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Categories: Anthropology: General, Offbeat: Earth and Climate

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     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Devastating megafires are becoming more common, in part, because the planet is warming. But a new study suggests bringing 'good fire' back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today's wildfires.

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Dinosaurs dominated the world right up until a deadly asteroid hit the earth, leading to their mass extinction, some 66 million years ago, a landmark study reveals. Fresh insights into dinosaurs' ecosystems -- the habitats and food types that supported their lives -- suggests that their environments were robust and thriving, right up until that fateful day, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

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New research, based on two decades' worth of data, shows that in the ten years after its onset in 2000, the Southwestern North American (SWNA) megadrought caused a 30% change in gravity wave activity in Earth's upper atmosphere.

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For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neanderthal. However, new analysis from an international research team dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neanderthal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

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Experimental physicists growing icicles are closer to understanding why some form with ripples up and down their outsides, while others form with smooth, slick, even surfaces. By growing icicles from water samples with different contaminants like sodium chloride (salt), dextrose (sugar) and fluorescent dye, they discovered that water impurities become entrapped within icicles as they form and subsequently create chevron patterns that contribute to a ripple effect around their circumferences.

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As a result of climate change, over one-fifth of the UK may have suitable weather by mid-Century to grow Chardonnay grapes for still wines, according to new research.

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Up to 78% of walkers would take a more challenging route featuring obstacles such as balancing beams, stepping stones and high steps, research has found. The findings suggest that providing 'Active Landscape' routes in urban areas could help tackle an 'inactivity pandemic' and improve health outcomes.

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A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought.

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A plant common to Japan, Causonis japonica, is the first to show a newly discovered trait. Its flowers can change color depending on the stage of its maturation cycle, and then change back to its original color. Although many flowers have been shown to change color depending on their maturation phase, Causonis japonica is the only known example of bidirectional color change. The pigments involved in the colors are related to nutrient-rich colorful vegetables, so understanding the flowers' color-changing tricks could have downstream applications in improving nutrient yields in certain food crops.

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Extracting ancient DNA from teeth, an international group of scientists peered into the lives of a once-thriving medieval Ashkenazi Jewish community in Erfurt, Germany. The findings show that the Erfurt Jewish community was more genetically diverse than modern day Ashkenazi Jews.

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Fossilized fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds.

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A new article discusses vital methodological issues for humanities-based historical inquiry and argues that the challenges of the Anthropocene demand interdisciplinary research informed by a variety of historical narratives.

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Researchers have devised a method to transform post-consumer mixed plastics that wash up on beaches into a variety of valuable products.

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Researchers have discovered and characterized a DNA sequence found in jawed vertebrates, such as sharks and humans, but absent in jawless vertebrates, such as lampreys. This DNA is important for the shaping of the joint surfaces during embryo development.

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Whatcheeria, a six-foot-long salamander-like creature that lived 340 million years ago, was the T. rex of its time: the biggest, baddest predator in its habitat. A new study reveals how they grew to their 'giant' size: instead of growing slow and steady throughout their lives like many modern reptiles and amphibians, they did most of their growing when they were young.

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A team of researchers has identified a group of human DNA sequences driving changes in brain development, digestion and immunity that seem to have evolved rapidly after our family line split from that of the chimpanzees, but before we split with the Neanderthals.

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A new study has found that organelle-like transcriptional condensates are an ancient and flexible tool used by cells to drive rapid gene expression.

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The complete skeletal remains of a spider monkey -- seen as an exotic curiosity in pre-Hispanic Mexico -- grants researchers new evidence regarding social-political ties between two ancient powerhouses: Teotihuacán and Maya Indigenous rulers. The remains of other animals were also discovered, as well as thousands of Maya-style mural fragments and over 14,000 ceramic sherds from a grand feast. These pieces are more than 1,700 years old.

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For millennia, caves have served as shelters for prehistoric humans. Caves have also intrigued scholars from early Chinese naturalists to Charles Darwin. A cave ecologist has been in and out of these subterranean ecosystems, examining the unique life forms -- and unique living conditions -- that exist in Earth's many caves. But what does that suggest about caves on other planetary bodies? In two connected studies, engineers, astrophysicists, astrobiologists and astronauts lay out the research that needs to be done to get us closer to answering the old-age question about life beyond Earth.

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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.