These guys know their shit

[darklighter1]

I got a million jokes if anyone is interested after reading this... ;)

New evidence of earliest North Americans

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

New evidence shows humans lived in North America more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than had previously been known.

Discovered in a cave in Oregon, fossil feces yielded DNA indicating these early residents were related to people living in Siberia and East Asia, according to a report in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

"This is the first time we have been able to get dates that are undeniably human, and they are 1,000 years before Clovis," said Dennis L. Jenkins, a University of Oregon archaeologist, referring to the Clovis culture, well known for its unique spear-points that have been studied previously.

Humans are widely believed to have arrived in North America from Asia over a land-bridge between Alaska and Siberia during a warmer period. A variety of dates has been proposed and some are in dispute.

Few artifacts were found in the cave, leading Jenkins to speculate that these people stayed there only a few days at a time before moving on, perhaps following game animals or looking for other food.

The petrified poop — coprolites to scientists — is yielding a look at the diet of these ancient Americans, Jenkins said.

While the analysis is not yet complete, he said there are bones of squirrels, bison hair, fish scales, protein from birds and dogs and the remains of plants such as grass and sunflowers.

The oldest of several coprolites studied is 14,340 calendar years old, said co-author Eske Willerslev, director of the Centre for Ancient Genetics at Denmark's University of Copenhagen.

"The Paisley Cave material represents, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest human DNA obtained from the Americas," he said. "Other pre-Clovis sites have been claimed, but no human DNA has been obtained."

The date for the new coprolites is similar to that of Monte Verde in southern Chile, where human artifacts have been discovered, added Willerslev.

Jenkins said it isn't clear exactly who these people living in the Oregon caves were, since there were few artifacts found. He said there was one stone tool, a hand tool used perhaps to polish or grind or mash bones or fat.

"We are not saying that these people were of a particular ethnic group. At this point, we know they most likely came from Siberia or Eastern Asia, and we know something about what they were eating, which is something we can learn from coprolites. We're talking about human signature," he said.

"If you are looking for the first people in North America, you are going to have to step back more than 1,000 years beyond Clovis to find them," Jenkins said.

The Clovis culture has been dated to between 13,200 and 12,900 calendar years ago and is best known by the tools left behind.

Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, said the find, along with indications of human presence at other locations, adds to the evidence for a pre-Clovis human presence in North America.

"The genetic evidence from the coprolites from Paisley Caves is also consistent with the current genetic data for the peopling of the Americas — that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from Northeast Asia," added Waters, who was not part of the research team.

Anthropologist Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said this data along with material from Alaska provide increasing "evidence that ancestors of Native Americans used a coastal route during the colonization of the Americas." Malhi was not part of the research team.

Jenkins said that discoveries like those in the Oregon caves "help us to reconstruct the American past."

"Our heritage is really important and it is important to the majority of the American public. If you don't know where you come from, it's hard to have a feeling of community, of participation."

To make sure the Oregon cave material hadn't been contaminated with modern DNA, the researchers tested more than 50 people who worked at the site. The DNA testing indicated that the feces belonged to Native Americans in two groups that can be traced to Siberia and East Asia.

In their paper the researchers dated the coprolites at 12,300 "carbon years" before the present. Prior to 3,000 years ago, carbon years differed from calendar years, resulting in the date of approximately 14,300 calendar years for the coprolites.

The research was funded by the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon; Association of Oregon Archaeologists and the Marie Curie Actions program.

[AYHJA]

I was looking at the title, like...Damn, what the hell is DL1 talking about...Read the article and bout spit my coffee on the monitor...Hard for me to even fathom excitement over such a discovery cause I can't imagine how it came about, cdr...

[ootpoot]

Extraction of DNA from coprolites looks similar to the recently found method of removing
DNA from cores of long bones of dinausars.
Whether it is just an academic exercise or if fungible DNA can be found remains to be seen.
So far, no Jurrasic Park for you!



No Cro-Magnon man.
No pooping Indians.
Would you care for some amber with your coprolite?
No, but I'd love some ambergris with my manatee.
Garçon, vas y tabernac!
Some brillig with my slithy toves, s'il vou plait...
FTW? Bring me a mirror!
CDR.
No, DWG.
Aha, PDF!
:?

[AYHJA]

Hey..! Is that your first CDR..? :p

[ootpoot]

Even a google search does not reveal "CDR" as a forum, blog or bulletin board acronym.
It must be something particular to ayhja.com like a secret handshake or 10-year-old boys touching 'dinkies' in their "No Girlz Allowed" tree fort.

What is this "CDR" thing? :?:

[AYHJA]

It must be something particular to ayhja.com

Nah, ya think..? :?: Whatever might have given you that idea..? :laff:

[ootpoot]

Like a few other things here, "CDR" is a sad 'in-joke'.
:(
It does, however, seem appropriate to reference it in a thread about 'old shit'.
;)

[AYHJA]

Would it still be a sad 'in' joke if there's a long ass thread easily viewed by any person with an internet connection that is titled 'The History of CDR'..? Would you like me to spoon feed you the information..? If you don't know, and don't care to know, cool...We'll just CDR and you can continue to pretend we're keeping something from you, or...You can do what everyone is telling you to do since you got here, and read the forums for yourself...Your call, but the very essence of CDR was to highlight the oblivious among us...

[ootpoot]

In other forum's that I visit, when asked a direct question,
the responder will often give the URL,
the lookup address for the thread,
or better still, a short, succinct answer.
I will give an example:

Question: "Would it still be a sad 'in' joke if there's a long ass thread... ?"
Answer: "Yes."

A search within ayhja forum for "CDR" brings up more than 900 posts.
To say after-the-fact that it is "easily viewed by any person with an internet connection" is disingenuous at best.

Question: "If one googles 'user-obsequious', what does one find?"
Answer:
              

Yawn.

[AYHJA]

In other forums that you visit, if you ask a direct question that has been asked 2,345,687 times, you'll probably get flamed or worse...The simple fact that you're still asking shows that you're just not all that willing to look, so fahgeddaboutit, don't worry..!