ICP News
ICP The new main offices of the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont were inaugurated today at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The new building, unique in Catalonia thanks to the sustainability criteria with which it was constructed, controls its temperature through…
Face of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, found in 2002 in Abocador de de Can Mata (Els Hostalets de Pierola, Anoia). Photo: ICP. Food specialization that allowed the expansion of great apes from Africa to Eurasia 14 million years could also have been responsible of their extinction. A study published today in PLOS…
Ichnites at the El Frontal site (Soria) Laser scanning and photogrammetric techniques were used to analyze a series of dinosaur footprints from the site of El Frontal (in Soria, Spain). The study revealed that some traces do not show the actual morphology of the feet of these animals because its…
Professor David Begun at the ICP David Begun, Professor at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Toronto, visited last week the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP). Begun works with the hypothesis that modern great apes (orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees) including humans, evolved from a common European…
Different views of the patella of Pierolapithecus catalaunicus Pierolapithecus catalaunicus (popularly known as Pau) exhibited a wide range of movements at the knee joint, similar to those observed in extant chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This finding reinforces the hypothesis that this hominid showed orthograde (upright trunk) locomotor behaviors, suitable for…
Researchers at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) have conducted a detailed review of the taxonomy and morphology of the aquatic turtle Ptychogaster (Temnoclemmys) batalleri. This specie has only been identified in Miocene sites in the Vallès-Penedès basin and in the French site of La Grive-St. Alban. The…
Extant macaque (Shawn Allen. Flickr) A study led by David M. Alba, researcher at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), describes the association of the genera Macaca and Mesopithecus for the first time during the Miocene. The finding has been published in the Journal of Human Evolution and…
Diferents vistes de dues falanges distals d'Oreopithecus bambolii The study of the distal phalanx of the thumb of the fossil hominoid Oreopithecus bambolii has revealed that this species had the ability to grasp objects with precision between the fingers like humans do, with a much higher accuracy than the extant…
The femur of Orrorin tugenensis, a new step towards the origins of bipedalism
04 Dec 2013
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El fèmur d'Orrorin tugenensis s'ha estudiat amb tècniques de morfometria geomètrica 3D Sergio Almécija, associated researcher at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), publishes today an article in Nature Communications analyzing the femur of Orrorin tugenensis, one of the oldest early humans that lived 6 million years ago…
The goat Myotragus balearicus proves itself again as an excellent evolutionary model
26 Jul 2013
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Reconstruction of Myotragus balearicus exhibited at ICP's museum in Sabadell. Laura Celia. ICP Myotragus balearicus, the endemic dwarf goat from the Balearic Islands, is proved again to be a suitable model to validate theories that relate life history of the species with some morphological features. In an article published today…
