Missing Link Between Humans and Chimpanzees ­Ethiopian Forest Bipeds 5.8 Million Years Ago?

140 miles northeast of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, near the Awash River marked in orange, paleontologists have discovered bones of a primate dubbed Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba which might have been the first upright ancestor to human lineage 5.8 million years ago.
140 miles northeast of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, near the Awash River marked in orange, paleontologists have discovered bones of a primate dubbed Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba which might have been the first upright ancestor to human lineage 5.8 million years ago.

July 21, 2001  Alayla, Ethiopia - A graduate student named Yohannes Haile-Selassie studying paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley, found bones on December 16, 1997 at a site 140 miles northeast of Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which might be the missing link in evolving primates that went on to become humans. This creature, Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba, might have been the first primate to walk upright and the oldest human ancestor who lived in Ethiopian forests, not grassy plains, as far back as 5.8 million years ago. That's a million and a half years earlier than any other previous discovery and challenges the long held theory that primates stood up when they moved from trees to grassy plains.

 

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Beyond Stonehenge with Astronomer Gerald Hawkins

Stonehenge, constructed of sarsen granite more than 4,000 years ago, on the gently rolling pastures of Wiltshire County, England, west of Andover. Photograph © 2000 by Linda Moulton Howe.
Stonehenge, constructed of sarsen granite more than 4,000 years ago, on the gently rolling pastures of Wiltshire County, England, west of Andover. Photograph © 2000 by Linda Moulton Howe.

June 16, 2001  Washington, D. C. - Astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins, Ph.D., educated at Manchester University in England and now retired in Washington and Virginia, wrote a book in 1973 entitled Beyond Stonehenge. The Daily Express in London wrote about it, "If Hawkins is right, and most experts now agree that he must be, then Stonehenge is the Eighth Wonder of the ancient world."

 

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Update on Mysterious Deep Water Sonar Images Off Western Cuba

Western tip of Cuba, not far from the Yucatan Peninsula, where unusual sonar images at 2,200 feet suggest unnatural structures covering several square kilometers.
Western tip of Cuba, not far from the Yucatan Peninsula, where unusual sonar images at 2,200 feet suggest unnatural structures covering several square kilometers.

June 13, 2001  Havana, Cuba - When I reported last month on COAST about the Cuba discovery, I had an interview with Barbara Moffet, Director of Plans and Programs at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D. C., who confirmed that the Society was aware of the deep water mystery off the western tip of Cuba. She said NGS was communicating with Paulina Zelitsky and her husband, Paul Weinzweig, partners in Canada's Advanced Digital Communications company, known as ADC. Last month, National Geographic was trying to decide whether to help fund a dive in a remotely operated vehicle with cameras to see what is down there. Today, I talked again with Barbara Moffet and she confirmed that National Geographic has now made an agreement for exclusive magazine coverage.

 

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Another Unusual “Face” On Mars

Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) MOC narrow-angle image M02-03051 of unusual face-like surface feature in valley of Libya Montes near equator on Mars, approximately 275 degrees West and 2.66 degrees North. Image released by MSSS on May 22, 2000. To find this feature, it is necessary to turn the original MOC image upside down.
Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) MOC narrow-angle image M02-03051 of unusual face-like surface feature in valley of Libya Montes near equator on Mars, approximately 275 degrees West and 2.66 degrees North. Image released by MSSS on May 22, 2000. To find this feature, it is necessary to turn the original MOC image upside down.

June 2, 2001 Tempe, Arizona - Unusual surface features on Mars imaged by the Global Surveyor continue to provoke controversy among scientists and civilians. One such image looks like a female face taken a year ago in May 2000 in the valley of Libya Montes near the Martian equator, but not publicized until the New York Post featured the image on May 9 after a press conference by astronomer Tom Van Flandern, Ph.D. and former astronaut Brian O'Leary. This week I discussed the face image with planetary geologist, David Nelson. Mr. Nelson is a Research Specialist in the Department of Geological Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe. His current work is to study the Mars Global Surveyor images and to contribute ideas about where the next NASA Mars Excursion landing sites should be in January 2004. Two rovers are planned for that mission and one likely exploration site will be near sedimentary deposits in the walls of Valles Marineris, the 3000 mile long canyon that runs near the Martian equator.

