The world"s earliest #Baboon was located in #MalapaCave -- and it"s the first of this kind of find - http://clapway.com/2015/08/23/earliest-baboon-specimen-found-in-malapa-cave-131/

In the years that the Malapa Cave has been producing archaeological finds for the scientific community, it has once again provided another fossil for scientists to ponder. News about the earliest baboon specimen that was found in Malapa Cave came to light on the 19th of August.

WHAT LIES IN THE MALAPA CAVE?

The press release on this discovery discusses that the fossil specimen was the earliest baboon species found to date. The earliest baboon specimen dated as far back as around two million years ago.

Previous finds within the Malapa Cave include the Australopithecus sediba which marked a new species of human ancestry. Although this new earliest baboon specimen does not contribute to what is known about the human ancestry and evolution, it marks another find in the cave’s book.

THE EARLIEST BABOON SPECIES

The earliest baboon fossil specimen was a partial cranium that was described in the paper released in the PLOS journal as the only non-hominin fossil to be recovered in the Malapa Cave location as of yet. But the finding of this fossil in a cave where only hominin fossils had been found previously is not much of a surprise to researchers of the study. One researcher noted that baboons and hominin species have co-existed at various points in history and are evident in several fossil finds in Africa.

This little interesting nugget contributes greatly to the overall baboon evolution in South Africa and helps science gauge when the modern baboon began to mark its appearance with a better timeline. Researchers also mentioned that the divergent of the baboons of the bygone era began to the modern baboons of today began around 1.8 to 2.2 million years ago, around the same time the new fossil was estimated to be.

Also, the paper also mentions that the earliest baboon specimen had some indications of similarities in the anatomy to the modern baboon. The find is also exceedingly fortunate as previous finds were brittle or heavily fragmented, preventing intense study on the fossils.

It is the hope of the researchers that future fossils of the earliest baboon specimen will be found.

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Earliest Baboon Specimen Found in Malapa Cave

6k Resolution Camera Will Let People Watch High Def Videos from the ISS - http://clapway.com/2015/07/28/6k-resolution-camera-will-let-people-watch-high-def-videos-from-the-iss123/

With our cultural reliance on technology, even the astronauts are now taking videos from the ISS to upload on YouTube. Now, a new 6k Resolution camera, which scientists are sending up to the space station, will make the videos from the ISS even more impressive.

The New Camera

The new camera that NASA scientists are sending up to the International Space Station, or ISS, will display in a much higher resolution than anything most people have ever seen before. The camera is called the Red Epic Dragon, and it can capture both still images and motion video in a 6k resolution.

If you don’t know very much about video display, ‘high definition’ is considered to be a pixel count of 1,920 x 1,080 on a consumer television. The Ultra HD 4k resolution has a pixel count of 3,840 x 2,160. 6k resolution, however, captures images at a resolution of 6,144 x 3,160 and at a framerate – or the number of still images in a single second of video – of 300 fps. This is a huge leap in technology and will lead to an ultra-enhanced clarity and all-around higher fidelity of video and still-image quality.

Getting Video from the ISS

NASA already takes videos from the ISS and puts them on YouTube. One of their YouTube Channels, ReelNASA, recently posted a group of videos from the ISS about astronauts floating about in zero gravity and experimenting on water. NASA wants people to be able to watch videos from the ISS and be interested in space and science. The videos will showcase various parts of the ISS, including inside and outside of the orbiting lab. By using the new camera, viewers will have a clearer image of what exactly is going on during investigations in space, which could ultimately assist in uncovering new discoveries. Spokespeople said that they will be posting videos from the ISS every few weeks for public

viewing on YouTube.

