Showing posts with label Otzi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Otzi. Show all posts

Tuesday 1 April 2014

Dino wars: is that dinosaur Kiwi or Aussie?

It's a cheap piece of rhetoric to invoke the long-running if affectionate New Zealand-Australian rivalry, but what with the current campaign to redesign the New Zealand flag in order to differentiate it more its trans-Tasman neighbour, I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss a science-themed story along these lines. In fact, the account bears some resemblance to the years spent arguing over Otzi, the Copper Age man found preserved in ice on the Austrian-Italian border. Although in this case, the focus of the disagreement isn't as clear-cut, since it concerns ancient remains found in both nations.

Even for a country with a population under five million, New Zealand has a seemingly minimal number of professional palaeontologists. That is, until you consider that the lack of industry application for the discipline's findings means its pretty good that there are any practitioners whatsoever. Numbers vary, but figures I have seen for the past few decades vary from less than a dozen to thirty or so professionals, most working for universities or state bodies. By comparison France, with twice the geographic area of New Zealand, has around one hundred professionals.

It isn't just the current financial crisis that has caused problems for would-be kiwi fossil hunters: funding has been steadily decreasing for the past half century and the emphasis shifted towards environmental research. This latter focuses on exploring the (very) long term changes that have affected not just the landmass as it is today but the largely submerged (90% or so) continent of Zealandia. This is of course extremely timely but it does enhance the idea that without much in the way of obvious practical returns, New Zealand palaeontology could dwindle to almost nothing. As it is, the country doesn't have a specialist palaeontological journal or even a dedicated palaeontological society.

The funding issue is claimed to be responsible for the loss of basic knowledge within the discipline, leading to problems such as taxonomic confusion and a backlog for formal descriptions, perhaps numbering some thousands of species, that are new to science. Of course New Zealand's distance from other nations doesn't help either, since the internet has frequently to be relied upon in lieu of direct representation at international conferences and the like. Therefore perhaps it's not surprising that there are only a couple of professional palaeontologists (part-time, at that) working on Mesozoic flora and fauna, including that much-loved clade, dinosaurs.

Luckily, this lack of professional numbers is partially redressed by dedicated amateurs, some of whom have played a pivotal role in dinosaur discoveries. The most famous is the late Joan Wiffen, who discovered New Zealand's first dinosaur fossils in 1974 after experts had proclaimed it unlikely any would be found (on the basis of the geological history of the current above sea-level land masses). I'm all for amateur fossicking and Joan Wiffen's four decades of dedication is an example to us all.

The heart of this piece concerns the discovery of the ninth dinosaur species found in New Zealand and serves as an instructive example of scientists at work knee-deep in messy reality rather than the unreachable ideal. One specimen that you won't find on FRED - the 95,000+ localities' Fossil Record Electronic Database - is the young theropod (carnivorous dinosaur) discovered in 2008 in New Zealand's dinosaur heartland, the Mangahouanga Stream between Taupo and Hawke's Bay. The specimen is only about forty centimetres long and is largely intact: a fully articulated skeleton only lacking a toe and a few tail end vertebrae. After 18 months careful preparation the reptile was in a suitable condition for high-level analysis, having - due to lack of budget - only received cursory examination during the removal of the overlying matrix. Having assessed the deposition layer as mid-Cretaceous the next obvious question was presumably which species did it belong to?

The most likely candidate for a species already scientifically described is the 5-6 metre gracile carnivore Australovenator wintonensis, which is known from fragmentary remains in central Queensland. At less than half a metre long, the New Zealand find would have to be a very young individual, which was the original opinion of the preparators. But the brief analysis of a visiting British palaeontologist put this into question, for although the upper jaw is missing from the adult Australovenator specimen, enough was present to suggest that the New Zealand skull is both too deep and too robust to be the same species. In addition, the kiwi remains has forearms that appear too long when compared to Australovenator, even accounting for variation in growth between youngster and adult.

Then in late 2009 the Australian Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published an article claiming the New Zealand specimen was just an infant Australovenator. At this point patriotism started to kick in. Even though 'Australo' only means 'south' the word is close enough to the name of the larger nation to provoke the kiwi fossil community into a counter attack. A core group of Hawke's Bay-based amateur fossil hunters nicknamed the little dinosaur 'Hillaryonyx' (named after Everest pioneer Sir Edmund, of course) and the scene was set for a brontosaurus-sized brouhaha.

