ABSTRACTS

Natural History, March, 2000 by Richard Milner

NEANDERTHAL FLOWER POWER The 1976 discovery of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton together with clusters of ancient pollen grains and plant stalks convinced many scientists that it had been deliberately buried with garlands of wildflowers. The Middle Paleolithic remains were found in Shanidar Cave, Iraq, with evidence of yarrow, grape hyacinth, and Saint Barnaby's thistle. Shanidar's discoverer, Ralph Solecki, opined in 1971 that "with the finding of flowers in association with Neanderthals, we are brought suddenly to the realization that the universality of mankind and the love of beauty go beyond the boundary of our own species."

At about the same time, however, zoo-archaeologist Richard Redding excavated several burrows of Meriones crassus, a gerbil-like rodent found in the Zagros Mountains, and observed that the animal stores large numbers of similar flowers in its tunnels. Learning about the habits of these rodents almost three decades later, Jeffrey D. Sommer, of the University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropology, reexamined accounts of the Shanidar excavations and noticed references to preserved rodent bones and burrows "very close to the skeletons." Sommer proposes that the flowers may well have been deposited at Shanidar by the Persian jird, M. persicus, another inhabitant of the region's barren and rocky slopes. "While the investigation of Neanderthal cognition should continue," he concludes, "the flower pollen recovered near Shanidar IV is more likely to have resulted from the activities of rodents than Neanderthals." ("The Shanidar IV `Flower Burial': A Reevaluation of Neanderthal Burial Ritual" Cambridge Archaeological Journal 9:1, 1999)

BIGGEST OF THE SMALL An extinct species of the disc-shaped, single-celled organism Nummulites may have been the biggest (and perhaps the longest-lived) unicellular creature that ever existed. Some individuals were the size of large clams.

A subgroup of foraminifera (microscopic creatures that encase themselves in elaborate calcium carbonate shells), the largest nummulites lived some 50 million years ago. While most modern forams are amoeba-sized, the Eocene species N. millecaput reached more than six inches in diameter. Louise M. A. Purton, of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and Martin D. Brasier, of the University of Oxford, investigated the conditions under which these protozoans attained such great size. They found that the Eocene nummulites lived in nutrient-rich environments during a warm climatic phase. Their shells indicate that individuals grew slowly but steadily and may have lived more than a century. Although there are not enough remains of the largest nummulites for definitive studies, researchers can estimate their life spans by comparing fragments with remains of the closely related smaller species N. laevigatus, which lived about six years. Studying alterations in carbon and oxygen isotopes in the fossilized shells, the researchers examined seasonal records of these extinct giants of the unicellular world and could thus extrapolate growth rates and ages. ("Giant Protist Nummulites and Its Eocene Environment: Life Span and Habitat Insights From [[Delta].sup.18]O and [[Delta].sup.13]C Data From Nummulites and Venericardia, Hampshire Basin, UK," Geology 27:8, 1999)

BIGGEST OF THE BIG Dinosaur bones discovered in 1994 in a remote area of southeastern Oklahoma may be the remains of the largest of all sauropods. Four neckbones, the longest of which reaches nearly five feet, were found by amateur paleontologist Bobby Cross, who thought they were the trunks of prehistoric trees. Close examination of the bones by Richard Cifelli and his colleagues at the University of Oklahoma revealed that they belonged to a relative of Brachiosaurus.

Extrapolating from the fragmentary bones, the researchers believe that the animal, which they named Sauroposeidon ("earth-lord lizard") proteles, was thirty times larger than the largest giraffe ever known. It was nearly a hundred feet long, weighed more than sixty tons, and had a thirty-foot neck.

Since the dinosaur lived about 110 million years ago, toward the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, it was given the species name proteles, from the Greek for "completion." This new find may begin to fill in the blanks about the last North American sauropods, which may have left behind the gigantic tracks near Glen Rose, Texas, that have puzzled researchers for decades. ("Sauroposeidon proteles, a New Sauropod From the Early Cretaceous of Oklahoma," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 20:1, 2000)

AND SPEAKING OF TRACKS ... After six years of searching for tracks in the Raton basin of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, geologist William T. Caneer discovered imprints in Upper Cretaceous sandstone that he believes were made by the king of carnosaurs. One track, in Colorado, indicates a Tyrannosaurus rex walking in normal, bipedal fashion. The New Mexico tracks may be impressions made by the animal's forearms and two-digit "hands." Caneer believes that the individual was rising from a prone position. ("One of Two T. rex Tracks From the Raton Basin Left Traces of the Forearms and Hands in Addition to the Foot," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19:3, 1999)