One of the most shrill arguments from alarmists is the idea that climate change will wipe out species because they can’t adapt. The claims run from polar bears to tortoises, to plants and coral. Yes, if we listen to these arguments, Nature so poorly equipped it’s creatures that they can’t adapt to a slightly warmer future.
Except when the last ice age ended, and it got warmer, and the saber-toothed cats got bigger because the prey got bigger…instead of disappearing due to “climate change”.
From the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
La Brea Tar Pit fossil research shows climate change drove evolution of Ice Age predators
LOS ANGELES — Concerns about climate change and its impact on the world around us are growing daily. New scientific studies at the La Brea Tar Pits are probing the link between climate warming and the evolution of Ice Age predators, attempting to predict how animals will respond to climate change today.
The La Brea Tar Pits are famous for the amazing array of Ice Age fossils found there, such as ground sloths, mammoths, and predators like saber-toothed cats and powerful dire wolves. But the climate during the end of the Ice Age (50,000-11,000 years ago) was unstable, with rapid warming and cooling. New research reported here has documented the impact of this climate change on La Brea predators for the first time.
Two new studies published by research associates at of the Page Museum document significant change over time in the skulls of both dire wolves and saber-toothed cats. “Different tar pits at La Brea accumulated at different times,” said F. Robin O’Keefe of Marshall University, lead author on the dire wolf study (Palaeontologia Electronica, April 9, 2014). “When we compare fossils deposited at different times, we see big changes. We can actually watch evolution happening.”
After the end of the last Ice Age, La Brea dire wolves became smaller and more graceful, adapting to take smaller prey as glaciers receded and climate warmed. This rapidly changing climate drove change in saber-toothed cats as well. “Saber-toothed cats show a clear correlation between climate and shape. Cats living after the end of the Ice Age are larger, and adapted to taking larger prey,” said Julie Meachen of Des Moines University, lead author on the sabertooth study (Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2014).
The two scientists discuss their work in a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK_DKSNbgR4&feature=youtu.be
“We can see animals adapting to a warming climate at La Brea,” said O’Keefe. “Then humans show up and all the big ones disappear. We haven’t been able to establish causality there yet. But we are working on it.”
The emerging links between climate change and evolution needs further study. There are many unanswered questions; such as why predators change in the ways that they do, the importance of factors other than climate, and whether the arrival of humans played a role in the mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age. “There is much work to be done on the specimens from the tar pits. We are working actively to bring together the researchers and resources needed to expand on these discoveries,” says John Harris, chief curator at the Page Museum. “Climate change is a pressing issue for all of us, and we must take advantage of what Rancho La Brea can teach us about how ecosystems react to it.”
O’Keefe, F. R., W. J. Binder, S. R. Frost, R. W. Sadleir, and B. Van Valkenburgh. 2014. Cranial morphometrics of the dire wolf, Canis dirus, at Rancho La Brea: temporal variability and its links to nutrient stress and climate. Palaeontologia Electronica.
Palaeontologia Electronica was the first peer-reviewed online paleontology journal in the world and has been in publication for 17 years. On April 9, visit palaeo-electronica.org/content/2014/723-canis-dirus-craniometrics
Meachen, J. A., F. R. O’Keefe, and R. W. Sadleir. 2014. Evolution in the sabre-tooth cat, Smilodon fatalis, in response to Pleistocene climate change. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 27: 714-723. Visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jeb.12340/abstract
About the Natural History Family of Museums
The Natural History Family of Museums includes the NHM, the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (Hancock Park/Mid-Wilshire), and the William S. Hart Park and Museum (Newhall, California). The Family of Museums serves more than one million families and visitors annually, and is a national leader in research, exhibitions and education.
It is interesting but evolutionary adaptations are really just a process, to help a species to survive.
If that is what you think then you simply do not understand.
For instance, a Pleistocene steppe mammoth population isolated from other steppe mammoth populations in the northern part of the species’ range was under selective pressure in each succeeding generation as the climate cooled to grow longer coats, lay down more subcutaneous fat, develop shorter ears, change the surface of their teeth & the shape of their trunk fingers because those differences were more adaptive in the new environment.
The use of active language here obscures what is going.
There is standing variation in each group, and it us usually normally distributed.
Those individuals who have inheritable characteristics that are better suited to the new environment will leave more offspring while those individuals who have inheritable characteristics at the other end of the distribution will leave fewer offspring. Over a number of generations, we will see the mean of the characteristic in the population shift towards a value that is better adapted to the new environment.
However, those individuals who existed when the environment shifted have not done anything to improve the chance that their genes will continue on into the future (unless they are very smart and can see what is coming and can choose appropriate mates.)
Richard Sharpe says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:12 pm
That’s a better way to put the process, & maybe I should have phrased it that way, but when Gould tried to explain natural selection to a general audience, he did it as I did. I once thought that WUWT, as a science blog, could handle a more statistical explication, but posts by the Kreationist Kids’ Klub here made me dumb down my explication. Not including Alan in that select society.
bushbunny says:
April 11, 2014 at 7:57 pm
Humans share DNA not with just 40 species, but with every species on the planet.
