Maya Dog Mystery
First Evidence of Live-traded Dogs for Maya Ceremonies
March 21, 2018
At one of the oldest Maya sites, STRI staff archaeologist, Ashley Sharpe, discovered dog bones from the Guatemalan highlands deep within two pyramids.
At one of the oldest Maya sites, STRI staff archaeologist, Ashley Sharpe, discovered dog bones from the Guatemalan highlands deep within two pyramids.
It is much faster to learn to recognize a new prey item from a neighboring species, than to learn by trial and error.
What slows or stops a disease epidemic if the pathogen is still present? It appears that wild frogs are becoming increasingly resistant to the chytrid fungal disease that has decimated amphibian populations around the world.
White-faced capuchin monkeys in Panama’s Coiba National Park habitually use hammer and anvil stones to break hermit crab shells, snail shells, coconuts and other food items, according to visiting scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). This is the first report of habitual stone-tool use by Cebus monkeys.
Perhaps old species, like some older people, gradually lose their ability to deal with changes in their environment. Aaron O’Dea and colleagues show that when the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific by the rise of the Panama land bridge, evolutionarily old species took longer to expand into new habitats than evolutionarily younger species did.
Join us to celebrate a few of the discoveries made in 2018.
A small bump in the ear canal of skulls from burials near the Gulf of Panama, may indicate that ancient coastal residents dove in icy waters to recover pearls and valuable orange Spondylus shells.
Why did some bee species become social, while the majority have remained solitary? On Barro Colorado Island, a bee that adopts both strategies interchangeably, may unlock the evolutionary origins of sociality in insects
Fever may be less effective at repelling infections in cold-blooded creatures
Bats can find motionless insects on leaves in the dark. This was thought to be impossible, because the acoustic camouflage provided by the leaves should confuse their echolocation system. Inga Geipel and colleagues discovered how they overcome this problem.