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6k Resolution Camera Will Let People Watch High Def Videos from the ISS

If you had the power to make one #unhealthy #snack a very #healthy #superfood, which would it be? - http://clapway.com/2015/07/20/bacon-seaweed-and-7-other-flavors-you-wish-were-healthy/

You have all heard about the magnificent discovery and future plans for bacon-flavored seaweed. Also known as dulse. If not, you should really check out this article. The flavor of bacon is making a comeback (though it never really left) and it’s packing a healthy punch. Bacon-flavored crackers and bacon-flavored salad dressing are just two of the goodies that have been created using a strain of dulse (the bacon seaweed) so far. As dulse makes it way to the American market, it makes you wonder what other healthy foods are out there, that have a naturally delicious flavor. Here are seven flavors you wish were innately healthy:

1. Pizza

Everyone loves pizza. It comes in so many different types of flavors, shapes, and sizes. It is made of different ingredients and most of them are not healthy at all. If you run into a “healthy” type of pizza, it probably doesn’t taste that great. While marine biologist are out finding bacon flavored seaweed, how about finding some pizza-flavored seaweed as well?

2. Hot Wings

I mean, since there is such a thing as bacon seaweed, there has to be hot wing flavored seaweed in the great big ocean. Right?

3. Oreo

Whether you call it cookies n’ cream or Oreo flavored, you know that both are great in pretty much everything. Milkshakes, frappuccinos, and cakes are the best when packed with Oreo flavor. And of course they are all super bad for you. I’ll just wait here patiently for there to be a new superfood that naturally tastes like Oreos.

4. Caramel

Just thinking about the delicious melt-in-your-mouth taste of caramel, makes me want to go and buy a big bag of caramel candy. If bacon seaweed is possible, anything is possible.

5. Butterscotch

You can say this is similar to caramel, but it’s not. Different taste but same unhealthy benefits. Someday, researchers will stumble upon butterscotch flavored turmeric. Turmeric has powerful anti-inflammatory properties that would decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes.

6. Ranch

I have friends that put ranch on everything. They put it on pizza, steak, and burgers. I cringe when I see them ruin their food that way. I bet they would love it if a ranch-flavored health food was unearthed.

7. S’mores

I recently tried Starbucks’ s’mores flavored frappuccino, and I have to say that I had to try my hardest to not get one more than once a day. But if it were created with a naturally s’mores flavored superfood, like kale, maybe I wouldn’t object to drinking more than one a day.

Bacon seaweed is great and all, but there are so many other flavors that I wish were innately found in some of our healthiest foods. What are some flavors you wish were healthy?

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Bacon Seaweed and 7 Other Flavors You Wish Were Healthy

New Horizons Finds That Pluto Has a Tail - http://clapway.com/2015/07/18/new-horizons-finds-that-pluto-has-a-tail426/

Recent new horizons images uncover never before seen features

Recent news about Pluto discoveries lit up the space science world as the New Horizons spacecraft approached Pluto. All the anticipation for the spacecraft reaching the dwarf planet reached a fever pitch until the first pictures taken by the New Horizons probe began to be transmitted. The new pictures were higher resolution than previous ones, so they allowed new features to be uncovered about what had once been the 9th planet in our solar system.

What’s new about pluto

The newer, higher quality pictures are to thank for recent discoveries. Everyone expected the newer technology to pay dividends, and it did. The announcement came from NASA yesterday in a press release.

The press release describes this strange find as actually being made of up ionized gas trailing thousands of miles behind Pluto, like a tail. But the exception was that this wasn’t any random trail. This trial was the atmosphere of Pluto being blown away by solar wind.

All the atmosphere that was being blown away escaped as well, and this isn’t a unique occurrence. Other instances of this atmosphere doing such a thing is seen on Venus and Mars.

A planet’s atmosphere blowing away isn’t something you see every day

Because of its small size in comparison to Earth, the atmosphere of the dwarf planet escaping gravitational pull is not surprising. Data from the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument tells scientists that the find was witnessed due to a slump of nitrogen ions. This is the tail, as mentioned before, that forms plasma. As of yet, the spacecraft hasn’t sent any information giving some indication of how far this tail trails.

