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After 40 years, police made an arrest in the rape and stabbing death of Roberta Walls. Charles Randall Berry, the 66-year-old suspect, was arrested Monday in Newington, Connecticut. Virginia Beach police said advancements in technology combined with investigative work helped detectives solve the case. ... In the spring of 1986, the body of Walls, a 22-year-old volunteer at the Bayside Area Library, was found on a baseball field behind Old Donation School, near Independence Boulevard north of Town Center.

Could this bring species back from egg-stinction? Texas firm Colossal Biosciences, which has dedicated itself to resurrecting lost species, including the dire wolf and woolly mammoth, has hatched live chicks from an artificial egg for the first time — a crucial, “Jurassic Park”-esque step in its mission to bring back the moa and other giant, long-gone avians. The first-of-its-kind artificial egg allows a bird embryo to develop completely outside of a biological shell while scientists oversee every aspect from early embryo to hatching. The team hatched 26 “healthy” chickens, which “will live out their natural lives” at the company’s avian...

An incredible outpouring of love and respect as hundreds of strangers filled St. Joseph the Worker Church in Hanson to bid farewell to World War II U.S. Navy veteran John Bernard Arnold III. A veteran group put out the call for the public to attend the funeral to help honor Arnold, an East Bridgewater man who had no known family. "When the veterans service officer from Hanson put out the call that he had outlived everyone, he didn't even imagine this level of support. It's just fantastic," said Dr. Andrea Gayle-Bennett, the deputy secretary for the Executive Office of Veteran...

In 1995, a human skull emerged from the Atlantic Ocean and landed on a beach in Longport, New Jersey. More bones followed over the next 18 years, surfacing across three different Jersey Shore towns. For three decades, investigators called the unidentified remains "Scattered Man John Doe." Now, genetic genealogy researchers have given him back his name: Captain Henry Goodsell, a 29-year-old schooner commander who died in a winter storm 181 years ago.The identification, confirmed in April 2025 and announced by the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center in May, marks one of the oldest cold cases ever...

DNA testing has finally revealed that two mysterious individuals -- a young boy and a teenage girl entombed together in a rare Anglo-Saxon double burial -- were brother and sister, according to a report by The Independent. The pair initially drew attention two years ago when they were discovered in Cherington, Gloucestershire, because of the unusual way they were laid to rest. Both children had been placed gently on their sides. The young girl faced her brother and had been propped up in a way, perhaps on pillows, that made it look like she was watching over her younger sibling...

A DECADES old cold case involving a teen girl who was found beaten and stabbed to death has come to an end thanks to a DNA link. Bobby Charles Taylor Sr., 60, was arrested in connection to the brutal rape and murder of Deanna Ogg who died in 1986 at the age of 16. Deanna Ogg was found dead in 1986, and now 40 years later authorities have arrested a man in connection with her murderCredit: Handout Mugshot of Bobby Charles Taylor Sr., who was arrested for the 1986 murder of Deanna Ogg. Bobby Charles Taylor Sr. was arrested and...

For 4,200 years, the Y chromosome of a Yakutian warrior has quietly echoed in Siberia's Arctic peoples. His extraordinary Stone Age grave was discovered in Russia's far northeast near Yakutsk in 2004 by scientists. The middle-aged hunter's skeleton was found on its back with arms at its side. Dozens of elk-bone plates were laid as a shield over the chest. Analysis of the radiocarbon data hints that the person died nearly 4,000 years ago. The person is presumed to be from the Ymyyakhtakh cultural horizon. This cultural horizon contains the nomadic hunter-gatherers who used more sophisticated bone and antler weapons......

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- Montgomery County authorities are crediting the advancements in DNA technology for helping solve the haunting case of Deanna Ogg, a 16-year-old girl who was found sexually assaulted and murdered in a wooded area near Old Houston Road in 1986. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office confirmed that 60-year-old Bobby Taylor Sr. was arrested and charged with capital murder and is being held at Montgomery County Jail. In a press conference on Wednesday, authorities said Taylor Sr. had been identified as the suspect in the case after detectives began re-examining evidence. Through that investigation, a DNA lab...

According to a statement released by the University of Copenhagen, analysis of the remains of 132 individuals unearthed near a megalithic tomb in northern France suggests that the site was initially used by one group of people, but that population declined around 3000 B.C. and was eventually replaced by another group. "We see a clear genetic break between the two periods," said Frederik Valeur Seersholm of the University of Copenhagen. Genetic testing revealed that the earlier group was composed of early farmers from northern France and Germany, while the later group was linked to people in southern France and the...

