34. Our Jumbled Ancestor
When paleoanthropologist Lee Berger unearthed a fossil near Johannesburg, South Africa, it seemed to be a jumble of parts: a braincase similar in size to that of an Australopithecus africanus, a Homo erectus pelvis, and the arms of a Miocene ape. But in April Berger announced that they all of a 12-year-old boy who lived 1.9 million years ago. The boy, called Karabo, may represent a bridge species between our Homo genus and its Australopithecus ancestor.
Berger thinks Karabo and an adult female found nearby represent a new hominid species, Australopithecus sediba, that may have been the first to walk upright the way modern humans do. A. sediba had long, apelike arms; a braincase one-third the size of a modern human’s; and a modern-looking pelvis that suggests it was a better upright walker than previous australopithecines. Others contend the two are not human ancestors at all because they
appeared around 400,000 years after the first evidence of habilis, the earliest in the Homo line. “Sediba is too late to sit on the lineage,” says paleoanthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley. Berger counters that the only fossils that can be definitively classified as H. habilis showed up after A. sediba. “Australopithecus sediba is the best candidate for a transitional species,” he argues. “It’s more advanced than Homo habilis, which appears later. It probably means Homo habilis is not really an ancestor of anything.” LAURIE RICH SALERNO
Berger thinks Karabo and an adult female found nearby represent a new hominid species, Australopithecus sediba, that may have been the first to walk upright the way modern humans do. A. sediba had long, apelike arms; a braincase one-third the size of a modern human’s; and a modern-looking pelvis that suggests it was a better upright walker than previous australopithecines. Others contend the two are not human ancestors at all because they
appeared around 400,000 years after the first evidence of habilis, the earliest in the Homo line. “Sediba is too late to sit on the lineage,” says paleoanthropologist Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley. Berger counters that the only fossils that can be definitively classified as H. habilis showed up after A. sediba. “Australopithecus sediba is the best candidate for a transitional species,” he argues. “It’s more advanced than Homo habilis, which appears later. It probably means Homo habilis is not really an ancestor of anything.” LAURIE RICH SALERNO
35. Haitian Quake Signals Future Shocks
The 7.0 magnitude earth quake that attened Haiti’s capital city last January may signal a new era of seismic activity in the Caribbean. According to geologists, the quake activated a fault system that had lain virtually dormant for at least years. Along with relief workers, geologists from the United States and Haiti raced to the quake’s epicenter, using devices to determine
exactly how the land had moved. eir eld surveys reveal that Hispaniola, Jamaica, and other islands
in the Caribbean sit atop a network of interlocking faults far more complex than geo ogists had earlier understood, according to a series of papers published last October. Until then, scientists had assumed the Haiti earthquake involved a simple shift along the Enriquillo-Plantain
Garden fault zone, a well-devolped,-mile boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. e surveys suggest instead that the Haiti quake may have ruptured primarily along a previously unmapped fault. Either way, the data show that the January tremor did not release all the stress that has accumulated in the fault system over hundreds of years. “ at’s the most troubling part—the region is primed for another quake,” says Paul Mann, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics. Haiti’s quake has also demonstrated
that strike-slip faults, which create mostly horizontal motions, can set o landslides and giant tsunamis (usually associated with faults that move in a vertical, thrusting motion). e lesson is that cities like Los Angeles that lie on strike-slip faults could face big waves after even a moderate earthquake. “Anywhere you have a lot of people living at sea level and a fault capable of triggering a landslide under the ocean, you have all the components for a disaster,” Mann says.
