Genetic Study Finds Treasure Trove Of New Lizards

New species of gecko that was once thought to be Diplodactylus tessellatus.

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University of Adelaide research has discovered that there are many more species of Australian lizards than previously thought, raising new questions about conservation and management of Australia's native reptiles.
PhD student Paul Oliver, from the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has done a detailed genetic study of the Australian gecko genus Diplodactylus and found more than twice the recognised number of gecko species, from 13 species to 29. This study was done in collaboration with the South Australian Museum and Western Australian Museum.

"Many of these species are externally very similar, leading to previous severe underestimation of true species diversity," says Mr Oliver.
"One of the major problems for biodiversity conservation and management is that many species remain undocumented.
"This problem is widely acknowledged to be dire among invertebrates and in developing countries.
"But in this group of vertebrates in a developed nation, which we thought we knew reasonably well, we found more than half the species were unrecognised."
Mr Oliver says this has great significance for conservation. For instance, what was thought to be a single very widespread species of gecko has turned out to be eight or nine separate species with much narrower, more restricted habitats and possibly much more vulnerable to environmental change, he says.
"This completely changes how we look at conservation management of these species," he says.
"Even at just the basic inventory level, this shows that there is a lot of work still to be done. Vertebrate taxonomy clearly remains far from complete with many species still to be discovered. This will require detailed genetic and morphological work, using integrated data from multiple sources. It will require considerable effort and expense but with potentially rich returns."
The research was supported by grants from the Australia Pacific Science Foundation and the Australian Biological Resources Study.
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Adapted from materials provided by University of Adelaide.

Dramatic Rise In Sea Level And Its Broad Ramifications Uncovered

Horseshoe Bay and beach on the island of Bermuda.

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Scientists have found proof in Bermuda that the planet’s sea level was once more than 21 meters (70 feet) higher about 400,000 years ago than it is now.

Storrs Olson, research zoologist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and geologist Paul Hearty of the Bald Head Island Conservancy discovered sedimentary and fossil evidence in the walls of a limestone quarry in Bermuda that documents a rise in sea level during an interglacial period of the Middle Pleistocene in excess of 21 meters above its current level. Hearty and colleagues had published preliminary evidence of such a sea-level rise nearly a decade ago, which was met with skepticism among geologists. This marine fossil evidence now provides unequivocal evidence of the timing and extent of this event.

The nature of the sediments and fossil accumulation found by Olson and Hearty was not compatible with the deposits left by a tsunami but rather with the gradual, yet relatively rapid, increase in the volume of the planet’s ocean caused by melting ice sheets.
A rise in sea level to such a height would have ramifications well beyond geology and climate modeling. For the organisms of coastal areas, and particularly for low islands and archipelagos, such a rise would have been catastrophic. The Florida peninsula, for example, would have been reduced to a relatively small archipelago along the higher parts of its central ridge.
“We have only to look at Bermuda to begin to assess the impact for terrestrial organisms or seabirds dependant on dry land for nesting sites,” said Olson. “This group of islands in the Atlantic was so compromised as a nesting site for seabirds that at least one species of shearwater became extinct as well as the short-tailed albatross, marking the end of all resident albatrosses in the North Atlantic.”
Determining the timing and extent of this global rise in sea level is not only important for interpreting the influence that it may have had on biogeographical patterns and extinctions of organisms on islands and low-lying continental coastal areas, it is also critical for anticipating the possible effects of future climate change. This particular interglacial period is considered by some scientists to be a suitable comparison to our current interglacial period. With future carbon dioxide levels possibly rising higher than any time in the past million years, it is important to consider the potential effects on polar ice sheets.
Biogeographers, conservationists and many others in the biological sciences must take these findings into consideration, Olson urged. “These findings are incredibly important and have major relevance because of their potential predictive value since this sea-level rise took place during the interglacial period most similar to the present one now in progress. It thus becomes essential that the full extent and duration of this event be more widely recognized and acknowledged.”
These findings were published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Feb. 4.
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Adapted from materials provided by Smithsonian.

Ancient fossil find: This snake could eat a cow!

