A 52-million-year-old ankle fossil suggests our prehuman ancestors were high-flying acrobats.
These first primates spent most of their time in the trees rather than on the ground, but just how nimble they were as they moved around in the treetops has been a topic of dispute.
For years, scientists thought the ancestors of today’s humans, monkeys, lemurs and apes were relatively slow and deliberate animals, using their grasping hands and feet to creep along small twigs and branches to stalk insects or find flowers and fruits.
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The work – led by the University of Adelaide, and involving scientists from the Queensland Government, and members of the local community – has uncovered what the researchers describe as a "treasure trove" of ancient wetlands on Queensland's North Stradbroke Island (known to Indigenous communities as Minjerribah), some dating as old as 200,000 years ago.
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As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, RiskMap.us, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.
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