Darwin visited South Africa in 1836. The HMS Beagle was on its homeward journey and although the crew were keen to get home, Captain Fitzroy needed to exercise one of his interests and visit the newly opened South African Observatory. Darwin went ashore to “geologise”. The geology of the region interested him greatly. But ever the naturalist, he discovered a bug in the Cape, and it is named after him – Kaapiad darwini.

In all he spent 18 days in the Cape. By all accounts he was sick and miserable, the cold and rainy Cape winter not helping matters. He recorded in his diary that it was a rather desolate country. (In a later book describing his travels, he stated that “there was no country like South Africa” with regard to the large animals that could be found in the interior.)

The world renowned British astronomer Jon Herschel was living at the Cape at this time, studying the Southern sky. Herschel was fascinated by the Cape’s unusual indigenous flora and started speculating on how species evolved. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy were invited by Herschel to dinner and although the details of the conversation are unknown, the 26 year-old Darwin was said to be very impressed by Herschel’s ideas.

The city of Cape Town have erected a series of commemorative plaques to mark the route Darwin took during his stay. Here are images of one of the plaques, taken in Sea Point, Cape Town.

Click to view larger image.

Related articles:

• Darwin’s South Africa legacy
• Wits celebrates Darwin’s birthday

The specimen, one of three found on the site, is impressively large at seven metres long, the length of a African elephant bull. Click though for the full-size images.

Aardonyx skeleton

Aardonyx skull

Aardonyx premaxilla

Aardonyx claw

Dr Adam Yates announces Aardonyx celestae

The new species, a vegetarian dinosaur named Aardonyx celestae, from the early Jurassic period (approximately 195 million years old and seven metres long), was described by Dr Adam Yates, the primary investigator and a palaeontologist from the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research,  University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The genus name (Aardonyx) means “Earth Claw”, (Aard – Afrikaans for Earth) and (Onyx – Greek for claw) an appropriate name, given that the large, earth-encrusted foot claws were some of the first bones to be discovered in the town of Senekal, near Bethlehem in the Northern Free State, in South Africa. The species name (celestae) is given to acknowledge the work of Celeste Yates who prepared much of the fossil.

“This species is important as the Aardonyx was an animal close to the common ancestor of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs,” explains Yates. “Sauropods, known popularly as “brontosaurs”, were the largest backboned animals to walk on land with their long necks, tree-trunk legs and whip-like tails. Some were even longer and exceeded 100 feet (about 30 metres) in length.  Aardonyx gives us a glimpse into what the first steps towards becoming a sauropod involved.”
The discovery was made by a Wits postgraduate palaeontology student, Mr Marc Blackbeard, who began excavating two sites in the Northern Free State, five years ago, under the leadership of Yates. “We knew that there was likely to be some fossils in these ‘bone beds’ discovered by James Kitching about 20 years ago, but we did not expect to find anything of this magnitude,” says Yates. 

Yates elaborates on the anatomy of Aardonyx celestae: “The dinosaur had a wide-gaping mouth, bracing joints in the back vertebrae that made the backbone rigid enough to support great weight and a forearm and hand capable of grasping and supporting weight. Growth rings in the rib and shoulder blade sections show that Aardonyx was not full grown – it was probably less than 10 years old when it died near a river or stream.”

He adds: “Aardonyx probably walked on its hind legs but could drop onto all fours as well. It had flattened feet with large claws that supported body weight on the inside of the foot and a robust thigh bone (femur) for supporting weight.”
Dr Chinsamy-Turan a Wits graduate and a Vertebrate Paleohistologist at UCT concurs: “My analysis of the bone microstructure in the ribs and shoulder blades of Aardonyx suggests that while it had experienced at least seven spurts or cycles of growth, it was not a fully grown animal.”

Dr Adam Yates lies down next to newly exposed dino-femur

According to Dr Matthew Bonnan, a Vertebrate Paleobiologist, Department of Biological Sciences and an author of the paper, they already knew that the earliest sauropods and near-sauropods would be bipeds.  “What Aardonyx shows us, however, is that walking quadrupedally and bearing weight on the inside of the foot is a trend that started very early in these dinosaurs, much earlier than previously hypothesised. The bones of the forearm are shaped like those of sauropods – this means that the forearm and hand could bear weight and that Aardonyx could drop onto all-fours as well as walk bipedally.”

