Scientists find 3.7 billion-year-old fossil, oldest yet

August 31, 2016 by Seth Borenstein

Scientists have found what they think is the oldest fossil on Earth, a remnant of life from 3.7 billion years ago when Earth's skies were orange and its oceans green.

In a newly melted part of Greenland, Australian scientists found the leftover structure from a community of microbes that lived on an ancient seafloor, according to a study in Wednesday's journal Nature .

The discovery shows life may have formed quicker and easier than once thought, about half a billion years after Earth formed . And that may also give hope for life forming elsewhere, such as Mars, said study co-author Martin VanKranendonk of the University of New South Wales and director of the Australian Center for Astrobiology.

"It gives us an idea how our planet evolved and how life gained a foothold," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists had thought it would take at least half a billion years for life to form after the molten Earth started to cool a bit, but this shows it could have happened quicker, he said. That's because the newly found fossil is far too complex to have developed soon after the planet's first life forms, he said.

In an outcrop of rocks that used to be covered with ice and snow which melted after an exceptionally warm spring, the Australian team found stromatolites, which are intricately layered microscopic layered structures that are often produced by a community of microbes. The stromatolites were about .4 to 1.6 inches high (1 to 4 centimeters).

It "is like the house left behind made by the microbes," VanKranendonk said.

Scientists used the layers of ash from volcanoes and tiny zircon with uranium and lead to date this back 3.7 billion years ago, using a standard dating method, VanKranendonk said.

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Meet Granny: At 105, she’s the world’s oldest killer whale

AUGUST 9, 2016

by Chuck Bednar

A killer whale estimated to be 105 years old, meaning that it was born a year before the Titanic sank, is apparently alive and well after being spotted off the coast of Washington.

Officially known as J2 but affectionately nicknamed “Granny,” the whale was seen swimming with other orcas in the Salish Sea and near San Juan Island’s False Bay near Washington state on July 27, the Daily Mail and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported earlier this month.

Granny, which was first spotted in 1971 when she was an estimated 60 years old, is believed to be the matriarch of a group of whales in the northern Pacific Ocean. Though experts believe she is 105, there is a 12 year margin of error about her age, meaning she could be only 93 years old – which still far exceeds the typical orca lifespan of between 60 and 80 years.

Experts from Ocean EcoVentures explained to the Daily Mail that they were able to identify J2 thanks to special markings on her dorsal fin and a notch shaped like a half-moon, and in a recent blog post, they said that she and her group, the Southern Resident Killer Whales, had spent a few weeks foraging and travelling through the Strait of Georgia near British Columbia.

How experts determined Granny’s age (and why she’s not all that unusual)

According to the author of that blog post, Simon Pidcock, Granny “has been swimming pretty much non-stop for over 100 years. The Southern Residents on average travel about 72 miles in a 24-hour period day in, day out. This means in Granny’s lifetime she has swam around the world the equivalent of a 100 times.”

The earliest pictures of J2 were from 1967, according to Pidcock, and whale researchers believe that she has been alive since 1911. In 1976, she was spotted travelling with a mature bull known as “Ruffles” due to the trailing edge of his dorsal fin. Ruffles was thought to be the only survivor among Granny’s offspring, as these whales typically remain with their mothers for life.

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Meet The World’s Oldest Wild Platypus

March 3, 2016

Ecologists surveying the platypus population in Melbourne’s waterways identify a 21-year-old male first tagged in the 1990s.

By Vicki Croke

He was out of the water and in the hands of biologists for just 15 minutes, but it was long enough for him to be weighed, microchipped…and for him to keep his record. While most wild platypuses are expected to live no more than 12 years, this guy, called the “grandpa platypus” by an Australian newspaper, and who was first tagged in the mid-1990’s, has reached the grand old age of 21—making him the oldest known wild platypus on record.

Josh Griffiths, senior wildlife ecologist at the Centre for Environmental Stress and Adaptation Research (Cesar), working with a team of students from Monash University, found the super-survivor while on a platypus survey, which he conducts twice a year in Melbourne, Australia.

It could be good genes or good luck or some kind of natural wisdom that have allowed this platypus to survive to an age that is considered to be about twice as long as most of his peers. Griffiths isn’t sure. But he told the Daily Mail that this secretive mammal is “a strong healthy male.” And that part of the explanation might have something to do with a long drought that ended about five years ago in the area. That dry spell reduced the platypus’s population and may have killed off rivals. Platypus numbers have been rebounding since.

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Oldest and Youngest Stag-Moose in North America

Sep. 19, 2013 — Matthew Hill has identified countless bones found by farmers, fishermen, rock hounds and heavy equipment operators. Most of the remains turn out to be deer, bison, horse or cow bones, or simply odd looking rocks. But some discoveries turn out to be highly unusual, as was the case with an antler from an extinct Ice Age animal known as a stag-moose or elk-moose.

"At first, I was puzzled. I knew it did not belong to a white-tailed deer, elk or caribou. It looked sort of like a moose antler, but not quite -- it was different," Hill said. "I suspected it might be stag-moose, so I sent a picture to a colleague at the Illinois State Museum to compare it with specimens in their collections. He confirmed my suspicion."

The discovery inspired Hill, an associate professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, to learn more about when the animal was in Iowa and search for additional specimens. Specifically, he wanted to determine the age of the antler and two other specimens he located. So he carefully cut a small cube from each specimen and sent them off to an Arizona lab for radiocarbon dating.

The results far exceeded Hill's expectations. Turns out, one of the samples is more than 30,000 years old, making it the oldest specimen of a stag-moose ever recorded in North America. The results of the radiocarbon dating, which would not have been possible without a grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are now fueling Hill's curiosity and new research.

"It means that these animals were here before the glaciers covered central Iowa, and that they returned for a short time after the glaciers retreated as well," Hill said. "Still, we don't know a whole lot about the ecology of these animals. When they appeared, their numbers on the landscape, the cause of their demise, and what other animals they were living with side-by-side? There are just a whole lot of questions and this will be a great opportunity to learn more."

Such discoveries often start with a phone call. Hill fields dozens of calls each year from people across the state with questions for him about a bone or a skull. In fact, the stag-moose antler that sparked Hill's interest was discovered by an Ames man, who was searching the South Skunk River near Ada Hayden Park for remains. Radiocarbon dating determined the antler to be 13,400-13,700 years old.

The 30,000-year-old specimen was found in the 1970s by a gravel pit operator working near Jester Park in Polk County. It was donated to the State Historical Museum in Des Moines, where it is on display. The third specimen, located near Parkersburg, is part of a personal collection. Hill said the animal lived 12,600 to 12,800 years ago, and tied a specimen from north-central Wisconsin for the youngest record of the stag-moose. What he finds most exciting is that the age of the Parkersburg specimen suggests the first people to occupy Iowa -- so-called Clovis hunters -- may have preyed on the beast.

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