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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (22042)3/5/2012 11:21:45 PM
From: average joe  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 69300
 
Humanity’s earliest ancestor looked like tiny eel, study finds

Published On Mon Mar 5 2012

Video: Meet the Pikaia, humankind's earliest ancestor

The Pikaia, which lived 500 million years ago, looked like a tiny eel with no eyes, two tentacles sprouting from its bi-lobed head with a backbone and a dorsal fin. And it might be humankind's earliest ancestor.

Liam Casey - Staff Reporter

Humankind’s earliest ancestor was a bottom feeder with a primitive backbone — not unlike some who walk the earth today — that swam off Canada’s west coast more than 500 million years ago.

Researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Cambridge confirmed Pikaia gracilens had a notochord, a flexible rod that becomes part of the backbone found in today’s animal embryos.

The Pikaia is the most primitive animal with a backbone and, therefore, the common ancestor to all vertebrates. The findings were published in the British journal, Biological Reviews, on Monday.

Life on land was much different 500 million years ago. Plants wouldn’t appear for another 75 million years and dinosaurs didn’t stalk the earth for another 270 million years. But life at the bottom of the sea was similar to today’s tropical waters with sponge-like creatures, but without coral and anything with vertebrae.

Our earliest ancestor resembled a tiny eel, just 5 centimetres long, with two tentacles near its mouth, a dorsal fin and no eyes.

“We can now say with some certainty that Pikaia likely swam because of the presence of the dorsal fin and the muscles, known as myomeres, along its back,” said Simon Conway Morris, a University of Cambridge professor and lead author of the study.

The sea creature would have spent its time feeding on sediment near the sea floor while avoiding the top dog at the time, Anomalocaris canadensis, a metre-long beast with a double trunk that was part squid, part Star Wars character.

American paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott discovered Pikaia in 1911 in British Columbia’s famed Burgess Shale, but he thought it was more like today’s earthworms than an eel.

Scientists long suspected the Pikaia had a primitive backbone, but couldn’t prove it, until now. They found the bone using Jean-Bernard Caron’s advanced imaging techniques at the ROM.

They found the backbone in a location consistent with other early vertebrates. The older imaging techniques revealed what everyone thought was the backbone, even though it was the wrong size and in the wrong place. Now the researchers suspect that may be an organ used for storage. That, of course, requires further study.

“The Pikaia now fits into the tree of life even though it’s a weird animal,” Morris said, “But that’s what science is: progressive, surprising and delightful.”

Morris began working on the Pikaia in the 1970s while completing his PhD, but never finished. A few years ago, he reached out to the Royal Ontario Museum because, with 61 fossils, it is the largest Pikaia collection in the world. That collection, along with another from the Smithsonian Institute, gave the study the power of numbers, which is rare in evolutionary research.

Older fossils with a backbone have been found in China, but those species are much more evolved, and, therefore, considered younger than the Pikaia.

The Burgess Shale is the crown jewel for researchers studying evolution. That’s because ocean mudslides trapped animals off an underwater cliff. Due to complex chemistry, which scientists still don’t really understand, the mud preserved the fleshy parts of an animal.

The Pikaia couldn’t have been described in such detail under normal fossil conditions where only bone survives. Caron said he plans to study at the Burgess Shale, part of a UNESCO world heritage site in Yoho National Park that is about a two-hour drive west of Calgary.

“The Burgess Shale is iconic,” Morris said. “We are just scratching the surface, to use a geological pun.”

thestar.com



To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (22042)3/6/2012 11:12:52 AM
From: average joe  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 69300
 
Is There Evidence of Advanced Technology in Ancient Hopi Culture?
Posted on March 4, 2012 by Micah Hanks



Years ago, I recall doing an interview with a very skeptically-minded cosmologist, who on occasion would humor journalists by fielding questions about UFOs, most–if not all of which–he believed, could be explained away through the marvelous knowledge base of the modern sciences. When asked if he believed humankind had ever had interaction with advanced extraterrestrial intelligences, he replied, “I don’t think there’s any evidence of that sort of thing in recent times, although I wouldn’t be surprised at all if hadn’t likely happened in prehistoric times.”

