Across Atlantic Ice is the result of more than a decade’s research by leading archaeologists Bruce Bradley of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Through archaeological evidence, they turn the long-held theory of the origins of New World populations on its head.

For more than 400 years, it has been claimed that people first entered America from Asia, via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. We now know that some people did arrive via this route nearly 15,000 years ago, probably by both land and sea.

Eighty years ago, stone tools long believed to have been left by the first New World inhabitants were discovered in New Mexico and named Clovis. These distinctive Clovis stone tools are now dated around 12,000 years ago leading to the recognition that people preceded Clovis into the Americas.

No Clovis tools have been found in Alaska or Northeast Asia, but are concentrated in the south eastern United States. Groundbreaking discoveries from the east coast of North America are demonstrating that people who are believed to be Clovis ancestors arrived in this area no later than 18,450 years ago and possibly as early as 23,000 years ago, probably in boats from Europe. These early inhabitants made stone tools that differ in significant ways from the earliest stone tools known in Alaska. It now appears that people entering the New World arrived from more than one direction.

Image left: Dennis Stanford with Clovis stone points from the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Chip Clark)

In “Across Atlantic Ice,” the authors trace the origins of Clovis culture from the Solutrean people, who occupied northern Spain and France more than 20,000 years ago. They believe that these people went on to populate America’s east coast, eventually spreading at least as far as Venezuela in South America.

The link between Clovis and contemporary Native Americans is not yet clear. Bradley and Stanford do not suggest that the people from Europe were the only ancestors of modern Native Americans. They argue that it is evident that early inhabitants also arrived from Asia, into Alaska, populating America’s western coast. Their ongoing research suggests that the early history of the continent is far more intriguing than we formerly believed.

Some of the archaeological evidence analyzed in the book was recovered from deep in the ocean. When the first people arrived in America, sea levels were nearly 130 meters lower than today. The shore lines of 20,000 years ago, which hold much of the evidence left by these early people, are now under the ocean. This is also the case in Europe.

Image left: Clovis-made stone tools in the hands of Bruce Bradley, co-author of Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture. (Photo by Jim Wileman)

“We now have really solid evidence that people came from Europe to the New World around 20,000 years ago,” Bradley says. “Our findings represent a paradigm shift in the way we think about America’s early history. We are challenging a very deep-seated belief in how the New World was populated. The story is more intriguing and more complicated than we ever have imagined.”

“There are more alternatives than we think in archaeology and we need to have imagination and an open mind when we examine evidence to avoid being stuck in orthodoxy,” Stanford adds. “This book is the result of more than a decade’s work, but it is just the beginning of our journey.”

Across Atlantic Ice is published by University California Press, Berkeley.–Source University of Exeter

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Across the Atlantic Ice boldly challenges this old narrative and presents overwhelming evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation of the American continents, and finds virtually no direct evidence that the progenitors of Clovis came from Siberia. Evidence put forth in this new book overwhelmingly indicates southwestern Europe, specifically the Ice Age Solutrean Culture of France and Spain, as the source of the people that developed into the Clovis.

Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford, of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Bruce A. Bradley, associate professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, apply rigorous scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of Clovis in Europe. Their research indicates that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought.

Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support these assertions, the book dismantles the old paradigms while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.

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Hagfishes, known as slime eels or slime hags, are so named because of the huge amounts of mucus they produce. One disturbed hagfish can fill a 2-gallon bucket with slime in a matter of minutes. The slime makes them virtually inedible.

2

The eyes of the Four-eyed Fish are split in half horizontally, each having two pupils and a retina that is divided into top and bottom sections. It swims with half of its eye out of the water, searching for insects, and the other half looking down into the water.

3

African lungfish enclose themselves in a mud tunnel and, after their lake has dried up, can live for years buried in the mud, breathing air and waiting for the rains to return. The structure of their heart and lungs first tricked scientists into thinking the South American lungfish was a reptile, the African lungfish an amphibian.

