Some 9,700 years ago, on an autumn day, a group of people were camping on the west coast of Scandinavia. They were hunter-gatherers who had been fishing, hunting, and collecting resources in the area. Some teenagers, both boys and girls, were chewing resin to produce glue just after eating trout, deer, and hazelnuts. Due to ...
Today, Australia is home to 17 species of hawks and eagles. But the fossil record shows some other, rather special raptors were present in the relatively recent past. Tens of thousands of years ago, Australia was home to species such as Dynatoaetus gaffae, the largest eagle ever to have lived in Australia, and Cryptogyps lacertosus, ...
Many visitors to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory are struck by the magnificent cliffs, stunning bird life, and extraordinary rock art. Some may know this landscape includes the earliest evidence of human occupation in what is now Australia, at Madjedbebe, where signs of habitation have been dated to 65,000 years ago. Most people, however, ...
Using the latest scientific methods, Tom Higham and Katerina Douka from the University of Vienna want to solve a great mystery of human evolution: Why are we the only humans left? Higham and Douka were the first ones to find a first-generation offspring of two different types of humans by studying ancient genes. They continuously ...
As ice sheets began melting at the end of the last ice age, a series of cataclysmic floods called the Missoula megafloods scoured the landscape of eastern Washington, carving long, deep channels and towering cliffs through an area now known as the Channeled Scablands. They were among the largest known floods in Earth’s history, and ...
The discovery of a rare bone artifact near the Lower Murray River casts more light on the rich archaeological record of Ngarrindjeri country in southern Australia. Details of the Murrawong bone point, dated between c. 5,300 and 3,800 years old, have been described by Flinders University, Griffith University, and other experts in a new paper ...
An ancient tree shows the temporary breakdown of Earth’s magnetic field 42,000 years ago that sparked major climate shifts that led to global environmental change and mass extinctions, a new international study co-led by UNSW Sydney and the South Australian Museum shows. This dramatic turning point in Earth’s history — laced with electrical storms, widespread ...
Analyzing 12 ancient Egyptian papyri fragments with X-ray microscopy, University of Copenhagen researchers were surprised to find previously unknown lead compounds in both red and black inks and suggest they were used for their drying properties rather than as a pigment. A similar lead-based “drying technique” has also been documented in 15th-century European painting, and ...
A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published in PLOS Genetics. Roughly 50,000 ...
A fossil recently recovered from the age of the dinosaurs is giving scientists the most vivid picture yet of how one of the most enigmatic and fearsome groups of ants to exist, the “hell ants,” once used their uncanny tusk-like mandibles and diverse horns to successfully hunt down victims for nearly 20 million years, before ...