A handout photo released by Nature magazine shows a Precloacal vertebra of an adult Green Anaconda

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It is the modern parental dilemma: at what age should you let your child have his or her first mobil
NEW YORK – Never mind the 40-foot snake that menaced Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie "Anaconda." Not even Hollywood could match a new discovery from the ancient world. Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.
"This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.
"It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately."
"If it tried to enter my office to eat me, it would have a hard time squeezing through the door," reckoned paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga.
Actually, the beast probably munched on ancient relatives of crocodiles in its rainforest home some 58 million to 60 million years ago, he said.
Head is senior author of a report on the find in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
(The same issue carries another significant report from the distant past. Scientists said they'd found the oldest known evidence of animal life, remnants of steroids produced by sponges more than 635 million years ago in Oman.)
The discoverers of the snake named it Titanoboa cerrejonensis ("ty-TAN-o-BO-ah sare-ah-HONE-en-siss"). That means "titanic boa from Cerrejon," the region where it was found.
While related to modern boa constrictors, it behaved more like an anaconda and spent almost all its time in the water, Head said. It could slither on land as well as swim.
Conrad, who wasn't involved in the discovery, called the find "just unbelievable.... It mocks your preconceptions about how big a snake can get."
Titanoboa breaks the record for snake length by about 11 feet, surpassing a creature that lived about 40 million years ago in Egypt, Head said. Among living snake species, the record holder is an individual python measured at about 30 feet long, which is some 12 to 15 feet shorter than typical Titanoboas, said study co-author Jonathan Bloch.
The beast was revealed in early 2007 at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Bones collected at a huge open-pit coal mine in Colombia were being unpacked, said Bloch, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology.
Graduate students unwrapping the fossils "realized they were looking at the bones of a snake. Not only a snake, but a really big snake."
So they quickly consulted the skeleton of a 17-foot anaconda for comparison. A backbone from that creature is about the size of a silver dollar, Bloch said, while a backbone from Titanoboa is "the size of a large Florida grapefruit."
So far the scientists have found about 180 fossils of backbone and ribs that came from about two dozen individual snakes, and now they hope to go back to Colombia to find parts of the skull, Bloch said.
Titanoboa's size gives clues about its environment. A snake's size is related to how warm its environment is. The fossils suggest equatorial temperatures in its day were significantly warmer than they are now, during a time when the world as a whole was warmer. So equatorial temperatures apparently rose along with the global levels, in contrast to the competing hypothesis that they would not go up much, Head noted.
"It's a leap" to apply the conditions of the past to modern climate change, Head said. But given that, the finding still has "some potentially scary implications for what we're doing to the climate today," he said.
The finding suggest the equatorial regions will warm up along with the planet, he said.
"We won't have giant snakes, however, because we are removing most of their habitats by development and deforestation" in equatorial regions, he said.

Unique Archaeological Discovery In Balkan: World’s First Illyrian Trading Post Found

"The archaeologists found many artifacts including more than 30 Illyrian boats, fully-laden with Roman amphorae. One of the big questions is why none of the wine amphorae are whole. They are all in fragments."

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There is jubilation at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo i Norway. Marina Prusac, Associate Professor in the department of archaeology, has just returned home after conducting excavations in the border area between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the course of several weeks of intense digging this autumn, her archaeological team found the very first traces of an Illyrian trading post that is more han two thousand years old. The Illyrians were an ancient people who lived by hunting, fishing and agriculture. They were known as warriors and pirates. Not only did they fight Greek colonists and Roman occupants, the various tribes also feuded among themselves. However, the archaeological finds show that the Illyrians also had peaceful trade connections with the Romans.
“The find is unique in a European perspective. We have concluded that Desilo, was the place is called, was an important trading post of great significance for contact between the Illyrians and the Romans,” Marina Prusac tells the research magazine Apollon at University of Oslo. Surprisingly large finds have been made in a short period of time. The archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a settlement, the remains of a harbour that probably functioned as a trading post, as well as many sunken boats, fully-laden with wine pitchers – so-called amphorae – from the first century B.C.
The archaeologist Adam Lindhagen, who has a PhD from the University of Lund and has specialised in Roman wine amphorae, says that this is the most important find of all time from the Illyrian areas.
“There is much to suggest that far more is hidden in the mud. We’ve only scraped the surface so far,” he points out.


