Patagonian monsters: 2019

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Happy New Year!

I wish you all a very happy New Year, may it be far better than this one that is ending.

Friday, December 27, 2019

The Del Mar skull, supposedly 47,000 years old (maybe)

The Del Mar skull was discovered by Malcom J. Rogers when he excavated two sites on the coast of California near San Diego.

The skull appeared at the second site named SDM-W4, in 1929. It was located (see map) between Del Mar and Solana Beach at the base of a cliff on the Northwestern side of the San Dieguito River.

He found a skull and ribs there (source), of course at that time there was no way to date the remains.

It seems that Bada was the first to try, using his amino acid racemization technique, and obtained 47,000 years (see my previous post on this technique and the "Sunnyvale girl" skull).

The skull looks like that of a regular paleoindian, and why shouldn't it? If it is 47 ky old, it should look modern. Below are some images of the Del Mar skull:

Del Mar skull.

C14 date for this skull is 6,800 plus minus 100 years, which Bada didn't accept assuming that the sample could have been contaminated with carbonates.

Gerow who does not accept Bada's date, wrote (Amino Acid dating and early and early man in the New World, a rebuttal, 1981, Bert A. Gerow, page 9):

"Interestingly, the reconstructed Del Mar skull (SDM-16704) from southern California, dated at 41,000-48,000 years by aspartic acid racemization (Bada 1975, Table 7) corresponds closely to Gifford's Santa Catalina type (with) the following characteristics: lowest cranial index, lowest height/length index, lowest gnathic index, longest cranium, and broadest nose. These distinctive features are shared with the Del Mar skeleton.
...
An anthropometric comparison of the Sunnyvale female with a comparable series from a late local prehistoric site indicates a single physical type contrasting with other regional types proposed by Gifford for California. The Del Mar male belongs to another physical type, although both are fully modern and Mongoloid with respect to dentition. The idea that two distinct physical types entered California or developed here fifty to seventy thousand years ago and remained genetically isolated and morphologically unchanged during that period is totally unacceptable in the light of present knowledge of population movements in prehistoric California."

So based on the shape of the bones, which are different he cannot accept that Sunnyvale woman and Del Mar man lived in California 70 and 47,000 years ago, but he can accept that they were contemporary paleoindians (?) Weird argument.

Sunnyvale and Del Mar skulls from California and their age

I was reading about the Del Mar remains that were discovered in 1926 on the California coastline and which were dated by Jeffrey L. Bada at 47,000 years old (Bada, J. L., and Helfman, P. M. 1975, Amino Acid Racemization Dating of Fossil Bones. World Archaeology 7 : 160–183.) as shown below (blue box):

They were doing groundbreaking work with a technique that Bada had developed: "amino acid racemization" or AAR for short.

AAR measures the ratio of right-handed amino acids or (D) amino-acids to the left-handed ones or (L) amino-acids, and uses it to determine the age of a biological sample.

All apha-amino acids except glycine come in two isomers, that are identical except that one bends polarized light to the right (hence the right-hand part of the nam), and the other type bends it to the left.

Proteins are made up exclusively of (L) amino acids. And the moment a living being dies, its (L) amino acids start to degrade by a process called "racemization", and become (D) amino acids. There are many amino acids in our bodies, and scientists use one, aspartic acid because it has a relatively quick racemization speed.

As you can see in the table above, older specimens have (D) amino acids and less (L) amino acids, so the ratio D⁄L is higher than in younger specimens.

Bada calibrated his method against a radiocarbon dated specimen (Laguna Skull) and then extrapolated the dates shown in the last column.

Of course, it was a controversial claim, Del Mar skull at 47 ky and the Sunnyvale skull with 70 ky, were far too old for orthodox scholars.

The novel technique was scrutinized and torn apart, other methods (Uranium and Thorium) used on the samples, which gave a much later date, almost one order of magnitude -ten times less- than Bada's data.

To justify Bada, we must admit that despite his claims that "The effects which other physical factors (pH, humidity, leaching) have on racemization rates are discussed. Because of the close correlation between temperatures calculated from in situ racemization rates (under diverse environmental conditions) and actual mean annual temperatures at various sites throughout the world, we conclude that factors other than temperature have very small effects on the reaction rate.", there are many factors that affect racemization.

Bada pointed out in 1984 that radiocarbon dates and AAR didn't seem to correlate in American specimens, while in other parts of the world, the correlation was very good.

Apparently the cause of this discrepancy was the degree of preservation of protein (and therefore amino acids) in the bones (see Stafford, 1990.), meaning that the same bone can give a Holocene or recent dating or a Pleistocene or older date!

So we could argue that the age of Del Mar and Sunnyvale bones might (barely) be 48,000 and 70,000 years old, but then we have the issue of the uranium (U) and thorium (Th) dates (Bischoff, 1981), which gave ages of 11,000 and 8,300 years BP respectively for those remains.

Bones can uptake these elements (U and Th) from the environment which can alter the actual age of the specimens, and (Millard, 1996): "are liable to underestimate the true age by at least one-third."

This would make them younger than they really are...

So the age remains an open question -maybe.

Sunnyvale girl skull

But what drew my attention when I was reading about this subject was the photo of the skull of the "Sunnyvale girl" in New Scientist's edition of Jul. 14, 1983 is shown below:

Sunnyvale skull (left) and 4,000 year old Indian skull (right). New Scientist

That skull is really big! I tried to find other photos, but I wasn't able to. But I found a description of her in this paper (Amino Acid dating and early and early man in the New World, a rebuttal, 1981, Bert A. Gerow, page 9):

"The Sunnyvale individual is a female, judged to have been about twentyfive to thirty years of age at the time of death. Morphologically, she is fully modern, with a well developed chin, thin cranial walls, canine fossae, short face, and sub-quadratic orbits. The lateral incisors exhibit "shoveling" on the lingual side. The latter is a common Amerindian physical trait shared with populations of East Asia. "

One source (Biological and Chronometric Applications of Amino Acid Racemization Reactions, Patricia Masters Helfman, 1976, Biology, Univ. of California, pp. 67) says that it was Gerow who found the "Sunnyvale girl" in 1972, but he does not mention this date in the paper cited further up.

