The Battalion
3S
Monday • March 1
A&M researchers study
Antarctic core samples
By Jill Reed
Science writer
Texas A&M researchers in the Ocean
Drilling Program are studying Antarctic core
samples to learn about the history of Earth’s
environment and to learn how to predict fu
ture global climate changes.
Dr. Peter Barker, a researcher with the
Ocean Drilling Program, is a co-chief for a two-
month leg of the ongoing climate study expe
ditions.
“We want to determine the history of the West
Antarctic ice sheet for the last six to ten million
years,” Barker said.
Barker said it is important to understand the
Antarctic ice sheet, which is a major component
of Earth’s climate system.
“When we prove the method works, the next
step will be to look at the East Antarctic margin
in the same way,” Barker said.
The East Antarctic ice sheet is larger and
over 30 million years older than the west sheet,
he said.
Barker said this leg of the expedition will help
resolve arguments about ice sheet stability.
“We need to understand the long-term his
tory of the ice sheet and what caused it to grow,
so we can know the short-term stability of the
ice sheet for the next 50 years or so.”
Geologists use nine-and-a-half-meter-long
core samples to answer questions about
changes in the global environment, crust move
ment and deformation, fluids and petrochemi
cals in the crust and evolution and extinction of
ocean life.
“We need data from several locations to deter
mine the frill history, but this drilling leg will give
us the proper method to do this,” Barker said.
Sediment layers containing animal remains
represent the periods of time when the Earth’s
climate was hospitable.
Past deep-water core sample studies have
determined that a huge meteorite crashed into
the Earth 65 million years ago and the floor of
the Atlantic is widening while the floor of the
Pacific is shrinking.
Ocean-drilling research also has found that the
Mediterranean Sea once dried up and later refilled
“We want to determine the
history of the West Antarctic
ice sheet for the last six to ten
million years.”
Dr. Peter Barker
Ocean Drilling Program
and the Great Barrier Reef, off Northeastern Aus
tralia is less than one million years old.
Crews aboard the drilling vessel work twelve-
hour shifts seven days a week drilling and ana
lyzing core samples taken from up to 850 feet be
low sea level.
Each core sample represents up to ten mil
lion years of Earth’s history.
Aaron Woods, a spokesperson for the Ocean
Drilling Program, said Texas A&M is responsible
for about half of the $47 million appropriation
funded by the National Science Foundation and
other international interests.
Woods said A&M handles many facets of the
program including ship operations, engineering
and drilling operations, administration, publi
cation of data and results, computer systems
and core sample storage and curation.
Baboon pair bonds early relathi
human marriage, researchers!
By Brian Vastag
Special to The Battalion
Female baboons who align them
selves with male “friends” to protect
their young are leading researchers
toward possible prehistoric origins
of marriage.
“Marriage is far, far more than sim
ply a mating relationship,” said the
University of Pennsylvania’s Ryne
Palombit, who studies pair bonds, the
animal equivalent of marriage. “It has
very important social aspects.”
Throughout history, social reasons
for marriage include forming al
liances, sustaining culture and shar
ing food. Traditionally, researchers
have focused on food sharing as the
primary motivation for pair bonds,
but Palombit believes his African ba
boon studies suggest another reason.
Pair bonds may have evolved, both in
animals and in early humans, to pro
tect infants from murder.
Forty percent of baboon babies
studied by Palombit on the grasslands
of Botswana were killed by a single
dominant male. This male kills to mo
nopolize his mating opportunities.
After an infant is killed, its moth
er stops lactating and her regular
menstrual cycle resumes. Within a
few months, she is ready to mate
again. Invariably, the dominant male
mates with her. Through this killing
and mating, the dominant male ef
fectively replaces another baboon’s
offspring with his own, giving his
genes improved chances for survival.
Primate infanticide, first reported
by Sarah Hrdy at the University of Cal
ifornia at Davis, intrigued Palombit so
much that he has made several trips
to study it. After watching the chacma
baboons, a subspecies of savannah
baboons, Palombit observed males
and females forming apparently non-
sexual “friendships,” or pair bonds.
The pairs spent much more time to
gether when infants were present,
supporting the idea that male friends
protected the infants. Palombit want
ed to test this idea.
He and his colleagues considered
waiting for infanticide attacks to see
how the male friends responded. But
when infanticides proved too diffi
cult to observe, they decided to sim
ulate infanticide. Using hidden
speakers playing recordings of male
attack cries and female distress
screams, the researchers ran a series
of tests. They found that the male
friends responded more aggressive
ly to the simulated attacks than oth
er male baboons: More support for
the theory that friendships serve to
protect the young.
Our early human ancestors may
have been infanticidai as well,
Palombit said. Chimpanzees, which
share over 98 percent of our DNA, are
occasionally infanticidai and ba
boons live in a savannah environ
ment much like that of early early
humans. These two factors support
speculation that our ancestors were
infanticidai, and that pair bonds —
and later marriage — evolved for in
fant protection, Palombit said.
Though it is easy to envision a
past where males and females bond
ed to save the children, it is tough to
find evidence.
“It is difficult to know if people
were infanticidai in the past,” Palom
bit said, "since there are no fossils of
p re historic wedding rj
dred- thousand-year-oli
certificates.”
Another problenn
is that no one knovvst
baboons protect thein
paternity tests, whichP
run on Ins next tre’d
promise to help explai
male friends fathered^
they are protecting,thf,
protecting their lineage]
evolutionary commons
they are not the father?
searchers will need otk
I ee( ronk, a Texas A& I
ogy professor, said then
answer for the originsoljs
“What works for one J
not work foi another.'.' l
Palombit’s work wir
mates like gibbons, who
ily groups much likeos.
ports Cronk’s statemt
form pair bonds with
sure of infanticide: the
reasons for pairing.
People probably de :
riage for many reasonsa
are multipleevolutionan:
bonds,” said Palombit
need to be open to then
He added that addin:
on baboons, including:
paternity tests, will com
to a better understand. :|
and human pairbond?
Palombit presented:
at the annual meeting
can Association for tls
ment of Science last:
chacma baboon study
fished in the journal
\nthr( jpologv later this I
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