Another human ancestor species found?
CLEVELAND, March 28 (UPI) -- The discovery of a fossil foot shows two different human ancestor species coexisted in Africa 3.4 million years ago, paleontologists say.
The fossil foot found in the Afar region of Ethiopia did not belong to a member of "Lucy's" species, Australopithecus afarensis, the most famous early human ancestor, researchers with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History said Wednesday.
The discovery suggests more than one species of early human ancestor existed between 3 million and 4 million years ago, with different methods of locomotion, a museum release reported.
The fossil foot was found in February 2009 in an area known as Burtele.
"The Burtele partial foot clearly shows that at 3.4 million years ago, Lucy's species, which walked upright on two legs, was not the only hominin species living in this region of Ethiopia," Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the museum's curator of physical anthropology, said. "Her species co-existed with close relatives who were more adept at climbing trees, like 'Ardi's' species, Ardipithecus ramidus, which lived 4.4 million years ago."
While the big toe of the foot in Lucy's species was aligned with the other four toes for human-like bipedal walking, Haile-Selassie said, the Burtele foot has an opposable big toe like the earlier Ardi.
"These fossil elements represent bones we've never seen before," study co-author Bruce Latimer of Case Western Reserve University said.
"While the grasping big toe could move from side to side, there was no expansion on top of the joint that would allow for expanded range of movement required for pushing off the ground for upright walking," he said.
"This individual would have likely had a somewhat awkward gait when on the ground."
The new partial foot specimen has not yet been assigned to a species due to the lack of associated skull or dental elements, the researchers said.
Google users can track their activity
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 28 (UPI) -- Google has announced an "Account Activity" feature to let owners of Google accounts see what they've been doing and where they've been going on the Internet.
Google account owners who sign up for the feature will receive a monthly password-protected report with information about their signed-in use of Google services, webpronews.com reported Wednesday.
The report will include statistics on e-mails sent and received, top search queries, and authentication information such as the number of connected sites, apps and services.
The Account Activity report will also include a list of account sign-in locations, browsers and platforms, Google said.
This can alert users if their Google accounts have been accessed from somewhere they've never been or from a device they don't own. It also will allow them to take action such as changing their password on contacting Google for assistance, webpronews.com said.
'March summer' linked to global warming
OTTAWA, March 28 (UPI) -- An early "March summer" in Canada and the United States with record high temperatures may be a symptom of global warming, researchers said.
Record-breaking summer-like conditions have been reported across North America following an unusually mild winter, meteorologists said.
In Canada, the temperature in Saint John, New Brunswick, hit 77 degrees Fahrenheit March 21, smashing the previous record high for March of 64 degrees, NewScientist.com reported.
"We've never seen these kinds of temperatures before," Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, said. "It's quite remarkable."
"The duration, areal size, and intensity of the 'summer in March' heat wave are simply off-scale," Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground Web site in San Francisco said. "The event ranks as one of North America's most extraordinary weather events in recorded history."
A large loop in the jet stream over the continent, funneling warm air northward from the Gulf of Mexico, remained "stuck" in place for more than a week, a phenomenon known as a blocking pattern, Masters said.
Phillips points out that air flowing northward in the spring would normally be cooled as it passes over cold, snowy ground, but the mild winter has left very little snow on the ground and the air is hardly cooling at all.
There is evidence global warming can both reduce snow amounts on the ground and influence atmospheric conditions aloft such as the jet stream, researchers said.
"Global warming boosts the probability of really extreme events, like the recent U.S. heat wave, far more than it boosts more moderate events," climate scientists Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou of RealClimate.org wrote in a blog post.
Popularity of mobile games skyrockets
SAN FRANCISCO, March 28 (UPI) -- The number of U.S owners of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices who use them for gaming has exceeded 100 million, a survey indicates.
The Mobile Games Trend Report from international market research firm Newzoo surveyed the number of Americans who play video games on their smartphone, tablet, or iPod Touch, venturebeat.com reported Tuesday.
Demonstrating the growing popularity of mobile gaming, the survey found 69 percent of U.S. mobile gamers play on a smartphone, while 21 percent play on a tablet, and 18 percent play on an iPod Touch.
Thirteen percent of all time spent playing games worldwide in 2011 was on a mobile device, the report estimated, totaling more than 130 million hours a day.
An estimated 9 percent of total game spending last year was on mobile titles, Newzoo said.
"The recent launch of the new iPad did not bring us the edgeless display and other innovations we were hoping for, but … the two main upgrades, processing power and resolution, dramatically improve the immersive experience of 'core' games on that platform," Newzoo Chief Executive Officer Peter Warman said.
"The intuitive interface forces developers to offer more casual gameplay, ensuring the games cater to a far broader audience, including the young moms and dads who used to play core games on their PC, Xbox, or PlayStation."
