Bonobos documented for first time using ancient pre-agricultural tools, breaking bones, and using spears as attack weapons

For the first time, a scientific study has observed bonobos (an analogous race to chimpanzees) making sophisticated use of ancient pre-agricultural tools in a manner similar to that which has hitherto been considered the prerogative of archaic pre-human hominins and other members of the Homo genus. Among other findings, a bonobo was observed for the first time making and using spears in a social setting for the purpose of attack and defense.

Interestingly, the bonobos are considered less sophisticated than their chimpanzee siblings. Chimpanzees have been observed in nature using branches to dig for tubers in the ground and to break into termite nests and beehives. As part of their cultural diversity, they have also been documented breaking nuts with hammer and anvil, and even manipulating branches into spears for use in hunting small prosimians that hide in tree hollows. By contrast, bonobos were known as a social species that engages in extensive sexual behavior and have not been observed in nature using tools.

In the current study they have examined that bonobos, in a sanctuary and a zoo, were also capable of undertaking sophisticated sequential-actions in extractive foraging tasks. This study included a group of eight bonobos at Wuppertal zoo, Germany, who lived in conditions of full captivity, and a group of seven bonobos from the Bonobo Hope sanctuary in Iowa, USA who lived in culturally-rich conditions with forest access. Both groups were presented with similar natural challenges: they were required to reach food either buried deep in the ground (covered by a layer of stones of varying sizes), hidden inside large ungulate bones (filled with dried fruit to simulate bone marrow), or concealed inside small concrete capsules.

Within a few days, the bonobos at the sanctuary began to prepare and use task-appropriate tools in a deliberate and planned manner. They also used stones and antlers as hammers to break ungulate bones or concrete capsules. The zoo bonobos also managed to perform food extraction tasks, but it took them a month to reach this point.

To sum up, we believe that the current study will break down our cultural hang-up as humans concerning the inherent capabilities and potential of bonobos and chimpanzees.

Video of the study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89rNGhGv3ys

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151130084918.htm

A recent study describes the differences between Neanderthal facial skeletons with the ones of modern humans.

An international research team, has just published a study describing for the first time the developmental processes that differentiate Neanderthal facial skeletons from those of modern humans.

This study showed that the Neanderthals, who appeared about 200,000 years ago, are quite distinct from Homo sapiens (humans) in the manner in which their faces grow.

        Bone is formed through a process of bone deposition by osteoblasts (bone-forming cells) and resorption by osteoclast (bone-absorbing) cells, which break down bone. In humans, the outermost layer of bone in the face consists of large resorptive fields, but in Neanderthals, the opposite is true: In the outermost layer of bone, there is extensive bone deposition.
          Neanderthals were always considered to be a very different category of hominin, but i fact they share with older African hominins a similar facial growth pattersn. It is actually humans who are developmentally derived, meaning that humans deviated from the ancestral pattern. . In that sense, the face that is unique is the modern human face, and the next phase of research is to identify how and when modern humans acquired their facial-growth development plan.

        In our opinión, it is an amazing research because it provides important information about human evolution, because some think that Neanderthals and humans should not be considered from different branches of the family tree. But those discoveries provide enough evidence to affirm that those two groups are sufficiently different from one another.

Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151207131517.htm

The four main stages of human evolution

Research into 430,000-year-old fossils collected in northern Spain found that the evolution of the human body's size and shape has gone through four main stages, according to a paper published this week.

Dated to around 430,000 years ago, Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain preserves the largest collection of human fossils found to date anywhere in the world. The researchers found that the Atapuerca individuals were relatively tall, with wide, muscular bodies and less brain mass relative to body mass compared to Neanderthals.

Comparison of the Atapuerca fossils with the rest of the human fossil record suggests that the evolution of the human body has gone through four main stages, depending on the degree of arboreality (living in the trees) and bipedalism (walking on two legs). The Atapuerca fossils represent the third stage, with tall, wide and robust bodies and an exclusively terrestrial bipedalism, with no evidence of arboreal behaviors. This same body form was likely shared with earlier members of our genus, such as Homo erectus, as well as some later members, including the Neanderthals. Thus, this body form seems to have been present in the genus Homo for over a million years.

This is really interesting since it suggests that the evolutionary process in our genus is largely characterized by stasis (little to no evolutionary change) in body form for most of our evolutionary history.

            Read more at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150831163841.htm