Pirate theory
It all started in spring 2007 when Professor Snjezana Vasilj of the University of Mostar found 16 Illyrian boats in Desilo, fully-laden with Roman wine amphorae. The find was speedily interpreted as proof that the Illyrians were pirates and that the ships had been sunk by the Romans. Although the pirate theory received considerable attention from the press in many parts of Europe, Marina Prusac and Adam Lindhagen did not believe this interpretation. “There certainly were pirate activities along the coast, but we thought it rather odd that the pirates were so far inland and so near the important Roman colony of Narona. In our opinion Desilo might have been a trading centre”. Desilo is located 20 kilometres from the coast on an alluvial plain by the River Neretva. The river is the only traffic artery along the entire Croatian coast that runs into the Balkan mountains. It is broad and free-flowing for the first 30 kilometres or so, after which its course becomes narrow. Near Desilo there are also ancient traffic arteries on land in the direction of both Narona, which was first a Greek trading post and then a Roman colony, and the Illyrian settlement of “Daorson” – the present-day Osanic.“Desilo is situated at the innermost point of a quiet bay where it was natural to transfer goods to smaller boats, so the place is perfect for an inner trading harbour. We knew that if we found a harbour it would represent a rare example of a meeting point in this impenetrable landscape. And we found it!” a delighted Ms Prusac tells us.

The harbour
Over the past two thousand years the river has repeatedly changed its bed in the delta. The archaeologists found the remains of the Illyrian trading post under several metres of mud and ooze when the land-owner put his excavator at their disposal. It appears that parts of the wall that stuck up from the mud by the water’s edge may have functioned as one of the many quays at the trading post. The wall is 20 metres long and 60 centimetres wide, and is built as a polygonal structure. “The wall was solid and stable. The other side was not so well constructed and most likely functioned as a dam. There were a number of mooring holes placed at the same height on the wall, almost like a horizontal band”. And as if this was not enough, the archaeologists from the University of Oslo also discovered that there were at least twice as many boats as those that had already been registered. The boats, which the Romans called Lembi, were well known for their fast manoeuvrability. The many pieces of pottery found indicate that this was a major trading post. And last but not least: about a hundred metres from the harbour site they found an Illyrian settlement. Moreover, in collaboration with the land-owner and along with master’s degree student Jo-Simon Frøshaug Stokke, the recently graduated archaeologists Lene Os Johannessen and Ole Christian Aslaksen discovered terrace formations in the mountainside. “This find can only be interpreted as indicating the presence of a settlement that presumably existed for several hundred years or even longer before the trade between the Illyrians and the Romans started”. Some graves – older than the other finds – were previously discovered close to the settlement. A number of individual finds have also been made in the area: anchor parts, lance tips and fibula, and metal buckles for fastening clothes. “Thanks to the clay and the fresh water the objects are surprisingly well preserved. Salt water would have destroyed the wood”.

Wine
On the sea bed, together with the boats, archaeologists from Moster found hundreds of pieces of wine amphorae and as many as 700 lids from these pitchers. “Imports from the Roman colony Narona must therefore have been far more extensive than we previously thought,” Adam Lindhagen points out.
He has analyzed the pottery to find out where the amphorae came from. He can now say that they were exclusively produced along the Dalmatian coast – from where wine was exported to the entire Roman Empire.
“In exchange for wine the Romans may have bought salt, metal, leather and slaves. The price could have been the same as in the north. According to Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.), the Gauls were happy to swap a slave for a 25-litre amphora of wine”. While Professor Vasilj was of the view that all the boats were sunk at the same time in a Roman campaign against Illyrian pirates, the Norwegian archaeologists have found indications that the boats were sunk over a period of almost a hundred years. Their evidence is based on the dating of the wine amphorae.

Ritual
One of the big questions is why none of the amphorae are whole. They are all in fragments. “We don’t know why the boats were sunk and the pitchers destroyed. It’s absurd to think that the Romans sank almost a thousand amphorae containing their own wine. The amphorae may have been dumped when they’d been emptied. But animal bones, horse teeth, Illyrian pottery and weapons like axes and spear tips have also been found in the sea. So it’s possible that they made ritual offerings to the sea – a well-known phenomenon in Scandinavia during the Iron Age. If we can confirm that this is the case, then this is the first example we have heard of from the Illyrian area.”

Cultural identity
Archaeological research on the Illyrians was used politically as the culture-historical glue of the various groups in the former Yugoslavia. Today the focus is more on the differences between the Illyrian peoples. “The neutral term ‘Illyrian’ was applied to all ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia. The Illyrians have been described as warriors, and little focus has been placed on peaceful connections between the Illyrians and the Romans. So it’s important to be able to reveal peaceful relations and to show that the Illyrians had come a long way in their cultural contact with other nations, at the same time as there were great differences between the Illyrian tribes. Our discovery is therefore important for understanding cultural identities in the Balkans in ancient times,” Marina Prusac tells us.

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Adapted from materials provided by University of Oslo.