The lack of elementary scientific data base even on a top science blog like WUWT never ceases to amaze me.
I’m sorry, but there is so much wrong with your comment that a detailed response would clearly be pointless.
milodonharlani says:
April 11, 2014 at 6:40 pm
_________________
I’ve done it now… references everywhere to such things as Hardy- Weinberg principle, post modern teleology, sympatric speciation and all sorts of wild ideas. At this point, the whole thing seems to add up to little more than a description of a big crap shoot.
You are obviously well versed in this field, why is that?
Richard what don’t I understand? The reason why humans continue to be successful, is they were able to adapt and are long lived. Also the females generally are fertile every month, unlike other mammals, Chimps are the same Unlike most animals our selective breeding is not just about the most fittest and strongest like in other mammals, we hand pick our mates, and ugly men with lots of money reign supreme when it comes to picking the most desirable mate. Just as well, ugly men with pots of dough are in the minority to allow us to pick our mates.
milodonharlani says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:22 pm
Not including Alan in that select society.
________________
I’m the dumbest guy that I know.
R = H^2 * S
bushbunny says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:29 pm
“… we hand pick our mates, and ugly men with lots of money reign supreme when it comes to picking the most desirable mate…”
_______________
I don’t know, I’ve been around and used to be handsome with a lot of money and when it comes to women, if you get what you paid for, you paid far too much.
Alan Robertson says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:25 pm
Wow. You’ve put yourself through a high speed crash course in biology. Well done.
Evolution is a crap shoot, but each throw of the dice is constrained by what has gone before, with a little bit of new options each time & a changed table as well. This is what simpletons like the Janice’s lying hero Discovery Institute’s Berlinski refuse to recognize, because he gets paid for not admitting it. Berlinski’s a philosopher, not a scientist, who has never contributed anything to advance math, philosophy or science, but has made a lucrative career of lying. The con artist hoodwinks susceptible believers like Janice by making phony calculations based upon the idiotically false assumption that every base pair in the genome of an organism is up for grabs in every generation.
If there is a circle of Hell below Dante’s lowest, that’s where the DI liars deserve to go for knowing misleading the credulous, naive faithful like Janice. As a result, she & her fellow cultists put their immortal souls in peril by accepting DI’s blasphemous conception of a god deceptive, cruel & incompetent.
[Cut the “lying” sneers out. Be civil when you chose to disagree. Mod]
Alan Robertson says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:31 pm
False modesty is a mortal sin in my book. Be careful. Be very careful.
(Or what? Mod)
Janice Moore says:
April 10, 2014 at 5:52 pm
But speciation by polyploidy (“secondary speciation”) has been observed only in plants.
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The family Catostomidae, the family Cobitidae, and the genus Labeo (family Cyprinidae). The Family Catostomidae and the genus Labeo are particularly interesting in that tetraploidy, occurring independently, seems to have resulted in species exhibiting remarkably similar body plans.
DesertYote says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:41 pm
Janice can’t handle the truth, nor is she the least bit interested in searching for it. She can only parrot what her puppet masters at DI spoon feed her.
[Stop it! Mod]
milodonharlani says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:39 pm
___________________
Without meaning for it to be, the phrase with philosophical implications, became a test of sorts, I apologize.
milodonharlani says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:38 pm
[Snip. Labeling other commenters as a “Liar” is unacceptable. Mod] ]
Alan, don’t worry you’re obviously are not a billionaire. LOL. If someone is religious doesn’t make them naive. Any living human does not have the choice but to live and adapt to society. Unless they wish to commit suicide or wage war on some foe. To come to the standard we are in right now, we have gone through years of adaptation, and some are better off than others. Not just financially but in our general adaptation to our natural environment and social/economic society. Anyway, I like Janice’s posts.
bushbunny says:
April 11, 2014 at 8:51 pm
Lots of people like comfortable falsehoods rather than inconvenient truth.
Haven’t yet encountered the DI, but being a gardener, I know a manure pile when I see one.
Alan Robertson says:
April 11, 2014 at 9:12 pm
Stinking to high heaven. At least Answers in Genesis, which uses all the same lies & tricks to gull the, well gullible, is honest enough to proclaim its creationism for all the world to see. DI is creationism dressed up to be more sciencey, in a, thank God, failed attempt to sneak creationism into public school science classes. I have no problem with fundamentalism whether Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or from any other religious tradition in high school world religion classes, but it manifestly does not belong in biology classes.
FWIW, I don’t think there should be public schools, only public standards, but that’s another matter.