exactly how the land had moved. eir eld surveys reveal that Hispaniola, Jamaica, and other islands
in the Caribbean sit atop a network of interlocking faults far more complex than geo ogists had earlier understood, according to a series of papers published last October. Until then, scientists had assumed the Haiti earthquake involved a simple shift along the Enriquillo-Plantain
Garden fault zone, a well-devolped,-mile boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates. e surveys suggest instead that the Haiti quake may have ruptured primarily along a previously unmapped fault. Either way, the data show that the January tremor did not release all the stress that has accumulated in the fault system over hundreds of years. “ at’s the most troubling part—the region is primed for another quake,” says Paul Mann, a geologist at the University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics. Haiti’s quake has also demonstrated
that strike-slip faults, which create mostly horizontal motions, can set o landslides and giant tsunamis (usually associated with faults that move in a vertical, thrusting motion). e lesson is that cities like Los Angeles that lie on strike-slip faults could face big waves after even a moderate earthquake. “Anywhere you have a lot of people living at sea level and a fault capable of triggering a landslide under the ocean, you have all the components for a disaster,” Mann says.
36. Astronomers Catch Asteroid Smashup
Last January a military telescope detected a bizarre object hurtling around the asteroid belt, leaving a long tail of dust. UCLA planetary scientist David Jewitt took one look and said, “Asteroid collision.” The millions of rocky objects orbiting between Mars and Jupiter probably collide all the time, but this is the first instance in which astronomers have seen direct evidence of an impact. Jewitt and his colleagues watched the object and its fading, X-shaped tail for five months with the Hubble Space Telescope. The most likely scenario, he says, is that an asteroid just 10 or 20 feet wide struck the larger object, called P/2010 A2, which measures almost 400 feet across. (A less likely
alternative is that P/2010 A2 is a solitary asteroid rotating so quickly that it flings off dust, producing the tail.) The speed and location of debris suggest that the crash happened in February or March 2009 at more than 11,000 miles per hour. The find should help astronomers determine how much dust in the solar system originates in asteroid collisions; such impacts may also create fragments that reach Earth as small meteorites. It could also open a whole new
field of study. Now that people know what an asteroid smashup looks like, “I’d be quite surprised if someone doesn’t find another one this year.
alternative is that P/2010 A2 is a solitary asteroid rotating so quickly that it flings off dust, producing the tail.) The speed and location of debris suggest that the crash happened in February or March 2009 at more than 11,000 miles per hour. The find should help astronomers determine how much dust in the solar system originates in asteroid collisions; such impacts may also create fragments that reach Earth as small meteorites. It could also open a whole new
field of study. Now that people know what an asteroid smashup looks like, “I’d be quite surprised if someone doesn’t find another one this year.
37. CIA Doctors Did Forbidden Research
Doctors employed by CIA participated in research and experimentation on prisoners at detainment centers such as Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram air base that included water boarding, stress positioning, and sleep deprivation, according to a June report from Physicians for Human Rights. The group says doctors violated ethical and legal protections, including the Nuremberg Code and the Common Rule regulating federal research on human subjects. Scott Allen, lead medical author and a physician at Brown University, studied redacted papers documenting U.S. intelligence-collection programs involving prisoners after the / attacks. In one waterboarding excerpt, doctors were told to record “how long each application lasted, how much water was
applied, . . . if the naso- or oropharynx was lled, and how the subject looked between each treatment.” Beyond violating the doctor’s oath to “do no harm,” the method was awed, says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe of Emory University. “You can’t look at a person and tell how much pain they’re in,” he sa ys.
In October the United States apologized for its reckless medical experimentation—not for the recent activities but for infecting Guatemalans with syphilis in the s to test the e ectiveness of penicillin in a precursor to the infamous Tuskegee experiments. “It’s frustrating that evidence documenting experimentationtoday is buttonholed, while something from the past is condemned,”
applied, . . . if the naso- or oropharynx was lled, and how the subject looked between each treatment.” Beyond violating the doctor’s oath to “do no harm,” the method was awed, says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe of Emory University. “You can’t look at a person and tell how much pain they’re in,” he sa ys.
