New Scientist - 29.02.2020

29 February 2020 | New Scientist | 19

Ancient humans

Palaeontology Zoology

Dirty air sticks

around indoors

Chemicals released by

cleaning or cooking can

stick to walls, furnishings

and other surfaces indoors

instead of wafting out

when we open a window.

Researchers found that

briefly airing a mock home

failed to reduce the levels

of 18 potentially harmful

substances (Science

Advances, doi.org/dm57)

Climate change

altered ancient diet

The Sahara desert was

once home to many species

of fish, including tilapia and

catfish, which were hunted

by animals and humans

alike. Fossils show these

fish dwindled as a changing

climate dried up lakes and

swamps they inhabited,

forcing those who relied on

them to change their diets

(PLoS One, doi.org/dm4k).

Seaweed may be

crucial ancestor

Tiny billion-year-old fossil

seaweeds found in China

may be the ancestors of all

land plants. The seaweeds

(Proterocladus antiquus)

have branching structures

and disc-shaped parts to

attach to rocks and are

the oldest complex plants

known (Nature Ecology &

Evolution, DOI: 10.1038/

s41559-020-1122-9).

Neanderthals really

did bury their dead

ARCHAEOLOGISTS in Iraq have

discovered a new Neanderthal

skeleton that appears to have

been deliberately buried between

about 60,000 and 70,000 years

ago. The find reinforces earlier

claims that this extinct type of

human used graves for their dead.

Excavations of Shanidar cave

in northern Iraq in the 1950s

and 1960s yielded the remains

of 10 Neanderthals, including one

dubbed Shanidar 4, which was

THIS insect locked in Cretaceous-era

amber has bizarrely wide and long

antennae that may have evolved to

help it confuse predators or disguise

it as it foraged on branches.

Bao-Jie Du at Nankai University in

China and her colleagues examined

the 99-million-year-old specimen

of a juvenile Magnusantenna wuae,

an insect from the Coreidae family.

It was preserved in amber collected

in northern Myanmar.

She found the nymph’s antennae

are more exaggerated than those

of all other species in the Coreidae

family. Du had never seen anything

quite like it and says that they may

be a new form of antennae.

The big question is why they

evolved. Du and her team suggest

that they might have been used for

displays during mating behaviour

or as false targets so that a predator

would miss the true body of the

insect in an attack. They also argue

the antennae would have been extra

sensitive, given their large surface

area (bioRxiv, doi.org/dm6j).

Max Barclay at the Natural

History Museum in London says

a sexual function is unlikely since

the antennae already seem to be

well-developed in the juvenile

insect. He favours the idea that

the antennae mimicked leaves to

provide disguise. Chris Baraniuk

found with clumps of pollen –

suggesting the body had been

deliberately placed in a grave

and flowers scattered on it.

However, the “flower burial”

idea has been controversial.

“There are burrowing rodents

that use the cave and they

sometimes take flowers into their

burrows,” says Emma Pomeroy

at the University of Cambridge.

Now Pomeroy and her team

have analysed a new set of remains

from the cave: the upper half of a

Neanderthal. They found multiple

lines of evidence that this

Neanderthal was deliberately

TV is educational -

even for birds

FORAGING birds can learn to

avoid foul foods by watching films

of other birds’ responses to it.

Liisa Hämäläinen at the

University of Cambridge and her

team studied this type of social

learning in blue tits (Cyanistes

caeruleus) and great tits (Parus

major), which forage together.

Two groups of 24 birds, 12 blue

tits and 12 great tits, were shown a

video of either a blue tit or a great

tit eating unpleasant “prey” – food

soaked in a bitter solution and

marked with a black square – and

showing disgust by wiping their

beaks and shaking their heads.

The birds that watched this

were given unpleasant food with

the marking and normal food to

see if they had learned. Another

set of 12 blue tits and 12 great tits

were given these options without

having watched the films.

For both species, the birds that

watched the videos ate fewer bad

prey than those that hadn’t. Blue

tits learned best by watching their

own kind, but great tits learned

equally well from either species

(Journal of Animal Ecology, doi.

org/dm6k). While birds have been

shown to avoid certain prey by

observing their own species, this

has only been seen across species

once before. Bethan Ackerley

buried, including that fact that the

sediment layer around the body is

visibly different to the layer below.

What is more, the sediment below

the body shows signs of having

been disturbed by digging

(Antiquity, doi.org/dm6h).

Modern humans were burying

their dead at least 100,000 years

ago, says Pomeroy. We don’t know

whether Neanderthals devised the

behaviour themselves or if they

learned it from humans, but we do

know Neanderthals and humans

encountered each other around

the time of the Shanidar burials.

Michael Marshall

Dinosaur era insect had

really odd oversized feelers

ROSTISLAV KUZNETSOV/EYEEM/GETTY IMAGES

BAO-JIE DU ET AL

Really brief

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