NASA scientists await more information from the spacecraft to arrive. The cool thing is that the spacecraft actually got to fly through the trail in its orbit around Pluto. Not many can say they have flown through the gas tail of a distant mass in space.

Other information is pending as well that may have answers to how the tail was formed and the shape of it. But all hinges on the New Horizons sending more data back.

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New Horizons Finds That Pluto Has a Tail

A New Raptor Fossil Discovered in China - http://clapway.com/2015/07/16/a-new-raptor-fossil-discovered-in-china567/

You know how the new Jurassic World film was pretty much all about the raptors in the movie? What’s not to like? They’re pretty charismatic on screen, and Blue had some awesome coloration.

Chinese raptor fossil found in Liaoning Province

Well, if you like dinosaurs, be prepared to become stoked about a real one; this new find in China of a raptor has been named the Zhenyuanlong suni. This type of raptor lived around 125 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous era.

The fossil was unearthed in the Liaoning Province, by a man named Sun Zhenyuan, who helped to get the fossil to the researchers for study. This is why fossil was named after him.

What do we know about the new raptor fossil thus far?

The research conducted on the fossil was made available today in Scientific Reports. The report was filed last year in November before it was accepted in April, then published today. There are two authors on this study; Junchang Lü and Stephen L. Brusatte.

Like many of the dinosaur fossils found in this region, this raptor is the relative of the Velociraptor we all have come to know from the Jurassic Park franchise. But it is also a feathered one as well, evident by the fossilized feathers, and research suggest it is closely related to birds given the anatomy structure of the fossil. The fossil is almost a full body skeleton.

raptor had wings?

The raptor fossil shows that it has probably around the height of a human and short appendages that looked like wings but probably couldn’t fly. There has been some joking or commentary that it basically looks like a human sized chicken or turkey, which is slightly scary if you have ever had to deal with aggressive poultry before.

One of the authors thought it was interesting to see the raptor fossil have winglike appendages without the actual intent of flying. The question then became why this dinosaur has wings, why has it evolved to have these in the first place. Other questions such as what its behavioral characteristics were begin to come to mind as well.

Only further research can be done to find out more about the fossil. That, and finding more similar fossils for further study.

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A New Raptor Fossil Discovered in China

New Butterfly Species Found in India - http://clapway.com/2015/07/12/new-butterfly-species-found-in-india432/

Perhaps one’s first images of India is exotic-tasting food, or those fond childhood memories of parents The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling aloud. By habit, we form associations to the exotic place, and one that most zoologists immediately form to India is the staggering amount of biodiversity.

New butterfly species is found

Recently,news has been circulating about a new butterfly species being found in the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. The find was released in the Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera back in June in the forty-eighth volume.

The new butterfly species has been given the scientific name Hypolycaena. It is otherwise known as the Banded Tit butterfly. The butterfly’s existence on paper was documented and sent in around April to the journal but wasn’t accepted until the first of June then printed on the 23rd.

The official announcement of the new butterfly species was released by Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Dr. Yogesh. Dr. Yogesh has research experience of 28 years in microbial ecology, molecular taxonomy, and biology. He has contributed to science journals with his research numerous times over his career.

What does the finding mean for the region?

Dr. Yogesh commented on the discovery of this new butterfly species by saying that this latest species finding emphasizes just how unique the diversity of animal species, is in this region. At the moment, there is not much known about the species apart from initial impressions and categorizations.

The uniqueness of the new butterfly species

This butterfly is a fascinating find because of its life cycle, in that the mature butterflies only live for two weeks in March every year and are speculated to spend the rest of the year inactive as pupae or larvae. The infancy stages are still unknown and not much study has been done but the food reliance is on bird droppings by streams.