Milo sometimes is is beneficial to learn about other people’s world view. Education and especially university or tertiary can really open one’s mind. I think we do get skeptical about life as we get older, but start to think, there is no ABSOLUTE. Too many variables around. And this does apply greatly to catastrophic climate changes and extreme weather events. We know for sure the moon controls our tides, and high tides happen when there is a full moon. I had a friend who I cared for years ago, when she was pregnant with another man’s child and has now joined a strict fundamentalist group, she’d cut me off completely, so I eventually found her again. She didn’t believe we had descended from chimpanzees and did not share a similar DNA. Well we didn’t descend from chimpanzees. So I sent her a letter via with a picture of a family of chimps, mum, dad and babs. I wrote, ‘Scientists tell us we share DNA with chimpanzees. ‘Vive la difference!” She is now happily married it appears, and doesn’t want any recall of her former life. However, some of the religious people come to my door, and leave me Watchtower, and he said, “Of course the world was NOT created in 6 days! Add several multiple 000s to that.
bushbunny says:
April 11, 2014 at 9:32 pm
Humans & chimps are descended from a common ancestor, neither chimp nor human, but an African great ape smaller & more carnivorous than its contemporary relative, the herbivorous ancestor of gorillas. It would have looked more like a chimp than a human, but lived in denser forest than its daughter species, of which only three survive, ie humans, chimps & bonobos (whose environment most resembles the Pliocene tropical forest).
The hominid line leading to humans specialized for a more terrestrial life on the spreading African grasslands which gave us the proliferation of antelope species & ground dwelling monkeys like baboons, while the ancestors of chimps & bonobos adapted to life in the less dense forests, so that, while better able to walk on the ground than their ancestors, retained a grasping foot, unlike the more savannah adapted hominids, whose feet evolved better to walk upright on the open prairies between wooded areas.
Actually Milo you are a bit off the time scale here, humans shared a common ancestor with other primates years ago, and I mean years ago, millions when the apes and monkeys diverged from other mammals around 60 million years ago. The hominid line broke off from other higher primates around 6 million years. Recent fossil record from Chad in Africa suggests A date back 6 million years. The earliest Australopithecus in Africa, were scavengers not hunters. They made no tools and teeth were similar to ours, but there is evidence of dimorphism between males and females and suggests they ate a diet of mainly vegetables and a bit of meat. There is a A.robustus, a larger biped, but they died out about 2-3 million years ago with the more gracile Australopithecus. Then the Homo group evolved. But the hominids did have small brains like the one found in Flores, nick named the Hobbit. But this genus seemed to have evolved separately but made tools, and hunted small elephants and large rodents.
Higher apes still live trees, and don’t walk on two legs, although they can but for short distances, and chimps don’t like swimming and the opposable thumb is a what we share with chimps and other higher primates that allows us to grasp things and use tools. Plus we have bigger brains.
Although most higher apes are vegetarian, the chimps are known to kill for meat. About 20% of their diet is protein. I am glad I don’t look like them, don’t you?
“Climate change is a pressing problem for all of us” only because so many are pressing to take advantage of its hobgoblinization, and they are making problems everywhere, from stupid-ifying school curricula to degrading the energy grid.
bushbunny;
Our “finer details” evolved much later than most think; hair and nose optimized for shallow water hunting and fishing, likely 70-200K years ago, when surviving true moderns were squeezed into a narrow equatorial band on the coast of Africa by the ice. Punk Eek at its best.
bushbunny says:
April 11, 2014 at 10:31 pm
My time scale wasn’t off. I never put a number on the divergence of hominids & the line leading to chimps & bonobos, but just said Pliocene, which is indeed when it happened, whether seven or six Mya. Upright walking on a foot more adapted for ground movement appears to have been an adaptation to spreading grasslands during the Pliocene or late Miocene.
Actually orangutans do quite well on two legs, but still spend most of their time in trees. Chimps & gorillas prefer four legs, but can & do walk on two when need be, as when their hands are full. The other great apes use different knuckles when walking on their hands, so all the living great apes have evolved different means of ground locomotion, but only hominids, represented now only by H. sapiens, have lost a grasping foot, ie they retain an opposable big toe.
Assigning H. habilis to genus Homo instead of Australophithecus is arbitrary. Its brain was bigger, teeth smaller & face shorter than the australophicenes from which it descended, but its post-cranial anatomy hardly changed at all. It did however make stone tools, which enabled it to access more animal fat by breaking open the bones of big animals for their marrow, which in turn permitted a bigger brain, since brain tissue requires fat.
Even after six or seven million years however, chimps & humans remain so close anatomically & genetically that taxonomists would put us in the same genus were it not that humans like to think we’re special. Even Linnaeus wrote that he would have placed chimps in genus Homo or us in Pan were it not for the religious objections he foresaw.
It’s still unclear if H. floresiensis (the Hobbit) is simply a miniature H. erectus or descended from an even earlier hominin (as opposed to hominid, which includes more extinct apes). Some still question whether H. floresiensis is a valid taxon. The subfossils are mushy.