Cave drawings show early humans’ creativity, archaeologists say

A series of lines scratched into rock in a cave in Europe could be proof that a type of early human called Neanderthals were more intelligent and creative than previously thought.

The X-shaped engravings inside Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar are the first known examples of Neanderthal rock art, according to a team of scientists. The find is important because it shows that modern humans and their extinct cousins shared the capacity for creative expression.

“We will never know the meaning the design held for the maker or the Neanderthals who inhabited the cave, but the fact that they were marking their territory in this way before modern humans arrived in the region has huge implications for debates about what it is to be human and the origin of art,” said Paul Tacon, an expert in rock art at Australia’s Griffith University.

Not all archaeologists are convinced that Neanderthals made the carvings. A recent study reported that Neanderthals and modern humans overlapped by several thousand years.

“Any discovery that helps improve the public image of Neanderthals is welcome,” said Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England. “We know they spoke, lived in large social groups, looked after the sick, buried their dead and were highly successful in the ice-age environments of northern latitudes. As a result ,rock engraving should be entirely within their grasp.”

“What is critical, however, is the dating,” Gamble said. “While I want Neanderthals to be painting, carving and engraving, I’m reserving judgment.”

Nearly two dozen fish species off U.S. West Coast deemed sustainable

(Reuters) - Nearly two dozen species of fish have been deemed sustainable seafood options once again after rampant overfishing left areas off the U.S. West Coast devastated, a marine watchdog group said on Tuesday.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program upgraded the status of 21 species of bottom-dwelling fish, including varieties of sole, rockfish and sablefish, to "best choice" or "good alternative" from the group's "avoid" classification.

The designations allow consumers, restaurants and seafood retailers to be confident in the sustainability of the once over-harvested species.

 

The change comes after fishing grounds off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington state were declared an economic disaster by the federal government in 2000. Overfishing in those areas brought some species to dangerously low levels and caused fishing income to drop sharply.

"The turnaround in such a short time is unprecedented," said Jennifer Kemmerly, director of the Seafood Watch program.

"Fishermen, federal agencies and our environmental colleagues have put so much effort into groundfish recovery, and now we're seeing the results of their work," she added.

The group attributed the region's revitalization to government-imposed fishing quotas, the creation of marine protected areas, and the use of better monitoring and control of catches.

Now, 84 percent of commercial groundfish caught off the West Coast are sustainable options, according to the Seafood Watch program.

"This recognition highlights the success of the West Coast groundfish catch share program," said Frank Lockhart, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's West Coast recovery efforts.

"Not only has it reduced impacts on the species we need to protect, but it has allowed fishermen increased flexibility to fish more effectively for the species they want," he said.

The West Coast's recovery mirrors improvements seen elsewhere in the United States following updates to the federal fishery law passed by Congress in 2006, the Seafood Watch program said.

China and Indian Leaders Said to Skip UN Climate Summit

The top leaders of China and India aren’t planning to attend this month’s United Nations summit on climate change, signaling tepid support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gases among two of the largest emitters.

President Xi Jinping of China and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon they won’t be at the day-long meeting of world leaders on Sept. 23, according to two UN diplomats, requesting not to be identified discussing the leaders’ plans. Their absence undercuts the summit, although it may not be fatal for negotiations set to wrap up by the end of 2015.

China is the world’s top greenhouse-gas emitter, and India is third, after the U.S., according to World Bank data. Together China and India account for nearly a third of total emissions, and their carbon footprint is growing while it remains flat in the U.S. and Europe.

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“I was completely shocked and very disappointed to read today that Chinese President Xi and Indian Prime Minister Modi may not make it to Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit,” said Tony deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean, in a statement. “For the small island states of the world, the science says we might be forced to pay the biggest price of all -- the loss of our countries. We expect solidarity from our developing country compatriots, not excuses.”

Resisting Cuts

Both China and India have pushed rich nations to pony up the $100 billion promised to poor countries to help deal with the threats of climate change, and have resisted sharp cuts in their own output. Both are also heavy users of coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, and have announced their own internal efforts to boost renewable energy.

“The issue for us is really on the commitments that countries will bring and the secretary general expects member states to come with strong and bold commitments on climate change,” Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said yesterday in New York. He said he has nothing to add when asked about the leaders’ attendance.

