Dinosaur feather evolution trapped in Canadian amber. Library of alexandria. Dino-era Mammal the "Jurassic Mother" of Us All? A tiny, shrew-like creature of the dinosaur era might have been, in a sense, the mother of us all. Named the "Jurassic mother from China" (Juramaia sinensis), the newfound fossil species is the earliest known ancestor of placental mammals—animals, such as humans, that give birth to relatively mature, live young—according to a new study.
The 160-million-year-old specimen pushes back fossil evidence for the evolutionary split between the placental and marsupial lineages by 35 million years. Although it's unclear if the creature is a direct ancestor of modern placentals, it's "either a great grand-aunt or a great grandmother," the study authors say.
Placentals—including creatures from mice to whales—are all that remain of the so-called eutherian mammals, of which J. sinensis is the oldest known specimen. The first eutherians evolved from the ancestors of marsupials, which have pouches and give birth to comparatively immature offspring. Lucky Breaks for Placentals and Marsupials. Homo Erectus travelled the high seas. Early manlike creatures may have been smarter than we think. Recent archaeological finds from the Mediterranean show that human ancestors traveled the high seas. A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago.
That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought. Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there. The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. The tools are very different from any others found on Crete, Strasser said. Initially the team didn't have any way to date the tools. That's where NCSU geologist Karl Wegmann came in.
The lower terraces are the easiest to date. Dating by terraces. Human rights & democracy statistics. About this Video In this video, made for the Oslo freedom Forum 2009, Hans Rosling discuss the difficulty in measuring progress in Human Rights in the form of comparable numerical statistics. He also shows the surprisingly weak correlation between existing estimates for democracy and socio-economic progress. The reason may be that democracy and human rights measurements are badly done. It may also be that democracy and human rights are dimensions of development that are in themselves difficult to assign numerical values. But it also seems as much improvement in health, economy and education can be achieved with modest degrees of human rights and democracy. Related content Democracy and GDP per capita in Gapminder World Links: Egypt's 'Indiana Jones' - antiquities minister Zahi Hawass - sacked.
Critics say Zahi Hawass, centre, is a publicity seeker. Source: AFP EGYPT'S antiquities minister, whose Indiana Jones hat made him the world's best-known Egyptologist, has been fired after months of pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of having been too close to the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak. Zahi Hawass, long chided as publicity-loving and short on science, lost his job along with about a dozen other ministers in a cabinet reshuffle to appease protesters seeking to purge remnants of Mr Mubarak's regime.
"He was the Mubarak of antiquities," said Nora Shalaby, an activist and archeologist. "He acted as if he owned Egypt's antiquities, and not that they belonged to the people of Egypt. " Despite the criticism, he was credited with helping boost interest in archeology in Egypt and tourism, a pillar of the country's economy. But after Mr Mubarak's ouster on February 11 in a popular uprising, pressure began to build for him to step down. Roman-era shipwreck reveals ancient medical secrets. India: Treasure unearthed in Kerala temple. 1 July 2011Last updated at 18:03 By Ashraf Padanna Trivandrum The temple was built in the 16th Century by the kings of Travancore Treasure, thought to be worth billions of rupees, has been unearthed from secret underground chambers in a temple in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Precious stones, gold and silver are among valuables found at Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple. The riches are thought to have been languishing in the temple vaults for more than a century, interred by the Maharajahs of Travancore over time.
They have not been officially valued and inspectors are taking an inventory. Inspectors say they will continue cataloguing the treasure for at least one more week. Unofficial estimates say that the treasure discovered so far over four days of inspections may be valued at more than 25 billion rupees ($500m). Concealed riches The Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple was built in the 16th Century by the kings who ruled over the then kingdom of Travancore. Royal wealth? Ancient Assyrian Dictionary Completed by University of Chicago Scholars. The word “ardu,” for slave, introduces extensive material available on slavery in the culture. And it may or may not reflect on the society that one of its more versatile verbs was “kalu,” which in different contexts can mean detain, delay, hold back, keep in custody, interrupt and so forth. The word “di nu,” like “case” in English, Dr. Cooper pointed out, can refer to a legal case or lawsuit, a verdict or judgment, or to law in general.
“Every term, every word becomes a window into the culture,” Martha T. Roth, dean of humanities at Chicago who has worked on the project since 1979 and has been its editor in charge since 1996, said last week. Even a dead language can prompt lively debate, as Matthew W. Stolper, a Chicago professor long involved in the project, once wrote. Dr. So why did the project take so long to complete? At the start, Dr. After World War II, the project was reorganized and the pace picked up; the first volume was published in 1956. Tunnel found under temple in Mexico. Researchers found a tunnel under the Temple of the Snake in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan, about 28 miles northeast of Mexico City. The tunnel had apparently been sealed off around 1,800 years ago. Researchers of Mexico's National University made the finding with a radar device.
Closer study revealed a "representation of the underworld," in the words of archaeologist Sergio Gomez Chavez, of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History. Experts found "a route of symbols, whose conclusion appears to lie in the funeral chambers at the end of the tunnel. " The structure is 15 yards beneath the ground, and it runs eastwards. "At the end, there are several chambers which could hold the remains of the rulers of that Mesoamerican civilization. Teotihuacan, with its huge pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, its palaces, temples, homes, workshops, markets and avenues, is the largest pre-Hispanic city in Mesoamerica.
Explore further: T. rex gets new home in Smithsonian dinosaur hall. Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images. Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt. More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings. Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.
The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak. She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found. "We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. "To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," she said. The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface. Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface. And she believes there are more antiquities to be discovered:
Secret History -- Sott.net. © Karen L. King 2012Gospel of Jesus' Wife: front. The Gospel of Jesus' Wife, a papyrus fragment of Coptic script containing a suggestion that Jesus may have been married, is an ancient document, and not a modern forgery, says a paper published in the Harvard Theological Review on Tuesday.
Tests by teams of engineering, biology, and chemistry professors from Columbia University, Harvard University, and MIT indicate the papyrus dates to between the sixth and ninth centuries, and possibly as far back as the second to fourth centuries. The brownish-yellow, tattered fragment, about 1 1/2 inches by 3 inches, caused international uproar when it was presented at a conference in Rome in September 2012 by Harvard Professor Karen L. King. Written in Coptic, a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, the fragment appears to be a broken conversation between Jesus and his disciples.
"She will be able to be my disciple," said the next line. When We Tested Nuclear Bombs -- Earth Changes. Since the time of Trinity -- the first nuclear explosion in 1945 -- nearly 2,000 nuclear tests have been performed, with the majority taking place during the 1960s and 1970s. When the technology was new, tests were frequent and often spectacular, and led to the development of newer, more deadly weapons. But starting in the 1990s, there have been efforts to limit the future testing of nuclear weapons, including a U.S. moratorium and a U.N. comprehensive test ban treaty.
As a result, testing has slowed -- though not halted -- and there are questions about the future. Who will take over for those experienced engineers who are now near retirement, and should we act as stewards with our enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons? Gathered here are images from the first 30 years of nuclear testing. See also "Can We Unlearn the Bomb? " © US DODA fireball begins to rise, and the world's first atomic mushroom cloud begins to form, nine seconds after Trinity detonated on July 16, 1945.