Experts claim to find preserved skin tissue on a 2 MILLION-year-old fossil - that would be the oldest in the world folks

Have scientists unearthed the world's oldest human SKIN? Preserved tissue found on a 2 MILLION-year-old fossil, expert claims
-South African anthropologists believe they have found preserved skin that belonged to an early human species known as Australopithecus sediba
-It could be the oldest soft tissue ever found for an early human species
-Scientists say they also discovered food particles in the teeth of the fossils
-The fossils were discovered in Malapa Nature Reserve near Johannesburg
By RICHARD GRAY FOR MAILONLINE
May 8, 2015

[Fossilized] skin belonging to a prehistoric human ancestor that lived two million years ago is thought to have been discovered among the remains of six skeletons.

Anthropologists believe they have found the preserved skin tissue of an early human species known as Australopithecus sediba in an ancient cave near Johannesburg, in South Africa. It could be the oldest example of human soft tissue to ever be found and is set to reveal new details about what this now extinct species of human was like.


Thin layers of 'organic' material thought to be skin was found attacked to the cement like rock from which this skull Australopithecus sediba was removed by anthropologists at the Malapa site in South Africa (credit AFP/Getty)

Scientists who have been leading the excavation, which began with the discovery of the remains of a 4ft 2 inch tall male juvenile in 2008, believe they have also found the remains of the ancient humans' last meals still preserved in their teeth. They say seeds and other food particles that became stuck in the creatures' teeth have been preserved.

Professor Lee Berger, an anthropologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who has been leading the excavation, said: 'We found out this wasn't just a normal type of rock that they were contained in - it was a rock that was preserving organic material.

'Plant remains are captured in it - seeds, things like that - even food particulates that are captured in the teeth, so we can see what they were eating. 'Maybe more remarkably, we think we've found fossil skin here too.'

Professor Berger, who made his comments in an interview with the Naked Scientists, discovered the first remains of Australopithecus sediba in 2008 after his son Matthew stumbled upon a [sic] fossilised bone in the Malapa Nature Reserve near Johannesburg.

They later excavated an almost complete skull, together with shoulder bones, a hand, wrist bones and ankle bones. Professor Berger announced the discovery to the world in 2010.
He described the early human as a new species that he called Australopithecus sediba and is thought to be a transitional species between earlier Australopithecus species and early Homo species...

[...]

AUSTRALOPITHECUS SEDIBA - A PIGEON-TOED CLIMBER
Research on the fossils of Australopithecus sediba have given an unprecidented insight into what these early human ancestors were like.

The fossils, which were studied by scientists across the world, show a mixture of primitive features and of more advanced features typical of later human species.

It has a narrow upper rib cage while the modern human's thorax is uniformly cylindrical. The cone-shaped rib cage allowed the early hominin to move its shoulder blades so it could climb trees. However, this prevented A. sediba from swinging its arms, meaning that walking and running was much more difficult. It had a slim waist similar to modern humans but feet which turned sharply inwards.

A. sediba had the same number of lumbar vertebrae as a modern man and a similar curvature of the lower back. However, its back was longer and more flexible than that of modern humans.
They had longer arms than we do with curved fingers, which would have made them adept at climbing.


Australopithecus sediba is thought to have lived in South Africa around 1.9 million to 2 million years ago at around the same time as other early humans were evolving across the African continent (Credit: Leo Delauncey/MailOnline)

The researchers also hope to find out whether, if it is soft tissue, it had been dried or soaked in water as it was preserved in the rock.

The remains of plants and insects have also been found preserved in the cement-like breccia alongside the skeletons.

It is thought that sediment in the bottom of a pool of water may have helped to protect the organic material from bacteria that would have caused them to rot and break down.
Professor Berger and his team are now trying to create a live laboratory on top of the site so they can continue working on the fossils while they are still in the ground without damaging them.

The laboratory will also have a platform that will allow members of the public to look down into the site where the remains are being excavated...

[click here to continue reading the article]

America imports more oil from Africa than Saudi Arabia

Now it seems it more like AFRI-'CON' than AFRICOM, don`t you think?

Africa and AFRICOM
[http://www.oilempire.us/africa.html] :

-a new front of the War of Terror
-the old grab for resources: oil, minerals, farmland

(from 2008) If Senator Obama is allowed to become President of the Oil Empire, look for US intervention in Africa to increase dramatically. The cover of the new "War on Terror" will be used to mask the grab for African oil and minerals.

This is probably the real goal of the recently created "Africa Command" (AFRICOM) military command.