Live Science reports that Joachim Burger of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and his colleagues examined more than 250 sets of human remains of people who lived in what is now southern Germany, on what was the frontier of the Roman Empire, between A.D. 400 and 700. The researchers analyzed DNA samples from the bones, performed strontium isotope analysis to look for chemical signatures in the bones, and compared the results of the tests with 2,500 ancient and 379 modern genomes. The study suggests that many people engaged in monogamy, and nearly one-quarter of the children lost at least one parent...

Phys.org reports that wheat for baking bread (Triticum aestivum) may have first been grown some 8,000 years ago in Georgia. Genetic studies of modern wheat plants and wild grasses indicate that domesticated wheat and wild goat grass were mixed in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Sea region. This hybrid plant eventually became bread wheat, explained Nana Rusishvili of the Georgia National Museum and her colleagues. They examined charred grains recovered from Gadachrili Gora and Shulaveris Gora, two Neolithic village sites in Georgia. Because charred grains of bread wheat look similar to durum wheat and other wheat seeds, the team...

The family of Freddy Ray Baca told authorities they "long feared what had happened to him,” although they never reported him missing. On Wednesday, those fears were confirmed. Remains found in 2023 “between two walls” in a building in Ruidoso Downs have been identified as Baca, who was 41 or 42 when he was last seen in 2018, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office announced in a news release. The sheriff’s office said the case is being investigated by the 12th Judicial District Major Crimes Unit. The release did not give a cause of death for Baca, and a call to...

Archeologists in Italy's Pompeii have for the first time used artificial intelligence to reconstruct the appearance of one of the victims of the volcanic eruption that destroyed the ancient Roman city nearly 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists use AI to generate image of Pompeii victim | 0:59 Reuters | 4.18M subscribers | 12,415 views | April 27, 2026

We Might Be Wrong About Humanity's Near Extinction | 34:00 New Scientist | 484K subscribers | 330,045 views | April 8, 2026

the B’nei Menashe can be found in a far corner of India,.. For generations, they have been teaching their children how their ancestors wandered to find refuge in the jungle. “We have faith in the Torah,” said Mr. Ngamthenlal, his face framed by the sidelocks worn by some Orthodox Jewish men. An aliyah, or homecoming, is finally in their sights. “We have good faith in the Israeli government. They promised that all the B'nei Menashe will go to Israel by 2030,” he said. “We all have our passports ready.” Nearly half the community has already moved to Israel, piecemeal, since...

LONDON: More than 2,000 years after they first claimed to have set foot in India, the mystery of the world's most obscure Jewish community - the Marathi-speaking Bene Israel - may finally have been solved with genetic carbon-dating revealing they carry the unusual Moses gene that would make them, literally, the original children of Israel. Four years of DNA tests on the 4,000-strong Bene Israel, now mainly based in Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Ahmedabad, indicates they are probable descendants of a small group of hereditary Israelite priests or Cohanim, according to new results exclusively made available to the Sunday Times...

Ibiza became part of the Islamic world in the year 902, when it was conquered by the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba. Settlement followed rapidly, taking place within little more than a generation, and by the twelfth century the island had developed into a modest but active urban centre within al-Andalus.Positioned along key maritime routes, Ibiza was not an isolated outpost but part of a dynamic network linking Iberia, North Africa, and the wider Mediterranean. This broader context helps explain the striking diversity uncovered in the new study, published in Nature Communications.The research team analysed 13 individuals buried between the tenth...

According to a statement released by the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies, genetic material from Streptococcus pyogenes, the bacterium that causes throat infections, scarlet fever, and toxic shock syndrome, has been detected in a 700-year-old tooth in the collection of Bolivia's National Museum of Archaeology. It had been previously thought that the bacterium arrived in South America with Europeans. "We weren't looking for this pathogen specifically," said Frank Maizner of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies. The tooth came from the skull of a young man who lived between A.D. 1100 and 1450 in the arid Bolivian highlands....

We’ve discussed many times the fact that humans and Neanderthals are so similar that Neanderthals provide no evidence we are closely related to some type of primitive non-human hominid. Now, a new pre-publication paper reviewed by New Scientist provides more evidence for this, proposing the radical hypothesis that Neanderthals are not only closely related to humans — they are descended from us!Michael Marshall asks, “Are Neanderthals descendants of modern humans?” He writes:Among the many other human species that once inhabited Earth, the Neanderthals are the most famous. They lived until relatively recently and in many ways, they were like us.Just...

Arizona’s Family has learned new information about the life an Arizona woman had after she allegedly killed her baby 45 years ago in North Dakota. Investigators said Nancy Trottier, 65, lived a life of serving the disabled following the alleged crime. She had no criminal history when she was arrested in Arizona last week and is charged with murder. For 41 years, Trottier was a teacher at the North Dakota School for the Deaf. She is a mother of four who has dedicated her life to teaching children with disabilities. The baby, whom police named Rebecca, was discovered in the...