In October the United States apologized for its reckless medical experimentation—not for the recent activities but for infecting Guatemalans with syphilis in the s to test the e ectiveness of penicillin in a precursor to the infamous Tuskegee experiments. “It’s frustrating that evidence documenting experimentationtoday is buttonholed, while something from the past is condemned,”
38. Sinkhole Eats Guatemala City
A hundred feet deep and 70 feet Wide, the giant sinkhole pictured above devoured a clothing factory in Guatemala City suddenly on May . Sinkholes typically form when groundwater washes away soluble bedrock like limestone. However, Daniel Doctor of the U.S.Geological Survey says this gaping pit probably formed due to faulty underground infrastructure, such as leaky sewer lines that eroded surrounding sediment over the course of many years. A foot of rain dumped by tropical storm Agatha was probably the nal straw. While Doctor says sinkholes this deep are extremely uncommon, “human activities cause minor ones to form almost anywhere there’s a large city.”
39. Microbes Are Key to a Happy Gut
Inside your gut is a complex ecosystem: bacteria that are crucial to the digestive process, along with bacteria-invading viruses whose role is largely unknown.
A genetic analysis conducted by mmicrobiologist Jeffrey Gordon at ashington University in St. Louis offers one of the first comprehensive descriptions of this inner world. More than 80 percent of the viral gene sequences he found were new to science. Gordon’s group took fecal samples from four sets of identical
twins and analyzed their microbes. The mix of viral genes he found was unique to each individual. Each one’s gut virome was also very stable: Samples
taken a year apart shared 95 percent of the same viral genes,Gordon reported in Nature last July. The stability of the gut population and the specific
viral genes that turned up there suggest that the relationship between the bacteria and the viruses is mutualistic. The samples included many viral genes
that, when incorporated into a bacterium, can aid metabolism. The gut microbial community is effectively an “organ within an organ,” Gordon says. The mix
of microbes inside you affects how you metabolize food and probably has substantial impact on your health. In the future doctors may pay more attention to tending the microbes within us. “Considering ourselves as a composite of species will be an important step” for better health care.
A genetic analysis conducted by mmicrobiologist Jeffrey Gordon at ashington University in St. Louis offers one of the first comprehensive descriptions of this inner world. More than 80 percent of the viral gene sequences he found were new to science. Gordon’s group took fecal samples from four sets of identical
twins and analyzed their microbes. The mix of viral genes he found was unique to each individual. Each one’s gut virome was also very stable: Samples
taken a year apart shared 95 percent of the same viral genes,Gordon reported in Nature last July. The stability of the gut population and the specific
viral genes that turned up there suggest that the relationship between the bacteria and the viruses is mutualistic. The samples included many viral genes
that, when incorporated into a bacterium, can aid metabolism. The gut microbial community is effectively an “organ within an organ,” Gordon says. The mix
of microbes inside you affects how you metabolize food and probably has substantial impact on your health. In the future doctors may pay more attention to tending the microbes within us. “Considering ourselves as a composite of species will be an important step” for better health care.
40. Wild Winds Made Mars Gorgeous
Mars has a wispy atmosphere, with just 0.006 times the surface pressure of Earth. But that is enough to have sculptured one of the most dramatic landscapes in the solar system, University of Texas geophysicist Jack Holt reported in May. The ice cap of Mars’s north pole is marked with enormous gorges; the largest, Chasma Boreale (jutting upward at right), is deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. For four decades scientists debated how these canyons formed. Using the Shallow Radar instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Holt was able to peek beneath the ice’s surface for clues; in particular, the radar could pick out differences in electrical reflectivity between overlying layers, showing how the ice built up over time. The data reveal that as the northern ice cap grew, its changing contours altered local wind patterns. Over millions of years, the weak but persistent winds ate away at the surface ice and dust, carving out Chasma Boreale in all its glory.
