The unusually powerful right arms of Neanderthals may not be due to a spear-hunting life as once suggested, but rather one often spent scraping animal skins for clothes and shelters, researchers say.
The Neanderthals are our closest known extinct relatives, who were probably less brutish and more like modern humans than commonly portrayed. Their brains were at least as large as ours. They controlled fire, expertly made stone tools, were proficient hunters, lived in complex social groups, buried their dead, and perhaps artfully wore feathers. Genetic research even suggests they interbred with modern humans. |  |
The tale of the Elvis-mouse hybrid: Why can't you be true?
A British artist’s plan to create a mouse with Elvis Presley’s DNA has set websites buzzing over the past week, but right now it’s nothing more than an art-school concept. And it's not clear whether the concept will ever go any further, due to ethical and legal concerns about blending human and animal DNA.
"The purpose of the work was to raise those almost frightening issues," artist Koby Barhad told me. Mission accomplished, Koby. Actually, celebrity DNA is quite the commodity. A few years ago, a venture called MyDNAFragrance marketed several perfumes that supposedly reflected the DNA coding of Elvis as well as Michael Jackson and other dead celebs. |  |
Largest ancient dam built by Maya in Central America identified at Tikal
Recent excavations, sediment coring and mapping by a multi-university team led by the University of Cincinnati at the pre-Columbian city of Tikal, a paramount urban centre of the ancient Maya, have identified new landscaping and engineering feats, including the largest ancient dam built by the Maya of Central America.
That dam – constructed from cut stone, rubble and earth – stretched more than 260 feet in length, stood about 33 feet high and held about 20 million gallons of water in a man-made reservoir.
That dam – constructed from cut stone, rubble and earth – stretched more than 260 feet in length, stood about 33 feet high and held about 20 million gallons of water in a man-made reservoir.
El Zotz masks yield insights into Maya beliefs
A team of archaeologists led by Brown University’s Stephen Houston has uncovered a pyramid, part of the Maya archaeological site at El Zotz, Guatemala. The ornately decorated structure is topped by a temple covered in a series of masks depicting different phases of the sun, as well as deeply modelled and vibrantly painted stucco throughout.
The team began uncovering the temple, called the Temple of the Night Sun, in 2009. Dating to about 350 to 400 A.D., the temple sits just behind the previously discovered royal tomb, atop the Diablo Pyramid. The structure was likely built after the tomb to venerate the leader buried there.
The team began uncovering the temple, called the Temple of the Night Sun, in 2009. Dating to about 350 to 400 A.D., the temple sits just behind the previously discovered royal tomb, atop the Diablo Pyramid. The structure was likely built after the tomb to venerate the leader buried there.
Ancient Mayan 'night sun' temple found in Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY — Archeologists have uncovered a 1,600-year-old Mayan temple dedicated to the "night sun" atop a pyramid tomb in the northern Guatemalan forest near the border with Mexico.
"The sun was a key element of Maya rulership," lead archeologist Stephen Houston explained in announcing the discovery by the joint Guatemalan and American team that has been excavating the El Zotz site since 2006. "It's something that rises every day and penetrates into all nooks and crannies, just as royal power presumably would," said Houston, a professor at Brown University, Rhode Island. |  |
Lost Viking Military Town Unearthed in Germany?
A battle-scarred, eighth-century town unearthed in northern Germany may be the earliest Viking settlement in the historical record, archaeologists announced recently.
Ongoing excavations at Füsing (map), near the Danish border, link the site to the "lost" Viking town of Sliasthorp—first recorded in A.D. 804 by royal scribes of the powerful Frankish ruler Charlemagne. Used as a military base by the earliest Scandinavian kings, Sliasthorp's location was unknown until now, said dig leader Andres Dobat, of Aarhus University in Denmark. |  |
Idaho State University research scientist David Peterson uncovers secrets about ancient Russian gold
Using a powerful scanning electron microscope at the Idaho State University Center for Archaeology, Materials, and Applied Spectroscopy (CAMAS), ISU anthropologist and research scientist David Peterson is helping shed light on the making of gold by nomadic horsemen nearly 4,000 years ago on the Eurasian steppe grasslands of present-day Russia.
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Scientists find new alien planet, smaller and hotter than Earth
The NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals astronomers a new alien planet possibly covered with molten lava.
Scientists have discovered what appears to be an alien planet just two-thirds the size of Earth, a heat-blasted world perhaps covered in molten lava, a new study reports. Astronomers discovered the newfound alien planet, known as UCF-1.01, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The diminutive world is just 33 light-years away, making it a near neighbor of Earth in the cosmic scheme of things. |  |
'Deflector Shields' protect the Lunar Surface
Scientists from RAL Space at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have solved a lunar mystery and their results might lead the way to determining if the same mechanism could be artificially manipulated to create safe havens for future space explorers. Their work focussed on the origin of the enigmatic "lunar swirls" - swirling patches of relatively pale lunar soil, some measuring several tens of km across, which have been an unresolved mystery - until now.
In the Apollo era it was realised that lunar swirls were associated with localized magnetic fields in the lunar crust (so-called lunar 'magnetic anomalies'). |  |
Asteroid Flies By Earth This Weekend: How to Watch Online
A city-block size asteroid will fly by Earth this weekend well beyond the orbit of the moon, and you can watch it zip safely by live in an online webcast.
