Tag Archives: Ancient

A vast blob of hot rock moving slowly beneath the Appalachian Mountains in the northeastern US is now thought to be the result of a divorce between Greenland and Canada some 80 million years ago. A study by an international team of researchers challenges the existing consensus in both geographical and chronological terms. It was previously thought the breaking up …

Credit: Ken Zirkel,the Museum of Natural History By the time “Lucy” took her final steps across the Ethiopian landscape 3 million years ago, her kind may have been living in a social world far more combative than we once imagined. A new study reveals that males of Australopithecus afarensis — the species that includes the famous fossil — were dramatically …

A massive blob of hot rock underneath New England appears to be part of an ancient ‘wave’ that’s moving towards millions of Americans in New York. Scientists said this nearly 250-mile blob called the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA) is roughly 125 miles underground, stretching across Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. A team from the University of Southampton …

DNA that humans acquired from ancient viruses plays a key role in switching parts of our genetic code on and off, a new study has found. Nearly half of the human genome consists of segments called transposable elements (TEs), also known as “jumping genes” because they can hop around the genome. Some of these TEs are remnants of ancient viruses …

The Tintina fault stretches 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) across northern Canada, crossing the Yukon and ending in Alaska. The fault is thought to have been dormant for 40 million years, but that thinking is challenged by a new study that suggests a major earthquake may be imminent. Researchers from the University of Victoria and the University of Alberta in Canada …

In a groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Human Evolution, researchers have uncovered fascinating details about human evolution in ancient Asia through fossilized teeth discovered at the Hualongdong site in Anhui Province, China. The findings, led by Professor Wu Xiujie, director of the Hualongdong excavations, challenge established theories of Homo evolution, particularly in Asia during the Middle Pleistocene era. …

Meet the potato’s unexpected ancestor: the tomato.  That’s right, a fruit. Potatoes and tomatoes don’t look alike, smell alike or taste alike, but in a study published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists said that the potato evolved from a tomato ancestor around 9 million years ago. “We’ve finally solved the mystery of where potatoes came from,” corresponding author Sanwen …

Globs of sticky goo discovered in the bottom of 2,500-year-old bronze jars from southern Italy have been chemically identified, settling a 70-year archaeological debate. It’s honey — the sweet leftovers of an offering to an ancient god. A team of chemists and archaeologists used cutting-edge analysis techniques to test the paste-like residue. They concluded that the jars, which were found …

Below the arid surface of southern Oregon’s Alvord Desert are the echoes of a once massive Ice Age Lake, along with the scars of an ancient catastrophic flood that helped to reshape the landscape in ways that can still be seen today. Evidence of the upheaval that once impacted this region close to 13,000 years ago were recently revealed in …

Despite how Ross’ paleontology career is treated by his companions in Friends, there’s something special about finding the remains of creatures that lived millions if not billions of years before us. In fact, humanity’s interest in paleontology isn’t a modern development. Ancient Romans were just as fascinated by fossils. According to the ancient Roman historian Suetonius, Emperor Augustus established the …