Perhaps some photos of the skull would shed some light on the matter of its size. But if I am not mistaken, these bones were reburied in accordance with the US law back in 1996.

Friday, December 20, 2019

Dorenberg Skull, more information

My post on the Dorenberg Skull mentioned a skull discovered in Mexico in the late 1800s, and lost during allied WW II bombing raids over Leipzig that flattened the local Museum of Ethnology.

Below are two images with more information from the book The Forgotten Collector: Josef Anton Dorenberg (1846-1935) by Ron Van Meer:

The description of it as a "Tertiary" skull is indeed interesting, the skull was set in stone.

The skull, though destroyed during the war, was studied by several scholars which identified new species of diatoms from samples taken from the skull.

Diatoms are minute single-cell algae that live in water. Their cell walls are composed in part of a transparent silica glass (they are the only living creatures that use silica to build their bodies -sea shells are made of calcium carbonate).

Well, Reichelt identified a diatom species he named Navicula dorenbergi in 1901 which he dated to the Sangamonian (80-220 Ky BP) -source.

More on the "erectus"(?) calvaria from Chapala Mexico

I recently posted about a very robust skullcap that was discovered in the region of Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico by Mr. Federico A. Solórzano, today I will add some more information.

The skullcap (or a copy of it) -here we have two different versions! is on exhibition at the Museo de Paleontologia de Guadalajara (Guadalajara Museum of Paleontology), this city is the capital of Jalisco state and is located 28 miles (45 km) north of Lake Chapala.

Guadalajara's official tourism website tells us all about the museum and also mentions the calvaria:

"...Este arco superciliar humano tiene características muy antiguas y no se parece al de un hombre moderno (Homo sapiens y Homo robustus), sino que se asemeja al de un Neanderthal. De comprobarse esta hipótesis, se tendría que modificar la datación del poblamiento de América, ya que el hombre que cruzó por el estrecho de Bering era tipo Cromagnon."

In English: "... this human superciliary arch has very ancient features and does not resemble that of a modern man (Homo sapiens and Homo robustus), instead it is similar to that of a Neanderthal. If this hypothesis is proved true, the date of the peopling of America would have to be modified, because the humans that crossed Bering Strait were of the Cromagnon type.".

This blog, written by Roberto Diaz Sibaja has the following photograph, which he took; he says it is a replica:

Replica of Solorzano's skull, by Roberto Diaz Sibaja

But, where exactly was this skullcap found? In what setting? Well, according to an interview published in this blog, Solórzano said, regarding the calvaria: "The experts don't admit it for a reason: there is no context. Initially it comes from Chapala, but it was not found in any geological layer or in association with anyghing because I don't know if I found it or if it is one of those that I bought".

Solorzano (1922 - 2015) was an engineer who later specialized in pharmaceutical biology, he was an academic at Guadalajara University, and at the time of the interview by José Jesús Langarica Herrera in 2011, was 89 years old. No wonder he couldn't remember if he'd purchased it or found it himself.

Above (source) is another image of the skullcap (right), and an unidentified skull (left).

What if someone sold it to a young avid Solorzano, who wanted to collect as many bones as possible? Can we be sure it was an American skullcap? What if somebody sold him a Eurasian calvaria? Possible and probable.

Finally here is an article written in English (Mexico discovery fuels debate about man's origins), in Oct. 2004, which says: "... archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas. 'Most people sort of just shook their heads and have been baffled by it,' said Robson Bonnichsen, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University."

Could Robson Bonnischsen be one of the Texas A&M osteologists mentioned in our last post, who in "an unpublished 1990 report... suggest the brow's thickness and robustness are comparable to those of (an) African Homo erectus"?

Bonnischsen was one of the anthropologists who took the United States government to court, fighting for the right to study the bones of Kennewick Man. And he won.

Chapala man is a mystery and will remain so until further evidence is found.

Lake Chapala is Mexico's largest freshwater lake (420 sq. mi - 1.100 km²) it is relatively shallow (34 ft. - 10 m). It drains into the Pacific Ocean. It is a lake formed by a tectonic rift valley, and has been around at least since the late Pliocene 2.5 Ma. It is set in a volcanic area.

Fossils of megafauna have been found near the lake: horses, mammoths and Gomphotheres, elephant-like animals, that lived there some 1.6 Ma.

You can hear Fernando Solórzano in a conference he gave in 2007 speaking about this calvaria here; listen after minute 20 of this 1:38 h. conference because he mentions the skull ("arcada" as he calls it), and an "English scientist" who sampled the skull.

He also says that "I found it" and that is a problem because he found it in Chapala, and it is out of place, so they suspect that he might have planted it there. And that (min. 41) "it was simply found among a large pile of bones that were collected over a long period of time on the shores of lake Chapala"

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Homo erectus lived until very recently (~100 Kya)!

An article publised today in Nature (Rizal, Y., Westaway, K.E., Zaim, Y. et al. Last appearance of Homo erectus at Ngandong, Java, 117,000–108,000 years ago. Nature (2019) doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1863-2), reports that the remains of twelve Homo erectus discovered in the early 1930s on the banks of the Solo River in Ngandong, Java, are far younger than expected.

The scientists returned to the original site (excavated in 1931-33) and using the original notes and photographs, found an area that had been purposely left untouched, and dug there, recording the stratigraphy and dating the soil level where the skulls were found.

Their abstract reports:

" Abstract Homo erectus is the founding early hominin species of Island Southeast Asia, and reached Java (Indonesia) more than 1.5 million years ago. Twelve H. erectus calvaria (skull caps) and two tibiae (lower leg bones) were discovered from a bone bed located about 20 m above the Solo River at Ngandong (Central Java) between 1931 and 1933, and are of the youngest, most-advanced form of H. erectus. Despite the importance of the Ngandong fossils, the relationship between the fossils, terrace fill and ages have been heavily debated. Here, to resolve the age of the Ngandong evidence, we use Bayesian modelling of 52 radiometric age estimates to establish—to our knowledge—the first robust chronology at regional, valley and local scales. We used uranium-series dating of speleothems to constrain regional landscape evolution; luminescence, ⁴⁰argon/³⁹argon (⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar) and uranium-series dating to constrain the sequence of terrace evolution; and applied uranium-series and uranium series–electron-spin resonance (US–ESR) dating to non-human fossils to directly date our re-excavation of Ngandong. We show that at least by 500 thousand years ago (ka) the Solo River was diverted into the Kendeng Hills, and that it formed the Solo terrace sequence between 316 and 31 ka and the Ngandong terrace between about 140 and 92 ka. Non-human fossils recovered during the re-excavation of Ngandong date to between 109 and 106 ka (uranium-series minimum) and 134 and 118 ka (US–ESR), with modelled ages of 117 to 108 thousand years (kyr) for the H. erectus bone bed, which accumulated during flood conditions. These results negate the extreme ages that have been proposed for the site and solidify Ngandong as the last known occurrence of this long-lived species"