41. Scans Unlock Hidden Life in Vegetative Brains
FMRI scans of the brain show a healthy volunteer answering “yes” to a researcher’s question at left and “no” at right, using only the power of thought. Retative state managed to answer doctors’ questions—using only his thoughts. e startling experiment, described in February in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests a new way to measure consciousness in brain-injured patients. Following a tra c accident, the patient had not spoken or made any other intelligible responses for five years before being included a study conducted by Adrian Owen and his team at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. e team tracked the patient’s brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging ( f ) while posing simple questions, such as whether he had a brother. He was asked to imagine walking around his house to indicate yes, and to think about playing tennis to signal no. In a healthy brain, these responses are easy to tell apart on a scan: Tennis activates motorrelated brain areas, while navigating activates spatial regions. Using this simple code, the patient answered ve of six questions correctly. Martin Monti, a euroscientist and lead author of the study, was “blown away” by the data. “We now know this patient has much more cognitive function than we ever imagined,” he says. Monti looks toward the day when f can improve diagnosis in disorders of consciousness and search for signs that patients are actually cognizant and alert. In some cases, imaging might also be used to communicate, but Monti thinks this may be rare. Only of patients whom he has studied have been able to do the visualization task at all.
42. X Prize Shows the Easy Path to a 100-MPG Car
Building a car that gets more than 100 miles per gallon does not require wild new technology, judging from the results of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. The $5 million top prize—awarded in September to the highest-mileage fourpassenger car that could top 100 mpg while passing a series of safety and other tests—went to the descriptively named Very Light Car, an automobile powered by a conventional internal combustion engine. That is not what team leader Oliver Kuttner expected when he formed Edison2 to build the winning vehicle. As the company’s name suggests, Kuttner expected to rely on electricity (and indeed, two electric two-seaters, the Wave II from Li-ion Motors and the E-Tracer 7009, made by X-Tracer, took $2.5 million each in the other two X Prize categories). But Kuttner’s team crunched some numbers and decided that they were better off avoiding heavy batteries and building the lightest, most aerodynamic car they could. So they did, and now—with the Environmental Protection Agency being pressed to set an automobile fuel-economy standard of 60 mpg by 2025— Kuttner intends to create a consumer version. “We have to prove it’s safe on real roads,” he says, “and build it at a cost people can actually afford.” He has no doubt that both can be done: “We’re going to build the Volkswagen Beetle for the 21st century.”
43. Plasma Rivers Explain the Quiet Sun
There is something new under the sun— or rather inside the sun. Usually our star follows a predictable pattern, becoming more and less active (as measured by flares, sunspots, and magnetic storms) on an 11-year cycle. But the most recent lull dragged on for 12.6 years.
“You have to go back 99 years to find another minimum as long,” says Mausumi Dikpati, a physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Last August she announced an explanation.
Dikpati used computer simulations to model the gargantuan rivers of plasma that flow across the sun’s surface. Like Earth’s ocean currents, solar plasma normally rises at the equator and sinks at higher latitudes. During the recent solar minimum, however, plasma flowed all the way to the poles.
Dikpati’s simulations show that these unusually long currents affect the magnetic fields near the surface, which indirectly determine the number of sunspots and the strength of solar flares.
These findings may help astronomers predict solar storms, which can disrupt radio and satellite communications on Earth, and understand the underlying mechanism behind the sun’s11-year heartbeat.
“You have to go back 99 years to find another minimum as long,” says Mausumi Dikpati, a physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Last August she announced an explanation.
Dikpati used computer simulations to model the gargantuan rivers of plasma that flow across the sun’s surface. Like Earth’s ocean currents, solar plasma normally rises at the equator and sinks at higher latitudes. During the recent solar minimum, however, plasma flowed all the way to the poles.
Dikpati’s simulations show that these unusually long currents affect the magnetic fields near the surface, which indirectly determine the number of sunspots and the strength of solar flares.
These findings may help astronomers predict solar storms, which can disrupt radio and satellite communications on Earth, and understand the underlying mechanism behind the sun’s11-year heartbeat.