4

Anemone fishes live in groups where the two largest fish only are sexually mature, the largest being female and the next largest male. If the female dies, the male changes sex to female and the next largest fish in the group matures to male. If the animated film “Finding Nemo,” had been true to life, Nemo’s dad, Marlin, should have become Nemo’s mother shortly after his original mother was eaten by a barracuda.

5

A few fishes specialize on, or at least supplement their diets with, the eyes of other fishes. A narrow-bodied cichlid in Africa’s Lake Malawi, the Malawi Eyebiter, does not make a good aquarium pet because of its eye-popping activities.

6

Peters Elephantfish is the only fish ever observed playing with objects. In captivity, these fish will repeatedly take a small ball of aluminum foil and carry it to the outflow tube of an aquarium filter so the ball is pushed across the tank by the water current.

7

Most fish are countershaded: darker on top, gradually lighter or silver on their sides and brightest on their bellies. Seen from above, beside or below, this pattern makes them less visible in the water column against the background color of the water.

8

The cusk eels are the world’s deepest living family of fishes. One was netted with a bottom trawl in the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of 27,500 feet. At such a depth a fish would experience a pressure of  approximately 12,000 pounds per square inch.

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As they sleep (and fish do sleep), parrotfishes and wrasses secrete a mucous cocoon around themselves at night, perhaps to thwart the highly-developed senses of moray eels and blood-sucking parasitic invertebrates.

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Menhaden, the fishes the Indians taught the Pilgrims to plant with their corn, today rank as America’s most important fishes. Menhaden oil is used in cosmetics, linoleum, health food supplements, margarine, soap, insecticides and paints. Their pulverized bodies end up as feed for cats, dogs, poultry and pigs.

All fish facts are from the new book Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide, by Bruce Collette, National Systematics Laboratory,  Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; and Gene Helfman, University of Georgia.

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Ichthyologists Gene Helfman, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia, and Bruce Collette, of the Division of Fishes at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, provide accurate, entertaining, and sometimes surprising answers to more than 100 common and not-so-common questions, such as “Can fishes breathe air?” “How smart are fishes?” and “Do fishes feel pain?”

They explain how bony fishes evolved, the relationship between fishes and sharks, and why there is so much color variation among species. Along the way we also learn about the devils hole pupfish, which has the smallest range of any vertebrate in the world; “Lota lota,” the only freshwater fish to spawn under ice; the Candiru, a pencil-thin Amazonian catfish that lodges itself in a very personal place on male bathers and must be removed surgically; and many other curiosities.

With more than 100 photographs—including two full-color photo galleries—and the most up-to-date facts on the world’s fishes from two premier experts, this fun, accessible, and informative book is the perfect bait for any curious naturalist, angler, or aquarist.

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Warner weaves together the variety of routes that Americans have taken to a collective sweet tooth and looks at the ways that federal and state governments promoted some sweeteners and limited the distribution of others. The book examines the times when newer and less costly sweeteners threatened the market dominance of older and more expensive options. It also explores complex issues through the sweeteners industry, such as food purity, food safety and truth in advertising. Warner reveals many aspects of the American business spirit that have accompanied and contributed to the sweetener industry and demonstrates how sweeteners of all varieties have become part of the fabric of our communities. “Sweet Stuff” takes a revealing look at sweeteners that will appeal to those interested in food culture as well as American culture and history.

(Sweet Stuff: An American History of Sweeteners from Sugar to Sucralose by Deborah Jean Warner, is published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, in cooperation with Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc./September 2011)

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Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave.

What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. In Falling to Earth, Worden tells for the first time the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. Readers will learn them here for the first time, along with the exhilarating account of what it is like to journey to the moon and back. It’s an unprecedentedly candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory but also its pitfalls.

Falling to Earth is published by Smithsonian Books.

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Despite the importance of seasonally dry forests, little is known of their ecology. Now, a new book The Ecology and Conservation of Seasonally Dry Forests in Asia, published by Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, explores these unique ecosystems, its animals, plants, and the people that inhabit them.