The paper also says: (bold highlight is mine)

"Furthermore, we can place Ngandong into a regional framework for Island Southeast Asia. H. erectus continuously inhabited the island, with dates on Java that start at 1.51 to 0.93 million years ago at Sangiran, then 540 to 430 ka at Trinil25 and ending with 117 to 108 ka at Ngandong. H.erectus was dispersed widely by 700 ka, as shown by archaeological evidence for hominins at Mata Menge (Flores, Indonesia) and Cagayan Valley (Luzon, Philippines). Two insular dwarf hominins are found on these outlying islands: Homo floresiensis at 100 to 60 ka and Homo luzonensis at 66.7±1 ka. Phylogenetic relationships have yet to be deter-mined for these two hominins, but they show morphological similarities with H. erectus. Sharing similar temporal ranges, Ngandong H.erectus, H.floresiensis and H. luzonensis represent three evolutionary trajectories of Homo in Island Southeast Asia, each of which ended in extinction.
Genomic evidence from modern populations in New Guinea provides estimates for the dates of the arrival of another early hominin in Island Southeast Asia. Two Denisovan lineages diverged from the Altai Denisovans, one at about 363ka and the other at about 283ka. These deep divergence dates provide evidence for the early arrival of Denisovans in Island Southeast Asia. Dispersing Homo sapiens encountered Denisovan lineages in Island Southeast Asia at about 45.7 ka and at about 29.8 ka. Additionally, a residual signal of approximately 1% archaic DNA in modern regional populations lies outside the human–Neanderthal–Denisovan clade. This may reflect a past introgression event with H.erectus and provide evidence that these Denisovans encountered a late-surviving H.erectus population "

There are sites (Ngawi and Sambungmacan, also in Java) that have not been dated yet and may yield even more recent dates. But even 100,000 years is very recent.

The earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia are the fossil skuls from Apidima Cave in Greece, dated at 210 Kya. By 100,000 years ago, Modern Humans were already living in Africa and very likely in the Levant (as per orthodoxy of coursee). So we coexisted with H erectus (I once posted about this -but in my post our ancestors and H. erectus mixed intimately in America).

All these sites and older ones (such as Trinil and Sangiran) are located on the Solo River where Eugene Dubois unearthed the first Homo erectus remains in 1891.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Horn Rock Shelter a skull 11,000 years old with a distinct morphology

Horn Rock Shelter is located in Texas, and is the site of a double burial, a middle aged man (37 - 44 years old) and a girl of 10 - 11. Apparently the man was a shaman. Girl and shaman were buried together in this cave as shown in the image below (girl on the Left).

A recent comment on my Chapala "homo erectus" brow ridge revisited post prompted me to look into this site and its oddly shaped male skull (Thank you William).

You can read about the site, the skeletons and the tools and articles found in the grave, in this article: New Look at the Double Burial from Horn Shelter No. 2, by Margaret A. Jodry and Douglas W. Owsley 2014.

The remarkable point seems to be the shape of the man's skull, as portrayed in National Geographic, from which this image (below) was taken:

The skull appears to have distinctive features yet this paper says that there were "no significant differences" between the Horn individuals and later Central Texas populations.

This is a reconstruction of the male skull:

Notice the brow ridges. Credits

The bust depicting how the shaman looked when he was alive also displays prominent brow ridges:

The remains are old, 11,100 years BP, and surely reflect the great morphological diversity of the Paleoindians, lost during the depopulation of the Americas due to illness brought by the Europeans after 1492 (flu, measles, small pox, just to mention a few), diseases which wiped out millions of Native Americans in a few years.

There are several news articles dating to the period 2010-15 that mention samples having been taken for DNA analysis, but no results have appeared in print as a formal paper, only articles in newspapers. But they are interesting:

Waco Tribune Herald, 2010: "The handful of other ancient American remains whose mtDNA has been studied carry one of the five genetic markers that various Native American groups share. Not so with the Horn Shelter bones, according to numerous tests Baker has done so far.
'The results are different from what you'd expect from Native Americans,' she said. 'I'm looking at the sequence and I'm not able to determine a haplogroup. . . . Usually, when I run the sequence, I get something very clear.'
Baker is planning to send the bone samples to another laboratory for retesting to see if her results can be replicated"

KWTX, 2017: "Dr. Doug Owsley, head of the division of physical anthropology at the Smithsonian, said DNA material has been successfully recovered from the bones of a little girl recovered at the Horn Shelter, but analysis has not yet been completed.
He also said scientists failed in their effort to recover DNA material from adult bones found in the same grave, but are now trying a different technique to recover the material."

The local Museum at the site (Bosque Museum) published in 2013: "Dr. Lori Baker of Baylor University has received the most recent DNA results on the Horn Shelter Man. We are awaiting the publication of her report to find out what the results show. Earlier DNA studies showed that Horn Shelter Man was not related to modern Native Americans."

There is a paper: 2012 Pack, FL, Hulsey, BI, and Cabana GS. "Report on DNA Findings for the Horn Shelter Site." Report submitted to Dr. Lori Baker, Baylor University.

It is surprising that the results have not been revealed after all these years...

Pendejo Cave: humans in America 55,000 years ago?

Pendejo Cave in New Mexico has produced some interesting evidence of an early migration into America. The book I browsed online (Pendejo Cave, Richard S. MacNeish, Jane G. Liddy UNM Press, 2003) has plenty of information.

It was excavated by MacNeish between February 1990 and April 1992. He found evidence of Pre-Clovis occupation and figures of up to 50,000 years BP were given at that time.

