Reflecting on 2010

Alright, here goes.

Since it's pretty typical of me not to understand really anything about technology, I've decided to discuss (in this post and most likely many future posts) a subject I'm more familiar with and more interested in. That would be science, which goes along with technology, right? Anyway, I'm specifically interested in the biological sciences, so I'm primarily going to talk about that.

I've titled this post 'Reflecting' because I found an article that outlined the "top scientific breakthroughs of 2010." A few of these caught my eye.

First, dinosaur colors. Um...awesome. Here's a little summary in case you haven't heard. Paleontologists can now compare pigmented cells in dinosaur fossils with cells from living birds and get a pretty good guess as to what color they were. According to the post, they've only been able to do this with one fossil and they're currently working on another, but it's a good start regardless. As cool as this is, one thing does disappoint me. It's too bad they've only been able to figure out how to do this on feathered dinosaurs. According to the images we already have of dinosaurs, the feathered ones are the prettiest anyway. However, I doubt this is actually the case. Anyway, one thing I can always count on is that science will keep marching forward and keep learning new things. Maybe this time next year we'll know what a brachiosaurus actually looked like (that's my favorite).

Next, and perhaps most exciting for me (biological anthropology nerd here), the discovery of a new extinct hominid in South Africa. This particular fossil was given the name Australopithecus sediba, which puts it in the same genus as a number of other human ancestors that have already been discovered, including the famous Lucy. As to be expected the fossil has characteristics that are both human-like and  ape-like making it hard to determine whether or not it is a direct ancestor of modern humans. Of course, this dilemma arises pretty much every time a new fossil is discovered, and only more time and much more research will give us the answer. One thing is for sure, though. Our family tree just keeps getting bushier and bushier.

The last breakthrough I wanted to mention was the discovery of self recognition in rhesus macaque monkeys (again with the biological anthropology). This concept may seem extremely simple to those with highly evolved brains, but self recognition is actually pretty rare in the animal kingdom. So far the only creatures who have been able to do it are humans, chimps, dolphins, and elephants. The smartest of the smart. And if you don't know, they determine this by sticking an individual in front of a mirror with a colored spot on their forehead, then seeing if the individual touches the spot on their own forehead or reaches out to the individual "in" the mirror. The discovery that a, once thought to be lower, primate has the ability of self recognition is changing the way scientists think about intelligence in the animal kingdom or, as the article says, making them realize that maybe we just can't understand it. I'm starting to think it might actually be the latter.

Ok, that's really all I wanted to mention about the "top scientific breakthroughs of 2010." If you want to know about the millions of tons of water they found on the moon or the habitable exoplanet they may have discovered, you'll have to go read the article yourself (http://gizmodo.com/5721504/the-top-scientific-breakthroughs-of-2010). Bye-bye for now.