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Categories: Archaeology: General, Ecology: Animals

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Focusing on the Lake Titicaca Basin in the Andes mountains, anthropologists found through analysis of 1,179 projectile points that the rise of archery technology dates to around 5,000 years ago. Previous research held that archery in the Andes emerged around 3,000 years ago. The new research from UC Davis indicates that the adoption of bow-and-arrow technology coincided with both the expansion of exchange networks and the growing tendency for people to reside in villages.

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Wild North American grapes are now less of a mystery after researchers decoded and catalogued the genetic diversity of nine species of this valuable wine crop.

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Plants often develop communities with microorganisms in their roots, which influences plant health and development. Although the recruitment of these microbes is dictated by several factors, it is unclear whether the genetic variation in the host plants plays a role.

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Humans have wiped out around 1,400 bird species -- twice as many as previously thought -- with major implications for the ongoing biodiversity crisis, a new study has found. The estimated extinctions would mean almost 12 per cent of bird species have died out over modern human history, since the Late Pleistocene around 130,000 years ago, with the vast majority of them becoming extinct directly or indirectly due to human activity.

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Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth's magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study.

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Our understanding of which aquatic species produce sounds just took a big step forward. Scientists have created an inventory of species confirmed or expected to produce sound underwater.   

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Research along James River in Richmond suggests that climate change could shorten window for predators to prey on larvae.

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In a new study of aardvarks, researchers spent months in sub-Saharan Africa collecting poop from the animal and concluded that aridification of the landscape is isolating them, which they say could have implications for their long-term survival.

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A new method could be used to estimate the prevalence of disease in free-ranging wildlife and help determine how many samples are needed to detect a disease.

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A new study of the remains of prehistoric and modern African antelopes found that AI technology accurately identified animals more than 90% of the time compared to humans, who had much lower accuracy rates depending on the expert.

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Widespread caries and toothache -- but also some dental work and filing of front teeth. Viking Age teeth from Varnhem bear witness to surprisingly advanced dentistry.

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And after nearly two years of fighting, war is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage on a scale not seen since World War II, according to new research.

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The high-altitude hero of the Himalayas, yak are among the few large animals that can survive the extremely cold, harsh and oxygen-poor conditions of the Tibetan Plateau. In the mountainous regions of Asia, yak and yak-cattle hybrids serve as vital sources of meat, milk, transportation and fuel. However, little is known about their history: when or where yak were domesticated. In a new study, researchers report archaeologically and genetically confirmed evidence for domestic yak, dating back 2,500 years, by far the oldest record.  

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This holiday season brings surprising news about your Christmas tree. Scientists just discovered that globally, trees growing in wetter regions are more sensitive to drought. That means if your tree hails from a more humid clime, it's likely been spoiled for generations.

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A new study finds that precipitation levels during nesting season are not related to reproductive success for wild turkeys, which runs counter to the conventional wisdom regarding the role that rainfall plays in wild turkey nesting success. The findings shed new light on how climate change may affect wild turkey populations.

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Simulations integrate historical records, fossils, and ancient DNA to reveal why the European bison nearly went extinct, and pinpoint optimal areas for conservation.   Since the near-extinction of the European bison, enormous conservation efforts have helped to restore wild populations, and its numbers are on the rise. However, the study authors argue that ensuring the species's long-term protection and recovery requires understanding why they nearly went extinct in the first place.    'Our study also suggests areas where rewilding attempts are most likely to be successful,' said lead author July Pilowsky, currently a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Pilowsky completed the research while working on their PhD at University of Adelaide and University of Copenhagen.   

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Recovered from looters, a new archaeological discovery from a cave in western Mongolia could change the story of the evolving relationship between humans and horses around the world. 

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Horses have developed long faces simply 'because they can,' a team of evolutionary biologists say. In a major review of how mammalian heads evolve, scientists found that adaptations to feeding explain why large species of mammals often have much longer faces compared to smaller closely related species -- a pattern referred to as Craniofacial Evolutionary Allometry (CREA).

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Pipistrelle bats have a magnetic compass and calibrate it at sunset, according to a new study. An international team of researchers has used behavioral experiments to show that two different components of the Earth's magnetic field influence the orientation of these animals. Like birds, they seem to be sensitive to magnetic inclination.

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A striking and extremely rare half-female, half-male bird has been spotted by a zoologist.