The archives of (the now closed) From the Wilderness website at www.fromthewilderness.com have several excellent articles about Africa, geopolitics and the rush of the superpowers (US and China) to control African oil supplies.

www.fromthewilderness.com

credit: http://www.oilempire.us/africa.html

Huge underground water aquifers discovered in North Africa...will this start the re-colonization of Africa or has it started with AFRICOM?

We'll drink to that: Massive underground reserves of water found in some of Africa's driest areas - including the Sahara Desert
Researchers estimate that reserves of groundwater across the continent are 100 times the amount found on its surface

By TED THORNHILL
DailyMail
April 21, 2012

Huge reserves of underground water in some of the driest parts of Africa could provide a buffer against the effects of climate change for years to come, scientists said.

Researchers from the British Geological Survey and University College London have for the first time mapped the aquifers, or groundwater, across the continent and the amount they hold.

‘The largest groundwater volumes are found in the large sedimentary aquifers in the North African countries Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan,’ the scientists said in their paper.

Revelation: Scientists have mapped Africa's underground water reserves

They estimate that reserves of groundwater across the continent are 100 times the amount found on its surface, or 0.66 million cubic kilometres.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research Letters, they cautioned, though, that not all these reserves can be accessed.

Where they can, small-scale extraction using hand pumps would be better than large-scale drilling projects, which could quickly deplete the reservoirs and have other unforeseen consequences.

Groundwater is no panacea for Africa's water shortages but it could form an important part of a strategy to cope with an expected sharp increase in demand for water as the continent's population increases.

Even now, some estimates put the number of Africans without access to safe drinking water at more than 300 million and only 5 per cent of arable land is irrigated.

‘It is not as simple as drilling big bore holes and seeing rice fields spring up everywhere,’ said Dr Stephen Foster, a London-based senior adviser for aid group Global Water Partnership and an expert in groundwater issues.

‘In some places it could be economically and technically feasible to use groundwater to reduce crop loss, but I would question whether that is true everywhere. It will need detailed evaluation.
Foster noted that projects have failed due to cost and logistics problems.

‘In northern Nigeria there have been groundwater irrigation projects that have failed because of the rising cost of fuel - a major factor in drilling costs - and distribution difficulties.’

The researchers say some of the largest deposits are in the driest areas of Africa in and around the Sahara, but they are deep - at 100 to 250 meters below ground level.

‘Water levels deeper than 50 meters will not be able to be accessed easily by a hand pump,’ said the study, led by Dr Alan MacDonald of the British Geological Survey. ‘At depths greater than 100 meters the cost of borehole drilling increases significantly due to the requirement for more sophisticated drilling equipment.’

The amount of water a borehole yields is another key issue. A small community hand pump needs a borehole with a flow rate of 0.1 to 0.3 litres per second. For large-scale irrigation, the rate needs to be much higher, say around 50 litres.

Dry research: It turns out that the biggest reserves of underground water are found near the Sahara Desert. Photo credit: Dailymail/Alamy

Phoebe White, a water, sanitation and hygiene specialist for the UK Department for International Development based in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, said hand pumps in the DRC cost up to $13,000 apiece but in some areas the aquifers are too deep and other pumps must be used.

In areas of DRC where drilling deep boreholes is required the cost can be around $130,000, although problems of accessibility and infrastructure can push that figure up, according to White.

The researchers say the maps, based on existing geological charts from governments and hundreds of aquifer studies, are aimed at promoting a ‘more realistic assessments of water security and water stress’.

Roger Calow at UK think-tank the Overseas Development Institute, which was involved in the program that spawned the research, said the paper shows water shortages in large parts of Africa do not stem from scarcity.

‘What the science is telling us is that we have more storage in these shallow, relatively unproductive (aquifers) than we thought,’ he said, adding that about 60 per cent of Africans still live in rural areas and 80 per cent of those rely on groundwater systems.

Calow said a third of hand pumps across Africa have broken down due to a lack of maintenance.

Aid agencies gave the research a cautious welcome.

‘The discovery of substantial water reserves under parts of Africa may well be good news for the continent but it may prove hard to access in the near term and, if not sustainably managed, could have unforeseen impacts,’ Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in Nairobi.

Nuttall said over-abstraction exploitation of groundwater in Mexico City, for example, is undermining the foundations of buildings.

He said the focus of efforts to improve water supply should be on better collection and storage.
‘The fact is that there is already a tremendous amount of water available for Africa but it is rarely collected’.

