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Categories: Archaeology: General, Space: The Solar System

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The remains of a huge carp fish mark the earliest signs of cooking by prehistoric human to 780,000 years ago, predating the available data by some 600,000 years, according to researchers.

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The Subaru Telescope successfully demonstrated engineering first light with a new instrument that will use about 2400 fiberoptic cables to capture the light from heavenly objects. Full operation is scheduled to start around 2024. The ability to observe thousands of objects simultaneously will provide unprecedented amounts of data to fuel Big Data Astronomy in the coming decade.

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Archeologists have identified one of the largest known sacred buildings of the Etruscans. The temple's strata offer insights into more than 1000 years of development of one of the most important Etruscan cities. The newly discovered temple is roughly the same size and on a similar alignment as the neighboring Tempio Grande, and was built at roughly the same Archaic time. This duplication of monumental buildings in an Etruscan city is rare, and indicates an exceptional finding.

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A supernova is a stellar explosion, which occurs when the lives of some really massive stars come to an end. In this violent epilogue, the star expels the material from its outer layers by means of a shock wave, allowing us to see the various elements it was composed of.

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For the first time in its eight years orbiting Mars, NASA's MAVEN mission witnessed two different types of ultraviolet aurorae simultaneously, the result of solar storms that began on Aug. 27.

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Researchers have unearthed an ivory comb from 1700 BCE inscribed with a plea to eradicate lice. The finding provides direct evidence for the use of the Canaanite alphabet in daily activities some 3700 years ago.

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For centuries, Indigenous communities in the American Southwest imported colorful parrots from Mexico. But according to a recent study, some parrots may have been captured locally and not brought from afar. The research challenges the assumption that all parrot remains found in American Southwest archaeological sites have their origins in Mexico. It also presents an important reminder: The ecology of the past can be very different from what we see today.

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As low Earth orbit becomes more cluttered, it becomes increasingly necessary to use middle Earth orbits, and radiation-tolerant cell designs will be needed. Making photovoltaics thinner should increase their longevity because the charge carriers have less far to go during their shortened lifetimes. Scientists propose a radiation-tolerant photovoltaic cell design that features an ultrathin layer of light-absorbing material. Compared to thicker cells, nearly 3.5 times less cover glass is needed for the ultra-thin cells to deliver the same amount of power after 20 years of operation.

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The earliest morphological traces of life on Earth are often highly controversial, both because non-biological processes can produce relatively similar structures and because such fossils have often been subjected to advanced alteration and metamorphism. Stromatolites, layered organo-sedimentary structures reflecting complex interplays between microbial communities and their environment, have long been considered key macrofossils for life detection in ancient sedimentary rocks; however, the biological origin of ancient stromatolites has frequently been criticized.

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Astronomers have identified the oldest star in our galaxy that is accreting debris from orbiting planetesimals, making it one of the oldest rocky and icy planetary systems discovered in the Milky Way.

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Astronomers have discovered the closest-known black hole to Earth. This is the first unambiguous detection of a dormant stellar-mass black hole in the Milky Way. Its close proximity to Earth, a mere 1600 light-years away, offers an intriguing target of study to advance our understanding of the evolution of binary systems.

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The island of Madagascar -- one of the last large land masses colonized by humans - -sits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of East Africa. While it's still regarded as a place of unique biodiversity, Madagascar long ago lost all its large-bodied vertebrates, including giant lemurs, elephant birds, turtles, and hippopotami. A human genetic study now links these losses in time with the first major expansion of humans on the island, around 1,000 years ago.

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A new study finds the original crust on Mars is more complex, and evolved, than previously thought. Researchers have determined the Martian crust has greater concentrations of the chemical element silicon, which may mean Mars' original surface may have been similar to Earth's first crust.

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Using DNA from two ancient humans unearthed in two different archaeological sites in northeast Brazil, researchers have unraveled the deep demographic history of South America at the regional level with some surprising results. Not only do they provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America, they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast -- for the first time. Among the key findings, they also have discovered evidence of Neanderthal ancestry within the genomes of ancient individuals from South America.

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The use of ancient DNA, including samples of human remains around 45,000 years old, has shed light on a previously unknown aspect of human evolution.

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Twilight observations have enabled astronomers to spot three near-Earth asteroids (NEA) hiding in the glare of the Sun. These NEAs are part of an elusive population that lurks inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. One of the asteroids is the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years.

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NASA's InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake last Dec. 24, but scientists learned only later the cause of that quake: a meteoroid strike estimated to be one of the biggest seen on Mars since NASA began exploring the cosmos. What's more, the meteoroid excavated boulder-size chunks of ice buried closer to the Martian equator than ever found before -- a discovery with implications for NASA's future plans to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

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Seismologists have developed a new method to scan the deep interior of planets in our solar system to confirm whether they have a core at the heart of their existence.

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Until now, Mars has been generally considered a geologically dead planet. An international team of researchers now reports that seismic signals indicate vulcanism still plays an active role in shaping the Martian surface.

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A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.