First a trivial remark. "Pendejo" (Pen-Day-Hoe) in Spanish means "pubic hair" and is used as a derogatory term equivalent to "idiot", "kid", "jerk", etc. Why was the cave given this name, is a mystery.

But let's get back to the science. Here several things were found:

Palm prints on baked clay 12-37Ky BP (source)
Human hairs 19,500 years old with DNA that did not correspond to the "four primary clusters" of Native American DNA (page 428).
A buffalo bone 35,000 years with chips caused by human workmanship (source)
The "heel bone" of a horse species which is now extinct, with a stone wedge jammed into it, 36,000 years old (source and photo)

The cave is shown below:

The book also includes several maps showing how the humans spread across the Americas from Beringia, but long before the currently accepted dates. Below is one image (I liked the lower left "sea level" swings during the different glacial and interglacial periods, as it shows several windows during which humans could have reached America earlier than 15 to 20 Kya and the purported Beringian standstill).

One of the book's maps

McNeish proposed a very early arrival date for Humans in America (58,000 to 70,000 years ago), below is an excerpt from the book (page 486) where he mentions it:

It mentions the "pebble tools" (Orogrande tool complex) such as those found in the cave and shown in the map above.

The coarse tools are used by those who question McNeish's findings because they dismiss them as too crude or even as geofacts (not man made).

However Homo habilis made very coarse tools ("Oldowan" pebble tools and choppers), so maybe the Pendejo Cave people were not even Homo sapiens.

As expected the dates were questioned by those who object an early migration into the New World. McNeish passed away in 2001, but his work has survived.

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Chapala "homo erectus" brow ridge revisited

A lmost nine years ago I posted about a superciliary arch unearthed in Mexico (See post), and a link to the paper itself:

Link: Irish, J. D., S.D. Davis, J.E. Lobdell, and F.A. Solórzano, (2000), Prehistoric Human Remains from Jalisco. Mexico, Current Research in the Pleistocene 17, 2000 pg. 95-96

Image (source):

The authors state that:

"One Chapala superciliary arch deserves specific mention due to its large size. Studies by Solórzano show the bone resembles that in archaic Homo sapiens at Arago, France. In an unpublished 1990 report, Texas A&M osteologists suggest the brow’s thickness and robustness are comparable to those of KNM-ER 3733 (African Homo erectus). Our measurements show the central torus thickness is 13.3, compared with 8.5 mm for KNM-ER 3733; the lateral torus thickness is 11.5 versus 9.0 mm (Rightmire 1998). Thus for the sake of comparison, the brow is more like that of Zhoukoudian Skull XI (Asian Homo erectus), with a central torus thickness of 13.2 +/- mm; lateral torus thickness was not measured (Rightmire 1998). Modern brows are too diminutive to allow these measurements. The brow also shows pneumatization (air pockets) along its length.
However, to reiterate the findings of the Texas A&M workers, these comparisons do not imply that pre-Homo sapiens were in the Americas. No phylogenetic or age implications are intended. Instead, the comparisons demonstrate the size relative to most New World specimens, although brows on the Lagoa Santa skull (Bryan 1978) and on recent Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia crania (Lahr 1995; C.L. Brace pers. comm. 1998) appear comparable. "

Friday, November 15, 2019

Captain Cook's description of the Haush and a large Fuegian beast

Continuing with my previous post on the Haush. I looked up Captain James Cook's journal for his comments on the haush, and sure enough, found them (CAPTAIN COOK'S JOURNAL DURING HIS FIRST VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD MADE IN H.M. BARK "ENDEAVOUR" 1768-71, where the Captain wrote:

"[In Success Bay.]
Monday, 16th. A Fresh breeze of Wind at South and South-West, with frequent showers of Rain and Snow. At 2 p.m. Anchored in the Bay of Success in 9 fathoms, the bottom Owse and sand.* (* The Endeavour was three days and a half in getting through the Strait of Le Maire, as far as Success Bay. It is a difficult passage for a sailing vessel even in the present day, as the tides are strong and winds generally contrary, but experience has enabled good directions to be given as to the best way to pass the Strait. Cook himself gives capital advice farther on.) The south point of the Bay bore South-East and the north point East-North-East. This Bay I shall describe when I come to speake of the rest of the Coast. Hoisted out the Boats and moor'd with the Stream Anchor. While this was doing I went ashore accompanyed by Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander to look for a Watering place and to speak with the Natives, who were assembled on the Beach at the Head of the Bay to the Number of 30 or 40. They were so far from being afraid or surprised at our coming amongst them that three of them came on board without the least hesitation. They are something above the Middle size, of a Dark Copper Colour with long black hair; they paint their Bodies in Streakes, mostly Red and Black. Their Cloathing consists wholy in a Guanacoe Skin or that of a Seal, in the same form as it came from the Animal's back.
The Women Wear a Piece of Skin over their Privy Parts, but the Men observe no such decency. Their Hutts are made like a behive, and open on one side where they have their fires; they are made of small Sticks and covered with branches of trees, long Grass, etc., in such a manner that they are neither Proof against Wind, Hail, rain or Snow, a sufficient proof that these People must be a very hardy race. They live chiefly on shell fish, such as Muscels, which they gather from off the Rocks along the Sea Shore, and this seems to be the Work of the Women. Their Arms are Bows and Arrows neatly made; their Arrows are bearded, some with glass and others with fine flint; several Pieces of the former we saw amongst them with other European things, such as rings, Buttons, Cloth, Canvas, etc., which I think proves that they must sometimes travel to the Northward, as we know of no Ship that hath been in these parts for many Years; besides, they were not at all surprised at our Fire Arms; on the Contrary, they seemed to know the use of them, by making signs to us to fire at Seals or Birds that might come in the way. They have no Boats that we saw or anything to go upon the Water with; their number doth not Exceed 50 or 60 young and old, and there are fewer Women than Men. They are Extreamly fond of any Red thing, and seemed to set more Value on Beads than anything we could give them; in this Consists their whole Pride, few, either Men or Women, are without a Necklace or String of Beads made of Small Shells or bones about their Necks. They would not taste any strong Liquor, neither did they seem fond of our Provisions. We could not discover that they had any Head or Chief or Form of Government, neither have they any useful or necessary Utensil except it be a Bag or Basket to gather their Muscels into. In a word they are perhaps as Miserable a sett of People as are this day upon Earth.* (* Cook's description of the natives of Tierra del Fuego is good to the present day, except that those who live farther westward are still more wretched. Those of the main island, in which the Bay of Good Success lies, are able to kill guanaco, and enjoy a better climate. They, as Cook observed, never go on the water, whereas those westward practically live in canoes.) Having found a convenient place on the south side of the Bay to Wood and Water at, we set about that Work in the Morning, and Mr. Banks with a Party went into the Country to gather Plants, etc."

