primitive humans alive more recently than first thought

Primitive human 'lived much more recently'

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website

A primitive type of human, once thought to be up to three million years old, actually lived much more recently, a study suggests.

The remains of 15 partial skeletons belonging to the species Homo naledi were described in 2015.They were found deep in a cave system in South Africa by a team led by Lee Berger from Wits University.

In an interview, he now says the remains are probably just 200,000 to 300,000 years old.

Although its anatomy shares some similarities with modern people, other anatomical features of Homo naledi hark back to humans that lived in much earlier times - some two million years ago or more.

"These look like a primitive form of our own genus - Homo. It looks like it might be connected to early Homo erectus, or Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis," said Prof Berger's colleague, John Hawks, from the University of Wisconsin.

Although some experts guessed that naledi could had lived relatively recently, in 2015, Prof Berger told BBC News that the remains could be up to three million years old.

New dating evidence places the species in a time period where Homo naledi could have overlapped with early examples of our own kind, Homo sapiens.

Prof Hawks told the BBC's Inside Science radio programme: "They're the age of Neanderthals in Europe, they're the age of Denisovans in Asia, they're the age of early modern humans in Africa. They're part of this diversity in the world that's there as our species was originating."

 Read more ,see photos here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39710315

Interesting for those who think Bigfoot is a relic human .Could bigfoot be the result of inter-mating of ancient humans? Just another theory to add to the pot. 

Rare creature found alive

Live, long and black giant shipworm found in Philippines

18 April 2017

Scientists have found live specimens of the rare giant shipworm for the first time, in the Philippines.Details of the creature, which can reach up to 1.55m (5ft) in length and 6cm (2.3in) in diameter, were published in a US science journal.The giant shipworm spends its life encased in a hard shell, submerged head-down in mud.Though its existence has been known for years, no living specimen had been studied until now.

Despite its name, the giant shipworm is actually a bivalve - the same group as clams and mussels.The "rare and enigmatic species", also known as Kuphus polythamia, is the longest living bivalve known to man, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

  Read rest see pics here :http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39626131

New Research on Giant Marine Creatures

How giant marine reptiles terrorized the ancient seas

Ichthyosaurs were some of the largest and most mysterious predators to ever prowl the oceans. Now they are giving up their secrets.

Traci Watson

Extracts from article :

As  discoveries started to pile up, he got hooked. Fischer, now at the University of Liège, Belgium, and his colleagues have since described seven surprising new ichthyosaurs, ranging from a tuna-sized reptile with thin, sharp teeth¹ to an animal as big as a killer whale, with a beak like that of a swordfish².

Fischer is part of an ichthyosaur renaissance that is sweeping palaeontology. After ignoring them for decades, more and more researchers have started to focus on the reptiles, which were among the top predators in the seas for some 150 million years during the days of the dinosaurs.

The swell of research is starting to answer key questions about ichthyosaurs, such as how and where they originated and how quickly they came to rule the oceans. The group was even more diverse than once thought, ranging from early near-shore creatures that undulated like eels to giants that cruised the open ocean by swishing their powerful tails. “They could go anywhere, just like whales,” Motani says. The biggest ones rivalled blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) in length and were the largest predators in the Triassic seas.

 Read more here : http://www.nature.com/news/how-giant-marine-reptiles-terrorized-the-ancient-seas-1.21722

Nessie seekers will be interested in the ones that undulated like eels.