Early Man Site Found in Highland Ecuador

Field investigations in Ecuador have produced archeological evidence for the occupation of the northern Andes by early nomadic hunters. Surface collections and test excavations have demonstrated a complex of stone tools with typological relationships to level I at Fell's Cave in southern Chile, and technological relationships to the late Pleistocene "fluted point" complexes of North America. The date of these materials is estimated at 7000 to 8000 B.C.     

Death of american ground sloths

Organic remains, especially dung, of extinct ground sloths provide ideal material for radiocarbon dating. Rampart Cave, Arizona, revealed periodic occupation at intervals by the Shasta ground sloth from before 40,000 years ago until 11,000 years ago. Dates from other caves in the arid Southwest indicate that the Shasta ground sloth disappeared at very soon after the time of Clovis big game hunters. Ground sloth remains in South America are slightly younger. The timing of ground sloth extinction is in accord with the model of explosive overkill.     

The Discovery of America: The first Americans may have swept the Western Hemisphere and decimated its fauna within 1000 years

I propose a new scenario for the discovery of America. By analogy with other successful animal invasions, one may assume that the discovery of the New World triggered a human population explosion. The invading hunters attained their highest population density along a front that swept from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico in 350 years, and on to the tip of South America in roughly 1000 years. A sharp drop in human population soon followed as major prey animals declined to extinction. Possible values for the model include an average frontal depth of 160 kilometers, an average population density of 0.4 person per square kilometer on the front and of 0.04 person per square kilometer behind the front, and an average rate of frontal advance of 16 kilometers per year. For the first two centuries the maximum rate of growth may have equaled the historic maximum of 3.4 percent annually. During the episode of faunal extinctions, the population of North America need not have exceeded 600,000 people at any one time. The model generates a population sufficiently large to overkill a biomass of Pleistocene large animals averaging 9 metric tons per square kilometer (50 animal units per section) or 2.3 x 10(8) metric tons in the hemisphere. It requires that on the front one person in four destroy one animal unit (450 kilograms) per week, or 26 percent of the biomass of an average section in 1 year in any one region. Extinction would occur within a decade. There was insufficient time for the fauna to learn defensive behaviors, or for more than a few kill sites to be buried and preserved for the archeologist. Should the model survive future findings, it will mean that the extinction chronology of the Pleistocene megafauna can be used to map the spread of Homo sapiens throughout the New World.     

Homing in the ant Cataglyphis bicolor

Cataglyphis bicolor, an ant widely distributed in North Africa and the Near East, orient to the sun as well as to visual patterns of the environment. These two mechanisms can be separated. Foraging ants (hunters) orient to terrestrial cues as long as possible, and only after these have become ineffective do they switch over to the menotactical sun orientation. In the digging individuals, however, the visual knowledge of locality is significantly inferior to that of the hunters. Diggers vary considerably in size, but hunters belong to the largest size group. In addition, the largest and smallest individuals orient differently toward black and white areas and stripe patterns.     

Paleomagnetic dating of cave paintings in tito bustillo cave, asturias, Spain

Geomagnetic variations recorded in sediments deposited in Tito Bustillo Cave, Asturias, Spain, have been correlated with part of the geomagnetic record established for Lake Windermere, England. An age of between 11,200 and 11,600 years is suggested for a frieze of animals discovered in the cave, so that these polychrome paintings may be attributed to late Ice Age hunters (Magdalenian V-VI).     

PUBLIC HEALTH: Deaths Among Heroin Users Present a Puzzle

More than 30 heroin users in Scotland and Ireland have succumbed to a mysterious malady in the past 6 weeks, leading health officials to suspect anthrax, the notorious biological warfare agent. Now, analyses by microbe hunters on both sides of the Atlantic offer a somewhat reassuring conclusion: Anthrax did not kill the heroin users. It's unclear what did, but a new suspect has emerged.     