The chapters in this new volume, edited by William McShea, biologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute; Stuart Davies of the Center for Tropical Forest Science-Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory Program; and Naris Bhumpakphan of Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand, draw connections between forests, endangered species, and agricultural communities in the region.

Contributors to this book, many of whom are in-country researchers and managers who have spent years studying this ecosystem, provide an overview of the ecology and conservation of seasonally dry forests in Asia. The book also includes case studies for the conservation of species dependent on these ecosystems, such as tigers, elephants, deer, banteng, and gibbons, and discussions outlining the effective management and conservation of seasonally dry forests.

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Palms are recognized as icons of the tropics, in addition to being the source of many economically significant products that extend relevance of the group to millions of people daily. Striking morphological and ecological variability characterize this family of about 183 genera and more than 2,400 species and has inspired almost two centuries of botanical research.

Hidden from view, but no less compelling, is the internal structure of palms—an understanding of which is essential for interpreting many of the unique biological aspects of the family and discerning relationships among palm genera. The Anatomy of Palms (Oxford University Press; 2011), a new book by P. Barry Tomlinson, James W. Horn (Department of Botany, Smithsonian), and Jack B. Fisher is a definitive reference showcasing both the science and art inside palms.

The chief appeal of The Anatomy of Palms is some 800 color photographs that document the extent of palm anatomical diversity. To give the preparations a more natural, hydrated appearance, as well as to overcome technical difficulties inherent in making microscope slides of palm tissues, many of the photos were custom-made for the book.

Image left: Colpothrinax wrightii, the Cuban belly palm. Leaf lamina in transverse section, stained with aqueous toluidine blue. From The Anatomy of Palms.

Palm biologists, plant anatomists, and curious botanists working in other disciplines will find that the book contains abundant new data, new interpretations, and new ideas for future studies. The first section provides an overview of the diversity of vegetative structure in palms and an evolutionary analysis of anatomical characters across the entire family. The second section focuses on the systematic anatomy of palms and is a synthesis of anatomical observations in the context of the most recent classification of the family.

The Anatomy of Palms has the potential for initiating a new wave of reinterpretation of palm fossils because of their often excellent anatomical preservation. The book also gives the classical field of comparative anatomy a fresh perspective, which will hopefully inspire others to do similar work. (Adapted from an article in The Plant Press, Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution)

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In the late 1920s, a very young German airplane enthusiast Reimar Horten started experimenting with flying models equipped with fuselages, stabilizers, rudders, and elevators, but his life’s work involved systematically removing these components from the models to try and achieve flight with only the wing. Not only were the pure wings more difficult to design with the stability and control needed to fly, they were harder to place in practical roles not already filled by conventional aircraft operating for less support and operational costs. Only the Wing is a new book by Russell Lee that recounts Horten’s epic quest to stabalize and control the all-wing aircraft. Lee is curator in the Aeronautics Division at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Always seeking to increase performance and efficiency, Horten adopted a multi-disciplinary approach after flying his first piloted wing in 1933, eventually breaking new ground in cockpit design and construction materials. His most important innovation was the unique pattern he developed to distribute the lift over his wings, the result of his efforts to refine the aerodynamic control of all-wing aircraft, often while working alone and in difficult circumstances. Two days after he passed away in 1993, the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded Reimar Horten the British Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Aeronautics.

For more information about this book visit the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press Web site.

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The volume features full ecosystem coverage of North America, detailing the use of wild plant and animal resources in each of eight broadly defined geographical regions. The independent domestication of eastern North American plants and the subsequent introduction of domesticated crops, first from Mexico and subsequently from Eurasia, are described in detail, as is the introduction of Eurasian domesticated livestock, and the role of the turkey, the dog, and tobacco in indigenous North American societies. Drawing from this rich analysis, the volume closes by considering the ways in which and the degree to which Native American societies actively shaped their natural environments.

Subsistence Economies of Indigenous North American Societies is edited by Bruce Smith, curator and senior archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

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