As you can see, Cook met the Haush in Good Success Bay, just like Darwin would do over 60 years later. He described them in a very similar manner to Darwin. Yet there is no reference to their language... where did Darwin get the idea that Captain Cook has compared these people's language to a man clearing his throat?

But there is a reference in Sir Joseph Bank's journal, he was the naturalist on board the Endeavour; he wrote two interesting things:

Haush language, with the remark used by Darwin: "Their language is guttural especialy in some particular words which they seem to express much as an Englishman when he hawks to clear his throat, but they have many words that sound so ft enough.".

Wild Beast in Tierra del Fuego: "Quadrupeds I saw none in the Island, exept the Seals and Sea lions which we often saw swimming about in the bay might be calld such, but Dr Solander and myself when we were on the top of the highest hill we were upon observ'd the footsteps of a large beast imprinted on the surface of a bog, but could not with any probability guess of what kind it might be."

Was this beast a guanaco? Guanaco live in Tierra del fuego and are the largest mammal there. I doubt a fox would have been considered a "large beast".

The Haush of Tierra del Fuego used clicks in their language

Charles Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle" is an extraordinary account, and I enjoy picking it up and reading pages at random. Last night, I read about the Beagle's arrival in Tierra del Fuego and Darwin's first contact with Fuegian natives, which took place at Good Success Bay (Bahia de Buen Suceso in Spanish).

The bay is located on the eastern tip of the Island of Tierra del Fuego, it is the western side of the Strait of Lemaire, which separates the Isla de los Estados island from the main Tierra del Fuego island. Its name is due to the protection it offered sailors from the roaring winds and terrible waves of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Darwin and a party of sailors landed here and met natives, he was shocked:

"I could not have believed how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a greater power of improvement. The chief spokesman was old, and appeared to be the head of the family; the three others were powerful young men, about six feet high. The women and children had been sent away. These Fuegians are a very different race from the stunted, miserable wretches farther westward; and they seem closely allied to the famous Patagonians of the Strait of Magellan. Their only garment consists of a mantle made of guanaco skin, with the wool outside; this they wear just thrown over their shoulders, leaving their persons as often exposed as covered. Their skin is of a dirty coppery red colour."

The Haush were people that lived on the Mitre Peninsula, on the last ranges of the Andes, in the forest, sandwiched between the Selknam people who lived to the north, in the grasslands, and the sea to the south, the domain of the Yamana (or Yaghan) canoe people.

What drew my attention was how Darwin described their language: (see bold highlighted text)

"Their very attitudes were abject, and the expression of their countenances distrustful, surprised, and startled. After we had presented them with some scarlet cloth, which they immediately tied round their necks, they became good friends. This was shown by the old man patting our breasts, and making a chuckling kind of noise, as people do when feeding chickens. I walked with the old man, and this demonstration of friendship was repeated several times; it was concluded by three hard slaps, which were given me on the breast and back at the same time. He then bared his bosom for me to return the compliment, which being done, he seemed highly pleased. The language of these people, according to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking sounds."

The fact that Darwin described them as having "Clicking sounds" is remarkable (see my recent post on click languages), it is the first reference that I have found of clicks in an Amerindian language.

I have mentioned the Haush (or Manek'enk) and their myths in my book (Monsters of Patagonia), they became extinct so not much is known about them. They were related to the Selknam people, hunted the local camelid (guanaco) and had a distinct language that though close to that of the Selknam, was unintelligible to them.

Lucas Bridges, son of Thomas, the English missionary who was the first European to settle in Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia, the world's southernmos city was the site of his mission among the Yamana people), wrote about the Haush. He reported that they feared both Selknam and Yamana, and believed that they had been forced into the forested cul de sac where they lived due to this constant conflict with their neighbors. He also noticed the difference between the language of Selknam and Haush.

Bridges also believed that the Haush (or Aush) arrived in Tierra del Fuego before the Selknam did, and he based this belief on the fact that many place names in Selknam territory had Haush names.

My Map of Patagonian natives. The Haush are on the lower right tip of Tierra del Fuego:

A close up view of Mitre Peninsula, the land of the Haush, and Bahia Buen Suceso is marked with a red circle:

A photo of one of the last Haush ca. 1920s (notice the guanaco fur, worn with the "wool outwards". The European man is a Catholic priest. Their missions only spread measles, tuberculosis and flu, wiping out the few remaining Haush (and also Selknam and Yamana) people.:

Little is known about them, their customs and language. I have not been able to find any scholarly papers about these people (most refer to the Selknam or Yamana). We have photos, and some articles written later, such as Anne Chapman's books, but if you dig deeper, they repeat the same themes and don't add new information beyond the anecdotes compiled by Bridges, the Catholic priests and the first "scientific" expeditions to Tierra del Fuego in the late 1800s.

The click language of the Haush is another mystery worth being studied.

Thursday, November 14, 2019

Life on Mars, new findings and the Viking experiments of 1976

I know that this post has nothing whatsover to do with the subject of this blog, but I have to admit that since my twelve-year-old eyes saw the amazing photos of Mars taken by Mariner 9 back in 1971, the possibility of life on Mars has always excited my imagination.

Then came the Viking missions and their experiments designed to find life on Mars (1976). The results were contradictory and surprising:

In the LR (labeled release) experiment, Mars soil was scooped up by the Viking probes, placed in a vat, laced with nutrients -to feed any possible microbes living in the soil. Nutrients that were tagged with a radioactive isotope of carbon (carbon-14 or C-14). The theory was that as the Martian microorganisms fed on the C-14 tagged nutrients, they'd release byproducts such as methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), the radioactive carbon would be bound into these molecules due to the processing by the microbes and sensors would detect the radioactive gases.

