ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Centuries-old DNA helps identify origins of slave skeletons found in Caribbean Posted: 09 Mar 2015 12:55 PM PDT Researchers have extracted and sequenced tiny bits of DNA remaining in the teeth of 300-year-old skeletons in the Caribbean. From this data, they were able to determine where in Africa the individuals likely lived before they were captured and enslaved.

Amid chaos of Libya, newly unearthed fossils give clues to our own evolution Posted: 09 Mar 2015 10:51 AM PDT A discovery of mammal fossils uncovered in the Zallah Oasis in the Sirt Basin of central Libya date back to the early Oligocene, between about 30 and 31 million years ago. Working in the Zallah Oasis in Libya's Sirt Basin -- an area that has "sporadically" produced fossil vertebrates since the 1960s -- the team discovered a highly diverse and unique group of fossil mammals dating to the Oligocene, the final epoch of the Paleogene period, a time marked by a broad diversity of animals that would seem strange to us today, but also development of species critical to human evolution.

Earth's climate is starting to change faster, new research shows Posted: 09 Mar 2015 10:46 AM PDT Earth is now entering a period of changing climate that will likely be faster than what's occurred naturally over the last thousand years, according to a new article, committing people to live through and adapt to a warming world.

Ancient fossils reveal diversity in the body structure of human ancestors Posted: 09 Mar 2015 09:42 AM PDT Recently released research on human evolution has revealed that species of early human ancestors had significant differences in facial features. Now, scientists have found that these early human species also differed throughout other parts of their skeletons and had distinct body forms. The research team found 1.9 million-year-old pelvis and femur fossils of an early human ancestor in Kenya, revealing greater diversity in the human family tree than scientists previously thought.

Saving Chilean mummies from climate change Posted: 09 Mar 2015 06:32 AM PDT At least two thousand years before the ancient Egyptians began mummifying their pharaohs, a hunter-gatherer people called the Chinchorro living along the coast of modern-day Chile and Peru developed elaborate methods to mummify not just elites but all types of community members--men, women, children, and even unborn fetuses. Radiocarbon dating as far back as 5050 BC makes them the world's oldest human-made mummies.

Are you a descendant of Genghis Khan? Millions of modern men descendants of 11 Asian dynastic leaders Posted: 09 Mar 2015 05:29 AM PDT Millions of modern Asian men are descended from 11 powerful dynastic leaders who lived up to 4,000 years ago -- including Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan, according to a new study. Researchers examined the male-specific Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son, in more than 5,000 Asian men belonging to 127 populations.

Early herders' grassy route through Africa: Old teeth show Lake Victoria wasn't tsetse fly habitat Posted: 09 Mar 2015 05:26 AM PDT A new study of nearly 2,000-year-old livestock teeth show that early herders from northern Africa could have traveled past Kenya's Lake Victoria on their way to southern Africa because the area was grassy -- not tsetse fly-infested bushland, as previously believed.