Newsdesk Archive

Children exposed to marijuana in the womb show a significant improvement in their ability to track moving objects at age four, according to new vision research. But researchers are warning that the results do not mean marijuana has a benefical effect on foetal development.

It had been more than a decade since “B.T.” had last seen anything. After suffering a traumatic accident as a young woman, doctors diagnosed her with cortical blindness, caused by damage to the visual processing centers in her brain. So she got a seeing eye dog to guide her and grew accustomed to the darkness.

A Birmingham (UK) researcher is exploring new ways to enhance the experience of deaf musicians with new visual and touch techniques. Richard Burn – currently studying a PhD in Music Technology at Birmingham City University’s Integra Lab – hopes his research will give deaf people a greater opportunity to express themselves and help enable them to create new works for both deaf and hearing audiences to enjoy.

Many animals exhibit learned behaviors, but humans are unique in their capacity to build on existing knowledge to make new innovations. Understanding the patterns of how new generations of tools emerged in prehistoric societies, however, has long puzzled scientists.

Spontaneous and synchronized drumming tempo has been assessed in a female bonobo who self-selected to participate by regularly approaching a human drummer in a designated research area within a bonobo zoo enclosure.

Was that fish on your plate once a sentient being? Scientists have long believed that the animals aren’t capable of the same type of conscious thought we are because they fail the “emotional fever” test. When researchers expose birds, mammals (including humans), and at least one species of lizard to new environments, they experience a slight rise in body temperature of 1°C to 2°C that lasts a while; it’s a true fever, as if they were responding to an infection. Related: Genetically Engineered Salmon Approved for Consumption

The death of one of the four remaining northern white rhinos has further stoked fears that the subspecies is doomed for extinction. After a series of illnesses, Nola, a 41-year-old female, had to be euthanized by San Diego Zoo staff Sunday. Related: Would you want a clone of your pet?

Beachgoers will be protected from sharks by drones and "smart" drum lines, according to the New South Wales (NSW) government. A trial will begin on the NSW north coast where there have been several attacks in the past 12 months.

“In the near future we are going to be finding so many more interesting objects in our galaxy, and because telescope time is severely limited at the really big observatories, we won’t be able to make sense of those discoveries without a lot of help from amateurs and schoolchildren,” says Dr Heather Campbell of Cambridge University. “Astronomy is going to change.”

Astronomers from the University of Cambridge, U.K., have detected a number of narrow streams and diffuse debris clouds around two nearby irregular dwarf galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. The research also implies that one of these dwarf galaxies – the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) could be more massive than previously thought. A paper detailing these findings was published last week on ArXiv.

The first of Europe's ExoMars missions is finally ready to get under way. This initial venture will involve a satellite going to the Red Planet to study trace gases, such as methane, in the atmosphere.

It may be time to call off the search for Mars' missing carbon. Mars' carbon-rich atmosphere was once thick enough to raise the planet's surface temperature and allow entire oceans of liquid water to form there — a drastic change from the cold desert it is today.

An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. The discovery suggests a range of potential applications, from low-energy devices to efficient transistors.

In the Italian countryside, not far from Pisa, a vast experiment is about to be switched on. If it's a success, one of Albert Einstein's greatest predictions will have been directly observed for the first time.

Was it a catastrophic collision in the star's asteroid belt? A giant impact that disrupted a nearby planet? A dusty cloud of rock and debris? A family of comets breaking apart? Or was it alien megastructures built to harvest the star's energy? Just what caused the mysterious dimming of star KIC 8462852?

The Moon was nudged into its tilted orbit by the gravitational pull of small planetary bodies left over from the formation of the solar system, according to a new model.

By using photons to communicate between two electrons through more than a mile of fiber optic cable, physicists have taken an important step toward proving the practicality of quantum networks.

Expect to hear a whole lot more about Li-Fi - a wireless technology that transmits high-speed data using visible light communication (VLC) - in the coming months. With scientists achieving speeds of 224 gigabits per second in the lab using Li-Fi earlier this year, the potential for this technology to change everything about the way we use the Internet is huge.