I found this statement rather interesting, since it seemed to allude to the very same sort of sentiment expressed within the UFO circles: that mankind may have had “help” at various times along the way in our lineage of coming to hold the position of dominance among species here on Earth. It was particularly strange to hear it coming from this individual, however, since this position is often criticized heavily by the science-minded for doubting the ingenuity and natural prowess of mankind as a species, instead favoring the position that we could not have achieved what we have on our own.

Regardless of what position on the matter one may hold, it cannot be dismissed that a multitude of ancient sacred and religious texts from around the world can be interpreted as dealing with this approach: from the Sanskrit epics of ancient India, rife with their reports of flying “vimanas” and advanced sounding weapons, to similar rich traditions found amidst cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, there are many who claim that evidence of a far greater level of advancement existed on Earth thousands of years ago… the question, of course, has to do with whether such proposed advanced technologies were our own, or if they came from someplace else.

One of my colleagues, the blogger Red Pill Junkie of the Daily Grail, sent along a fascinating series of insights pertaining to a word called Patuwvotas, which among the Hopi Indians in North America means “flying shield” (and brings to mind references to other flying shields seen throughout history). According to Red Pill Junkie, Patuwvota is

…a Hopi word, and it means ‘flying shield’. The Hopi believe that Mankind has been destroyed 3 times. During the 3rd era, man turned his intelligence and creativity into making tools, and he devised the Patuwvotas to cross the heavens; he also made great cities and towers.

But men displeased the gods once again. They became arrogant and wicked, and used the Patuwvotas to make war with each other –sound familiar?– so Taiowa (the Sun god) decided to act: He spared the life of the last virtuous men by making them build boats, while waves as tall as mountains destroyed everything in their path.

This legend sounds remarkably similar to the stories of ancient civilizations such as those in the Sanskrit epics, that harnessed incredible weapons of mass destruction (including flying vimanas) to their advantage for warfare, but which may have eventually also led to their demise. In the Hopi legend, Sotuknang (the Creator god) spoke to the survivors:

“I have washed away even the footprints of your Emergence; the stepping-stones which I left for you. Down on the bottom of the seas lie all the proud cities, the flying patuwvotas [shields], and the worldly treasures corrupted with evil, and those people who found no time to sing the praises to the Creator from the tops of their hills. But the day will come, if you preserve the memory and the meaning of your Emergence, when these stepping-stones will emerge again to prove the truth you speak.”

As Red Pill Junkie put it cryptically, such stories were “intended to be a warning to the Western civilization, but alas, we decided not to pay attention… again.” He joked with me during a recent email exchange that, apparently, “the world will be destroyed… again.” But maybe this is exactly the case… I’ve penned a number of articles in the past that dealt with such topics myself, and the curious evidence of ancient nuclear events in man’s prehistory… is it possible at all, despite however incredible it may seem, that we once had incredibly advanced technology here on Earth, and that it’s proliferation may have led to the demise of some ancient culture that existed here long before us? Perhaps, strange though it sounds, this is indeed an alternative worthy of consideration.

But then there’s that heralded and almighty alien question that often gets associated with things… in other words, did visiting extraterrestrials come and make their presence known in our midst long ago, and help humans along after a fashion? This, of course, will be the subject of Intrepid Magazine’s Paradigm Symposium conference this October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. With any luck, perhaps the gathering of minds we’re hoping for at this event may be conducive to bringing us a bit closer to ultimate realization of the truth regarding our inconspicuous and enigmatic beginnings… to learn more about the event, follow this link to visit the Paradigm Symposium website.

Also, you may enjoy this interview I did with one of our speakers, Philip Coppens, author of the new book The Ancient Alien Question:

The Gralien Report Podcast featuring an interview with Philip Coppens (Click Here to Download)

Hopi “Kachina dolls” image by Grombo via Wikipedia.