Both Viking landers carried the mini lab onboad and both probes 4,000 miles apart (6.400 km) detected signs of biological activity. Of course some non-biological processes could yield the same results such as soil activated by the solar ultraviolet radiation, so samples were taken from spots shaded by rocks from the UV radiation: they too displayed "biological activity".

Another test was run in which the soil was cooked at 160°C (320°F) to kill any microbes. Then the test was run again: no biological gases were detected probably because the heating killed the Martian microbes. Heating up to 50°C (122°F) also stopped bio-activity.

This meant life right? Well no, there was a gas chromatograph — mass spectrometer (GCMS) experiment that could detect organic compounds in the soil. It detected none. In fact it found that Mars had even less of these compounds than the Moon soil recovered by the Apollo missions. This was surprising (organic compounds are very common all across the Solar System) and apparently the GCMS was working correctly. The conclusion: no organic compounds meant no life. Case closed.

A few weeks ago I cama across a blog post in Scientific American (I'm Convinced We Found Evidence of Life on Mars in the 1970s - The Labeled Release experiment on the Viking mission reported positive results, although most have dismissed them as inorganic chemical reactions) it was published on Oct. 10, 2019 and written by Gilbert V. Levin, an engineer who was a principal experimenter of the Viking LR experiment. The article is worth reading. In it, Levin mentions the following: (quote)

Methane has been measured in the Martian atmosphere; microbial methanogens could be the source;
The rapid disappearance of methane from the Martian atmosphere requires a sink, possibly supplied by methanotrophs that could co-exist with methanogens on the Martian surface;
Ghost-like moving lights, resembling will-O’-the-wisps on Earth that are formed by spontaneous ignition of methane, have been video-recorded on the Martian surface;

(unquote)

Yesterday I read a news release that led me to a paper on Methane and Oxygen and their odd behavior on Mars: Seasonal variations in atmospheric composition as measured in Gale Crater, Mars, published 12 Nov. 2019, by Melissa G. Trainer Michael H. Wong et al., https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JE006175

The paper looks into the data recorded by the Curiosity Mars rover on how the concentration of certain gases changes over the course of Martian seasons. They found that:

"The mixing ratio of O2 shows significant seasonal and interannual variability, suggesting an unknown atmospheric or surface process at work... Oxygen has been observed to show significant seasonal and year‐to‐year variability, suggesting an unknown atmospheric or surface process at work. "

"...Surprisingly, however, we have found that O2 does not demonstrate the predictable seasonal behavior of the other major components... these are the first precise in situ measurements of O2, revealing a surprising seasonal and interannual variation that cannot be accounted for in current chemical models. Though Mars has the potential to generate significant O2 release due to abundances of oxidants in/at its surface, the mechanisms by which O2 could be quickly generated and then quickly destroyed are completely unknown."

Biological and natural processes can explain oxygen in the Martian atmosphere.

Both charts from NASA

But not only oxygen displays an odd seasonal variability, so does methane!:

"... it can be seen that both trace gases [oxygen and methane] exhibit seasonal variations with much greater amplitudes than Ar and N2 ... The observed behavior of either molecule is not currently understood,and a strong relationship between the two might inform the root cause of observed changes in both O2 and CH4, such as the potential seepage or release mechanisms hypothesized for CH4 [Moores et al., 2019]..."

Since both gases can be produced by life forms -on Earth- the same could be happening on Mars. But the rising and lowering of these gases could also be due to natural non-biological phenomena -yet unknown.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Toca do Serrote das Moendas - Brazil. A site that is over 21 Ky old.

This brief post will mention a paper written in 2014, that mentions a site in Brazil which was occupied by humans more than 21 +/-3 Kya.

AngelaKinoshita et al., (2014), Dating human occupation at Toca do Serrote das Moendas, São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí-Brasil by electron spin resonance and optically stimulated luminescence, Journal of Human Evolution Volume 77, December 2014, Pages 187-195, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.09.006, reports the following:

"Abstract
Excavation of Toca do Serrote das Moendas, in Piauí state, Brazil revealed a great quantity of fossil wild fauna associated with human remains. In particular, fossils of a cervid (Blastocerus dichotomus) were found, an animal frequently pictured in ancient rock wall paintings. In a well-defined stratum, two loose teeth of this species were found in close proximity to human bones. The teeth were independently dated by electron spin resonance (ESR) in two laboratories. The ages obtained for the teeth were 29 ± 3 ka (thousands of years) and 24 ± 1 ka. The concretion layer capping this stratum was dated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of the quartz grains to 21 ± 3 ka. As these values were derived independently in three different laboratories, using different methods and equipment, these results are compelling evidence of early habitation in this area."

The authors argue that the deer remains and the human remains are the same age, which is the weak point in their case. Sedimentation could have altered the laying down of the fossils, and younger human bones could have ended up next to ancient deer teeth. Yet there is the chance that they were coeval events.

This is the location of the site:

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Hualongdong skull from China supports pre-OOA Homo sapiens evolution in Asia

A paper published last April (Archaic human remains from Hualongdong, China, and Middle Pleistocene human continuity and variation by Xiu-Jie Wu et al., PNAS May 14, 2019 116 (20) 9820-9824; first published April 29, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902396116) challenges the commonly accepted viewpoint on human evolution: a skull that is 300,000 years old shows a mixture of ancient Asian and anatomically modern human (AMH) features.

The skull - Hualongdong 6 or HLD 6 for short- is one of a growing group of Asian, and specially Chinese crania displaying a mosaic of archaic and AMH features.

A virtual reconstruction HLD6 with the actual parts (yellow) and the mirror-images of the missing pieces (gray). The image also shows some stone tools found at the site

Why is HLD 6 important? Because it questions the Out of Africa model (AMH originated in Africa and spread across the world 60 Kya). It is clear evidence that shows the legacy of Homo erectus in Asia: they were successful, and evolved into Asian populations of Homo sapiens long beore African Homo sapiens left their homeland.