Because of the lack of sufficient in-depth research, much about the butterfly is not known including behavior and environment and other such things. To put things into perspective, it was only a few years ago that another different butterfly species was discovered in the region called the Bright-eyed Argus. So, there is much that still isn’t known about many species, and still others be waiting to be discovered.

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New Butterfly Species Found in India

Moroccan Desert Yields 400 Million-Year-Old Sea Creatures" Fossils - http://clapway.com/2015/07/12/moroccan-desert-yields-400-million-year-old-sea-creature-fossils679/

The sea creatures of olden days

It was during the Ordovician period that it was a rich time for Earth’s marine life, as it was teeming with sea creatures. All sorts of species swam the ocean depths until 400 million years later they were encased in Ordovician rocks, preserved, for scientists to find in the Moroccan desert.

Fossils of sea creatures add to recent flurry of prehistoric fossils

There have been a great many finds lately in the paleontology world, such as the worm with armor, or the arthropod that was recently found. This cluster of fossils will add to science’s growing catalogue of prehistoric species, and bolster our understanding of how early life adapted and evolved on our planet.

The fossils were found by fossil collector Mohamed Ben Moula at the Fezouata Biota in 2000. This area is known to have fossilized remains for more than fifty years, but it was only he that found a fossil with soft tissue, which is rare to find.

Sea creatures’ fossils are game-changing

When fossils are found, it’s a given that they sometimes cause us to reevaluate what we know about the prehistoric era that formed our planet as it is today. However, these have caused quite a stir in the science community because of how rare it is to find fossils from this very early period. Due to the environment of the time, fossilization wasn’t optimal at that time.

Yale professor Van Roy was shown the site by Ben Moula, and he collected a few specimens himself. He saw a variety of species from within the Ordovician period, some of which included fossils of known sea creatures, such as a horseshoe crab dated older than previously known. All of this data only serves to show that it’s very likely the species evolved earlier than we previously thought.

A lot of the research in this area was conducted by Van Roy and his team. They have other research on this particular era that can be found, such as their work on the faunas that was published in 2010.

It’s clear to all that this Ordovician period evidence is of great interest to this group of individuals, especially this Moroccan terrain where so many fossils of the period have begun to unveil themselves. Only time will tell what else the desert shows scientists about the sea from days so long ago.

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Moroccan Desert Yields 400 Million-Year-Old Sea Creatures" Fossils

Five Star System Is Not a Pun, but a Reality - http://clapway.com/2015/07/09/five-star-system-is-not-a-pun-but-a-reality654/

A New Star System Discovered

Yes, a new star system with five stars was found in by astronomers at the Open University in the UK. No, it is not a pun on the phrase “five-star.” There actually is a star systems with five suns around a huge center of gravity out there, and we’ve recently discovered it.

A Brief description of the five star system

The five star system, or a quintuple star system if you want to avoid confusion, was presented in Llandudno, Wales, at a National Astronomy Meeting at Veneu Crymru. The press release for this conference, which officially let the science community know about the amazing find among other great research, can be found here.

What’s even cooler about this five star system is that the stars are not all that is unique about the system. It is the fact that it has two binary stars that eclipse every now and then. If you thought one eclipse was cool, what about a double?

All experts agree, and even the layman can as well, that finding a five star system that is connected together as this one is, or even just a five star system alone, is extremely rare, not to mention extremely lucky.

Who found it?

Astronomers with the SuperWasp program, which has been successful in finding exoplanets over the years since it was started in 2003, found some additional eclipses one day in the light curve it was studying. The rest is history. The five star system is about 250 light years away from the constellation Ursa Major.

But any planets circling the stars wouldn’t sleep much

Why is that? Because there would be nothing but daylight most of the year, or the time it takes to complete one full cycle around the stars. There is some night, but that is for a very short time in comparison.

Many are excited by this new scientific find and await to see what further studies tell us. By studying this system, we can better understand how other systems like it get created in the variety of ways they do, and maybe even more about our origins.