Matriarchs as repositories of social knowledge in African elephants

Despite widespread interest in the evolution of social intelligence, little is known about how wild animals acquire and store information about social companions or whether individuals possessing enhanced social knowledge derive biological fitness benefits. Using playback experiments on African elephants (Loxodonta africana), we demonstrated that the possession of enhanced discriminatory abilities by the oldest individual in a group can influence the social knowledge of the group as a whole. These superior abilities for social discrimination may result in higher per capita reproductive success for female groups led by older individuals. Our findings imply that the removal of older, more experienced individuals, which are often targets for hunters because of their large size, could have serious consequences for endangered populations of advanced social mammals such as elephants and whales.     

使鹿鄂温克人体质状态研究*

使鹿鄂温克人以饲养驯鹿为生，而且是中国最后的狩猎部落，近些年生产生活方式的巨变也带来了身体素质的巨大变化。对使鹿鄂温克原始居民进行了身体形态、身体机能、身体素质这三方面的详细调查，并进行了大量横向和纵向的对比。得到使鹿鄂温克人平均身高略高于周边汉族、猎民点生产生活物质条件改善后猎民点居民生活方式日趋健康、城市使鹿鄂温克人缺乏体育锻炼等几点结论。     

First record of giant anteater (xenarthra, myrmecophagidae) in north america

A right metacarpal III represents the first North American record of the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). Recovered in northwestern Sonora, Mexico, with a rich vertebrate fauna of early Pleistocene (Irvingtonian) age, it belongs to a cohort of large mammals that dispersed from South America to North America along a savanna corridor. Presumably habitat and climatic changes have subsequently driven this mammalian family more than 3000 kilometers back into Central America from its former expansion into temperate North America.     

Human occupations and climate change in the Puna de Atacama,Chile

Widespread evidence for human occupation of the Atacama Desert, 20 degrees to 25 degrees S in northern Chile, has been found from 13,000 calibrated 14C years before the present (cal yr B.P.) to 9500 cal yr B.P., and again after 4500 cal yr B.P. Initial human occupation coincided with a change from very dry environments to humid environments. More than 39 open early Archaic campsites at elevations above 3600 meters show that hunters lived around late glacial/early Holocene paleolakes on the Altiplano. Cessation of the use of the sites between 9500 and 4500 cal yr B.P. is associated with drying of the lakes. The mid-Holocene collapse of human occupation is also recorded in cave deposits. One cave contained Pleistocene fauna associated with human artifacts. Faunal diversity was highest during the humid early Holocene.     

论美国民主政治制度确立发展的成因

美国的民主政治制度是西方民主制度的典型代表,美国是联邦制国家,政权组织形式为总统制,实行三权分立与议会制的政治制度。美国政治制度的发展确立是由北美的民情、地理、经济等因素决定的。     

Recolonizing carnivores and naïve prey: conservation lessons from Pleistocene extinctions

The current extinction of many of Earth's large terrestrial carnivores has left some extant prey species lacking knowledge about contemporary predators, a situation roughly parallel to that 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, when naive animals first encountered colonizing human hunters. Along present-day carnivore recolonization fronts, brown (also called grizzly) bears killed predator-naive adult moose at disproportionately high rates in Scandinavia, and moose mothers who lost juveniles to recolonizing wolves in North America's Yellowstone region developed hypersensitivity to wolf howls. Although prey that had been unfamiliar with dangerous predators for as few as 50 to 130 years were highly vulnerable to initial encounters, behavioral adjustments to reduce predation transpired within a single generation. The fact that at least one prey species quickly learns to be wary of restored carnivores should negate fears about localized prey extinction.     

A proposal to modernize the american antiquities act

The Antiquities Act of 1906, which has provided the legal basis for protecting the U.S.'s prehistoric and historic heritage, is no longer adequate. Artifact hunters and collectors have descended on national forests and U.S. parks in ever-increasing numbers. The drafters of the 1906 act could not have anticipated the lucrative market in prehistoric artifacts in the 1970's. The act has come under attack in the courts as being unconstitutionally vague. In light of the recent criminal prosecutions under the Antiquities Act and the constitutional challenges, reviewed in this article, the authors propose a new Antiquities Act which expands the scope of the act to include those who would deal in artifacts taken unlawfully from federal lands and increases the criminal penalties for a violation of the act.     

