Curtin University researcher Kit Prendergast has named the new bee species Leioproctus zephyr, after her pet dog Zephyr after noticing a protruding part of the bee’s face looked similar to a dog’s snout. Leioproctus zephyr. Image credit: Kit Prendergast. The newly-described bee species belongs to Leioproctus, a species-rich genus in …
Read More »Ancient Native Americans
An international team of archaeologists has excavated and examined 8,000-year-old projectile points (spear- and arrowheads) at two sites in Yemen and Oman. They’ve found that ancient Arabians independently invented a process to create distinctive projectile points — called fluting — that was first used by Native Americans about 5,000 years …
Read More »A Non-Tobacco Plant
Archaeologists Find Traces of Non-Tobacco Plant in Pre-Columbian Native American Pipe The 1,430-year-old basalt pipe from central Washington State, the United States, not only contained nicotine, but also had strong evidence for the smoking of the Indian tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis) and the smooth sumac (Rhus glabra). Until now, the use …
Read More »Skype begins testing an all-in-one app on Android offering native phone calls, SMS support & more
A new Skype application dubbed “Skype Mingo” has been spotted in the wild, offering Android users the ability to use Skype as the native calling app and contacts manager for their smartphone, while still being able to take advantage of Skype features like chat, file and photo sharing, video calls, and …
Read More »Turkeys Were Part of Native American Life Centuries before First Thanksgiving
According to a new study by Florida State University researchers, Native Americans were keeping eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) as early as 1200 – 1400 CE. A wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo). Image credit: Vince Pahkala / CC BY-SA 3.0. Researchers knew that turkeys had been a part of Native …
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