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Human Body Has Gone through Four Main Stages of Evolution, Scientists Say

Sima de los Huesos hominins lived in what is now Spain about 400,000 years ago. Image credit: © Kennis & Kennis / Madrid Scientific Films.
Sep 1, 2015 by News Staff

The evolution of the human body’s size and shape has gone through four stages, says an international group of anthropologists from the United States, Spain, France, and China. Sima de los Huesos hominins lived in what is now Spain about 400,000 years ago. Image credit: © Kennis & Kennis / Madrid Scientific Films. The team, directed by Prof Juan Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University of Madrid, studied the body size and shape in the fossil...

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IAA archaeologist Dr Joe Uziel sitting atop the stepped structure. Image credit: Shai Halevy / Israel Antiquities Authority.

Second Temple-Period Monumental Podium Unearthed in Jerusalem

Sep 1, 2015 by News Staff

Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a unique 2,000-year-old stepped structure in the City of David, an ancient neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel. IAA...

This is an artist’s rendering of Pentecopterus decorahensis. Image credit: Patrick Lynch / Yale University.

Pentecopterus decorahensis: Ancient Giant Sea Scorpion Unearthed in Iowa

Sep 1, 2015 by News Staff

The fossil of a previously unknown species of eurypterid that lived 460 million years ago (Middle Ordovician period) has been discovered in Iowa. This...

These rocks, recovered by the Ocean Drilling Program on board the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, are from the Earth’s upper mantle that underwent intense alteration by heated seawater. The rocks show a systematic change in color from rusty brown (top) to green and black (bottom), reflecting the chemical gradients across the fluid mixing zone. These chemical gradients played a key role in supporting microbes with chemical energy and the substrates they needed to thrive. Fossilized microbes were found in white veins consisting of the minerals calcite and brucite. Image credit: Ocean Drilling Program.

Scientists Find Evidence of Ancient Microbial Life in Sub-Seafloor Mantle Rocks

Sep 1, 2015 by News Staff

Traces of ancient microbial communities have been found in rock samples of Earth’s mantle from a seafloor hydrothermal system that was active more than...

Artist’s impression of New Horizons encountering a Pluto-like object in the distant Kuiper Belt. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Alex Parker.

NASA Selects Next Target for New Horizons Spacecraft: 2014 MU69

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

The next destination for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is a Kuiper Belt object known as 2014 MU69. Hubble images of 2014 MU69 taken on June 24, 2014....

Gobisaurus, an ankylosaur with a stiff tail but no knob of bone at the end, compared with Ziapelta, an ankylosaur with a fully developed tail club. Image credit: Sydney Mohr.

New Study Traces Evolution of Ankylosaur’s Distinctive Tail

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

Ankylosaurs are a large group of herbivorous armored dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The typical ankylosaur had a wide...

This image is a close-up from the image above and shows the Occator crater with a cluster of mysterious bright spots. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA.

Dawn Beams Back New Image of Ceres’ Bright Spots

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft captured this image of Ceres and its mysterious bright spots on June 25, 2015, from a distance of 2,700 miles (4,400 km). This...

Left: captive Philistine warriors from a wall relief at Medinet Habu, Egypt, 1185-1152 BC. Right: an artist's conception of a Philistine warrior. Image credit: John Shumate.

Philistines Introduced Cumin, Opium Poppy into Levant, Archaeologists Say

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

The Philistines – one of the so-called Sea Peoples, and mentioned in the Bible and other ancient sources – were a seafaring Indo-European people...

Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of the spiral galaxy Messier 96 in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / LEGUS Team / R. Gendler.

Hubble Zeroes in on Messier 96

Aug 31, 2015 by News Staff

This newly-released image from the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a Milky Way-like galaxy Messier 96. Dust...

Herschel images of a small fraction of the galaxies analyzed in the new study. The images have a size of 5 x 5 arcsec2. The circle has a radius of 1.5 arcsec. Image credit: Stephen Eales et al.

Astronomers Find First Direct Evidence of Galaxy ‘Metamorphosis’

Aug 28, 2015 by News Staff

A multinational group of astronomers has shown that a large proportion of galaxies have undergone a major ‘metamorphosis’ since they were initially...

Excavations at Agios Vasileios. Image credit: Angelos Delivorias / Stavros Vlizos / Greek Ministry of Culture.

Greek Archaeologists Unearth 3,600-Year-Old Mycenaean Palace near Sparta

Aug 28, 2015 by News Staff

Archaeologists working at the site of Agios Vasileios in the valley of Sparta, southern Peloponnese, have discovered the ruins of an ancient palace of...

In this theoretical artist’s conception of our Milky Way Galaxy, green ‘bubbles’ mark areas where alien life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called panspermia. Image credit: NASA / JPL / R. Hurt.

Astrophysicists: Milky Way Galaxy ‘Infected’ with Pockets of Alien Life

Aug 28, 2015 by News Staff

A fundamental question in astrobiology is: whether life can be transported between extrasolar planets, planetary systems? A team of U.S. astrophysicists...

This Hubble image shows the extraordinary galaxy Markarian 231. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / Hubble Collaboration / A. Evans, University of Virginia, Charlottesville / NRAO / Stony Brook University.

Supermassive Binary Black Hole Found in Nearest Quasar Markarian 231

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of astrophysicists and astronomers, led by Dr Youjun Lu of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, has found a supermassive...

The young Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 m deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’s northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 km. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

What Would Alien Lifeforms on Titan and Mars-Type Exoplanets Be Like?

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

In a new paper published in the journal Life, Prof Dirk Schulze-Makuch of Washington State University and his colleagues from Germany draw upon what is...

Top: map of Natufian sites with narrow and wide conical mortars in the Southern Levant. Bottom, from left to right: (i) almost peeled barley grain subsequent to the third shift of dehusking in the narrow conical mortar; (ii) grinding the dehusked grains to flour by intensive radial motion in a narrow conical mortar with a long wooden pestle; (iii) fine flour and some groats deposited in the adjacent cuphole, subsequent to the first shift of milling. Image credit: Eitam D et al.

Archaeologists Unravel Mystery of Paleolithic Rock-Cut Mortars Found throughout Levant

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

Using Paleolithic conical mortars carved into bedrock, a team of experimental archaeologists has reconstructed how the Natufian people – hunter-gatherers...

Leucothoe eltoni, male. Image credit: James Thomas.

New Species of Shrimp-Like Crustacean Named after Elton John

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

A newly-discovered species of leucothoid amphipod has been named after British singer and composer Sir Elton John. Leucothoe eltoni, male. Image credit:...

Gueragama sulamericana inhabited a desert environment. This lizard was found in an ancient oasis along with pterosaurs of the species Caiuajara dobruskii. Image credit: Julius Csotonyi.

New Ancient Iguana Species Discovered in Brazil

Aug 27, 2015 by News Staff

A fossilized jawbone from a newly-described species of acrodontan iguana, Gueragama sulamericana, that lived about 80 million years ago has been unearthed...

This Hubble image shows a bipolar planetary nebula named the Twin Jet Nebula, located about 5,560 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Bipolar planetary nebulae are formed when the central object is not a single star, but a binary system. Studies have shown that the nebula’s size increases with time, and measurements of this rate of increase suggest that the stellar outburst that formed the lobes occurred just 1,200 years ago. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt.

Astronomers Capture Incredible Image of Twin Jet Nebula

Aug 26, 2015 by News Staff

Using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers captured...

Earth as seen on July 6, 2015 from a distance of one million miles by NASA’s EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite. Image credit: NOAA / NASA / U.S. Air Force.

Earth’s Mineralogy is Unique in Cosmos, Scientists Say

Aug 26, 2015 by News Staff

The mineral diversity of Earth is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos. That’s according to a group of researchers, led by Dr Robert...

This false-color image shows household dust under a microscope. Image credit: NIAID.

Scientists: House Dust Can Reveal Region, Gender Ratio of Residents, Presence of Pet

Aug 26, 2015 by News Staff

The dust in our homes contains more than 5,000 different species of bacteria and around 2,000 species of fungi, according to a team of scientists who investigated...

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