44. Prehistoric Moby-Dick
Foot-long fossilized teeth found in the Chilean desert—once an ocean—have long tantalized paleontologists, who wondered what kind of beast had left them
behind. In July, Olivier Lambert of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris announced that his team may have solved the puzzle. Working in Peru, they unearthed similar teeth along with the giant skull and jaw of a fearsome, 12-million-year-old sperm whale. Named Livyatan melvillei in honor of Moby-Dick’s author, the whale was roughly the size of a modern adult male sperm whale. But living sperm whales have small teeth and typically do not
use them to capture prey. Paleontologists suspect that L. melvilleifed more like an orca, savagely ripping and tearing its victims. Ancient baleen whales found in the same area “would have been perfect prey for such an animal,” says Lambert, who has returned to Peru in search of the rest of Livyatan’s skeleton.
behind. In July, Olivier Lambert of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris announced that his team may have solved the puzzle. Working in Peru, they unearthed similar teeth along with the giant skull and jaw of a fearsome, 12-million-year-old sperm whale. Named Livyatan melvillei in honor of Moby-Dick’s author, the whale was roughly the size of a modern adult male sperm whale. But living sperm whales have small teeth and typically do not
use them to capture prey. Paleontologists suspect that L. melvilleifed more like an orca, savagely ripping and tearing its victims. Ancient baleen whales found in the same area “would have been perfect prey for such an animal,” says Lambert, who has returned to Peru in search of the rest of Livyatan’s skeleton.
45. Pinkie Pokes Holes in Human Evolution
A fragment of a pinkie finger excavated from a deep cavern in southern Siberia may point to a new species ofancient human. year-old bone yielded
markedly di erent from that of modern humans or Neanderthals, challenging the current view of how our ancestors migrated out of Africa. Johannes Krause and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, zeroed in on mitochondrial (which is passed down intact
from a woman to her children) preserved in the ancient bone. In January they identi ed it as belonging to an unknown female hominid whom they nicknamed “X Woman.” Her mitochondrial differed from present-day human at nearly positions, twice the difference measured between human and Neanderthal .
The genetic patterns indicate that X Woman, Neanderthals, and modern humans shared a common genetic ancestor about a million years ago. Pääbo suggests that X Woman may belong to a group of archaic humans who migrated out of Africa at a different time from Neanderthals or modern humans. If so, her group survived an astoundingly long time alongside the others—perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years. It is also possible that she was descended from the hybrid spawn of an ancient tryst between her ancestors and Neanderthals. Krause and Pääbo are now sequencing the nuclear genome from the Siberian nger fragment. If the nuclear con rms their initial windings, it will mark the rst time that an entirely new group of ancestral humans was identi-
ed by sequencing from a mere bone fragment, exponentially widening the potential to understand our human ancestors. “More and more, we will
see a lot of genetic information coming from fossil remains in which very little morphological information exists.
markedly di erent from that of modern humans or Neanderthals, challenging the current view of how our ancestors migrated out of Africa. Johannes Krause and Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, zeroed in on mitochondrial (which is passed down intact
from a woman to her children) preserved in the ancient bone. In January they identi ed it as belonging to an unknown female hominid whom they nicknamed “X Woman.” Her mitochondrial differed from present-day human at nearly positions, twice the difference measured between human and Neanderthal .
The genetic patterns indicate that X Woman, Neanderthals, and modern humans shared a common genetic ancestor about a million years ago. Pääbo suggests that X Woman may belong to a group of archaic humans who migrated out of Africa at a different time from Neanderthals or modern humans. If so, her group survived an astoundingly long time alongside the others—perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years. It is also possible that she was descended from the hybrid spawn of an ancient tryst between her ancestors and Neanderthals. Krause and Pääbo are now sequencing the nuclear genome from the Siberian nger fragment. If the nuclear con rms their initial windings, it will mark the rst time that an entirely new group of ancestral humans was identi-
ed by sequencing from a mere bone fragment, exponentially widening the potential to understand our human ancestors. “More and more, we will
see a lot of genetic information coming from fossil remains in which very little morphological information exists.