Although largely powerless, the passion of the non-professional fossicking community should not be underestimated. Everything that could be done to raise funding for a full analysis of the young reptile was undertaken: web articles were written, t-shirts were printed, even lyrics for a song called 'He's ours' (to the tune of the folk song 'No Moa!') On the basis of this, questions were asked in New Zealand parliament and as a result, and a bit of a whipround by some of the universities, money was found for eight months of part-time analysis by two palaeontologists with some experience on Mesozoic vertebrates. As mentioned previously, the reduction in funding for the discipline meant that there wasn't - and still isn't - a single full-time professional scientist dedicated to the era.

Once the analysis was complete the intention was to have a monograph published by GNS Science, a government-owned research institute, prior to public exhibition of the fossil. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until several visiting Australian palaeontologists asked to see the prepared slab. They were at first stalled, and then later denied access, even to just photographs of the bones. Several arbitrary reasons were given, but the most likely motive for this behaviour was that the kiwi scientists were still assessing the species of the dinosaur. Which, given the loss of taxonomic knowledge mentioned above, was a tricky business if restricted to just New Zealand scientists. So much so, that it took the next two and a half years before anything further was heard.

The latest New Zealand dinosaur fossil

It's not known who was allowed to examine the fossil during this time but by late 2013 rumours surfaced that the dinosaur had been finally identified as a species new to science. A badly scanned interim report was leaked, containing several figures of the prepared fossil, included the photograph above. More significantly, the report listed eleven points of fundamental anatomical disparity with Australovenator, which have since proved enough to convince the majority of naysayers. The few who are still doubtful are all, needless to mention - but I will anyway - Australian. Until the beginning of this year it seemed the specimen would remain in limbo, but someone, somewhere, perhaps a leading university figure or government official, has pulled their finger out and New Zealand's latest endemic dinosaur species may soon be appearing in the records of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).

So not exactly an ideal way to pursue science by any stretch of the imagination. But the story is proof that cuts in funding can cause all sorts of problems for science in the long-term, even if the matter appears trivial to the layman.

Oh, and as for the official name for the creature: Stultusaurus aprillis. How appropriate!

Monday 27 August 2012

Ancestral claims: why has there been comparatively little research into human origins?

It has been said that we live in a golden age of dinosaur discoveries: from Liaoning Province in China to the Dakota Badlands, new species are being named on an almost monthly basis. But if there is a plethora of dinosaur palaeontologists why has there seemingly been so few scientists studying the origin of Homo sapiens? Surely deciphering the ancestry of mankind is one of the great challenges?

The image of hominins has certainly evolved over the past thirty years, even the naming changing in scientific circles (from the broader term hominid), although as the title of the 2003 BBC series' Walking With Cavemen showed, popular perception has been slow to adopt new research. As a child, I had an early 1970s plastic model kit of a Neanderthal Man. I seem to recall it bore more than a passing resemblance to the Morlocks from the 1960 film adaptation of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, a far cry from the individuals portrayed in Walking With Cavemen and other, more recent, series. Yet this idea of a shambling, zombie-like creature is still to some extent prevalent. Why should this be, when there is now evidence for Neanderthal ritual and art? Are we simply afraid of finding yet more nails in the coffin of human uniqueness (apologies for the rusty metaphor)?

There are still clear elements of taboo to the subject: the humbling  notion of humans being but a 'monkey shaved' was also felt by early evolutionists, with even natural selection co-founder Alfred Russel Wallace believing humanity the product of divine fiat. Perhaps a sense of embarrassment (try watching zoo visitors as they observe apes) combined with Western religious thought has prevented the discipline becoming popular in the way the love of all things dinosaur has skyrocketed since the 1970s.

Then again, it still seems that people misunderstand evolution via natural selection, considering progress as via ladders rather than differentiating bushes. The 2004 discovery of yet another new hominin species, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, led the Christian Science Monitor to describe it as that hoary old misnomer the 'missing link'. This is despite three decades of popularising by the likes of Dawkins, Fortey, Jay Gould, etal, to dispel the notion. You only have to read archaeologist (note: not palaeontologist) Mark Roberts’ account of the seemingly shoestring Homo heidelbergensis excavations at Boxgrove in England to realise that hominin research has been attracting about one per cent of the news (and a zillionth of the funds) directed towards cutting-edge particle physics.