The asteroid 2002 AM31 will make its closest approach to Earth on Sunday (July 22), when it will pass by at a range of about 3.2 million miles (5.2 million kilometers). That's about 13.7 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. On Sunday, the Slooh Space Camera sky watching website will host two live webcasts to offer Internet denizens views of the space rock from telescopes at the Prescott Observatory in Arizona and the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. |  |
Sequencing of Single Sperm Could Reveal New Infertility Causes
Sperm, decoded: a technological achievement parses the genomes of individual sperm cells, showing new way to study reproductive medicine and hereditary cancer.
Less than a decade after the first full human genome was mapped, technology has arrived to decode the full genome of a single sex cell. The ability promises to offer new insight into the causes of infertility, the development of mutations and the diversity of the human genome. |  |
3,006 Species Can’t Be Wrong
What do a hummingbird and an elephant have in common? And a scorpion, a warthog, an amoeba, and a palm tree? According to a study of 3,006 different species, the answer may be one of biology’s most fundamental traits: the amount of energy needed to sustain life.
The acquisition and processing of food sources is, self-evidently, a critical aspect of life that drives behavior and is molded by natural selection. But just how much energy does an organism need? And are we fated by our body size to spend more or less time foraging for energy?. |  |
Scientists Create Flightless Mosquitoes
Oxford, England — Oxitec scientists have reported the creation of a new flightless strain of the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The breakthrough, reported in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, could help stop the spread of this dangerous and invasive pest.
The Asian tiger mosquito is a serious nuisance biter, but is also capable of transmitting dengue fever, Chikungunya, West Nile Virus and a host of other diseases. In the last few decades it has spread throughout the world and is now established in many regions, including Europe and the US, where it is becoming both an extremely bothersome pest and an increasing health concern. |  |
Who, What, Why: How do you track an iceberg?
A large iceberg has broken off a glacier in northern Greenland. Where will it go - and how do you track an iceberg?
At twice the size of Manhattan, the iceberg that has just calved from the Petermann Glacier, is not hard to miss. It can easily be seen on satellite images and is nestled within the glacial fjord. But once it gets out to open sea, it will drift and start to break up into smaller pieces, in a way that is virtually impossible to predict, says Trudy Wohlleben, senior ice forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service. |  |
Antarctica faces major threats in the 21st century: researchers
The continent of Antarctica is at risk from human activities and other forces, and environmental management is needed to protect the planet's last great wilderness area, says an international team of researchers, including a Texas A&M University oceanographer, in a paper published in the current issue of Science magazine.
Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt II, professor of oceanography who has conducted research in the area for more than 25 years, says Antarctica faces growing threats from global warming, loss of sea ice and landed ice, increased tourism, over-fishing in the region, pollution and invasive species creeping into the area. One of the longer-term concerns that may present the greatest threat overall is the potential for oil, gas and mineral exploitation on the continent and in the surrounding ocean, the authors note.
Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt II, professor of oceanography who has conducted research in the area for more than 25 years, says Antarctica faces growing threats from global warming, loss of sea ice and landed ice, increased tourism, over-fishing in the region, pollution and invasive species creeping into the area. One of the longer-term concerns that may present the greatest threat overall is the potential for oil, gas and mineral exploitation on the continent and in the surrounding ocean, the authors note.
Strategies for a Changing Planet: Farming
The biggest challenge in preparing crops for climate change is knowing what to prepare them for. Even within agricultural regions, the effects of global warming will vary.
Consider Kansas, the source of a fifth of America’s wheat. Parts of eastern Kansas are now 20 percent wetter than they were in 1900. Rainfall in western Kansas remains largely unchanged, and the region could become much drier over the next century. Meanwhile, short-term fluctuations are becoming more extreme. Last year, despite the long-term increase in rainfall in the area, the state placed every county in southeast Kansas under drought warning or drought emergency. |  |
Strategies for a Changing Planet: If All Else Fails...
It’s impossible to predict the exact speed and severity with which climate change will unfold, but one thing is clear: if we take no preventive action, eventually we’ll be tempted to take desperate action. And over the decades, as the effects of climate change grow increasingly severe, the amount of risk humankind is willing to bear will increase.
In the next decade, as Dust Bowl–like conditions afflict the American West and it becomes ever more difficult to dismiss the drought as a temporary glitch, low-risk methods for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will start to look attractive. The most benign scheme would be to plant more trees. In 1976, physicist Freeman Dyson proposed planting a tree farm the size of Australia to offset the fossil-fuel emissions of the day. By 2009, NASA climate modelers and biologist Leonard Ornstein estimated that both the Australian outback and the Sahara would have to be transformed into forest to remove meaningful quantities of carbon dioxide. |  |
Solar system ice: Source of Earth's water
Scientists have long believed that comets and, or a type of very primitive meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites were the sources of early Earth's volatile elements—which include hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon—and possibly organic material, too. Understanding where these volatiles came from is crucial for determining the origins of both water and life on the planet. New research led by Carnegie's Conel Alexander focuses on frozen water that was distributed throughout much of the early Solar System, but probably not in the materials that aggregated to initially form Earth.
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New Pluto moon could endanger spacecraft journey
(SPACE.com) The discovery of another moon around Pluto is exciting news for planetary science, but it's also likely causing some anxiety for the team in charge of New Horizons, a spacecraft set to be the first probe ever to visit the dwarf planet.
On Wednesday (July 11), researchers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope announced the detection of P5, a tiny moon measuring just 6 to 15 miles (10 to 24 kilometers) across. P5 brings Pluto's known satellite tally to five, and it comes just a year after Hubble spotted moon number four, the similarly diminutive P4. |  |