Free Republic

The Pleistocene-Holocene transition is a very significant period of time, because it marks what I believe is the true foundartions for the origins of civilisation, when we see the first permanent settlements in the Fertile Crescent followed by the onset of agriculture, and from then on humanity has developed exponentially.From an archaeological point of view, it’s truly a fascinating time period, with so many incredible sites discovered in the past century, from Ancient Jericho in the West Bank, to Mureybet and Tell Qaramel in Syria, and Kortik Tepe, Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in Turkey.The foundations of these sites were...

Evidence continues to mount that Neanderthals were a much more intelligent species than scientists originally suspected. Popular Science reports that archaeologists uncovered a remarkable, multifunctional tool from Belgium's Scladina Cave. The utensil was fashioned from the tibia of an extinct cave lion 130,000 years ago and had four different functional components. Researchers believe that it may have originally been created for use in tasks such as chiseling, but as some of the points wore down, they were reshaped and repurposed for other jobs, such as sharpening and retouching flints. According to the report, the team stated that "the intentional transformation...

Palaeontologists excavating a dump outside Barcelona have found a skull dating back 14m years that could belong to a common ancestor of apes and humans. The nearly intact skull, which has a flat face, jaw and teeth, may belong to a previously unknown species of great ape, said Salvador Moya, the chief palaeontologist on the dig. "We could find a cradle of humanity in the Mediterranean," he said. A routine land survey for a planned expansion of the Can Mata dump in Els Hostalets de Pierola turned up the first surprise in 2002: a primate's tooth. Since then, scientists from...

Archaeologists working at the Magna Roman Fort in northern England have made a series of huge discoveries, in the very literal sense. Recent excavations at the ancient Roman fortification have unearthed several examples of gigantic shoes, with one representing what could be among the largest examples of historic footwear ever found. The unusual discoveries are offering researchers fresh new insights into the diversity of the people who worked along Hadrian’s Wall close to 2,000 years ago. A Gigantic Discovery The discoveries are among the latest that have made their way into the Vindolanda Charitable Trust’s remarkable collection, with similar examples...

Ancient humans were building large wooden structures -- possibly houses -- almost half a million years ago. The discovery, the earliest evidence of wooden construction, suggests that some ancient communities were far less nomadic than we have assumed...One of the first artefacts they found was a wooden tool, probably a digging stick. "The number of sites where wood is preserved is small," says researcher Geoff Duller at Aberystwyth University, UK......a 1.4-metre-long log overlying an even larger log that was too big to fully excavate during their month-long project. They saw that the overlying log had been worked with tools to...

According to a statement released by The Australian National University (ANU), researchers have identified the earliest known evidence of rice in the Pacific Islands. Rice was originally domesticated in central China 9,000 years ago, but it took thousands of years for it to reach the Marianas Island in western Micronesia. Phytolith analysis of microscopic plant debris found on pottery from the Ritidian Beach Cave in northern Guam indicated that rice arrived there at least 3,500 years ago. Previously, the earliest known evidence of rice in the remote Pacific dated to between 1,000 and 700 years ago, so this discovery pushes...

The southern coast of the French region of Brittany is home to one of Europe's highest concentrations of mysterious megalithic standing stones. More than 10,000 are strewn around a six-mile stretch in the Carnac region, from La Trinité-sur-Mer to Erdeven. Unlike other megalithic monuments, such as Stonehenge, these do not typically form a circle, but are linear or curvilinear in nature. In the past, it has been difficult for archaeologists to accurately ascertain their age. According to a statement released by the University of Gothenburg, new research suggests that that not only are they even older than expected, but they...

The world's oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth's tusk with an astonishing level of skill.Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual....new, more reliable radiocarbon...

Fossils from China's Turpan-Hami Basin reveal it was a rare land refuge during the end-Permian extinction, with fast ecosystem recovery driven by stable climate conditions.A new study has found that a region in China's Turpan-Hami Basin acted as a refugium, or "life oasis", for terrestrial plants during the end-Permian mass extinction, the most severe biodiversity crisis since the Cambrian period.Published in Science Advances, the research challenges the common belief that land-based ecosystems were as heavily impacted as marine environments during this extinction event.The team's findings suggest that some land areas were shielded from the worst effects of the extinction, creating...

Scientists discovered a 480-million-year-old phosphatic sponge in South China, making it the oldest known stromatoporoid and extending its fossil record by 20 million years.International scientists have discovered the oldest known phosphatic stromatoporoid sponge in South China, dating back approximately 480 million years to the Early Ordovician period.Stromatoporoid sponges were major reef builders during the Paleozoic era, playing a foundational role in forming reef structures—much like modern corals do today. Their significance peaked from the late Middle Ordovician to the Devonian period, a time when reef ecosystems transitioned from being dominated by microbial communities to those built primarily by skeletal organisms.Until...

