Face of 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman revealed
9 hours ago
What would it be like to meet one of our closest human relatives from 75,000 years ago in the flesh?
Scientists have produced a remarkable reconstruction of what a Neanderthal woman would have looked like when she was alive.
It is based on the flattened, shattered remains of a skull whose bones were so soft when excavated they had the consistency of "a well-dunked biscuit".
Researchers first had to strengthen the fragments before reassembling them.
Prehistoric DNA being dug up to see if it can help modern-day crops cope with climate change
Monday 6 May 2024 08:31, UK
Prehistoric plant DNA is being dug up from deep below the Arctic to see if it can help modern-day crops cope with the effects of climate change.
Researchers from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh are working with European scientists to analyse microbes from the palaeolithic period, when, like today, the planet was becoming warmer.
The university team has been awarded £500,000 by Horizon Europe, a European Union scientific research initiative, to spend four years examining ancient soil samples extracted from deep below the Arctic under a project named Tolerate.
Dr Ross Alexander, a plant molecular biologist at Heriot-Watt, said researchers were "using samples from the palaeolithic period, around 100-200,000 years ago, because the planet was warming then, much like now".
The aim, he said, was "to find out whether the plants, soil and bacteria of the past can help our current crops survive in a rapidly changing planet".
Ancient People Hunted Extinct Elephants at Tagua Tagua Lake in Chile 12,000 Years Ago May 22, 2024
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Thousands of years ago, early hunter-gatherers returned regularly to Tagua Tagua Lake in Chile to hunt ancient elephants and take advantage of other local resources, according to a study published May 22, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rafael Labarca of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and colleagues.
Multiple archaeological sites are known from the region of Tagua Tagua Lake in central Chile, representing some of the earliest known human settlements in the Americas. In this study, Labarca and colleagues report the recent discovery of a new site called Taguatagua 3, an ancient hunter-gatherer camp dating to the Late Pleistocene, between 12,440-12,550 years old.
Notably, this site features the fossil remains of a gomphothere, an extinct relative of elephants. Signs of butchery on the bones, along with stone tools and other evidence, indicate that Taguatagua 3 represents a temporary camp established around the task of processing the large carcass. Other activities were also carried out during the camp’s brief period of use, including processing of other foods as indicated by additional charred remains of plants and small animals such as frogs and birds. Fossil cactus seeds and bird eggshell suggest that this camp was occupied specifically during the dry season.
Numerous such sites of similar age are now known from this region, implying that Tagua Tagua Lake was a recurring hunting and scavenging ground for people during the Late Pleistocene due to abundant and predictable local resources. The authors suggest that this area was a key location along the routes taken by mobile communities of the time and that temporary camps might have hosted regular meetings between these mobile bands. Further investigation of this rich archaeological region will continue to provide insights into the mobility and subsistence strategies of early humans in South America.
The authors add: “Taguatagua 3 helps us to understand better how the early humans adapted to fast changing environments in central Chile during the late Pleistocene times.”
Discovery in Timor May Rewrite How Humanity Arrived in Australia by Mike Morley et. al.
May 23, 2024
Introduction:
(Science Alert) Humans arrived in Australia at least 65,000 years ago, according to archaeological evidence. These pioneers were part of an early wave of people travelling eastwards from Africa, through Eurasia, and ultimately into Australia and New Guinea.
But this was only one of many waves of migration in the story of the human colonization of the globe. These waves were probably driven by climate change and the ability of groups to adapt to a wide range of environments.
In new research published in Nature Communications, we have found evidence that a large wave of migration reached the island of Timor not long after 50,000 years ago.
Our work at Laili rock shelter suggests the people who first reached Australia some 65,000 years ago came via New Guinea, while Timor and other southern islands were only colonized by a later wave of settlers.
A team of evolutionary biologists at Harvard University, working with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, East Carolina University, Osaka University and the University of Toronto, has reconstructed the genome of an extinct species of flightless bird that has come to be known as the little bush moa.
In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group sequenced DNA recovered from a fossilized bone found on South Island (the largest and southernmost of the two main islands that make up New Zealand).
