Over the past five years, archaeologists have identified more than 1,600 monumental stone structures known as mustatils dotted across a swathe of Saudi Arabia larger than Italy. The purpose of these ancient stone buildings, dating back more than 7,000 years, has been a puzzle for researchers. Our excavations and surveys reveal these were ritual structures, ...
Madagascar’s extinct elephant birds — the largest birds ever to have lived — have captured the public’s interest for hundreds of years. Little is known about them due to large gaps in the skeletal fossil record. A new study published in Nature Communications used ancient molecules extracted from fossil eggshells to reveal surprising new insights ...
At the icy northern tip of Greenland, far into the Artic Circle, a deep bed of sediment beneath the mouth of a fjord has lain frozen and undisturbed for 2 million years. Known as the Kap København Formation, this relic of a vanished world dates to a period when Earth was much warmer than it ...
Oregon State University archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons. The 13 full and fragmentary projectile points, razor-sharp and ranging from about half an inch to 2 ...
When prehistoric people re-sharpened cutting tools 300,000 years ago, they dropped tiny chips of flint — which today yield evidence of how wood was processed by early humans. The small flint flakes were discovered at the Lower Paleolithic site of Schöningen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Now, a multidisciplinary team led by the University of Tübingen and ...
Archaeologists have identified a 4,000-year-old goldworking toolkit among the grave goods from an important Bronze Age burial site near Stonehenge. The toolkit was found at the Upton Lovell G2a Bronze Age burial site, which was excavated in 1801 and is now on display at the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes. Now, a team of researchers from ...
The fossilized remains of a prehistoric toothed bird that lived 67 million years ago are turning the bird tree of life on its head. The bird — named Janavis finalidens — shares crucial features with its modern cousins, such as chickens and ducks, which is forcing a rethink about bird evolution. A stone-encased fossil was plucked from ...
Researchers are heralding the discovery of an ancient human skull, possibly of Homo erectus, in central China as an important find. As excavation of the remarkably intact fossil continues, archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists anticipate that the skull could give a fuller picture of the diverse family tree of archaic humans living throughout Eurasia in prehistoric times. ...
The alphabet was invented around 1800 BCE and was used by the Canaanites and later by most other languages in the world. Until recently, no meaningful Canaanite inscriptions had been discovered in the Land of Israel, except for only two or three words here and there. Now, an amazing discovery presents an entire sentence in ...
Sixty-six million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered a mega-earthquake that shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision. The amount of energy released in this mega-earthquake is estimated at 1023 joules, which is about 50,000 times more ...
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