An Oxford University spin-out has invented a new smart material that promises to slash the energy required to power a smartphone screen. The creation threatens to shake up the smartphone and wearable device market, because more than 90pc of the battery power in a mobile device is used to illuminate its display.

Researchers in the US have demonstrated a remarkably efficient new way to distil alcohol from water—using light. The method needs less energy than conventional thermal distillation and produces a more concentrated distillate. While the new method is unlikely to displace conventional distillation in industry, the researchers say, it could find niche applications in separation and purification processes.

To limit climate change, experts say that we need to reach carbon neutrality by the end of this century at the latest. To achieve that goal, our dependence on fossil fuels must be reversed. But what energy source will take its place? Researchers report that they just might have the answer: blue-green algae.

Imagine one million identical cows marching shoulder to shoulder and rib to rib down a path to the slaughterhouse. Imagine one million identical cows getting the same idea simultaneously to turn around and storm the cloning plant that created them. Somewhere in between is what probably will happen when the world’s largest cloning plant, currently under construction in China, goes into full operation in early 2016.

Not long ago, archaeologists excavating a thousand-year-old Native American village near Dove Creek, Colorado, found a mass grave of turkeys, containing the remains of more than 50 birds, young and old. This wasn’t a cache of bones leftover from turkey dinners. Instead, the carcasses had been carefully arranged within a circle of stones and buried in the floor of a small structure. Alt: Early Native Americans Raised Turkeys, But Not to Eat

More than 12,000 years ago, lions dwelled in the caves of present-day Russia. Two cubs from the ice age were recently uncovered in the Siberian Arctic, perfectly frozen in the permafrost. Named Uyan and Dina after the Uyandina river where they were recovered, the cubs still had their fur and whiskers.

A distant relative of today’s giraffes was a bit of an odd creature: It was about the size of a bull moose, but it had a long neck that could stretch both up to eat tree leaves and down to eat grass. That’s the conclusion of the first comprehensive analysis of a complete set of fossilized neck bones from the animal, known as Samotherium major.

A 'dinosaur' fossil originally discovered on Prince Edward Island, Canada, has been shown to have steak knife-like teeth, and researchers have changed its name to Dimetrodon borealis -- marking the first occurrence of a Dimetrodon fossil in Canada.

If Pleistocene megafauna -- mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths and others -- had not become extinct, humans might not be eating pumpkin pie and squash for the holidays, according to an international team of anthropologists.

New research may draw a 'curtain of fire' on dinosaur extinction theory The role volcanic activity played in mass extinction events in the Earth's early history is likely to have been much less severe than previously thought, according to a study led by the University of Leeds.

An underground city found in Turkey’s touristic Cappadocia will “rewrite the history of the city,” according to the mayor in the Central Anatolian Nev?ehir province, adding they had discovered people had permanently lived in the underground city, unlike other cities which were mostly carved into rocks for temporary protection.

A new secret archive shows a high level of masonic involvement in the inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic A secret archive containing the names of two million Freemasons has been made public for the first time on the genealogy site Ancestry which reveals extensive Masonic involvement in the controversial British investigation into the catastrophe.

The agricultural revolution was one of the most profound events in human history, leading to the rise of modern civilization. Now, in the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists has found that after agriculture arrived in Europe 8,500 years ago, people’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color.

There’s something about caves — a shadowy opening in a limestone cliff that draws you in. As you pass through the portal between light and dark, you enter a subterranean world — a place of perpetual gloom, of earthy smells, of hushed silence. Long ago in Europe, ancient people also entered these underground worlds.

A DNA study has confirmed that London was an ethnically diverse city from its very beginnings, BBC News has learned. The analysis reveals what some of the very first Londoners looked like and where they came from.

Flu season is nearly upon us, and in an effort to limit contagion and spare ourselves misery, many of us will get vaccinated. The work of Jonas Salk and Thomas Francis has helped restrict the spread of the nasty bug for generations, and the influenza vaccine is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. But before the vaccine could be developed, scientists first had to identify the cause of influenza — and, importantly, recognize that it was contagious.