A primary cause for the dearth of public knowledge can be put down to the actual lack of direct fossil evidence. Although Neanderthal remains were the first actually recognised as belonging to a human ancestor, it took several decades after the initial 1829 discovery before the identification was scientifically confirmed. Into the Twentieth Century the lack of finds allowed such embarrassments as the poor-quality Piltdown fake to be taken at face value. It is easy to see at least one key reason why this should be: human ancestry carries so much emotional baggage that it took over forty years before British scientists saw the obvious, instead of following the patriotism and jingoism inspired by the finds.

As it is, the history of hominin palaeontology has been riddled with contention, serendipity, unfortunate accidents and amateur bungling. If anyone wants to disprove the myth of science as a sterile, laboratory-conditioned activity, this sphere provides key evidence par excellence (good to get a rhythm going). From Eugene Dubois hiding his Java Man (Homo erectus) remains for several decades early in the Twentieth Century to the disappearance of Peking Man (also Homo erectus) fossils during the Second World War - not to mention the grinding up of yet more erectus bones for Chinese traditional medicine - the fate of finds is enough to make a dedicated specialist weep.

In addition, the fact that humans and their ancestors primarily evolved in what are today remote African locations with limited infrastructure can only exacerbate the situation. The work can be tedious, physically arduous and rewards few and far between. Yet fossil remains are the backbone of the discipline (almost a pun there, if you really look for it). After all, an increase in the number of finds can also lead to a paradigm shift in understanding: in the last few years it has been possible to undermine the opinion given on the BBC documentary The making of Walking with Dinosaurs, first broadcast back in 2000, that we would never know the colour of any dinosaur, courtesy of feathered Chinese theropod fossils (try saying that three times fast).

However, the last few decades has seen an improvement in the number of finds as funding has been allocated and professional enthusiasm increased. The problem has been that rather than solidifying the story of our ancestral line the number of species has multiplied without aiding the overall picture; there are still plenty of dashed lines on the human family tree. This indeterminacy has meant that a consensus is hard to find. If you examine any two charts of human ancestry, the chances are that they won’t agree. In the face of limited evidence it seems relatively easy for palaeoanthropologists to promote their own theories as to which species are our direct ancestors. Human nature being what it is, the favoured species usually happen to be those discovered by the said promoter. Such behaviour led to a thirty-year rift between two of the key players, Richard Leakey and Donald Johanson, partially over the number of branches on the direct ancestral tree. If anyone thinks the days of feuding scientists as long past (consider for example the Nineteenth Century American dinosaur pioneers Cope and Marsh) this quarrel ought to set the record straight.

One area of research that has undoubtedly given a boost to the understanding of human origins is the ability to retrieve and read ancient DNA. That’s not to say that it has yet produced much in the way of definitive evidence, but it undoubtedly widens the knowledge that can be gained from a paucity of finds. A recent report suggested that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals did not after all interbreed but share a similar genome via common ancestry. This is a reversal of a previous report that in turn countered earlier genetic evidence...and so on.

The relatively recent demise of the Neanderthals has provoked some interesting theories that show how science can reflect the concerns of contemporary society, namely that the violent aspect our species may have been directly responsible. There is currently no firm evidence for deliberate genocide, with other likely culprits ranging from inability to adjust to climate change to a less flexible neural architecture (specifically, missing out on the 'Great Leap Forward' via imaginative cogitation). Recent texts have attempted to downplay innate human aggression but writers closer in time to the world wars and to the heyday of Freudianism, especially Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart and American author Robert Ardrey, had a major influence on the subject with their promotion of the 'killer ape' theory. From 1960 onwards the first serious, sustained research on wild chimpanzees by Jane Goodall inadvertently reinforced the notion of mankind as a predominantly violent species. Given such notions, it is perhaps little wonder that funding has been lacking.

The new century has so far seen something of an improvement, with a large increase in the number of popular books and television programmes reflecting and in turn further developing public interest. The controversy surrounding the nature of the Homo floresiensis finds of 2003 has proved fortuitous, with general news media at long last paying serious attention. The ball may have been started rolling by the Chalcolithic ice mummy Otzi, who was discovered in the Alps in 1991. A young upstart at a mere 5,300 years old, the incredible preservation of the man, his clothing and tools have helped bridge the gap in how we relate to our prehistoric ancestors.

So times they are a-changing. The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project is a sustained, well-funded effort to examine the past 700,000 years of evidence in the United Kingdom using a plethora of cross-discipline techniques in addition to conventional archaeology and palaeontology. The use of advanced dating methods such as electron spin resonance and the ability to analyse ancient DNA suggest that even without new finds, hominin research in the near future will generate some surprises. All I can say is that it's about time, too!