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Pre-Columbian tunnel complex discovered in southeastern Peru Story Filed: Thursday, August 15, 2002 8:40 AM EST Lima, Aug 15, 2002 (EFE via COMTEX) -- A pre-Columbian tunnel complex has been discovered in southeastern Peru, officials said. Chumbivilcas Mayor Florentino Layme told Panamericana Television that the tunnels were discovered in the southeastern province of Chumbivilcas, some 1,300 kilometers (about 808) miles southeast of the capital. The tunnels apparently were made by the Wari people who lived in the area prior to the emergence of the Inca empire and are located under the village of Lliqui. The walls of the tunnels, or...

An ancient ceremonial building that was built thousands of years ago in northwestern Peru's La Libertad region was decorated with a painting of a spider deity clutching a knife. Archaeologists discovered the mural in November 2020, after local farmers damaged the temple structure during the expansion of their sugar cane and avocado plantations. When scientists inspected the monument ("huaca" in the Indigenous Quechuan family of languages), they found a figure painted against a white background on the southern wall, in shades of ocher, yellow and gray.... The wall holding the spider god mural faces a river bisecting the Virú Valley,...

Scientists say they may have worked out how spiders and silkworms are able to produce such strong fibers to spin their webs and cocoons. They say that if they are right, their research could be used to produce silk in the laboratory for extra-strong protective clothing, sports equipment and even replacement bone tissue. Silk is the strongest natural fiber known to man but scientists have yet to replicate its strength. They have managed to purify silk into powder but have not been able to turn it into material. "The problem is that when people take these purified powders and try...

Researchers have unravelled an ancient missing link between today’s spiders and their long-extinct ancestors, and that may help explain how spiders came to weave webs. The research by scientists at the University of Kansas (KU) and Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College focuses on fossil animals called Attercopus fimbriunguis. While modern spiders make silk threads with modified appendages called spinnerets, the fossil animals wove broad sheets of silk from spigots on plates attached to the underside of their bodies. Unlike spiders, they had long tails. The research was led by Paul Selden, professor of invertebrate paleontology in the department of geology at KU,...

William Stein, associate professor of biological sciences at Binghamton University... and his colleagues offer new insights into the world's oldest trees found in an area cited as home to the Earth's oldest forest. Located near the Gilboa Dam in Schoharie County, NY, the region has yielded tremendous tree trunks from the Devonian era, meaning they're roughly 380 million years old. These trunks have been studied by paleobotanists for about a century, but scientists could only guess what the tops of the trees looked like... The fossil, more than 12 feet long, offered the first evidence of how big and complex...