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Categories: Anthropology: General, Space: Cosmology

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Scientists should seek answers hidden in the dirt using proven and state-of-the-art archaeological science techniques to support new discoveries about human evolution following recent controversies at a cave site in Africa, says a group of international experts. Their recommendations follow claims published in June of this year that Homo naledi --a small-brained human species -- buried their dead in Rising Star Cave, South Africa, between 335,000 and 241,000 years ago, and may also have decorated the cave walls with engravings.

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The Second Plague Pandemic of the mid-14th century, also known as the Black Death, killed 30-60 percent of the European population and profoundly changed the course of European history. New research suggests that this plague, potentially through resulting changes in diet and hygiene, may also be associated with a shift in the composition of the human oral microbiome toward one that contributes to chronic diseases in modern-day humans.  

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While life on Earth is relatively new, geologically speaking, the ingredients that combined to form it might be much older than once thought. The simplest amino acid, carbamic acid, could have formed alongside stars or planets within interstellar ices. The findings could be used to train deep space instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope to search for prebiotic molecules in distant, star-forming regions of the universe.

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The national park of Koli in eastern Finland is home to a famous, 34-metre-long crevice cave known as Pirunkirkko, or Devil's Church in English. A new study investigates the acoustics of the Devil's Church and explores whether the acoustic properties of the cave could explain the beliefs associated with it, and why it was chosen as a place for activities and rituals involving sound.

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Wondering whether whether Dark Matter particles actually are produced inside a jet of standard model particles, led researchers to explore a new detector signature known as semi-visible jets, which scientists never looked at before.

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Modern hippos first dispersed in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene, according to a new study.

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Recent research has shown that engravings in a cave in La Roche-Cotard (France), which has been sealed for thousands of years, were actually made by Neanderthals. The findings reveal that the Neanderthals were the first humans with an appreciation of art.

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The latest image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.

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LUCA, the 'last universal common ancestor' of all living organisms, lived 4.32 to at most 4.52 billion years ago. What LUCA looked like is unknown, but it must have been a cell with among others ribosomal proteins and an ATP synthase.

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If you look at massive galaxies teeming with stars, you might be forgiven in thinking they are star factories, churning out brilliant balls of gas. But actually, less evolved dwarf galaxies have bigger regions of star factories, with higher rates of star formation. Now, University of Michigan researchers have discovered the reason underlying this: These galaxies enjoy a 10-million-year delay in blowing out the gas cluttering up their environments. Star-forming regions are able to hang on to their gas and dust, allowing more stars to coalesce and evolve. In these relatively pristine dwarf galaxies, massive stars--stars about 20 to 200 times the mass of our sun--collapse into black holes instead of exploding as supernovae. But in more evolved, polluted galaxies, like our Milky Way, they are more likely to explode, thereby generating a collective superwind. Gas and dust get blasted out of the galaxy, and star formation quickly stops.   

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New research combined both physiological and archaeological evidence to argue that not only did prehistoric women engage in the practice of hunting, but their female anatomy and biology would have made them intrinsically better suited for it.

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Our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a much larger formation, the local Supercluster structure, which contains several massive galaxy clusters and thousands of individual galaxies. Due to its pancake-like shape, which measures almost a billion light years across, it is also referred to as the Supergalactic Plane. Why is the vast supergalactic plane teeming with only one type of galaxies? This old cosmic puzzle may now have been solved.

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, CECILIA Survey receives first data from galaxies forming two-to-three billion years after the Big Bang. By examining light from these 33 galaxies, researchers discovered their elemental composition and temperature. The ultra-deep spectrum revealed eight distinct elements: Hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, argon and nickel. The teenage galaxies also were extremely hot, reaching temperatures higher than 13,350 degrees Celsius.

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New genetic data show that humans and sharks share bitter taste receptors, even though their evolutionary pathways separated nearly 500 million years ago.

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A new study casts doubt on claims that Homo naledi, a small-brained hominin dating to between 335-241,000 years ago, deliberately buried their dead and produced rock art in Rising Star Cave, South Africa. Recent articles suggested the recent excavations at the Rising Star Cave system provided evidence of at least three burial features, two in the Dinaledi Chamber and a third in the Hill Antechamber cavity. The group of experts have now called for a deeper dig into the science behind the findings.

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The second- and fourth-most distant galaxies ever observed have been discovered in a region of space known as Pandora's Cluster, or Abell 2744, using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

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Astronomers have discovered the most distant barred spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, that has been observed to date.

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A recent study sheds new light on the ecological adaptability of early humans at the time when they first expanded their range outside Africa, 2--1 million years ago.  

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A new analysis of lice genetic diversity suggests that lice came to the Americas twice -- once during the first wave of human migration across the Bering Strait, and again during European colonization.

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No two societies in history think exactly alike. In fact, the mindset of a given society throughout history can help historians unpack important clues about the effects of psychological shifts -- such as more social trust or more openness. Researchers explain how modern computing methods like text mining, face detection algorithms, and melodic extraction programs can enable large-scale analysis of cultural artifacts such as paintings, stories, or clothing to uncover this psychological data.