Researchers report for the first time that the 'living' bridges army ants of the species Eciton hamatum build with their bodies are more sophisticated than scientists knew. The ants automatically assemble with a level of collective intelligence that could provide new insights into animal behavior and even help in the development of intuitive robots that can cooperate as a group.

America's beekeepers are having a rough time. They lost an estimated 42 percent of their hives last year. While some colony losses are normal, these numbers are high. "Such high colony losses in the summer and year-round remain very troubling," entomologist Jeff Pettis said in a statement. Related: Pesticide exposure in bumblebees 'harms pollination'

Biologists at Tufts University have succeeded in inducing one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering genomic sequence. The work reveals physiological circuits as a new kind of epigenetics - information existing outside of genomic sequence - that determines large-scale anatomy.

The scientist behind plans to build the world’s largest animal cloning factory in China has hailed the venture as an “extremely important” contribution that could help save critically endangered species from extinction. Related: 'Resurrection Plants' Offer Hope as Climate Turns Hostile

There is no substantive evidence for a 'pause' or 'hiatus' in global warming and the use of those terms is therefore inaccurate, new research from the University of Bristol, UK has found. The researchers, led by Professor Stephan Lewandowsky of Bristol's School of Experimental Psychology and the Cabot Institute, examined 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 2009 and 2014 that specifically addressed the presumed 'hiatus' and found no consistent or agreed definition of such a 'hiatus', when it began and how long it lasted.

A giant plant using energy from the Sun to power a Moroccan city at night will open next month. The solar thermal plant at Ouarzazate will harness the Sun's warmth to melt salt, which will hold its heat to power a steam turbine in the evening.

Using data recorded from space, researchers say they've created a soundscape of the Earth. Performed live last week in the NASA booth at the supercomputing conference in Austin, Texas, the experiment used a process called data sonification to transform images of the Earth beamed back from the Space Weather Satellite DSCOVR into sound.

The intensity of Earth's geomagnetic field has been dropping for the past 200 years, at a rate that some scientists suspect may cause the field to bottom out in 2,000 years, temporarily leaving the planet unprotected against damaging charged particles from the sun. This drop in intensity is associated with periodic geomagnetic field reversals, in which the Earth's North and South magnetic poles flip polarity, and it could last for several thousand years before returning to a stable, shielding intensity.

Acid fog may once have eaten away rocks on Mars, researchers say. Scientists concentrated on data that the Spirit rover gathered from exposed bedrock at the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater near the equator of Mars. Spirit analyzed a dozen locations on four outcrops of rocks spanning about 650 feet (200 meters) along Cumberland Ridge and the Husband Hill summit.

Scientists suggest that 3.8 billion years ago, Mars might have had only a moderately dense atmosphere. The scientists have identified a photochemical process that could have helped such an early atmosphere evolve into the current thin one without creating the problem of 'missing' carbon and in a way that is consistent with existing carbon isotopic measurements.

Mars’ doomed moon Phobos may leave its parent planet a parting gift. A new study shows the moon is likely to break apart before it hits the atmosphere, creating a debris ring that will encircle Mars for millions of years. The research, published in this week’s Nature Geoscience, follows a report earlier this month that not only is Phobos losing altitude due to Mars’ gravity, it also already is showing signs of structurally stress from tidal forces.

The solar system might be a lot hairier than we thought. A new study publishing this week in the Astrophysical Journal by Gary Prézeau of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, proposes the existence of long filaments of dark matter, or "hairs."

Mercury can experience meteor showers as Comet Encke periodically peppers the planet's tenuous atmosphere with dust, new research suggests. Earth has several meteor showers every year, generally occurring when the planet plows through the dust trail left behind by a comet or asteroid passing near the sun. These particles fall into the atmosphere and burn up, creating a trail for skywatchers to follow.

Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) is finally here and – for telescopic viewers – it’s showing two tails! Several observers in recent days have spotted it on film. An avalanche of pictures is expected during the next days as Comet Catalina ascends in the predawn sky and becomes brighter and easier to see.

The grizzled asteroid miner is a stock character in science fiction. Now, a couple of recent events – one legal and the other technological – have brought asteroid mining a step closer to reality. The legal step was taken when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bill titled H.R. 2262—SPACE Act of 2015.

Hamas forces seized a chest full of Ottoman-era gold coins discovered in Gaza, Israeli news site Walla reported on Monday. The Turkish coins, a serious archaeological find, was uncovered by construction workers paving a road in the neighborhood of Shujaiyeh.

The ultra-thin ‘uterine’ vellum of medieval books has puzzled scientists for years. Is it really made of foetal tissue? Scientists have found the truth at last Using an off-the-shelf pencil eraser and electrostatic technology first pioneered 2,500 years ago, University of York scientists have settled one of the great puzzles of pre-Gutenberg commercial publishing.

Most archaeologists can be happy to uncover a small handful of important ancient sites in their careers. Sarah Parcak, a young professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has already pinpointed thousands, making her among the most productive archaeologist working today. How is this possible? She hunts for evidence of buried civilizations from the vantage of space.

Egypt said Monday it will conduct more tests this week in search of a hidden chamber in King Tutankhamun's tomb that a British archaeologist believes may be the burial place of Queen Nefertiti. Archaeologists have never discovered the mummy of the legendary beauty, but renowned British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves said in a recent study that her tomb could be in a secret chamber adjoining Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of Kings in Luxor in southern Egypt.

An intricately carved gold ring containing a stone engraved with an image of Cupid — a god associated with erotic love — has been discovered near the village of Tangley in the United Kingdom. In the engraving, Cupid (also known by his Greek name, "Eros") is shown standing completely nude while holding a torch with one hand.

Archaeological study dismisses abbey’s links to King Arthur and Joseph of Arimathea, saying many stories were created to raise funds after a fire A four year study by archaeologists has comprehensively demolished cherished myths about one of the most romantic religious sites in England, Glastonbury Abbey.

Epigenetics and behaviorism suggest the ancient Greeks were right Brian Dias noticed something unusual about a group of lab mice he was breeding at Emory University: They were afraid of the smell of acetophenone, even though they’d never been exposed to it before. Dias was studying how ancestral environments leave imprints on descendant generation.

The human genome is littered with sequences left behind from long-ago viral infections but now scientists have found the code is still active Ancient viruses were critical to the evolution of humans and infections left genetic code in our bodies which is still essential for life today, Stanford University has discovered.

Migration between different communities of bacteria is the key to the type of gene transfer that can lead to the spread of traits such as antibiotic resistance, according to researchers at Oxford University. While horizontal gene transfer - also known as bacterial sex - has long been acknowledged as central to microbial evolution, why it is able to exert such a strong effect has remained a mystery.

In a basement on the Irvine campus of the University of California, behind a series of five protective doors, two teams of biologists have created a novel breed of mosquito that they hope will help eradicate malaria from the world. The mosquito has been engineered to carry two ingenious genetic modifications. One is a set of genes that spew out antibodies to the malarial parasite harbored by the mosquito. Mosquitoes with these genes are rendered resistant to the parasite and so cannot spread malaria.

The only animal known to survive the extreme environment of outer space without the help of special equipment turns out to have the most foreign DNA of any species. Water bears, also known as tardigrades, have genomes that are nearly one-sixth foreign, meaning that the DNA comes from creatures other than the animal itself, new research finds. Alt: Water Bears Are the Master DNA Thieves of the Animal World

Champion of regeneration, the freshwater polyp Hydra is capable of reforming a complete individual from any fragment of its body. It is even able to remain alive when all its neurons have disappeared. Researcher the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, have discovered how: cells of the epithelial type modify their genetic program by overexpressing a series of genes, among which some are involved in diverse nervous functions. Studying Hydra cellular plasticity may thus influence research in the context of neurodegenerative diseases.