A study by UNEP and the World Agroforestry Centre found there is enough water falling as rain over Africa to supply the needs of some 9 billion people.

‘Ethiopia, where just over a fifth of the population are covered by domestic water supply and an estimated 46 per cent of the population suffer hunger, has a potential rainwater harvest equivalent to the population needs of over 520 million people,’ Nuttall told Reuters.

UGANDAN OIL: Target of AFRICOM and African colonialism

UGANDA OIL: US Africa Command, a tool to Recolonize the African Continent
The United States of America has no right to prescribe Africom on Africa even at the expense of dividing Africa and weakening the African Union. America wants its own interests to prevail over those of Africa.

Inform Africa
March 28, 2012.

UNBIASED AFRICA REPORT
By Dr. Motsoko Pheko

The USA Africa Command, which America calls ‘Africom’, is a military structure of the Defence Department of America. Africom was formed in 2007 during President George W Bush’s second term of office. That was two months after America had bombed a small African country, Somalia, destabilising it to the ashes it is today and to the danger it now poses to Africa and international trade. The coast of Somalia is infested with sea piracy and kidnappings. This is as a result of the earlier American invasion of Somalia, in pursuit of its illegitimate economic interests in Africa. The political instability of Somalia has now caused the problem of ‘terrorism’ for East African countries such as Kenya.

In October 2011, the Institute of Security Studies held a seminar in Pretoria, South Africa, on United States’ security policy in Africa and the role of the US Africa Command. The main speaker was the American Ambassador to South Africa. He presented what was a ‘non-military insider’s perspective on the United States’ Africa Command.’ This way he was supposedly to ‘separate facts from fiction and rumours and deal directly with misconceptions and misapprehensions about Africom.’

The American apologists of Africom suggested that the creation of this American military structure under the American Defence Department ‘has turned out to be different from what the USA government had originally envisioned and what the United States of America had originally perceived, having quickly foresworn locating its headquarters in Africa.’

It seems that even in this 21st century the United States of America government does not respect the sovereignty of African states and the territorial integrity of the continent. If it did, it would know that Africans have national and continental interests and the right to protect them. Assistance should be solicited. Those who need assistance know what kind of assistance they want. The United States of America has no right to prescribe Africom on Africa even at the expense of dividing Africa and weakening the African Union. America wants its own interests to prevail over those of Africa.

Africans have a painful history of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, racism and colonialism by nations that claim to be ‘civilised’ but have behaviour that is contrary to civilisation. They dehumanised Africa’s people and saw nothing wrong with that. They have never shown any remorse for their inhuman deeds to Africans or offered any reparations for the colossal damage they inflicted on Africans. America’s persistence to impose Africom on Africa proves this beyond reasonable doubt.

UGANDAN OIL AND AMERICAN TROOPS TO ‘HELP’

Uganda suffered unspeakable atrocities under Idi Amin’s government that was installed by Britain under Prime Minister Edward Heath. The British government did not like the socialist policies of President Milton Obote. Idi Amin killed many Ugandans. They included the Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum.

After the overthrow of Idi Amin, there emerged Joseph Kony, leader of what he calls the Lord’s Resistance Army. Kony has murdered thousands of Ugandans. This included kidnapping hundreds of Ugandan children who he forced to join his army to fight the Ugandan government. Many of those children were killed in the senseless war. This has gone on for over 20 years.

The US government never approached Uganda or the African Union or its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, to ask how the United States could help. Now there is discovery of oil in Uganda. Almost immediately, there are reports that US government has sent an army to Uganda to find Joseph Kony and rescue Uganda’s children. Why did America not make this offer long before Uganda discovered this oil wealth? Acquisition of Africa’s resources is the chief purpose of Africom, not the development of Africa.

WILL US ALLOW RUSSIAN OR CHINESE ARMY INSIDE AMERICA?

Some African countries have been threatened with sanctions and ‘regime change.’ One of them is Libya, where Colonel Maummar Gaddafi was killed under the dark cloud of NATO and United States of America. When Africans raise concerns about ‘Africom’ they are said to suffer ‘misconceptions, misapprehensions, rumours, and fiction.’ Now, is the United States of America government prepared to...

(click here to read the full article)


Related:

• First-ever crude oil discovered in Kenya...is it a blessing or a curse of the black gold?
• So why are we in Uganda now?

