found Australopithecus Sediba is our ancestor. One is that Homo habilis is significantly older (by around half a million years), and is more human-like than Australopithecus Sediba. The other is that the anatomy simply does not fall into line with the other specimens. The length of the arms, etc, seem a step backwards. Perhaps it was a parallel branch that died out.
It's hard to argue this is the ancestor of Homo when it's occurring much later than the earliest members of the genus Homo by half a million years," said anthropologist Brian Richmond of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
National Geographic [nationalgeographic.com]
Re:Why Google Earth? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because Google Earth is a quantum leap in Atlas technology.
Prior to Google Earth/Maps, the dominant atlas technology was, well, Atlases; Big hefty books with discrete resolutions, fixed orientations, no hyper-linking(obviously), nice indices but no search functionality, oh and finally, they were super expensive. Google Earth is an improvement on the Atlas in every conceivable sense of the world, especially the most important ones; usability and accessibility. And the proof of this fact is in the increased amount of people using it, and getting results from it.
Google is delivering us the technologies sci-fi was promising over 60 years ago. It's delivering them because it understands that immediate and all consuming lust for payment and profit is not always the best way to improve technology or its use. The Anglo-Saxon model of money up front for everything is not what's going to take humanity into the 22nd century.