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Five Star System Is Not a Pun, but a Reality

Understanding Our Ice Age Friend, the Woolly Mammoth - http://clapway.com/2015/07/03/understanding-our-woolly-friend-the-mammoth765/

Finding out something new

If you have every wanted to know more the Woolly Mammoth but could never find any new developments in their study, here’s your chance. A research study was published just yesterday featuring our woolly friend, with new findings about its DNA structure and how it was adapted to its arctic conditions in the Ice Age. The study was published with cell.com in more scientific detail, and elaborates on the differences between the elephants that live today and the ones of yesterday.

It comes as no surprise that there was some huge reconfigurations of the DNA of the Woolly Mammoth that allowed it to live in such harsh frigid conditions. However, the study went in-depth to discover the differences and found the unique changes to be fascinating.

Genetic changes to the Woolly Mammoth

In short, the changes in the DNA that differed from the elephant creatures of today allowed for physical changes to occur in order for it to survive the cold. Basically, the gene TRPV3 helped to create the Wooly as we know it today and is extremely sensitive to change.

One researcher, Vince Lynch PhD, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, said in a news release, “This is by far the most comprehensive study to look at the genetic changes that make a Woolly Mammoth a woolly Mammoth. They are an excellent model to understand how morphological evolution works, because mammoths are so closely related to living elephants, which have none of the traits they had.”

Lynch’s research focus at the university focuses itself on that premise of morphology in terms of evolution on the genetics level and how at the molecular level, genetics can be very influential towards that morphology, as well as other interesting focuses.

Before this study, all efforts to sequence mammoth DNA were failures

However, this team of researchers found a backdoor so to speak, in that in that they sequenced not only mammoth genes but also the genes of the Asian elephant. After that, the comparisons began. Most changes in the genes dealt with fat metabolism and other such things to help brave the cold.

These genes could ostensibly be used to bring back the wooly mammoth. But that is likely a terrible idea, and sure to spark parallels to Jurassic Park. Suffice to say, the animal wouldn’t survive in conditions present today as it did then, due to the huge change in environment.

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Understanding Our Ice Age Friend, the Woolly Mammoth

Scientists Discover New Coral Species That Lives 4000 Years - http://clapway.com/2015/07/01/scientists-discover-oldest-coral-species-that-lives-4000-years457/

Newly discovered Hawaiian coral species can live up to 4,000 years!

Recently, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural have discovered a new coral species in Hawaii. The species is a milestone discovery for one remarkable reason. Like with its ground-based alternative, trees, the measurement of age is based on the number of rings in the coral. The new species is the longest living marine creature that is known to science so far based on radiocarbon measurements on the growth rings- four thousand years.

The discovery hit the Hawaiian news yesterday afternoon

The species is known now as the Leiopathes annosa. The Latin name refers to the species’ longevity. The coral is found in the ocean depths of one thousand to one thousand six hundred feet in the Hawaiian Island area, the area of Papahanaumokuakea included.

The various depths of the world’s oceans are still quite unknown to us

This sentiment is shared by all who study these underground terrains, most especially when they continue to find new specimens unknown to science to log into the books. It also shows how much we have yet to understand about the environments in which we find these new species as well.

According to the news story, the new coral species was incorrectly identified as one that exists in the Mediterranean Sea, but upon further inspection the consensus was that it was unique. Researchers after the initial impressions were done with could see that this new coral species was different in its morphology in the comparisons of Hawaiian and Mediterranean specimens.

Want more info about the new coral species?

For more in-depth detail about the specimen, you can read it here in the ZOOTAXA article.

The specimens of the new coral species were collected by the Hawaii Undersea Research Lab for study then given to the National Musuem of Natural History in D.C and to the Bishop Musuem in Honolulu for further studies whenever feasible. Time will tell what further information can be revealed from this new coral species and also the underwater environment that houses the species.

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Scientists Discover New Coral Species That Lives 4000 Years