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have analyzed the soft tissue of a fossilized plesiosaur for the first time, revealing that the long-necked marine reptile had both smooth and scaly skin. This combination likely helped it swim efficiently while also allowing movement along rough seabeds.Plesiosaurs inhabited the world's oceans throughout much of the Mesozoic Era (203–66 million years ago). These reptiles, which could grow up to 12 meters long, fed primarily on fish and propelled themselves using four paddle-like flippers, similar to sea turtles. Until now, little has been known about their external anatomy...However, in a new study published in...

Six images of galaxies taken from nearly 800,000, from upper left to lower right: the present-day universe, and 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10 billion years ago. Credit: M. Franco / C. Casey / COSMOS-Web collaboration ************************************************************ A new cosmic deep field map from the COSMOS collaboration, powered by the James Webb Space Telescope, is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about the early universe. Spanning nearly the full history of cosmic time and featuring nearly 800,000 galaxies, the data shows a universe forming stars and supermassive black holes far earlier—and in greater numbers—than previously predicted. This unprecedented scope offers...

Are ancient alien theories pure fantasy or a lost truth? From pyramids to myths, history is full of mysteries that defy explanation. Could we have had a little extraterrestrial help? The 'Ancient Aliens' Idea is More Realistic Than You'd Expect... | 11:49 Sideprojects | 1.21M subscribers | 832,868 views | January 31, 2025

Mammaliaforms encompass both living and extinct species that share a close relationship with mammals. Research on mammaliaforms aids scientists in deciphering the evolutionary developments responsible for various mammalian features.In two consecutive studies in Nature, Dr. Mao Fangyuan and Dr. Zhang Chi from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with colleagues from Australia and the United States, recently reported two Jurassic mammaliaforms from China, revealing the earliest dental diversification, mandibular middle ears, and articular-quadrate joint transformation of mammaliaforms.The studies provide key information about the evolutionary shift from reptilian jaw bones to early...

There is no single answer to this puzzle. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for around 179 million years and during that time, evolved into an enormous array of different shapes and sizes. Some were tiny, like the diminutive Albinykus, which weighed under a kilogram (2.2lbs) and was probably less than 2ft (60cm) long. Others were among the biggest animals to have ever lived on land, such as the titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum, which may have weighed up to 72 tonnes. They ran on two legs, or plodded on four. And along with these diverse body shapes, they would have produced an equally...

Fossilized bone fragments unearthed in a cave in northern Spain in 2022 have revealed a previously unknown human population that lived more than 1.1 million years ago, according to new research.Found at the Sima del Elefante site in the Atapuerca Mountains, the fossils make up a partial skull comprised of the left side of the face of an adult hominin. The mineralized bones are the earliest human fossil remains found so far in Western Europe.However, it wasn't immediately obvious which species of prehistoric human the team had found, and the study describing the fossils, published Wednesday in the journal Nature,...

Approximately 14,000 years ago, the unprecedented solar event—now judged to be the most powerful known to have occurred—marked Earth’s transition into the Holocene epoch, according to the findings of an international team of scientists. The team traces the event to around 12,350 BC using a new climate-chemistry model specifically designed to reconstruct ancient solar particle activity. This expands the known timeline for ancient solar storms and raises the bar on the upper boundaries of their intensity. Although the event in question was already known from past observations of radiocarbon spikes in ancient wood samples, its scale and magnitude remained unknown....

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Recreating the spectacular pose many dinosaurs adopted in death might involve following the simplest of instructions: just add water. When palaeontologists are lucky enough to find a complete dinosaur skeleton – whether it be a tiny Sinosauropteryx or an enormous Apatosaurus – there's a good chance it will be found with its head thrown backwards and its tail arched upwards – technically known as the opisthotonic death pose. No one is entirely sure why this posture is so common, but Alicia Cutler and colleagues from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, think it all comes down to a dip in...

Some of the largest animals to ever walk on Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods—and the most famous of these giants is probably Brontosaurus, the "thunder lizard." Deeply rooted as this titan is in the popular imagination, however, for more than a century scientists thought it never existed. The first of the Brontosaurus genus was named in 1879 by famed paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. The specimen still stands on display in the Great Hall of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. In 1903, however, paleontologist Elmer Riggs found that Brontosaurus was apparently the same as the...