ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Discovery demystifies origin of life phenomenon Posted: 11 Mar 2015 03:58 PM PDT Biomolecules, if large enough (several nanometers) and with an electrical charge, will seek their own type with which to form large assemblies. This is essentially 'self-recognition' of left-handed and right-handed molecule pairs.

Fossil skull sheds new light on transition from water to land Posted: 11 Mar 2015 01:04 PM PDT The first 3-D reconstruction of the skull of a 360-million-year-old near-ancestor of land vertebrates has been created. The 3-D skull, which differs from earlier 2-D reconstructions, suggests such creatures, which lived their lives primarily in shallow water environments, were more like modern crocodiles than previously thought.

Did Neandertals make jewelry 130,000 years go? Eagle claws provide clues Posted: 11 Mar 2015 01:04 PM PDT Krapina Neandertals may have manipulated white-tailed eagle talons to make jewelry 130,000 years ago, before the appearance of modern humans in Europe.

Scientists reconstruct evolutionary history of whale hearing with rare museum collection Posted: 11 Mar 2015 01:03 PM PDT Scientists CT scanned fetal whale specimens from the museum's marine mammal collection to trace the development of fetal ear bones in 56 specimens from 10 different whale families. Their findings confirmed that changes in the development of ear bones in the womb paralleled changes observed throughout whale evolution, providing new insight about how whales made the dramatic evolutionary shift from land to sea and adapted to hearing underwater.

Saharan 'carpet of tools' is earliest known human-made landscape Posted: 11 Mar 2015 01:02 PM PDT A new intensive survey of the Messak Settafet escarpment, a massive outcrop of sandstone in the middle of the Saharan desert, has shown that stone tools occur "ubiquitously" across the entire landscape: averaging 75 artefacts per square meter, or 75 million per square kilometer.

For 80 Years, Ancient Gold Treasure Rested Undisturbed Posted: 11 Mar 2015 09:41 AM PDT A collection of ancient Greek and Roman coins includes an incredibly rare aureus of the Roman emperor Otho, who reigned for a mere three months. The Greek coins were struck by some of the most powerful city-states and rulers of the ancient world, such as Athens, Corinth and Alexander the Great.

Asian Monsoon rains drove mammal evolution Posted: 11 Mar 2015 05:15 AM PDT New research has shown that the Asian monsoon rains played a key role in the evolution of mammals.