| NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCESCIENCE30 February 2017DR MARIAN VANHEREN, TIM EVANSON/WIKIPEDIA, ALEXANDRA WEY/EPA/CAMERA PRESSDOGS CAN
UNDERSTAND US
“Who’s a good boy? You are,
yes, you are.” A Hungarian
study has found that pooches
use the left hemisphere of
their brain to understand
the meaning of words and
the right to understand their
tone – just like humans do.GIANT PANDAS
ARE NO LONGER
ENDANGERED
Contrary to the black and
white bears’ reputation
of having a blasé attitude
towards the continued
existence of their species,
researchers have found giant
panda numbers in southern
China actually increased from
1,596 in 2004 to 1,864 in 2014.
This means the animal is
now classed as ‘vulnerable’
rather than ‘endangered’.THE MOON
CAN TRIGGER
EARTHQUAKES
Large-scale quakes are more
likely to occur during full
and new Moons, researchers
in Japan have found. The
effect is due to the pull of the
Moon’s gravity being stronger
at these times, putting
extra stress on the Earth’s
tectonic plates.WHAT WE LEARNED
THIS MONTHWERE NEANDERTHALS
THE ORIGINAL HIPSTERS?
We’ve already had the paleo diet, but could paleo
jewellery be the next big hipster trend? A team from
the University of York has found that Neanderthals
crafted necklaces and other items of jewellery using
animal teeth, shells and ivory. Such behaviour was
previously thought to be exclusive to humans.
In the late 1940s, a large collection of hominin
remains was found surrounded by intricate body
ornaments and jewellery in the Grotte du Renne
in Arcy-sur-Cure, central France. Over the
intervening decades, debate has raged among
palaeontologists as to whether Neanderthals would
have been capable of the complex, symbolic
thought processes required to produce such
decorative items.
Now, by analysing the proteins of some of
the previously unidentified hominin specimens,
the researchers from York were able to determine
the remains most likely belonged to a Neanderthalinfant. And radio carbon dating shows that the
sample is around 42,000 years old. This puts it near
the end of the Pleistocene epoch, which ranged
from 1.8 million to around 11,000 years ago –
a perfect match for the date of the artefacts that can
now be assumed to have indeed been the work of
Neanderthal jewellery-makers.
As interesting as that is, it’s perhaps the protein
analysis technique involved that’s the real story here.
“For the first time, this research demonstrates
the effectiveness of recent developments in ancient
protein amino acid analysis and radiocarbon dating
to discriminate between Late Pleistocene clades,”
said researcher Matthew Collins. “These methods
open up new avenues of research into contexts
where hominin remains are scarce and where the
biological nature of remains is unclear due to DNA
not being preserved. This is of direct relevance to
our understanding of hominin evolution.”New evidence shows that Neanderthals
did indeed make jewellery, settling
a decades-long debate in palaeontologyANTHROPOLOGY28 February 2017