 

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Underwater City Reported Off Western Cuba

"We are the first people ever to see the bottom of Cuban waters over 50 meters...It's so exciting. We are discovering...even possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan."

- Paulina Zelitsky, ocean engineer, Advanced Digital Communications, May 2001

At the western tip of Cuba at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters), ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky of Advanced Digital Communications reports large plateau with "shapes that resemble pyramids, roads and buildings."
At the western tip of Cuba at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters), ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky of Advanced Digital Communications reports large plateau with "shapes that resemble pyramids, roads and buildings."

May 18, 2001 Washington, D. C. - Reporter Andrew Cawthorne reporting from Havana, Cuba for Reuters bylined a May 15 story entitled "Explorers Comb Cuban Seas for Treasure, Mysteries." (See complete text below.) He interviewed ocean engineer Paulina Zelitsky, employed by Advanced Digital Communications and based in Tarara along the Cuba coast east of Havana. According to the article, Ms. Zelitsky said, "We are the first people ever to see the bottom of Cuban waters over 50 meters. It's so exciting. We are discovering ...even possibly a sunken city built in the pre-classic period and populated by an advanced civilization similar to the early Teotihuacan culture of Yucatan. ...Researchers using sonar equipment have discovered at a depth of about 2,200 feet (700-800 meters) a huge land plateau with clear images of what appears to be urban development partly covered by sand. From above, the shapes resemble pyramids, roads and buildings. "

 

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Archaeologists Date Peru’s Supe Valley Civilization As Old As the Pyramids

120 miles north of Lima, Peru is the Supe Valley archaeologists found ruins and mounds in 1905, but only now have scientists confirmed the site to be nearly 5,000 years old.
120 miles north of Lima, Peru is the Supe Valley archaeologists found ruins and mounds in 1905, but only now have scientists confirmed the site to be nearly 5,000 years old.

May 6, 2001  Caral, Peru - Archaeologists reported in the April 27, 2001 journal Science that the mounds and ruins in the Supe Valley 120 miles north of Lima are as old as the pyramids. Now Caral, Peru is the oldest city in the Western Hemisphere. Even though the site and seventeen others were first discovered in 1905, age was never precisely dated. Now Jonathan Haas, Curator of Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago and co-author of the report, says that disintegration of carbon in plant fibers in the ruin walls definitely date between 2627 B.C. and 2020 B. C. That makes the Peruvian Supe Valley home to a civilization as old and advanced as those in Egypt where the pyramids were being built, to Mesopotamia where the Sumerian culture dominated, to the Indus Valley, China and the newly discovered Central Asian civilization near Iran and Afghanistan which was making fine ceramics and had its own independent writing symbols. See: Earthfiles Science report 05-05-01.

 

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Archaeologists Find Central Asia Civilization As Old As Sumeria

Large 150 meters by 150 meters fortified building complex dating to at least 1800 B. C. in the Kara Kum desert of Central Asia at Margiana, Turkmenistan (Russia) near Afghanistan border. Photograph courtesy Prof. Fredrik T. Hiebert, University of Pennsylvania.
Large 150 meters by 150 meters fortified building complex dating to at least 1800 B. C. in the Kara Kum desert of Central Asia at Margiana, Turkmenistan (Russia) near Afghanistan border. Photograph courtesy Prof. Fredrik T. Hiebert, University of Pennsylvania.

May 5, 2001  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - A large, sophisticated civilization equal to Sumeria and Mesopotamia and thriving at the same time at least 5,000 years ago was lost in the harsh desert sands of the Soviet Union near the Iran and Afghanistan borders. But now details are beginning to emerge. This week I visited archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. There he has some exquisite pottery shards the Russian government gave him permission to bring back to the United States from his recent excavations in the Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan on the Iran and Afghanistan borders.

 

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Foot-and-Mouth Disease Spreads to Humans in England?