Drug abuse control: policy turns toward rehabilitation

Heroin addiction is the most difficult to control and the most socially destructive form of addiction in America today. Heroin is a fact of life and a cause of death among an increasing number of citizens in America, and it is heroin addiction that must command priority in the struggle against drugs.-President Nixon in his drug message to Congress on 17 June.     

自然景观空间意义之探索——南太行山典型峡谷景观韵律美评价

景观的韵律美价值与景观对原始人类的战略意义相一致,这是景观韵律美评价的基本原理。本文对南太行山典型峡谷景观(王相岩峡谷景观)的空间结构及其意义、韵律美价值进行了分析和探讨:围谷及其绝壁上的悬岩和洞穴,预示着一种潜在的、原始人的理想领地和直接生境;峡谷走廊与围谷的结合而形成的串珠式空间序列和每一围谷中的倒塔式竖向空间序列,能最大限度地满足人的空间探索欲和求知欲,产生多种景观感受和有利于形成清晰的整体环境认知图。这些结构正是自热景观美的韵律。     

隰县鼠类天敌食性研究及控害作用评估

对晋西隰县采集的372份鼠类天敌粪便和渣吐团样本进行食性分析。结果表明,天敌食物由鼠类、鸟类、昆虫类、植物类等动植物组成,其主要食物为鼠类,出现在样本中的百分比为69.62%;其次为鸟类和植物类,分别占17.20%和11.56%。进一步分析得出,各种鼠类在食物中出现的频率同该种鼠类的数量没有直接关系,天敌取食鼠类具有选择性,捕食最多的猎物具备容易寻找和较易捕捉2个条件;另一个明显的特点是在容易捕捉的基础上喜欢选择个体较大的种类。依据食性研究结果得出,天敌与鼠类之间存在着紧扣的食物链关系,在肯定天敌对减少鼠类的数目和为害以及控制鼠传疾病的流行方面作用的同时,提出了招引天敌灭鼠要事先做好调查研究,根据鼠情鼠种具体情况具体分析,避免盲目行为的观点。     

Conservation in South america: problems, consequences, and solutions

Lack of solid data on rates of habitat conversion and on the basic biology of Neotropical organisms makes predictions of massive waves of extinction in South America premature. South America's problems regarding the use of natural resources are a result of historical, sociological, economic, and scientific factors. Most countries in South America have done a great deal to encourage conservation efforts, but the magnitude of the problem is well beyond their limited economic means to solve. The problems of species disappearance in South America are of global importance. A successful solution will involve a coordinated and massive effort of governments and specialists in all aspects of conservation biology from throughout the world. There is still time to resolve these problems. Unnecessarily dire predictions of species extinction may be counterproductive to the development of a long-term conservation strategy that is needed to manage Neotropical conservation problems.     

中美高校信息素质教育比较研究

综述了美国近30年信息素质教育动态发展的历程,并对我国的信息素质教育现状加以介绍,同时对中美高校信息素质教育进行了客观的分析与比较,提出我国应借鉴美国成功经验,构建适合我国的信息素质教育体系。     

赛加羚羊检疫与防疫的探讨

对１９８８年和１９９１年分４批从美国、德国引进的１６头赛加羚羊进行入境隔离检疫,从美国进口的１４头赛加羚羊中检出４头兰舌病羚羊。通过对其余赛加羚羊加强了防疫和驱虫工作,制止了传染病和寄生虫病的发生,保证了引进赛加羚羊工作的成功。     

An El Jobo Mastodon Kill at Taima-taima, Venezuela

Excavation at Taima-taima in 1976 recovered artifacts of the El Jobo complex in direct association with the butchered remains of a juvenile mastodon. Radiocarbon dates on associated wood twigs indicate a minimum age of 13,000 years before the present for the mastodon kill, a dating significantly older than that of the Clovis complex in North America. The El Jobo complex must have evolved independently in northern South America.