Signing frogs wave goodbye

The Panamanian golden frog communicates with other frogs by semaphore in the form of gentle hand waves.

It has evolved the mechanism to signal to rivals and mates above the noise of mountain streams. . .

The frogs (Atelopus zeteki) were filmed at a remote location in the Panamanian rainforest. The population had all but disappeared because of a fungus that grows on the amphibians' skin and suffocates them. . .

Just after filming was completed in June 2006, the location was overtaken by the chytrid fungus. Scientists were forced to remove the remaining frogs from the wild and keep them in captivity.

Hilary Jeffkins added: "The whole species is now extinct in Panama - this was one of the last remaining populations. Its final wave was in our programme."

From the BBC.

Oxford to return Maori remains

Oxford University today agreed to return to New Zealand the indigenous human remains obtained by its natural history museum during the 19th century.

The four sets of remains include two Maori skulls, a Moriori skull from the Chatham Islands off New Zealand's east coast and a section of pelvis.

Efforts by New Zealand's national museum, Te Papa, to retrieve the bones began in 2005 as part of a government policy to seek the return of Maori and Moriori remains.

Full article here.

Black Sea U-boats found

The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed "Hitler's lost fleet", has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea.

The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey.

From the Telegraph (with slideshow).

Blue-eyed mutants

Researchers have finally located the mutation that causes blue eyes, and the findings suggest that all blue-eyed humans share a single common ancestor born 6000 to 10,000 years ago. . .

Geneticist Tony Frudakis of DNAPrint Genomics Inc., a Sarasota, Florida, company that develops genetic-testing products, is shocked that the mutation happened just once. Although there are about 10 ways to get someone with red hair, the scientists found only one way to get someone with blue eyes. "I would have thought blue eyes arose several times independently," Frudakis says.

From ScienceNow.

UN peacekeepers: cultural crime, too

UN troops have had a shameful record in recent years, having been implicated in everything from rape and robbery to weapons trafficking and enslavement. So perhaps this should come as no surprise:

Spectacular prehistoric depictions of animal and human figures created up to 6,000 years ago on Western Saharan rocks have been vandalised by United Nations peacekeepers, The Times has learnt.

Archaeological sites boasting ancient paintings and engravings of giraffes, buffalo and elephants have been defaced within the past two years by personnel attached to the UN mission, known by its French acronym, Minurso.

Graffiti, some of it more than a metre high and sprayed with paint meant for use for marking routes, now blights the rock art at Lajuad, an isolated site known as Devil Mountain, which is regarded by the local Sahrawi population as a mystical place of great cultural significance.

Many of the UN "graffiti artists" signed and dated their work, revealing their identities and where they are from. Minurso personnel stationed in Western Sahara come from almost 30 countries. They are monitoring a ceasefire between the occupying Moroccan forces and the Polisario Front, which is seeking independence.

No pleading ignorance, either:

"Issa", a Kenyan major who signed his name and wrote the date, had just completed a UN course, Ethics in Peacekeeping, documents show.

Worse, this doesn't appear to be an isolated incident -- rather, the opposite:

. . . a report by Nick Brooks, of the University of East Anglia, and Joaquim Soler, of the University of Gerona . . . outlines the "severe vandalism", saying that it "now appears to be an essentially universal practice when Minurso staff visit rock art sites"

Meanwhile, further accusations here:

Morocco's director of national heritage blamed UN peacekeeping forces Thursday for vandalising prehistoric sites in the Western Sahara while patrolling the demilitarised zone. . .

According to him there have been two types of vandalism carried out by UN forces - low-level, such as graffiti scribbled on ancient rocks, and "deliberate vandalism", such as the theft of cave paintings, desecration of graves, and the removal of engraved paving stones.

There has been an apology issued by the UN, but that itself has led to more outrage as the apology was sent to only one of the entities claiming the disputed territory.

UPDATE: Not much attention to this story so far. The NY Times has run just a single paragraph on the story to date, reporting only the Moroccan accusation and not the more comprehensive indictment reported by the Times of London, and reporting it in he-said/she-said format concluding with the reassurance that Unesco was being brought in to take a look.

This story will surely provoke comparison of the coverage with that of coalition forces in Iraq. On one level this isn't quite fair, since the ongoing devastation to archeological sites in Iraq is vastly greater and if anything merits more attention, not less. Yet the greatest damage in Iraq has been indirect, a consequence of civil disorder, rather than the direct result of military action. The vandalism in the Sahara is particularly shocking due to its deliberateness and the identity of those responsible, along with the complete lack of mitigating circumstances.