Page 28 - aruba-today-20190503

A28 SCIENCE
Friday 3 May 2019
Chinese fossil sheds light on mysterious Neanderthal kin

NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly 40 said Bence Viola of the Uni-
years after it was found by a versity of Toronto.
monk in a Chinese cave, a The Nature paper points
fossilized chunk of jawbone out similarities to a fossil jaw
has been revealed as com- reported in 2015 that had
ing from a mysterious rela- been dredged by a fishing
tive of the Neanderthals. net off the coast of Taiwan.
Until now, the only known So maybe the Denisovan
remains of these Deniso- range can be extended
vans were a few scraps of that far south, he said.
bone and teeth recovered Such linking of fossils might
in a Siberian cave. DNA eventually reveal Deniso-
from those Siberian fossils van body shape and size,
showed kinship with Nean- he said. From the scant
derthals. But the remains known remains "I assume
disclosed little else. they were large guys, but
The new discovery was it's kind of hard to prove,"
made roughly 1,400 miles Viola said.
(2,300 kilometers) to the In addition to the anato-
southeast in Gansu prov- my, the study's approach
ince of China. The right half of using protein from the
of a jawbone with teeth is bone or teeth could also
at least 160,000 years old, This undated photo made available by Dr. Dongju Zhang of Lanzhou University in April 2019 shows be used on fossils to look
scientists reported Wednes- the right half of the Xiahe mandible, found in 1980 in the Baishiya Karst Cave in the Gansu prov- for evidence of Deniso-
day in the journal Nature. ince of China. van identity, said Eric Del-
No DNA could be found, Associated Press son of Lehman College in
but scientists recovered New York. Even if a fossil is
protein fragments that they Hublin of the Max Planck DNA can be found in sev- Lanzhou University in China. found not to be Denisovan,
compared to the Siberian Institute for Evolutionary An- eral present-day popula- Study of it began in 2010. the analysis could reveal
DNA. That showed the fossil thropology in Leipzig, Ger- tions of Asia and Australia The discovery also provides details of how it fits on the
came from a Denisovan. many, one of the paper's whose ancestors probably new anatomical details evolutionary tree, he said.
The find addresses several authors. didn't pass through that that can be compared "The method potentially
mysteries. One was why In fact, "it's a big surprise" region. The new finding ex- to other fossils from China, tells us a whole new way of
the Siberian DNA indicated that any human relative pands their known range, some of which are "good looking at fossils," he said.
Denisovans were adapted could live in the cold cli- although Hublin said it's still candidates for being Chi- Katerina Harvati of the
to living at high altitudes mate and thin air of the not clear where Deniso- nese Denisovans," Hublin University of Tuebingen in
when the Siberian cave is plateau at that time, more vans first appeared. They said. Germany said the ability of
relatively close to sea level. than 100,000 years before are named for Siberia's Experts unconnected to Denisovans to adapt to the
The Chinese cave, by con- our own species showed Denisova cave, where the the research agreed the inhospitable climate of the
trast, is on the high-altitude up there, he told reporters. remains were found. fossil could help identify Tibetan Plateau is remark-
Tibetan Plateau, about Previous research had in- The new work was a long other remains as Deniso- able. It adds to growing ev-
10,800 feet (3,280 meters) dicated that Denisovans time in coming. The monk van. idence that our ancient rel-
high. must have lived some- who found the fossil in 1980 "We always assumed ... atives were more capable
"Now we have an explana- where other than Siberia, gave it to a Buddhist lead- that Denisovans were dis- than scientists had thought,
tion," said Jean-Jacques because traces of their er, who passed it along to tributed all across Asia," she said.q
SpaceX confirms crew capsule

destroyed in ground test

By MARCIA DUNN gulfed the capsule a half- with station supplies early
AP Aerospace Writer second before the launch- Friday morning, although
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) abort thrusters were to fire. approaching storms threat-
— SpaceX finally confirmed SpaceX still cannot access ened yet another delay.
In this March 8, 2019 file image taken from video made avail- Thursday its crew capsule the testing area at Cape Earlier in the week, the
able by NASA, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is hoisted onto was destroyed in ground Canaveral for safety rea- flight was postponed by a
a ship in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast after it returned testing two weeks ago and sons, according to Koenigs- major power shortage at
from a mission to the International Space Station. conceded that the ac- mann. The company does the space station.
Associated Press
cident is "not great news" not want to disturb any An old power-switching unit
for the company's effort to evidence that could pro- failed Monday, slashing the
launch astronauts this year. vide clues to the failure, he space station's power by
Hans Koenigsmann, a com- noted. 25% and ruling out any de-
pany vice president, told re- The company has conclud- liveries. By Thursday, flight
porters it's too soon to know ed, meanwhile, that the controllers had replaced
what went wrong during smaller, simpler cargo ver- the box and restored full
the April 20 test or whether sion of the Dragon capsule power to the orbiting out-
the crew Dragon capsule's is safe to fly to the Interna- post.
test flight in March — minus tional Space Station. The cargo and crew ver-
astronauts — contributed SpaceX was on track to sions of the Dragon capsule
to the failure. Flames en- launch a Falcon rocket are considerably different.