Most of the tunes are very accessible to even young children. Meet the Elements though is just good music – for all ages.

This also give me the excuse to linking to the classic The Elements by the fabulous Tom Lehrer.

It was a triumph for humanity. It showed us what we are capable of. Humans had broken the bounds from which we had evolved and were exploring the Moon. For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors had gazed at the moon in the night sky, trying to make sense of it. Now we had stepped on the surface of this mysterious place and left out imprint.

But, I suppose predictably, the conspiracy theory kooks have slithered out of their holes and are once again defaming this magnificent, inspiring achievement with their nasty inane Moon Landing Hoax. This is not a small little fringe group of hopeless eccentrics – for instance, 25% of Britons believe it was a hoax. Hardly any popular article or TV news item about the Moon landing is complete without some reference to the CTists. I suppose they are best ignored but this really does irk me. Of course this is being driven by a smaller hard-core group of tinfoil hatters, but their anti-science delusions are having a bad influence on a generation that should rather have been inspired by the Apollo mission.

I won’t waste my time debunking their nonsense. It’s been done over and over again. Phil Plait, as usual, does a good job of that. But I have been pondering on what drives these nutters to besmirch this enormous achievement. You can read a few opinions on the psychological make-up of conspiraloons here, here and here. One thing that is beyond doubt is that CTists’ belief in their particular hoax is unshakeable. Hard, irrefutable evidence will not sway them from their beliefs. As Cumbrian Sky notes:

The HBs are never, repeat, NEVER going to be convinced that NASA went to the Moon. It doesn’t matter how many times they read, or you explain, that there were no stars in the Moon’s sky because the photos were exposed for the bright surface and foreground, so obviously teeny tiny faint starse wouldn’t be picked up by the camera. You can tell them a million times that the flags left by the astronauts aren’t “blowing in the breeze”, they’re actually flapping about because they’ve got supporting wire frames to stop them hanging there all limp and embarrassing for the photographs. They slap their hands over their ears and sing out “lalalalalala!” when you try to explain that the shadows cast by objects on the Moon look different to shadows cast by objects here on Earth because LIGHTING CONDITIONS ON THE MOON ARE NOTHING LIKE THEY ARE HERE ON EARTH!!

Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this exactly how Young Earth Creationists behave? No scientific evidence – no matter how slam-dunk conclusive – will sway them from the central idea that a supernatural deity created the universe – with the Earth at its centre, and of course man at the centre of that – about 6,000 years ago. And all living things were created by this imaginary dictator and we remain at the mercy of this space monster. So there! If there is any scientific work to be done it’s within this absolute framework. As Ken Ham would say: “Any so-called fact that appears to contradict the bible is not a fact and needs to be re-interpreted in terms of the bible”. No arguments. Don’t bring the evidence.

Like the religious types, CTists like to gather with like-minded believers and believe that they will “find the truth” and spread it to the heathen out there and foster social change.  They believe they have “secret” knowledge which they impart to their inner circle of true believers. This sounds remarkably like the Pagans and Gnostics – and even Jesus himself: “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you.  But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that ‘they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.’”  (Mark 4:10-12 NAB)

Charles Darwin gave us the priceless gift of knowing that we can actually explain the world around us – including our own origins. Creationists with their deep fear of reality would rather have us believe that we are merely pawns in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing celestial ruler and that their is no value in pursuing knowledge since the question of the universe and our origins is settled.

The Apollo mission gave us the priceless gift of knowing our capacity for achieving amazing feats – that humans are capable of understanding the Universe and all its wonders. Conspiracy theorists with their deep fear of anything that is beyond their control would rather have us believe that we are mere powerless pawns in the hands of secret, pervasively evil forces that conspire against us for their own nefarious ends.

These fearful little people should not be entertained and their paranoid ravings should be given no further oxygen.

Nicknamed “Lluc,” the male bears a strikingly “modern” facial appearance with a flat face, rather than a protruding one. The finding sheds important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.

In a study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Salvador Moyà-Solà, director of the Institut Català de Paleontologia (ICP) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and colleagues present evidence for the new genus and species, dubbed Anoiapithecus brevirostris. The scientific name is derived from the region where the fossil was found (l’Anoia) and also from its “modern” facial morphology, characterized by a very short face.

Thankfully, no “missing link” talk. But its modern, flat-faced appearance does raise intriguing questions about its relationship to us. Could we have a European ancestor after all?

