u/ADragonFromTheAbyss

In a cave in southern Italy in 1963, archaeologists found two skeletons buried in an embrace 12,000 years earlier, one of them long assumed to be male — ancient DNA from their bones revealed in 2026 that both were female and related, and that the younger carried the same rare growth-disorder mutation still seen in children today.

A 12,000-year-old embrace long misread as a man and woman tells a different story: genetic analysis reveals two women, one living with a rare inherited disorder that still affects families today.

For more than 30 years, animal remains discovered during excavations at Ferriter's Cove, a small bay on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, and dated to the end of the Mesolithic period (8000–4000 BC) have been cited as proof that, before agriculture became established in Ireland, there was contact between its Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Europe's Neolithic farming communities.

Believed to be bone fragments belonging to cattle, the find is considered the earliest evidence for the presence of domesticated farm animals on the islands of Ireland and Britain.

Now, UCD researchers have shown the famous bones were never cattle at all but belonged to a bear and wild boar.

Neanderthals may have trekked deep into the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula around 55,000 years ago, a new study of stone tools suggests.

The study focused on stone tools discovered at Jebel Katefeh-1 (JKF-1), an archaeological site beside an ancient lake near the city of Jubbah, in Saudi Arabia's Nefud Desert (also spelled Nafud or An Nafūd). No Neanderthal bones have ever been found in Arabia, so researchers wondered who was making tools there

A squid pulled from a sperm whale's stomach during an Antarctic whaling expedition in 1955–56 sat overlooked in scientific collections for nearly 70 years. Until researchers realised it wasn't just a new species, but an entirely new family of Large Oceanic Squid -- no one knew existed.

A squid preserved since the 1955–56 whaling season has been recognised as Mobydickia poseidonii, the only known member of a newly described oceanic squid family.

Study: https://fr.pensoft.net/article/192319/list/8

The study of penguin fossils, conducted by researchers from China University of Geosciences in Beijing, has revealed how ancient bones can offer a glimpse into climate change from millions of years ago.

The penguin fossils, found on Seymour Island (located around the tip of Graham Land on the Antarctic Peninsula), date back to the Eocene epoch, which spanned approximately 34-56 million years ago. 

Seymour Island provides insight into a significant chapter of Earth’s history of climate change.

As the island’s rock layers stack up in a mostly unbroken sequence, they offer a unique look into major geodynamic changes, including the initial growth of the Antarctic ice sheet and the opening of Drake Passage.

REANIMAL DLC OST - Opening Cutscene (Custom Mix)

A small church discovered beneath a larger one may have hosted one of the most important meetings in the history of Christianity, but some scholars not involved with the excavation disagree

New research suggests that no matter what we eventually determine the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees to be, we'll learn it was a primate that climbed trees.

Researchers observed and confirmed with measurements that wild sooty mangabey monkeys in an Ivory Coast forest display foot bone flexibility that facilitates vertical climbing up skinny tree trunks to hide, forage or sleep.

Study: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2608183123

Unseasonably warm weather that rapidly melts snowpack is becoming more widespread in the U.S. West and happening earlier in the year.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeb3361

LaPlante was part of a recent study, published in the journal Science Advances, that attempted, for the first time, to identify what conditions exactly make for a “snow eater.”

Compared to normal warm spells or heat waves, the researchers determined that these events happen when temperatures stay above freezing through both day and night for multiple days, typically three to five.

These events can roughly double the rate at which snow melts, causing flooding and making it challenging to manage water resources.

“Snow eaters” appear to be occurring earlier in the year and becoming more widespread in the Western United States as the climate warms.

Since the 1850s, the study found, the area affected by snow eaters has increased by an average of about 40,000 square miles per century, and the first snow eater of the season has been arriving about one month earlier per century.

Antarctica is 600 miles (about 1,000 kilometers) from any major city, almost entirely uninhabited, and surrounded by a cold and inhospitable ocean. It might seem like the last place to expect anthropogenic pollution.

But the continent’s freezing temperatures trap airborne and marine pollutants, a situation that has historically made it a sink for contaminants such as mercury, a heavy metal that can harm human and wildlife health.

According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, mercury is accumulating in Antarctica much faster thanks to increasing anthropogenic mercury emissions.

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2613472123

In 1911, a US professor claimed he had discovered the ancient mountain stronghold of the last Incan king deep in the Peruvian Andes. Yet 53 years later, another explorer proved he was mistaken – and shortly afterwards, a BBC crew followed his trail...

"No one now disputes that this was the site of ancient Vilcabamba." So wrote the Yale academic who brought the Peruvian ruins of Machu Picchu to global attention in 1911.

Hiram Bingham III was recruited by locals to look for a lost Incan city fabled for its hidden treasures – and he firmly believed that's what he had found.

Yet 50 years later, Bingham's conviction was challenged by another US explorer nicknamed "the real Indiana Jones".

In August 1964, Gene Savoy claimed to have found the same lost city – around 60km (37 miles) northwest of Machu Picchu.

He believed his expedition had identified the mountain stronghold of the last Incan king at Espíritu Pampa (the "Plain of the Spirits" or Vilcabamba), a set of ruins in remote cloud forests, high above a tributary of the Amazon.

A repeatedly heated patch of clay, fire-damaged tools and locally rare pyrite form the earliest convincing archaeological case for deliberate fire-making, although no human remains identify the makers directly

Nearly 50 years after launch, NASA has found a clever way to stretch Voyager 2’s fading power supply and buy its science mission at least another year.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found a way to reduce Voyager 2’s power use, giving the historic spacecraft more time to continue collecting scientific data.

The operation, nicknamed the “Big Bang,” required the team to shut down certain powered devices at the same time and replace them with alternatives that require less electricity. Engineers also had to make sure Voyager 2 would remain warm enough for its systems to keep functioning !

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260810015703.htm

The Black-Naped Pheasant-Pigeon Was Rediscovered

Fergusson Island had been keeping a secret for decades. The Papua New Guinea island, of just over 500 square miles, was keeping an elusive bird both hidden and protected. Spotted only a few times by indigenous hunters on the island, with the last sightings in the 1990s, the black-naped pheasant-pigeon was believed to be extinct.

This all changed when an expedition in 2022 proved the bird was still alive and well.