It was perhaps the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century. And next week space scientists will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity in fitting style – by launching a probe to help demonstrate the accuracy of the theory’s last unproven prediction: the existence of gravitational waves.

Ever dreamt of kicking back, letting go of the wheel and reading the paper on the commute to work? In large cities, that could soon be a reality, say auto manufacturers. Semi-autonomous cars have already hit the road, capable of gauging distance, accelerating and breaking automatically, and rectifying the situation if, say, a distracted driver approaches another car too quickly.

UFO researchers are claiming a mummified "being" they are studying came from outer space, but was buried in a Mayan tomb for hundreds of years. Alien investigators tried to garner support for their theory that the mummy, reportedly removed from a Mayan tomb in Mexico, is an extra terrestrial and not a child mummy, as sceptics claim. Related: Is this bizarre 'winged object' flying past the sun a UFO? Mysterious shape is spotted in images released by NASA Related: THE NOTORIOUS B.I.G.FOOT

U.S. utilities see great potential in the use of remote-controlled drones to do the often-dangerous work of inspecting power lines and transmission towers but strict regulations have so far slowed adoption of the technology.

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego developed a new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood. The technology could serve as a general tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental, and industrial applications.

Doctors in Poland used a virtual reality system combining a custom mobile application and Google Glass to clear a blocked coronary artery, one of the first uses of the technology to assist with surgery. The imaging system was used with a patient who had chronic total occlusion, a complete blockage of the artery, which doctors said is difficult to clear using standard catheter-based percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI.

Magic tricks work because they take advantage of the brain's sensory assumptions, tricking audiences into seeing phantoms or overlooking sleights of hand. Now a team of researchers has discovered that even brainless single-celled yeast have sensory biases that can be hacked by a carefully engineered illusion, a finding that could be used to develop new approaches to fighting diseases such as cancer.

We used to believe our brains couldn’t be changed. Now we believe they can – if we want it enough. But is that true? For many years, the consensus was that the human brain couldn’t generate new cells once it reached adulthood. Once you were grown, you entered a state of neural decline. This was a view perhaps most famously expressed by the so-called founder of modern neuroscience,

Scientists have succeeded in growing functional vocal cord tissue in the laboratory, a major step toward restoring a voice to people who have lost their vocal cords to cancer surgery or other injuries. Experts from several disciplines were able to bioengineer vocal cord tissue able to transmit sound. About 20 million Americans suffer from voice impairments, and many have damage to the vocal cord mucosae, the specialized tissues that vibrate as air moves over them, giving rise to voice.

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit but the highest form of intelligence,” wrote that connoisseur of wit, Oscar Wilde. Whether sarcasm is a sign of intelligence or not, communication experts and marriage counselors alike typically advise us to stay away from this particular form of expression. The reason is simple: sarcasm expresses the poisonous sting of contempt, hurting others and harming relationships. As a form of communication, sarcasm takes on the debt of conflict. Related: Is the Glasgow accent being levelled out by London? Dinnae be daft

Researchers have discovered a hormonal mechanism in hamsters that connects short winter days with increased aggression in females, and that it differs from the mechanism that controls this same response in males. Related: Torture doesn’t work, says science: Why are we still doing it?

About one third of people with depression have high levels of inflammation markers in their blood. New research indicates that persistent inflammation affects the brain in ways that are connected with stubborn symptoms of depression, such as anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure.

Can you make out the dot at the bottom of this question mark? What if you stand a few metres away? The finest detail the average human eye can distinguish is about the size of a full stop seen at a distance of a metre. This is called "resolution". The best resolution for an optical system – like the eye – is roughly given by the ratio of the wavelength of the light you're viewing in and the size of the aperture that light is passing through.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that a dim, cool dwarf star is generating a surprisingly powerful magnetic field, one that rivals the most intense magnetic regions of our own Sun.

