Category: Palaeontology
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Did our human ancestors eat each other? Carved-up bone offers clues
A reconstruction of Homo erectus, a hominin species that lived between 1.6 million and 150,000 years ago.Credit: S. Entressangle/E. Daynes/Science Photo Library A fossilized leg bone bearing cut marks made by stone tools might be the earliest evidence that ancient humans butchered and ate each other’s flesh. The 1.45-million-year-old hominin bone, described in Scientific Reports1…
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Face of Anglo-Saxon teen VIP revealed with new evidence about her life | HeritageDaily
The face of a 16-year-old woman buried near Cambridge (UK) in the 7th century with an incredibly rare gold and garnet cross (the ‘Trumpington Cross’) has been reconstructed following analysis of her skull. The striking image is going on public display for the first time on 21st June, with new scientific evidence showing that she moved to…
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Earliest Ancestors of Today’s Dolphins Discovered
Life reconstruction of Olympicetus thalassodon pursuing a school of fishes alongside plotopterid birds (background) somewhere in the eastern North Pacific Ocean. Credit: Art by Cullen Townsend Paleontologists have discovered a new species of toothed whale, Olympicetus thalassodon, which lived 28 million years ago and offers insights into the evolution of modern dolphins. This species, along…
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New study shows that the Bachman’s warbler was a distinct species and points to new gene related to pigmentation in warblers — ScienceDaily
The Bachman’s warbler, a songbird that was last seen in North America nearly 40 years ago, was a distinct species and not a hybrid of its two living sister species, according a new study in which the full genomes of seven museum specimens of the bird were sequenced. Genome comparisons of Bachman’s warbler with the…
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Lessons in sustainability, evolution and human adaptation — courtesy of the Holocene — ScienceDaily
The El Gigante rockshelter in western Honduras is among only a handful of archaeological sites in the Americas that contain well-preserved botanical remains spanning the last 11,000 years. Considered one of the most important archaeological sites discovered in Central America in the last 40 years, El Gigante was recently nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage…
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Seal depicting St George among finds found near Suzdal | HeritageDaily
Archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences have uncovered a seal depicting St George during excavations of a 12th–13th century AD settlement south of the Russian town of Suzdal. The settlement was first discovered in 2017 by the Suzdal Expedition, with ongoing research being conducted in 2022 to 2023. The team have found a rare…
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Early Cretaceous lepidosaur (sphenodontian?) burrows
Kinlaw, A. A review of burrowing by semi-fossorial vertebrates in arid environments. J. Arid Environ. 41, 127–145 (1999). Article ADS Google Scholar Reichman, O. J. & Smith, S. C. Burrows and burrowing behavior by mammals. Curr. Mammal. 2, 197–244 (1990). Google Scholar Kinlaw, A. Burrows of semi-fossorial vertebrates in upland communities of central Florida: their…
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Archaeologists use artificial intelligence (AI) to translate 5,000-year-old cuneiform tablets | HeritageDaily
A team of archaeologists and computer scientists have created an AI program that can translate ancient cuneiform tablets instantly using neural machine learning translations. In a paper published in the journal PNAS Nexus, from the Oxford University Press, the researchers have applied the AI program to translate Akkadian texts with a high level of accuracy.…
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The distant ancestors of modern horses had hooved toes | HeritageDaily
According to researchers, the ancient ancestors of contemporary horses possessed multiple hooved toes instead of a single hoof, which gradually disappeared over time. Ancestors such as Eocene Hyracotherium exhibited foot structures resembling those of present-day tapirs, featuring four toes at the front and three at the back. Each toe was equipped with its own hoof…
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Study weighs distant supermassive black holes | HeritageDaily
Near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy sits an immense “supermassive” black hole that astronomers call Sagittarius A*. Scientists theorise that the black hole grew in tandem with our galaxy, and suspect that similar phenomena are at the heart of most large galaxies in the universe. Sagittarius A* is located near the border of…