The UN meeting on Sept. 23 is not a negotiating session but a gathering of world leaders, business executives and environmentalists to discuss ways to combat global warming, and how to mitigate its impact. The meeting includes three concurrent sessions in the morning at which leaders are to make “national action & ambition announcements,” according to the schedule.

‘Turning Point’

“I hope the Climate Summit will be a turning point for generating climate action and mobilizing political will for a meaningful, universal climate agreement next year,” Ban said in a blog post this week.

This UN meeting will be followed by a negotiating session in Lima in December, and then one in Paris next year at which leaders seek to hammer out a new global agreement on cutting emissions.

An official with the Chinese mission to the UN declined to comment and a call to the Chinese embassy in Washington wasn’t answered. The Indian mission to the UN didn’t have an immediate comment.

Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, declined to comment on the decision by Xi not to attend, which was previously reported by the online publication China Dialogue, and said he couldn’t comment on whether the move would affect U.S. President Barack Obama’s plans to attend. Bloomberg BNA reported July 25 that the White House had confirmed Obama would attend, without naming its sources.

Climate Risks

The summit comes as scien

tists are increasingly warning of the risks of climate change. Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change, according to a draft UN report.

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft, obtained by Bloomberg News last month.

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Deep sea 'mushroom' may be new branch of life

A mushroom-shaped sea animal discovered off the Australian coast has defied classification in the tree of life. A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom.

A mushroom-shaped sea animal discovered off the Australian coast has defied classification in the tree of life.

A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom.

Such a situation has occurred only a handful of times in the last 100 years.

The organisms, which were originally collected in 1986, are described in the academic journal Plos One.

The authors of the article note several similarities with the bizarre and enigmatic soft-bodied life forms that lived between 635 and 540 million years ago - the span of Earth history known as the Ediacaran Period.

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We think it belongs in the animal kingdom somewhere, the question is where”

Jorgen OlesenUniversity of Copenhagen

These organisms, too, have proven difficult to categorise and some researchers have even suggested they were failed experiments in multi-cellular life.

The authors of the paper recognise two new species of mushroom-shaped animal: Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides. Measuring only a few millimetres in size, the animals consist of a flattened disc and a stalk with a mouth on the end.

During a scientific cruise in 1986, scientists collected organisms at water depths of 400m and 1,000m on the south-east Australian continental slope, near Tasmania. But the two types of mushroom-shaped organisms were recognised only recently, after sorting of the bulk samples collected during the expedition.

"Finding something like this is extremely rare, it's maybe only happened about four times in the last 100 years," said co-author Jorgen Olesen from the University of Copenhagen.

He told BBC News: "We think it belongs in the animal kingdom somewhere; the question is where."

The system used to group every life form on Earth encompasses several levels, or taxonomic ranks.

A domain is the highest taxonomic rank and below that is a kingdom. Traditionally, biologists have recognised five or six kingdoms, including animals, plants, fungi and bacteria.

Kingdoms are divided into phyla, which are grouped according to similarities in general body plan.

"What we can say about these organisms is that they do not belong with the bilateria," said Dr Olesen.

Bilateria represents one of the most important animal groupings, whose members share bilateral symmetry (their bodies are divided vertically into left and right halves that mirror one another). Humans belong within this grouping.

The new organisms are multicellular but mostly non-symmetrical, with a dense layer of gelatinous material between the outer skin cell and inner stomach cell layers.

The researchers did find some similarities to other animal groupings, such as the Cnidaria - the phylum that comprises corals and jellyfish - and the Ctenophora, which includes the marine organisms known as comb jellies. But the new organisms did not fulfil all the criteria required for inclusion in either of those categories.

Dr Olesen said the new animals could either be a very early branch on the tree of life, or be intermediate between two different animal phyla.

He conceded that they might eventually find their way into an existing group, because there was still so little known about Dendrogramma's biology.

One way to resolve the question surrounding Dendrogramma's affinities would be to examine its DNA, but new specimens will need to be found. The original samples were first preserved in formaldehyde and later transferred to 80% alcohol, a mode of treatment that prevents analysis of genetic material.

Accordingly, the team's paper in Plos One calls for researchers around the world to keep an eye out for other examples.

"We published this paper in part as a cry for help," said Dr Olesen.

"There might be somebody out there who can help place it."

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