As of April 24, 2001, England has slaughtered 1,974,000 hoofed animals and plans to slaughter 232,000 more animals in an effort to stop the rapidly spreading "O" strain of the foot-and-mouth virus that has plagued the United Kingdom since February 2001. Photograph © 2001 by Associated Press.
As of April 24, 2001, England has slaughtered 1,974,000 hoofed animals and plans to slaughter 232,000 more animals in an effort to stop the rapidly spreading "O" strain of the foot-and-mouth virus that has plagued the United Kingdom since February 2001. Photograph © 2001 by Associated Press.

April 24, 2001  Plum Island east of Orient, Long Island, New York - Today in England, three suspected cases of human foot-and-mouth disease are being investigated by the British Public Health Laboratory. One of the patients is a man from Cumbria who developed blisters in his mouth and sore, itchy hands while working on a crew slaughtering hoofed animals infected with foot-and-mouth disease. Officials are waiting to hear from laboratory test results which should be in next week. If the humans test positive for foot-and-mouth disease, it means the virus moved from animals to people.

 

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Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in Colorado and Saskatchewan, Canada

On the top is the normal prion protein, PrP-C found in all mammals. On the bottom is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. Various distorted prion protein shapes are what cause diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk; scrapies in sheep; BSE Mad Cow; Creutzfeldt-Jakob and new variant-CJD; and kuru - all attacking brain and spinal cord tissue in animals and humans and always fatal. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of prion proteins and conformational models for prion diseases in Prions Prions Prions (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: SOn the left is the normal prion protein, PrP-C found in all mammals. On the right is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. Various distorted prion protein shapes are what cause diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk; scrapies in sheep; BSE Mad Cow; Creutzfeldt-Jakob and new variant-CJD; and kuru - all attacking brain and spinal cord tissue in animals and humans and always fatal. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of prion proteins and conformational models for prion diseases in Prions Prions Prions (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.pringer-Verlag, © 1996.
Above is the normal prion protein, PrP-C found in all mammals. Below is the abnormal, misshapen PrP-SC. Various distorted prion protein shapes are what cause diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk; scrapies in sheep; BSE Mad Cow; Creutzfeldt-Jakob and new variant-CJD; and kuru - all attacking brain and spinal cord tissue in animals and humans and always fatal. These diagrams are from Huang, Z., Prusiner, Stanley B. and Cohen, Fred E. from "Structures of prion proteins and conformational models for prion diseases in Prions Prions Prions (ed. S.B. Prusiner) Berlin: Springer-Verlag, © 1996.

 

April 24, 2001  Denver, Colorado - Another infectious agent made headlines in North America in April 2001. That is the fatal prion brain destroyer known as "Chronic Wasting Disease," or CWD. The first case of chronic wasting disease confirmed in a wild mule deer was shot by a hunter last fall in Saskatchewan near the border of Alberta, Canada. Over the past four years, dozens of CWD cases have been confirmed in Saskatchewan's 19 captive game farms. About 3000 animals have been slaughtered there in an attempt to keep the dreaded disease from spreading. Elk are raised on the game farms for their meat and their antler velvet which is used in homeopathic remedies and to provide aphrodisiacs for Asia. But now even Korea has banned imports of elk antlers from Canada because of concerns about spreading chronic wasting disease.

 

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The Ekpyrotic Universe – A Collision Before the Big Bang?

Some of the mathematical equations used by particle physicist Burt A. Ovrut, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania Physics Department to "work in" the theoretical 5th dimension. Photograph © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe.
Some of the mathematical equations used by particle physicist Burt A. Ovrut, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania Physics Department to "work in" the theoretical 5th dimension. Photograph © 2001 by Linda Moulton Howe.

April 15, 2001  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - A brand new theory about the creation of the universe emerged recently from cosmologists and particle physicists at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge, England. The new theory is called the Ekpyrotic Universe, from a Greek word meaning "conflagration" used to describe the universe's creation from a huge fireball that cooled down. Periodically, the Greeks thought, the process could repeat itself.

 

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