Nearing the end of 2009, the editors of the magazineScience have published their usual list ofthe most important scientific advances of the year. The discovery ofArdipithecus ramidus fossil, a species of hominin that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia, tops the ranking.
The fossil is more than a million years older than Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), a partial skeleton of what was hitherto considered the oldest hominin. The study of the skeleton of theArdipithecus, better known as “Ardi” by anthropologists, has brought scientists closer to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. The set of fossilized bones from “Ardi” revealed that they belonged to a woman who weighed about 50 kilograms and was 1.20 meters tall. After analyzing theskull, teeth, pelvis, hands, feet and other bones, the researchers determined thatArdipithecus had amixture of “primitive” traits shared with their predecessors, -the apes of the Miocene epoch- and “derived” traits, which he shared exclusively with later hominins.
ResearchArdipithecus has changed “the way we think about human evolution and represents the culmination of an arduous research collaboration of 47 scientists from nine countries who analyzed 150,000 specimens of fossilized animals and plants,” said Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief ofScience, in an editorial.
The second position in the list of the most innovative achievements of 2009 is occupied bypulsars-Highly magnetized and rapidly rotating neutron stars- detected by theFermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. It is followed by the discovery of therapamycin, a molecule found in the soil of Easter Island (Chile) that amazingly prolongs the life of mice, allowing some of them to live the equivalent of more than 100 years in humans.
Thetop ten Scientist of the Year also highlights the exploration of the properties ofgraphene, a material formed by sheets of highly conductive carbon atoms that has begun to be used experimentally in electronic devices as a substitute for silicon. And the discovery by French, German and American researchers of a strategy thatcombines gene therapy with blood stem cell therapyand it could be a useful tool in treating a deadly brain disease.
Also included in the list areABA receptorsthat help plants survive during prolonged droughts, thefirst x-ray laserworld developed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the“magnetic monopoles”(fundamental particles with only one magnetic pole), the finding ofwater on the moonby the LCROSS probe, andHubble Space Telescope repair, which has allowed a sharper view and a revitalization that has resulted in his most spectacular images of the Universe to date.
Predictions ofScience for hot science topics in 2010 include thecancer cell metabolism, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, the sequencing and disease of theexoma(the protein-coding part of the genome), thepluripotent mother cellsto treat neuropsychiatric diseases, and the future ofhuman space flight.
