News Desk

Asian elephants bury their calves with their legs poking out of the ground, researchers have observed. The calves were 1 year old or less and were transported to premade burials of sorts — irrigation drains on tea estates in India — by herd members, before being placed in holes and covered in soil. See the study here.

A new study from the Nihewan basin of China has revealed that hominins who possessed advanced knapping abilities equivalent to Mode 2 technological features occupied East Asia as early as 1.1 million years ago (Ma), which is 0.3 Ma earlier than the date associated with the first handaxes found in East Asia. This suggests that Mode 2 hominins dispersed into East Asia much earlier than previously thought.

Mainstream science has done its best to debunk the notion, but a belief in a world-changing series of prehistoric impacts continues to gain momentum.

In the largest ever modern whole-genome analysis from South Asia…The study also turns up a surprise: an unexpectedly rich diversity of genes from Neanderthals and their close evolutionary cousins, the Denisovans. Because no fossils of these ancient human relatives have been found in India, researchers are speculating about how these genes got there—and why they stuck around.

Psilocybe mushrooms appear to have started producing psilocybin roughly 67 million years ago, right around the dinosaurs’ demise, new research shows.

Fossilized trees discovered by chance in southwest England belong to Earth’s earliest-known forest, new research has found. The 390 million-year-old fossils supplant the Gilboa fossil forest in New York state, which dates back 386 million years, as the world’s oldest known forest.

A recent study sheds light on the relationship between moral values and political affiliations, revealing that the standards of morality people apply in political contexts may differ significantly from those in personal spheres.

Nestled within the photosynthetic, or light-eating, tissue of the boreal trees – and within the bountiful cloud-like lichens and feathery mosses that carpet the ground between them – are fungi. These fungi are endophytes, meaning they live within plants, often in a mutually beneficial arrangement. See the research here.

Archaeologists have identified evidence of a Jewish-Islamic scientific collaboration having taken place a thousand years ago, thanks to an archaic star chart once thought to be a forgery.  Gigante’s analysis is published in the journal Nuncius.

An investigation into the genomes of 10 people who lived between 6350 and 4810 B.C. revealed few biological links among these small communities, according to a study published Feb. 26 in the journal PNAS.

Roughly 128 million years ago, snakes suddenly burst into an abundant existence on Earth, eventually diversifying into the 4,000 or so species we see today. See the research in Science.

Late last year, astronomers discovered a fascinating star system only 100 light-years away from us. Its six sub-Neptune planets circle very close to their host star in mathematically perfect orbits, piquing the interest of scientists searching for alien technology or technosignatures, which they argue would offer compelling evidence of advanced life beyond Earth.

Studies at MIT and elsewhere are producing mounting evidence that light flickering and sound clicking at the gamma brain rhythm frequency of 40 Hz can reduce Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression and treat symptoms in human volunteers as well as lab mice. See the new study in Nature.

Our understanding of the human past is changing rapidly, and this does not come from new evidence alone. We are seeing an increasing diversity of perspectives among archaeologists, and they are asking new and important questions. But the field still has a long way to go.

Image by: Downtowngal (Wiki Commons)

New research published in Journal of Psychopharmacology provides evidence that the drug MDMA may have the unique ability to enhance emotional responses to positive (but not negative) social interactions. This insight sheds light on the potential of MDMA to influence social perception, opening new avenues for understanding and potentially treating conditions characterized by impaired social processing.

Now, the team has unlocked the life history of this ill-fated man, combining modern and traditional archeological methods to read the story written in his bones. The research was published in PLOS ONE.