Anoiapithecus displays a very modern facial morphology, with a muzzle prognathism (i.e., protrusion of  the jaw) so reduced that, within the family Hominidae, scientists can only find comparable values within the genus Homo, whereas the remaining great apes are notoriously more prognathic (i.e., having jaws that project forward markedly). The extraordinary resemblance does not indicate that Anoiapithecus has any relationship with Homo, the researchers note. However, the similarity might be a case of evolutionary convergence, where two species evolving separately share common features.

So the debate revolves around the geographic origin of the hominid family. The consensus at the moment is that it is Africa, so is Anoiapithecus brevirostris a European offshoot from an African family? And, fascinatingly, did this European offshoot then return to Africa? This is the subject of an article in New Scientist magazine.

Moyà-Solà says that A. brevirostris and some similar-looking kenyapithecins lived in Europe shortly after the afrohominid and kenyapithecin lineages split, and so that the divergence itself may have happened there. If he is right, our hominid ancestors lived in Europe and only later migrated to Africa, where modern humans evolved.

This “into Africa” scenario is likely to be controversial. Critics argue that discoveries like Moyà-Solà’s are more likely to reflect the quality of the fossil records in Africa and Europe than offer clues to the actual origins of hominids.

Muddying the waters is that the European fossil record for the time is superior to the African one. The Spanish project is continuing and researchers anticipate that more fossils remains will be found in the future. These should provide more information to help solve the puzzle.

Isn’t science exciting!

Ida is a lemur-like creature but differs from a lemur in many respects, in particular, the absence of a toilet claw and a toothcomb. Darwinius masillae is part of a larger group of primates, Adapoidea, not simply a lemur. The scientific paper is available and can be found here.

This is clearly an extremely interesting and important find. But the media reports – television, radio and press – are running sensational reports about this being the “missing link” and that it provides “proof” of our – human – evolution from the animal kingdom. The hype is that Ida is our direct ancestor, even that Ida show human characteristics. Here’s but one example:

Evidence in the talus bone links Ida to us. The bone has the same shape as in humans today. Only the human talus is obviously bigger.

This is obvious nonsense. Having the “same shape” is so non-specific as to be meaningless. And as for  “Missing link”: this is an archaic phrase now adopted by creationists to cast doubt on the fact of evolution. The tactic is to demand that scientists produce every single morphological change – the full evolutionary record – which is impossible. And of course when any fossil of a new transitional creature is found, another gap, or missing link, is added.

At first glance, this media onslaught with pretty much the same (wrong) message is puzzling. But dig a bit deeper and you will find a well-coordinated public relations effort to promote an upcoming documentary and a new book titled The Link. The press release from the University of Olso has a huge heading: “The Link”. They have a website named, you guessed it, The Link, where they describe what they’re doing:

The scientific publication of Ida has been carefully timed so that the film, book and website can be launched at the same time. The scientists see this as a new way of presenting science for the 21st century, where a major scientific find becomes available to everyone, wherever they are in the world at the same time. Ida connects to us all, and we can all share in understanding her.

This “link” they’re talking about is the one directly to humans. A member of the team, Dr Jens Franzen takes this to unbelievable lengths, describing Ida as “like the Eighth Wonder of the World”, because of the extraordinary completeness of the skeleton. He can’t contain himself:

It was information “palaeontologists can normally only dream of”, he said.

In addition, Ida bears “a close resemblance to ourselves” he said, with
nails instead of claws, a grasping hand and an opposable thumb – like
humans and some other primates. But he said some aspects of the teeth
indicate she is not a direct ancestor – more of an “aunt” than a
“grandmother”.

Others are more circumspect. Dr Chris Beard, curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and author of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey, said he was “awestruck” by the publicity machine surrounding the new fossil.

He argued that it could damage the popularisation of science if the creature was not all that it was hyped up to be.

Dr Beard has not yet seen scientific details of the find but said that it would be very nice to have a beautiful new fossil from the Eocene and that Ida would be “a welcome new addition” to the world of early primates.

But he added: “I would be absolutely dumbfounded if it turns out to be a potential ancestor to humans.”

Quite. I’m all for popularising science, but this is not the way to do it. It doesn’t always have to be about us. There is enough beauty and wonder to revel in this find. It doesn’t have to be turned into a proto-human media sensation.

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