Despite its frigid temperatures, Mars might be able to host lakes of water on its surface today, a new study suggests. Although extremely small amounts of water would quickly evaporate in Mars' low-pressure atmosphere, water from sources such as aquifers could last long enough to pool, with larger pools remaining liquid for at least a year, researchers said.

Rocks on Earth and the moon are nearly identical — except when they’re not. Now new computer simulations might be close to figuring out why lunar samples are in many ways chemically identical to counterparts on Earth and yet missing a few key ingredients. Easily vaporized elements, known as volatiles, are largely missing from moon rocks but might be sequestered deep in the lunar interior.

While dolphins may not be able to converse with humans like Flipper, scientists have discovered they do share at least one language trait with humans - regional accents. Mammals that live in pods in certain areas off the coast of the UK have been spotted communicating with unique sounds.

A tour captain in Tampa Bay, Fla. says he knows what music the dolphins of his aquatic neighborhood prefer -- the instrumental work of a famed Greek-American composer. It turns out the playful marine mammals love "Yanni Live at the Acropolis," Bay News 9 reports. They're also into swing music.

Scientists have solved a longstanding mystery about how some fish seem to disappear from predators in the open waters of the ocean, a discovery that could help materials scientists and military technologists create more effective methods of ocean camouflage. In a paper published this week in Science, a team led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin reports that certain fish use microscopic structures called platelets in their skin cells to reflect polarized light, which allows the fish to seemingly disappear from their predators.

Immediately following Britain’s declaration of war in 1939, Dion Fortune began a series of regular letters to members of her magical order, the Fraternity of the Inner Light, who were unable to hold meetings due to wartime travel restrictions. With enemy planes rumbling overhead, she organised a series of visualisations to formulate “seed ideas in the group mind of the race”, archetypal visions to invoke angelic protection and uphold British morale under fire. “The war has to be fought and won on the physical plane,” she wrote, “before physical manifestation can be given to the archetypal ideals. What was sown will grow and bear seed.” As the war developed, this was consolidated with further work for the renewal of national and international accord. For the first time the Fraternity’s doors were opened to anyone who wanted to join in and learn the previously secret methods of esoteric mind-working. With unswerving optimism she guided her fraternity through the dark days of the London Blitz, continuing her weekly letters even when the bombs came through her own roof. – from the introduction to The Magical Battle of Britain, from the letters of Dion Fortune, edited by Gareth Knight

IN JANUARY an elephant entered Moragoda village in northern Sri Lanka and killed a father in his vegetable garden. In July, a dairy farmer from the east was killed taking his cow out to graze. Now an ambitious project aims to warn communities when elephants approach by tracking these giants around the country via their rumbling calls.

As many as 50% of all natural history specimens held in the world's museums could be wrongly named, according to a new study by researchers from Oxford University and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Researchers have discovered several new species of marine fungi inhabiting previously undescribed branches of the tree of life. Little is known about the fungi flourishing in the world's oceans and this study, which set out to investigate its diversity and abundance, revealed that many marine fungi are very different from those found on land.

Children are taught that all living organisms -- from animals, plants, and fungi to bacteria and single-celled organisms -- belong to specifically different categories of organic life. A new discovery by Tel Aviv University researchers and international collaborators is poised to redefine the very criteria used to define and classify these animals.

Called after Tolkien's character from the "Lord of the Rings" series, a new eyeless harvestman species was found to crawl in a humid cave in southeastern Brazil. Never getting out of its subterranean home, the new daddy longlegs species is the most highly modified representative among its close relatives and only the second one with no eyes living in Brazil. Related: Long-snouted Amazonian catfishes including three new species to form a new genus

Certain species of the crawling lumps of mollusk called chitons polka-dot their armor-plated backs with hundreds of tiny black eyes. But mixing protection and vision can come at a price. The lenses are rocky nuggets formed mostly of aragonite, the same mineral that pearls and abalone shells are made of. New analyses of these eyes support previous evidence that they form rough images instead of just sensing overall lightness or darkness, says materials scientist Ling Li of Harvard University.

Humans have the best of all possible visual worlds because our full stereo vision combines with primitive visual pathways to quickly spot danger, a study led by the University of Sydney has discovered.

Scientists have glimpsed songbirds stamping their feet in a rapid-fire "tap-dance" that is invisible to the naked eye. Both male and female cordon-bleu birds bob up and down while singing to their mates.

Dinosaurs were the dominant group of terrestrial vertebrate animals for more than a hundred million years. Some of them grew to gargantuan sizes but even these mighty creatures would have fallen prey to parasites. But when you look back on the geological record, parasite fossils are really rare. This is because fossilisation itself is a rare occurrence and most parasites are tiny, squishy things that don't get preserved under anything less than the most ideal conditions.

Ancient tiny people whose remains were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores evolved from large-bodied Homo erectus individuals from Asia, according to the first ever comprehensive analysis of their teeth. The study suggests Homo floresiensis, aka 'the hobbit', shrank due to what is known as "insular dwarfism" or "the island effect", which happens when a population evolves in a limited-range environment where fewer resources and smaller territories are the norm.

As gold jewellery goes, it could be considered to be quite modest, but a 6,600 year old pendant discovered at the site of one of Europe's oldest prehistoric towns may be the world's oldest bling. The tiny two-gram pendant was discovered during excavations at the archaeological site of Solnitsata in the Varna region of Bulgaria.

As part of a Turkish-UNDP joint project, sculptors have engraved the findings of Göbeklitepe on T-shaped stones to show both the way to the site and the first steps of human civilization A path to Göbeklitepe, a 12,000-year-old site in the southeastern province of ?anl?urfa often referred as the “point zero of history,” has been decorated with large stone plaques that tell about the ongoing excavation work there.

New evidence uncovered at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile has now provided further evidence that the earliest known Americans became established in South America even earlier than previously thought. For many decades, it was believed that the Americas were first populated some 13,000 years ago by big-game hunters from Asia, known as the Clovis people.

Human domestication may have helped save the wild ancestors of pumpkins, gourds and squash from extinction. Eons ago, wild gourds and squash relied on very large animals to disperse their seeds in dung. Seeds have been found in fossilized mastodon dung dating back 30,000 years. Alt: Ancient gardeners saved the gourd

UK researchers have unearthed ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in Earth's climate in the past 400 million years. The fossil forests, with tree stumps preserved in place, were found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago situated in the Arctic Ocean. They were identified and described by Dr Chris Berry of Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Science.

The Etruscans laid the first underground sewers in the city of Rome around 500 BC. These cavernous tunnels below the city's streets were built of finely carved stones, and the Romans were happy to utilize them when they took over the city. Such structures then became the norm in many cities throughout the Roman world. Related: 4,000 coins found in Roman treasure trove in Swiss orchard Related: Fragments of Roman building sign discovered at Silchester Related: Secret pagan basilica in Rome emerges from the shadows after 2,000 years

They look strange, they look painful and most of all, they look alien. They’re elongated skulls and a new discovery in Patagonia may shed light on why parents subjected their children to this gruesome practice. Not only that, researchers may have hinted at who taught them the technique. Aliens? According to a recent paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, anthropologists from Kansas State University found 60 skulls belonging to hunter-gatherers who lived in Southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego some 2,000 years ago. Eighteen of the skulls shows evidence of elongation, the first ever to be found in Patagonia

A simple test that uses a raisin and a plastic cup can predict how well a toddler will perform academically at age eight, researchers say. The toddlers were given a raisin that was placed under an opaque cup within easy reach. After three training runs, toddlers were asked to wait until they were told (60 seconds) they could touch and eat the raisin. Related: Babies have logical reasoning before age one, study finds

Children's health is suffering due to the excessive use of antibiotics in farm animals, according to a new report. Kids are becoming infected with bacteria that are resistant to treatment with the same antibiotics that are commonly used in raising farm animals, and it is difficult to treat children who are infected with the drug-resistant bacteria, the report said.