The abstract of this paywalled paper says:

"Newly found ∼300,000-y-old human remains from Hualongdong (HLD), China, including a largely complete skull (HLD 6), share East Asian Middle Pleistocene (MPl) human traits of a low vault with a frontal keel (but no parietal sagittal keel or angular torus), a low and wide nasal aperture, a pronounced supraorbital torus (especially medially), a nonlevel nasal floor, and small or absent third molars. It lacks a malar incisure but has a large superior medial pterygoid tubercle. HLD 6 also exhibits a relatively flat superior face, a more vertical mandibular symphysis, a pronounced mental trigone, and simple occlusal morphology, foreshadowing modern human morphology. The HLD human fossils thus variably resemble other later MPl East Asian remains, but add to the overall variation in the sample. Their configurations, with those of other Middle and early Late Pleistocene East Asian remains, support archaic human regional continuity and provide a background to the subsequent archaic-to-modern human transition in the region."

So despite my reservations on Chinese science and the state promoted Sino-centric view (akin to the deplorable Aryanism promoted by India's Hindu nationalist BJP party), I must acknowledge science and proof. HLD 6 is proof of human multiregional evolution.

Relatively quick origin for Homo floresiensis pigmies: 150 to 675 generations to shrink in size

The Flores Island Homini shrunk in height over a relatively short period of time according to an article published on October 9, 2019:

The paper written by José Alexandre F. Diniz-Filho, Lucas Jardim, Thiago F. Rangel, Phillip B. Holden, Neil R. Edwards, Joaquín Hortal, Ana M. C. Santos and Pasquale Raia (Quantitative genetics of body size evolution on islands: an individual-based simulation approach - 15Biol. Lett. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2019.0481), simulated models to explain how hominins could have reduced their size over time:

"We applied the model to evaluate body size differentiation in the pigmy extinct hominin Homo floresiensis, showing that dwarfing may have occurred in only about 360 generations (95% CI ranging from 150 to 675 generations). This result agrees with reports suggesting rapid dwarfing of large mammals on islands, as well as with the recent discovery that small-sized hominins lived in Flores as early as 700 kyr ago. Our simulations illustrate the power of analysing ecological and evolutionary patterns from an explicit quantitative genetics perspective."

The tools found at Hueyatlaco - Valsequillo Mexico

Some additional information on the Valsequillo site in Mexico. Below are some photgraphs of the tools found there:

The tool found at Vasequillos. See full article and source

The only other images of the tools (source) discovered at the site:

Clearly they are three different tools and they seem to be mesolithic to my (layman) eyes. Of course, no size or scale is given so we can only guess what they were really like.

Hueyatlaco the controversial Mexican site at lake Valsequillos

The Hueyatlaco site in Mexico (map with location) has been controversial since it was first studied because the excavations conducted there back in the early 1960s (1962, 1964 and 1966) by C. Irwin-Williams and on occasions also Juan Armenta Camacho, found stone artifacts -later lost by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) located in Mexico City- that were set in extremely old soil layers.

These tools were dated to an age of several hundreds of thousands of years. Far too old to have been made by Homo sapiens.

A good detailed account of this site can be found here: Malde, Harold E., Steen-McIntyre, Virginia, Naeser, Charles W. and VanLandingham, Sam L. 2011. The stratigraphic debate at Hueyatlaco, Valsequillo, Mexico. Palaeontologia Electronica Vol. 14, Issue 3; 44A:26p; palaeo-electronica.org/2011_3/27_malde/index.html.

These early dates were unnaceptable because they contradicted orthodox findings. So they were rejected on the basis that Uranium had leached into the artifacts and altered their age as measured by the uranium series age technique.

An alternate measuring method was used (fission track dating), and the outcome was the same (Geologic Evidence for Age of Deposits at Hueyatlaco Archeological Site, Valsequillo, Mexico, Virginia Steen-McIntyre, Roald Fryxell and Harold E. Malde, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0033-5894(81)90124-1. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017, Quaternary Research, Volume 16, Issue 1July 1981 , pp. 1-17). Below is the Abstract of this paper:

"Abstract
Direct tracing of beds during excavation in May 1973, confirmed that the artifact-bearing layers at Hueyatlaco underlie 10 m of fine-grained, water-laid deposits that constitute part of the wide-spread Valsequillo gravels. Dissection of these deposits by the adjacent Río Atoyac has reached a depth of 50 m. The stratigraphic section at Hueyatlaco includes four distinctive tephra units. The oldest one occupies a small channel in a series of cut-and-fill stream deposits that have yielded bifacial tools. It lies more than a meter above flat-lying, fine-grained beds from which edge-retouched tools have been recovered. The three other tephra units occur higher in the section.
Fission-track ages on zircon phenocrysts from two of the younger tephra layers (370,000 ± 200,000 and 600,000 ± 340,000 yr, 2σ) agree with concordant uranium-series dates for a camel pelvis that was found associated with bifacial tools at Hueyatlaco (245,000 ± 40,000 yr by 230Th and > 180,000 yr by 231Pa). These dates are compatible with the depth of burial and subsequent dissection of the Hueyatlaco deposits, as well as with the degree of hydration of volcanic glass shards and with the extent of etching of heavy-mineral phenocrysts from within the tephra layers.
These findings suggest to us that further search for archaeological remains in deposits as old as those at Hueyatlaco would be warranted."

Silvia Gonzalez from the Liverpool John Moores University disputes these early dates, but has agreed to dates which are also older than those currently accepted by orthodox science: 40,000 years.

In The Late Pleistocene Human Occupation of Mexico Silvia Gonzalez and David Huddart (FUMDHAMentos VII pp 237-259) discuss the older ages proposed by Steen-McIntyre et al, but also mentions several sites in Mexico with ages of up to 40 kya. One of them is the Toluquilla footprint layer, which has both animal and human foot and paw prints in volcanic ash deposited at Lake Valsequilo. This ash erupted from the Tolquilla volcano roughly 40 Kya:

Gonzalez and Huddart write:

"The stratigraphic context and geochronological control for the Xalnene Ash is shown in Figs.11 and 12 and discussed in detail in Gonzalez et al. (2006a). The Toluquilla Footprint Layer has been dated to 38 ±8.57 Ka (sample number: TW04-10) using Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating of baked, silty xenoliths within the ash which were interpreted as being baked at the time of the eruption, which reset the time signal. The ash layer is older than the stratigraphically younger, fluvial sediments from the Valsequillo Gravels exposed in the Barranca Caulapan (Fig.12) where there are radiocarbon dates between 9.15 ±0.5 Ka (W1896) from the top of the sequence to 38.9 ±0.8 Ka (Oxa-14355) on a mollusc shell at its base, as well as an Electron Spin Resonance date on a mammoth molar and U-Series dates on bones. All of the dates obtained with different methods are in agreement."

