The ancient North American city of Cahokia had as its focal point a feature now known as Monks Mound, a giant earthwork surrounded on its north, south, east and west by large rectangular open areas. These flat zones, called plazas by archaeologists since the early 1960s, were thought to serve as communal areas that served…
Read More “North ‘plaza’ in Cahokia was likely inundated year-round, study finds” »
Maritime archaeologists from Bournemouth University have uncovered the remains of a medieval ship and its cargo dating back to the 13th century off the coast of Dorset. The survival of the vessel is extremely rare and there are no known wrecks of seagoing ships from the 11th to the 14th centuries in English waters. The…
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The mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly in modern Iraqi Kurdistan was one of the major regional centres of the Parthian Empire, which extended over parts of Iran and Mesopotamia approximately 2,000 years ago. This is a conclusion reached by a team of archaeologists led by Dr Michael Brown, a researcher at the Institute of Prehistory, Protohistory…
Read More “In search of the lost Parthian city of Natounia” »
Endothermy, or warm-bloodedness, is the ability of mammals and birds to produce their own body heat and control their body temperature. A warm-blooded mammal ancestor breathing out hot hairin a frigid night [Credit: Luzia Soares] This major difference with the cold-blooded reptiles underpins the ecological dominance of mammals in almost every ecosystem globally. Until now,…
Evolution has long been viewed as a rather random process, with the traits of species shaped by chance mutations and environmental events — and therefore largely unpredictable. Similar leaf types evolved independently in three species of plants found in cloud forests of Oaxaca, Mexico and three species of plants in similar environment in Chiapas, Mexico. This…
Read More “Plant study hints evolution may be predictable” »
It took several hundred million years after the formation of Earth some 4½ billion years ago for the initially fiery globe to cool down, allowing the first oceans and land masses to form. The land was barren rock for the next three billion years. The diversity of flora and fauna as we know them today…
An extended period of turmoil in the prehistoric Maya city of Mayapan, in the Yucatan region of Mexico, was marked by population declines, political rivalries and civil conflict. Between 1441 and 1461 CE the strife reached an unfortunate crescendo — the complete institutional collapse and abandonment of the city. This all occurred during a protracted…
The study of the genomes of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, has opened up new research paths that can broaden our understanding of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. A study led by the University of Barcelona has made an estimation of the time when some of the genetic variants that characterise our…
Read More “When did the genetic variations that make us human emerge?” »
The evolution of the brain and nervous system in animals has been wound back more than 400 million years, thanks to the examination of fossil remains of ancient lungfish providing a missing link in the emergence of land-living, four-legged animals on Earth. Cranial endocast of a Palaeozoic lungfish [Credit: A Clement, Flinders University] An international…
For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published in the journal The lateral view of the skull unearthed from Red Dear Cave [Credit: Xueping Ji] “Ancient DNA technique is a really powerful tool,” Su says. “It tells us quite definitively…
