In the Upper East River Valley of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventis) are thriving thanks to climate change. The rodents’ startling population boom — their numbers have tripled in ten years — has now been linked to the increasing size of their bellies, which is probably caused by climate-driven changes in hibernation patterns.
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The rust-coloured plateau above Mecca in Saudi Arabia may soon attract pilgrims of palaeontology. The hills, which overlook the Red Sea, have disgorged the 29–28-million-year-old partial skull fossil of an early primate that possesses features both of apes and monkeys. The skull could help palaeontologists to answer questions about the life of primates in a period that until now has provided few fossils.
When he caught sight of the skull during an expedition in search of ancient whale fossils last year, Iyad Zalmout wondered whether it belonged to a monkey or an ape. “It turns out it’s not an ape, it’s not a monkey, it’s something intermediate,” says Zalmout, a palaeontologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and an author of a paper published in Nature today. Continue reading Fossil skull fingered as ape–monkey ancestor
Human laughter is rooted in the emotional displays of the common ancestor we share with apes, suggests an analysis of the vocalizations of tickled juvenile apes and humans. Continue reading Human-ape links heard in laughter
Jørn Hurum has accompanied the fossilized primate he nicknamed Ida on a world tour to fame and notoriety in the last week. The 47-million-year-old fossil is famous for its haunting completeness — the outlines of its fur and its last meal appear like a shadow around the intact skeleton. Yet Hurum has drawn fire for promoting the fossil and its potential links to human ancestors through a multi-platform media campaign alongside the release of a scientific paper that describes the fossil’s genealogy more modestly. Today, he and Ida paused in London to discuss the fallout of the publicity and the next scientific steps. Continue reading Taking a fossil primate on the road