46. Do Physical Laws Vary From Place to Place?
Since the days of Isaac Newton, a bedrock principle of physics has been that the basic properties of the universe (the laws of gravity and the speed of light, for instance) are the same in all locations, at all times. So scientists were intrigued by the announcement last August that one of the so-called constants of nature might not be so constant after all. John Webb, an astronomer at the University of New South Wales in Australia, was studying the fine-structure constant, which governs the
strength of the force between charged particles, in a large number of distant galaxies. Using data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, he and his colleagues found a slight but notable variation in the constant: It increased one part per million for every billion light-years farther they looked. Odder still, an earlier survey in the Northern Hemisphere indicated that the constant
decreased with distance, suggesting a possible asymmetry in the universe. These tentative findings raise the possibility that the physical laws that allow life to exist may hold true only in our particular part of the universe. “There could be regions with different values for the constants of physics,” Webb says. “We inevitably find ourselves in one that allows us to be here.”
strength of the force between charged particles, in a large number of distant galaxies. Using data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, he and his colleagues found a slight but notable variation in the constant: It increased one part per million for every billion light-years farther they looked. Odder still, an earlier survey in the Northern Hemisphere indicated that the constant
decreased with distance, suggesting a possible asymmetry in the universe. These tentative findings raise the possibility that the physical laws that allow life to exist may hold true only in our particular part of the universe. “There could be regions with different values for the constants of physics,” Webb says. “We inevitably find ourselves in one that allows us to be here.”
47. Early Dawn for Earth’s Complex Life
The history of life on earth may need a significant rewrite. In July an international team reported fossil evidence of multicellular organisms dating back 2.1 billion years. Previously, scientists had believed that the first of these complex creatures did not appear until almost a billion years later, and that single-celled microbes were the only life-form before then. After recovering more than 250 fossils from clay deposits in western Africa, Stefan Bengtson of the Swedish Museum of Natural History and his collaborators examined some of the relics with a powerful three-dimensional scanner. The fossilized creatures, some
of them as large as five inches across, appeared to have an organized internal structure composed of a network of cells, suggesting complexity far beyond the simple bacterial structures Bengtson expected to find. “This is the first fossil we can hold in our hands and say, ‘Maybe complex life started here,
of them as large as five inches across, appeared to have an organized internal structure composed of a network of cells, suggesting complexity far beyond the simple bacterial structures Bengtson expected to find. “This is the first fossil we can hold in our hands and say, ‘Maybe complex life started here,
48. The Science of Chivalry
In some DISASTERS every man for himself. In others it’s women and children rst. What determines whether panic or order prevails? Time, says Benno Torgler, an economist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, who studied century-old nautical disasters for clues. The Titanic sank in the
Lusitania three years later. e passengers were remarkably similar in age, gender, and percentage of survivors, Torgler says. But when he analyzed who survived, the differences jumped o the page. Women on the Titanic were percent more likely to escape the disaster than men, and children had a
percent better chance than adults. On the Lusitania, though, people between and had the best odds. “Survival of the ttest was much stronger on
the Lusitania,” says Torgler, who published his ndings in March. e crucial di erence was time. The Lusitania sank in minutes, but it took the Titanic two hours and minutes to succumb to the sea, leaving time for social norms to triumph over sel shness. Now Torgler is on the hunt for modern catastrophes he can compare in the same way to further unlock the science of chivalry. “How long does it take for this pro-social behavior to emerge?” he asks. “ at’s a question for neuroscience.”
Lusitania three years later. e passengers were remarkably similar in age, gender, and percentage of survivors, Torgler says. But when he analyzed who survived, the differences jumped o the page. Women on the Titanic were percent more likely to escape the disaster than men, and children had a
percent better chance than adults. On the Lusitania, though, people between and had the best odds. “Survival of the ttest was much stronger on
the Lusitania,” says Torgler, who published his ndings in March. e crucial di erence was time. The Lusitania sank in minutes, but it took the Titanic two hours and minutes to succumb to the sea, leaving time for social norms to triumph over sel shness. Now Torgler is on the hunt for modern catastrophes he can compare in the same way to further unlock the science of chivalry. “How long does it take for this pro-social behavior to emerge?” he asks. “ at’s a question for neuroscience.”
