186. New Evidence Concerning Early Man in North America

Man ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 152
Author(s):  
Alan Lyle Bryan
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Ana L. Hernández-Damián ◽  
Sergio R. S. Cevallos-Ferriz ◽  
Alma R. Huerta-Vergara

ABSTRACTA new flower preserved in amber in sediments of Simojovel de Allende, México, is identified as an extinct member of Staphyleaceae, a family of angiosperms consisting of only three genera (Staphylea, Turpinia and Euscaphis), which has a large and abundant fossil record and is today distributed over the Northern Hemisphere. Staphylea ochoterenae sp. nov. is the first record of a flower for this group, which is small, pedicelled, pentamer, bisexual, with sepals and petals with similar size, dorsifixed anthers and superior ovary. Furthermore, the presence of stamens with pubescent filaments allows close comparison with extant flowers of Staphylea bulmada and S. forresti, species currently growing in Asia. However, their different number of style (one vs. three) and the apparent lack of a floral disc distinguish them from S. ochoterenae. The presence of Staphyleaceae in southern Mexico ca. 23 to 15My ago is evidence of the long history of integration of vegetation in low-latitude North America, in which some lineages, such as Staphylea, could move southwards from high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as part of the Boreotropical Flora. In Mexico it grew in association with tropical elements, as suggested by the fossil record of the area.


2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 1308-1326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng-Sheng Xia ◽  
Sen-Gui Zhang ◽  
Zong-Zhe Wang

Previous reports of Cambrian bryozoans have proved not to be bryozoans. No pre-Ordovician bryozoans have been recognized. The oldest unequivocal bryozoans known from North America, Britain, and Russia are evidently of early Arenigian age. New bryozoans recently collected from the Fenxiang Formation in the Daping and Guanzhuangping sections, situated in the area east of the Yangtze Gorges, are described here, including one new genus, Orbiramus, and six new species, Nekhorosheviella nodulifera, N. semisphaerica, Orbiramus normalis, O. ovalis, O. minus, and Prophyllodictya prisca. These are assigned to the Trepostomida, apart from the last species which belongs to the Cryptostomida. The new bryozoans are from the conodont Paltodus deltifer deltifer Zone of the late Tremadocian age, the first three species possibly being present in the P. deltifer pristinus Subzone at the base. Therefore, they are the oldest bryozoans known from anywhere in the world. Extensive reefs resulting from a major regression in the late Tremadocian were dominated by bryozoans in the upper Fenxiang Formation. The bryozoans lived in a shoal environment and accumulated essentially in situ, showing no signs of significant transportation.


Science ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 184 (4138) ◽  
pp. 791-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Bada ◽  
R. A. Schroeder ◽  
G. F. Carter

1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (12) ◽  
pp. 2027-2039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen W. Archer ◽  
John H. Calder ◽  
Martin R. Gibling ◽  
Robert D. Naylor ◽  
Donald R. Reid ◽  
...  

The sea cliffs at Joggins, Nova Scotia, are the most extensive and continuous Carboniferous section in eastern North America. Although the section has been considered to have formed within a nonmarine depositional basin, paleobiological information indicates that parts of the section were deposited in brackish water. The occurrence of a trace-fossil assemblage, which includes Cochlichnus, Kouphichnium, and Treptichnus, is part of an assemblage of biogenic structures that apparently reflects paleodeposition within fluvial systems that may have experienced distal marine influences. Presence of agglutinated foraminifera characteristic of brackish-water environments supports this interpretation. This information provides new evidence of brackish-water conditions at Joggins such as those now being widely recognized in other Carboniferous coal-bearing sections.


1996 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen J. Gremillion

Systematic quantitative analysis of desiccated human paleofeces from two rockshelters in eastern Kentucky has yielded new evidence for early agricultural diet in eastern North America. Results indicate that native cultigens (including sumpweed, sunflower, and chenopod) were sometimes significant dietary constituents as early as ca. 1000 B.C., at least a millennium before agricultural economies became widespread across the region. However, variability in the quantity and frequency of cultigen remains suggests a dietary role that was somewhat limited compared to the practices of later Woodland period farmers. The predictions of foraging theory suggest that the utilization of cultigens would have been most advantageous in spring and summer (when many other foods were scarce) or in years of poor production by nut-bearing trees. The causal link between food storage and the development of food production in eastern Kentucky receives some empirical support and warrants further investigation.


Author(s):  
Edward Vajda

Dene-Yeniseian is a proposed genealogical link between the widespread North American language family Na-Dene (Athabaskan, Eyak, Tlingit) and Yeniseian in central Siberia, represented today by the critically endangered Ket and several documented extinct relatives. The Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis is an old idea, but since 2006 new evidence supporting it has been published in the form of shared morphological systems and a modest number of lexical cognates showing interlocking sound correspondences. Recent data from human genetics and folklore studies also increasingly indicate the plausibility of a prehistoric (probably Late Pleistocene) connection between populations in northwestern North America and the traditionally Yeniseian-speaking areas of south-central Siberia. At present, Dene-Yeniseian cannot be accepted as a proven language family until the purported evidence supporting the lexical and morphological correspondences between Yeniseian and Na-Dene is expanded and tested by further critical analysis and their relationship to Old World families such as Sino-Tibetan and Caucasian, as well as the isolate Burushaski (all earlier proposed as relatives of Yeniseian, and sometimes also of Na-Dene), becomes clearer.


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