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Much of a Pre-Columbian population in ancient Chile was poisoned by arsenic, say researchers. According to a recent study conducted by Jaime Swift of the Australian National University and colleagues from several other institutions in Australia and Chile, a significant part of a pre-Columbian population in northern Chile suffered from slow poisoning due to the intake of arsenic from water sources. The researchers performed plasma mass spectrometry trace element analysis of human bone and tooth samples from 21 burials excavated at the site of Caleta Vitor on the Pacific coast of northern Chile, a part of the ultra-dry Atacama Desert...

Source: Unleashed.news If China secures the CopiaPort-E project, it would turbocharge Beijing’s trade in South America—not only enabling CHINAMAX megaships, but allowing all shipping to completely bypass U.S.-controlled chokepoints and dominate hemispheric commerce virtually overnight. A geopolitical storm is brewing on the western edge of South America—and the United States cannot afford to look away. At the heart of it all lies a deep-water mega-port project in Chile’s Atacama Desert: CopiaPort-E, a port so naturally engineered by geography itself that it could become either America’s greatest commercial and strategic opportunity, or China’s most dangerous economic beachhead south of our border....

Vehicle tracks have torn through the geoglyphs of Alto Barranco. Image courtesy of the Atacama Desert Foundation Acollection of gigantic artworks carved into the Atacama Desert centuries ago has been destroyed by thunderous parades of 4x4s, quadbikes, and all-terrain motorcycles. Located in the Tarapacá region of present-day northern Chile, the geoglyphs of Alto Barranco were made by the region’s Indigenous people along the migration route between the Oasis of Pica and the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The etchings were created between 900 and 1450 CE by removing darker surface rocks and pebbles from the ground, revealing a lighter sandy...

Scientists have found evidence that an earthquake 3,800 years ago in Northern Chile is the largest in human history, according to a new study. The quake had a magnitude of around 9.5, prompting tsunamis that struck countries as far away as New Zealand and boulders the size of cars to be carried inland by the waves, according to researchers at the University of Southampton. Since earthquakes occur when two tectonic plates rub together and rupture, a longer rupture indicates a bigger earthquake, they said. "It had been thought there could not be an event of that size in the north...

Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass. Now, a research team studying the distribution and composition of those glasses has come to a conclusion about what caused the inferno. In a study published in the journal Geology, researchers show that samples of the desert glass contain tiny fragments with minerals often found in rocks of extraterrestrial origin. Those minerals closely match the composition of material returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission, which sampled the particles...

"Some of these birds did not live a happy life. They were kept to produce feathers and their feathers were plucked out as soon as they grew in."...In total, at least six species of parrots originally recovered from five of the desert's archaeological sites were studied in the research, with the remains variously dating from between 1100 to 1450..."The feathers of tropical birds were one of the most significant symbols of economic, social, and sacred status in the pre-Columbian Americas," the authors write in their study."In the Andes, finely produced clothing and textiles containing multicolored feathers of tropical parrots materialized...

Nearly two decades ago, the rumors began: In the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, someone had discovered a tiny mummified alien. An amateur collector exploring a ghost town was said to have come across a white cloth in a leather pouch. Unwrapping it, he found a six-inch-long skeleton. Despite its size, the skeleton was remarkably complete. It even had hardened teeth. And yet there were striking anomalies: it had ten ribs instead of the usual 12, giant eye sockets and a long skull that ended in a point. {snip} On Thursday, a team of scientists presented a very different explanation...

The severely elongated head of a preserved skeleton found in Peru's Atacama Desert in 2003 is so unusual that it initially prompted people to suggest that the diminutive body was that of an extraterrestrial. Since then, DNA testing confirmed that the remains — which measure about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long — belonged to a human fetus that researchers named Ata. But the scientists who conducted that investigation and published their findings in March have recently come under fire for their methods. ...Their investigation, which did not include any Chilean researchers, may have sidestepped protocols that typically monitor the ethics...

Maybe they became disoriented and beached themselves. Maybe they were trapped in a lagoon by a landslide or a storm. Maybe they died there over a period of a few millennia. But somehow, they ended up right next to one another, many just meters (yards) apart, entombed as the shallow sea floor was driven upward by geological forces and transformed into the driest place on the planet. Today, they have emerged again atop a desert hill more than a kilometer (half a mile) from the surf, where researchers have begun to unearth one of the world's best-preserved graveyards of prehistoric...

Explanation: As far as the eye could see, it was a dark night at Las Campanas Observatory in the southern Atacama desert of Chile. But near local midnight on April 11, this mosaic of 3 minute long exposures revealed a green, unusually intense, atmospheric airglow stretching over thin clouds. Unlike aurorae powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, the airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction, and found around the globe. The chemical energy is provided by the Sun's extreme ultraviolet radiation. Like aurorae, the greenish hue of this...

Explanation: This rugged road through the dark Atacama Desert seems to lead skyward toward the bright stars and glowing nebulae of the southern Milky Way. If you follow the road you will get to Cerro Armazones peak in Chile, future construction site for the 40-meter class European Extremely Large Telescope. For now though, sliding your cursor across the image will identify wonders of the southern skies in view. The scene is dominated by the reddish glow of the Great Carina Nebula, one of our galaxy's largest star forming regions. In fact, the remarkable skyscape is not a composite of varying...

Scientists exploring caves in the bone-dry and mostly barren Atacama Desert in Chile stumbled upon a totally unexpected discovery this week: water. They also found hundreds of thousands of animal bones in a cave, possibly evidence of some prehistoric human activity. The findings are preliminary and have not been analyzed. The expedition is designed to learn how to spot caves on Mars by studying the thermal signatures of caves and non-cave features in hot, dry places here on Earth. Scientists think Martian caves, some of which may already have been spotted from space, could be good places to look for...