Ötzi the Iceman, the world’s oldest glacier mummy, was a short and slender man (an estimated 110 pounds) who had blackened lungs, presumably from sitting next to camp fires. His skin contained 61 bluish-black tattoos, which the artist may have intended as healing treatments.Researchers have learned many other details of his life because of DNA analysis, including Ötzi’s skin color and ancestry. A new such study has found that Ötzi was much balder than initially believed and had darker ski ...read more
A new discovery concerning Gale Crater mud on Mars increases the likelihood that the planet has developed some form of life in the past. This time, it’s not the composition of the mud, but its dried-out, cracked pattern of neat hexagons that matters.When mud dries, it typically forms a more squared-off pattern. But when mud dries, re-moistens, and dries again repeatedly, the pattern can shift to board-game-like hexagons.“This is the first tangible evidence we’ve seen that the ancient clima ...read more
In a dense Salvadoran rainforest, a conservation detection dog named Niffler was engrossed in a peculiar training exercise. Like a determined scavenger hunt participant, his mission was clear: locate carnivore scat samples that his handler, Kayla Fratt, co-founder of K9 Conservationists, had hidden along a trail. Niffler searched tirelessly for his target, signaling his find by laying in front of the sample, paws and nose framing it on three sides. This critical exercise was not just a game – ...read more
Archaeologists have recently confirmed that a Japanese society that prospered between roughly A.D. 200 and A.D. 600 on the island of Tanegashima modified craniums for mysterious reasons. While the recent paper explains that the modified skulls reinforced group identification and belonging, they may also have something to do with the local shellfish trade. The Hirota people clearly valued mollusks, as they lined their graves with funerary goods made from shellfish brought from hundreds of miles a ...read more
During the late Jurassic period around 150 million years ago, a small tyrannosauroid called Stokesosaurus lived in North America. This tiny carnivore had to keep an eye out for the much larger Allosaurus while hunting and scavenging.But by the late Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago, Allosaurus was long gone and tyrannosauroids had evolved into hulking, ferocious top predators. Case in point: the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex. For many decades, scientists could not find any North Ame ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine