When the solar system was first organizing itself, a disk of gas and dust took shape around the sun’s central mass. It eventually sorted itself into the system of planets we see today. But there are things we don’t know about how that happened. One observation that has been challenging …
Read More »Martian Jezero Crater
Planetary scientists have analyzed images taken by the Mastcam-Z camera and the Remote Micro-Imager of the SuperCam instrument on NASA’s Perseverance rover — which landed in Jezero crater in February 2021 — in the three months after landing. The images show the geologic layers of an ancient river delta, which …
Read More »Rhinoceros Family
Researhers have sequenced the genomes of two living and three extinct rhinoceros species and compared them to existing data from the remaining three living species and a range of outgroups. A paleoartist’s reconstruction of the three extinct species whose genomes were sequenced by Liu et al.: in the foreground …
Read More »Ancient Martian Life
Along with analyzing rocks using X-rays and ultraviolet light, NASA’s Perseverance rover will zoom in for close-ups of rock surfaces that might show evidence of past microbial activity in Jezero Crater, the landing site of the Mars rover. This image was taken by the WATSON camera on the robotic arm …
Read More »Ancient Woodlice
Paleontologists have performed a complete re-analysis of Oxyuropoda ligioides, a land-based peracarid crustacean first reported in 1908 from the Late Devonian floodplains of Ireland and left with unresolved systematic affinities despite a century of attempts at identification. Oxyuropoda ligioides in its 365-million-year-old continental environment (Kiltorcan, Kilkenny, Ireland). Image credit: Diane …
Read More »New Ancient Caiman
A new genus and species of caimanine alligatorid being named Chinatichampsus wilsonorum has been discovered by a team of paleontologists from Virginia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Iowa. Holotype of Chinatichampsus wilsonorum: (A) cranium in dorsal view; (B) interpretive line drawing; gray areas indicate …
Read More »Ancient Maya Flasks
A team of archaeologists from the United States and Mexico have detected mixtures of tobacco and a non-tobacco plant called the Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from a collection of 14 pre-Columbian Maya bottle-shaped containers known as flasks. The discovery paints a clearer picture of ancient Maya drug …
Read More »Ancient Corn Domestication
The domestication of corn (Zea mays ssp. mays), a global food staple with great economic and cultural importance, began in southwestern Mexico 9,000 years ago and humans dispersed this important grain to South America by at least 7,000 years ago as a partial domesticate. South America served as a secondary …
Read More »Ancient Villages In Amazonia
Using a helicopter-based lidar mapping tool, an international team of scientists led by University of Exeter archaeologists has discovered a network of mound villages in the south-eastern portion of Acre State, Brazil, dating back to 1300-1700 CE. Detail of a circular mound village called Dona Maria with ‘twin’ village. Image …
Read More »Megafloods On Mars
Mars is a mostly dry, dusty planet these days, but the more we study it, the more we learn about its watery past. Very watery, it would seem. New findings from the Curiosity rover point to megafloods in the planet’s past. NASA couldn’t see the evidence of this event …
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