Beware of the KONY 2012 movement - Pretext for Africa Invasion

This is a major psyops by the U.S. a pre-text for invasion if you will to soften up public sentiment ans sell it down your throat, especially now since AFRICOM has been set up to effectively subvert and control the African continent, at a critical time like now when the African nations are fractured with disunity and  mistrust, and with essentially the loss of the enigmatic and charismatic Libyan leader Col. Muammer Qaddafi who seeked to unify the African mainland and champion African freedoms, there is no central voice of reason and opposition to the colonial powers usurping the natural riches of motherland Africa. 

“The US is...concerned about Chinese penetration in the region that they are going to gobble all the economical resources and earn influence on the regional governments. So the US maybe want to stop this Chinese advancement in central Africa...” (Eric Margolis, RT)

READ: So why are we in Uganda now? (Oct 2011)

RSA

Anonymous - KONY2012 Warning


Uploaded by TheAnonMessage on Mar 8, 2012
http://youtu.be/qr1EdLzYz_M

UPDATE:
Something very malicious is unfolding from this campaign. A Military Intervension of the United States means that the final goal is to attain oil. We cannot allow this to happen. Yes, Kony must die. But only after 20 years, when the United States wants the oil. We must all focus on Operation V and forget this propaganda. They called their video an experiment. It means we're their subjects. So far, their experiement has succeeded: BRAINWASH.

KONY 2012: African Invasion Psyop: Infowars Nightly News

Infowars.com
March 9, 2012
Alex explains how the establishment is using the foundation controlled left to promote a US Military invasion of Africa.


Uploaded by TheAlexJonesChannel on Mar 9, 2012
http://youtu.be/Cv4UwyGFKks

System using foundation controlled left to promote invasion of Africa.
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/

So why are we in Uganda now?

“The US is...concerned about Chinese penetration in the region that they are going to gobble all the economical resources and earn influence on the regional governments. So the US maybe want to stop this Chinese advancement in central Africa...”(Eric Margolis, RT)


UGANDA: Soldier during a training course in the western Ugandan Army base of Bihanga. (AFP Photo/Marc Hofer) 

Strings attached: US in Uganda
RT News
Published: 19 October, 2011
Eric Margolis

The US denies an interest in Uganda’s oil, but there are many other reasons for its presence in the region. None of them altruistic, claims war correspondent Eric Margolis.

American “aid” to Uganda is being offered without any third-party help, which is a sure sign that the effort is for its own sake, rather than humanitarian reasons.
The White House is deploying a hundred troops in the African country with the official aim of helping the authorities in a fight against a guerilla group that has been dragging on for two decades.

But award-winning war correspondent Eric Margolis told RT that if Washington had humanitarian interests in mind it would not be going in alone.

Various interests of the US are to be found in Central Africa, states Margolis.
Firstly, it is the growing conflict in Somalia, with which the US is a close ally, the correspondent suggested. It may be also Kenya, another beneficiary of US military financing.

Ethiopia is an ally as well. The American presence in Africa also includes its base in the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, but most troops there are not on combat missions.

But an internal African problem may not be the sole attraction for the newly expanded US contingent in the region. It may be also linked to some kind of geopolitical game, Margolis continued.

“The US is also concerned about Chinese penetration in the region that they are going to gobble all the economical resources and earn influence on the regional governments. So the US maybe want to stop this Chinese advancement in central Africa,” he said.

Also the US defense secretary has claimed he is worried about the links between Uganda’s Lord Resistance Army and Al-Qaeda.
LRA is a guerrilla group accused of widespread atrocities across several countries, which began its attacks in Uganda more than 20 years ago. In 2003, the LRA had 3,000 armed troops and 2,000 people in support roles.

Many also think this is not the right time to get involved in a new foreign military expedition of a really marginal interest, because of the deep financial troubles in which the US now finds itself.

However, the fact that economic turmoil does not stop the Pentagon from a new operation can only mean it is highly interested in this new game.

One way or another, the US is going to aid the African country all alone, while it could be much more legitimate for them to find a third-party, uninterested ally, the correspondent suggested.

“It could be more legitimate, if the US did it in conjunction with disinterested nations – Russia, for example, or South Africa and Turkey. But the fact that they’re doing it on their own means they are doing it for the interests of their own policy,” Margolis said.

The first American troops already arrived in Uganda last week and will soon deploy elsewhere throughout the region once other nations in the area approve the action. Meanwhile, US military operations continue in Central Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere.

In June, the Pentagon moved to send nearly $45 million in military equipment to Uganda and Burundi, another country contributing in Somalia. The aid included four small drones, body armor and night-vision and communications gear, and is being used in the fight against al-Shabab.