49. Why Swine Flu Fizzled
Last January, as new H1N1 flu infections were trailing off in the Northern Hemisphere, accusations began to fly
that the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic in the spring of 2009 had served mainly to line the
pockets of pharmaceutical companies making vaccines and the drug Tamiflu. By June, a report in the British
Medical Journal concluded that the WHO had exaggerated the threat. “That’s a 20/20 hindsight point of
view that’s unacceptable,” says Lone Simonsen, a flu expert at George Washington University in Washington,D.C., who cautions it could have been much worse. Early signs of H1N1 indicated similarities to the 1918 flu
that killed 60 million people worldwide. But H1N1 changed as it spread, and by the time it reached Japan it was
mild, killing mostly the immunocompromised elderly, says Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at the Japan Science
and Technology Agency. A recent study of data in the United States measured the impact of H1N1 on years of life lost. By that measure, H1N1 seems more similar to the 1968 pandemic, which killed 1 million people globally, than to the outbreak in 1918. Simonsen notes, however, that the H1N1 battle may not be over, pointing out that “the
last five pandemics in history have allcome in waves.”
that the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic in the spring of 2009 had served mainly to line the
pockets of pharmaceutical companies making vaccines and the drug Tamiflu. By June, a report in the British
Medical Journal concluded that the WHO had exaggerated the threat. “That’s a 20/20 hindsight point of
view that’s unacceptable,” says Lone Simonsen, a flu expert at George Washington University in Washington,D.C., who cautions it could have been much worse. Early signs of H1N1 indicated similarities to the 1918 flu
that killed 60 million people worldwide. But H1N1 changed as it spread, and by the time it reached Japan it was
mild, killing mostly the immunocompromised elderly, says Hiroshi Nishiura, an epidemiologist at the Japan Science
and Technology Agency. A recent study of data in the United States measured the impact of H1N1 on years of life lost. By that measure, H1N1 seems more similar to the 1968 pandemic, which killed 1 million people globally, than to the outbreak in 1918. Simonsen notes, however, that the H1N1 battle may not be over, pointing out that “the
last five pandemics in history have allcome in waves.”
50. Giant Ancient Fish Fed Like Whales
In EVOLUTION some ideas are so good that they come up again and again. Last year paleontologists in Britain and the United States learned that during the Cretaceous era huge sh drifted through the oceans with mouths agape, ingesting plankton through specialized lters, thus lling the ecological niche that humpbacks and other baleen whales occupy today. Previously, scientists had found only a few fossils of lter-feeding sh, which lived about million years ago and then seemingly went extinct.
Large plankton eaters did not appear again until about million years ago, when suspension-feeding sharks emerged. at huge gap stumped researchers until last year’s discovery by University of Oxford paleontologist Matt Friedman, who identi ed a -foot-long fossil sh, previously excavated from a slab of rock in Kansas, as a lter feeder. Bonnerichthys, as he called it, dated to around million years ago, long after such animals were thought to have vanished.
Friedman subsequently reexamined dusty museum archives and found neglected fossils showing that similar gape-mouthed, plankton-eating sh had thrived all over the world for more than 100 million years.That abundance indicates the creatures “were far more than just a blip on the evolutionary radar,” Friedman says.“ They were a hidden dynasty.”
Large plankton eaters did not appear again until about million years ago, when suspension-feeding sharks emerged. at huge gap stumped researchers until last year’s discovery by University of Oxford paleontologist Matt Friedman, who identi ed a -foot-long fossil sh, previously excavated from a slab of rock in Kansas, as a lter feeder. Bonnerichthys, as he called it, dated to around million years ago, long after such animals were thought to have vanished.
Friedman subsequently reexamined dusty museum archives and found neglected fossils showing that similar gape-mouthed, plankton-eating sh had thrived all over the world for more than 100 million years.That abundance indicates the creatures “were far more than just a blip on the evolutionary radar,” Friedman says.“ They were a hidden dynasty.”