See my post on these footprints

Footprints at Valsequillo from Gonzalez and Huddart.

The only work to be published at a date more or less close to the time of the discoveries was written by Juan Armenta Camacho Vestigios de labor humana en huesos de animales extintos de Valsequillo, with his paper presented at the XXXV Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Puebla, 1978. On its page 111, it mentions the controversial -and other not so controversial dates- for the animal bones with evidence of human activities on them (cuts, crushing, torsion breakage, perforations and even inscriptions).

Dates from Armenta's book (notice the 280,000 year old date)

The question seems to remain open: we have the very ancient dates, but we also have a firm refusal to accept them. Mainstream science simply ignores these findings which otherwise would undermine the neat construction built on the assumption that America was first peopled not more than 15-20,000 years ago.

Friday, November 8, 2019

Click Language may not be the "first" language of mankind

In previous posts I have written about languages, their diversity, out-of-Africa and the peopling of America.

I recently read an interesting article published several years ago in Scientific American (Social Clicks: Sounds Associated with African Languages Are Common in English) by Anne Pycha -February 1, 2012.

Pycha writes that:

"[English language] Speakers, it turns out, use clicks for a previously overlooked purpose: as a form of verbal punctuation in between thoughts or phrases. Melissa Wright of Birmingham City University in England recently analyzed click sounds in six large sets of recorded English conversations. She found that speakers used clicks frequently to signal that they were ending one stretch of conversation and shifting to a new one. For example, a speaker might say, “Yeah, that was a great game,” produce a click, then say, “The reason I’m calling is to invite you to dinner tomorrow.”
This pattern, which occurred for both British and American speakers, suggests that clicks have a meaning similar to saying “anyway” or “so.” That is, clicks provide us with a phonetic resource to organize conversations and communicate our intentions to listeners...".

Why is this important? Because Click languages, which are only spoken in Africa, are often portrayed as ancient languages, the "original" mother tongue of human beings.

This video shows what a Xhosa sounds like speaking in his click language.

See these scholarly articles as an example of the above notion of a primeval African click language:

However if clicks were overlooked in English, were they also ignored among other languages?

There was one other language outside of Africa, spoken on Mornington Island, Australia. It was called "Damin", nobody speaks it now, it became a lost language. It was spoken in until the 1800s by the initiated men of the Lardil aboriginal tribe (read more here).

The idea that click languages are the original tongue of mankind is based on a weak assumption: since these languages are used by the South African hunter-gatherers, and these people are also (see my recent post on this subject) said to be the oldest group of humans based on their mtDNA, then it must be the primeval language. But are we expected to believe that these people kept their original language while elsewhere it evolved at a rapid pace, diversifying? Why would the click-languages remain static or evolve slower?

I side with Tom Güldemann who wrote: "The idea that modern click phonemes have their ultimate origin in the linguistic feature of a very ancient human language remains just one among several speculative hypotheses."

Thursday, November 7, 2019

Freshwater stingray sighted in Lake Nahuel Huapi - or was it a catfish?

I have posted on the "cuero" myth of the Mapuche natives, which is a creature that resembles a stingray (see my posts here). I mentioned some reports of freshwater stingrays in the region (Northern Patagonia) as an explanation for the myth.

However there are no scientific records of freshwater stingrays in Patagonia.

Today I came across a newspaper report published in January 2014 in Bariloche 2000, which mentions a sighting of a ray in lake Nahuel Huapi

"The neighbor René Zuker said he saw a ray in the waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi, in Villa La Angostura. The fisherman shared a photograph with B2000... [see photo below]... 'I think that it it a freshwater stingray and not a manta ray' René stated after verifying the information on the Internet... he reported that he was on the pier at Bahia Mansa and spotted the animal at a depth of 6 meters approximately. 'At first sight I didn't notice it, then I saw that it moved and I took the photograph quickly' he said, and he explained that as he is a photography fan, he carries his camera with him wherever he goes.
[he] told us that it is not the first time that he sees an animal of this kind: 40 years ago, on the shore of the lake, meters from the Limay River [the outlet of Lake Nahuel Huapi] he saw a ray which he described as follows: 'it was the size of my hand, almost just born, and it was being eaten by some bugs, and it drew my attention, it was half rotten".

Ray in Lake Nahuel Huapi. By Rene Zuker

There are no rays, but the lake, and Northern Patagonia is the home to one of the oldest catfish familiess, the Diplomystidae. Not many people know that these fish live in the lakes and rivers of Patagonia. Most are aware of trout, salmon and perch, but not these catfish, pictured below:

They live in Chile and Argentina in the same region where the "Cuero" myth appeared (is that a coincidence?) - see maps below

The map above shows Patagonia in green, the oval is the area where the Cuero myth was popular among the Mapuche natives. In Yellow is the area where you can find freshwater stingrays.

Below is the current distribution of velvet catfish:

Of course a ray and a catfish are different, yet, a fish 6 meters (18 feet) underwater will appear larger than it is due to the refraction of light at the water-air interface (roughly 1.33 times larger than it really is):

The fossil record tells us that catfish have been living in Patagonia since the Eocene, tens of millions of years ago. The Diplomystidae or "velvet catfish" are quite special: they are the basal clade of all catfish, they are the only catfish to have a maxilla (bony jaw) with teeth on it. Furthermore, they are only found in Chile and Argentina.

The only problem with trying to identify the Nahuel Huapi catfish (Diplomystes viedmensis - also known as Olivaichthys viedmensis) with a gigantic freswater stingray is the size. The catfish are barely 30 cm long (one foot). However catfish (sliuridae) can grow into giants: the Siluris glanis can measure 5 meters long (15 feet), and one catfish caught in the Mekong river (source and photo) weighed 646 lbs and measured 8.9 ft long (293 kg - 2.7 m).

Maybe there are some very big catfish in Lake Nahuel Huapi... or who knows, perhaps some yet to be discovered freshwater stingray.

For now all we have is a blurred photo of a dark fish in the lake's clear blue waters.