It’s time to go spanning the globe for anatomy news and notes!
Snail Evolution
Come with us now to Sweden’s Koster Islands. In 1988, an algae bloom wiped out large portions of the snail population. And a marine biologist named Kerstin Johannesson reintroduced 700 new snails to the snail-less environment. Why? We thought you’d never ask.
She saw opportunity. She introduced a new snail variety from a different “ecotype.” In other words, snails shaped by a different habitat. Johannesson wanted to see if the new snails “would evolve the traits of the original inhabitants over time.”
As this article from Science Alert told us, based on research first published in Science Advances, Johannesson predicted changes in the snails’ appearance and genetics.
Thirty years later, her predictions have checked out.
The snail shells changed over the decades from a “Crab” ecotype to a “Wave” ecotype. Scientists watched the ongoing evolution over time—appearance, average length, shell thickness, color, and patterning. The snails needed to adapt because their habitat was different—the new environment was less prone to crab attacks.
Evolution at a snail’s pace! Which, in this case, was pretty quick. Amazing.
When In Chicago
Next time we’re in Chicago, we’re heading to the International Museum of Surgical Science (1524 N. Lake Shore Drive). Thanks to a great article in Chicago Health by Claire Zulkey, we are intrigued.
The museum was started in 1935 by Max Thorek with the idea “to unite surgeons through education, fellowship, and humanitarian work.”
The museum, writes Zuley, celebrates “the seams where art, medicine, and history join together. After all, art has had an explicit role in medicine, from Leonardo Da Vinci’s groundbreaking anatomical sketches to Harold Gillies’s drawings documenting his plastic surgeries on soldiers disfigured in World War I.”
Of course, we are big believers in the intersection of art and health science. The museum’s website says the building includes 10,000 square feet of public gallery space “dedicated to the history of surgery and an exquisite permanent collection of art and artifacts from the history of Medicine.”
Admission is just $30!
Burial Practices
When did we begin burying our own? When did any hominin start burying their own? Well, as this article points out on History.com, it’s a complex issue. How do we know for sure that the burying was an intentional act?
“What is considered to be the oldest intentional human burial took place approximately 100,000 years ago in a cave in Qafzeh, Israel, where the remains of up to 15 early Homo sapiens were discovered during excavations in the 1930s and 1960s,” stated the article from History.com in June of 2023. “More recently, the oldest deliberate human burial in Africa was unearthed in 2013 near the coast of Kenya, where, roughly 78,000 years ago, a small two-and-a-half- or three-year-old child was placed in the fetal position and laid to rest in a shallow grave.”
More recently, a study published in L'Anthropologie by Professor Ella Been from Ono Academic College and Dr. Omry Barzilai from the University of Haifa sheds new light on the burial practices of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the Levant region during the Middle Paleolithic. An article on Phys.org by Sandy Oster, highlighted the research that compared and contrasted a total of 17 Neanderthal and 15 Homo sapiens burials from various archaeological sites.
The Levant region is in Western Asia and the research looked at how the two species buried their dead including differences in burial location, body posture, and specific grave goods.
At the time being studied, both hominin species were living side by side. Homo sapiens arrived in the Levant between 170,000 and 90,000 years ago and, later, re-entered the region 55,000 years ago from Africa. Neanderthals arrived in the same location from Europe 120,000 to 55,000 years ago.
“Based on the results of around 37 total confirmed burials, it was found that both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals buried their dead regardless of sex or age,” writes Oster. “However, Neanderthal infant burials were more common than Homo sapiens infants. Similarly, both species would sometimes include grave goods in the form of animal remains, including goat horns, deer antlers, mandibles and maxilla.”
It’s pretty amazing to read about the care being taken so long ago. The study found that Neanderthals were more likely to include rocks in their burials, including placing a body between two large rocks “as a form of positional marker or placing modified limestone pieces underneath the dead's heads as a sort of headrest.”
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Photo by Sue Conrad on Unsplash
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