The largest flying animal in the world, Quetzalcoatlus, has a wingspan of up to 52 feet (15.9 m)

The climate was warmer during the Late Cretaceous period, about 100 to 66 million years ago. All of the continents saw the emergence of several new species, including the enormous Quetzalcoatlus that inhabited North America.

The Quetzalcoatlus compared to a man, car, and pterodactyl. Source Pinterest

One of the biggest known flying animals ever, Quetzalcoatlus has a wingspan that can measure up to 15.9 m (52 ft). This enormous creature was given the name Quetzalcoatl in honor of the feathered serpent god of Mesoamerica, who was well-known there under various titles.

He was referred to as Kukulkan by the ancient Maya and Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs.

In the Maastrichtian Javelina Formation at Big Bend National Park in Texas, the United States, the first Quetzalcoatlus fossils were found in 1971 by Douglas A. Lawson. Later, Lawson found the partial skeletons of even smaller people at a different location.

It was how we discovered the existence of this enormous flying creature.

Despite not being a dinosaur, Quetzalcoatlus coexisted with them. The most well-known azhdarchid, or flying reptile, family member was Quetzalcoatlus.

"From earlier reptilian life forms, the pterosaurs and dinosaurs appear to have developed along different paths. It also becomes obvious that pterosaurs did not turn into birds.

The anatomy is similar to that of a wing in this sense. The fourth finger of each forelimb was noticeably longer in pterosaurs. It held up the leading edge of a membrane that reached all the way from the body's flank to the tip of the finger. The remaining fingers were little, reptilian, and ended in a pointed claw.

The main strut of a bird's wing is its second finger, and most of the wing is made up of feathers, according to Wann Langston.

Despite the fact that Quetzalcoatlus is frequently portrayed as having feathers, scientists believe it actually had pycnofibres instead of animal hair. Quetzalcoatlus was more than five meters (16.4 ft) tall, weighed 250 kilograms, and was as tall as a giraffe when it was standing on the ground.

As Quetzalcoatlus flew through the air, it was able to observe numerous other enormous species moving about our world. Then, everything came to an end since around three-quarters of Earth's plant and animal species became extinct 65 million years ago.

Because it happened at the transition between the Cretaceous (K) and Tertiary (T) periods, this event is known as the K-T mass extinction. The Quetzalcoatlus did not survive, and the dinosaurs were the most famous creatures to perish.

100 million-year-old marine reptile skeleton discovered - May 'unlock' prehistoric research

The skeleton of a giant 100-million-year-old marine reptile has been found in Australia, raising hopes for researchers to uncover important evidence of prehistoric life.

The remains of the 6m-tall young long-necked pleiosaur, also known as an elamsaurus, were found by amateur fossil hunters on a cattle station in Queensland last August.

The elasmosaurs, which were 8 to 10 meters long, lived in the Eromaga Sea, which covered large parts of the Australian inland with 50-meter-deep water about 150 million years ago.

Queensland Museum

Espen Knutsen, senior curator of palaeontology at the Queensland Museum, likened the discovery to that of the Rosetta Stone - it helped experts decipher the hieroglyphs.

"We have never found a body and a head, and this may be key to the future of research in the field," he said, adding that paleontologists may gain more substantial knowledge about the origin, evolution and ecology of the Cretaceous period in the region.

"Because the neck of pleiosaurs made up 2/3 of them, the head often separated from the body after they died, which made the discovery of an intact fossil very difficult."

Knutsen explained that when an elasmosaurus died, its decomposing body was inflated with gases that caused it to rise to the surface of the water. Often the head was broken off when the carcass fell prey to predators.

Queensland Museum

The specimen found is in good condition, however, and researchers will perform chemical tests on the teeth, which may provide information about the ecology of the environment it lived in, whether it had migrated during its lifetime, or whether it lived permanently in one place , but also for his diet.

Ancient marine reptiles such as pleiosaurs and ichthyosaurs are not classified as dinosaurs, even though they lived around the same time. Plesiosaurs were descendants of land-dwelling species and therefore lacked gills and had to occasionally surface for air. It remains unknown how long they could remain underwater.

The Evolution of Human Nutrition in Prehistory

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By Giorgio Pintzas Monzani

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By now we always think of food as creation, art, a mix of new ingredients, yet losing the primordial essence of it: surviving.

Man has been able to evolve, travel and discover, having mainly only one motive, nutrition, food.

Of course, the fact that man has not always been interested in gourmet preparations does not mean that they should be of little importance today, at all.

However, there are nuances of prehistoric and ancient nutrition that are still little known to most people today, despite the infinite number of commonalities with our tables today.

Let us start initially by looking at what exactly prehistory is, a detail that often eludes many.

With the Latin term prae-historia, we define all that long period of human existence where the discovery of writing had not yet been made.

The exact subdivision of prehistory is as follows:

●       Paleolithic, which lasted nearly 2 million years and ended about 12,000 years ago

●       Mesolithic, a period between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago

●       Neolithic, the last period of the Stone Age that ended about 4,000 years ago with the invention of writing

The thing that stands out is precisely the long periods of these eras: it may seem obvious but it's not at all, that humans spent more time in prehistory than in history, we were mostly illiterate, which gives a very good idea of how young our race is.

So we will see how starting in the Paleolithic period, man began over the millennia, to develop a more varied and complex diet than his ancestors, albeit at a much slower pace than we might think.

We will certainly not develop the topic solely in the classical scholastic manner, but will also look at dishes from the prehistoric diet that have a direct connection to our tables today.

The Paleolithic, the longest period of prehistory

Speaking of the Paleolithic we mean the longest historical period of prehistory, as well as of human existence.

From the first appearance of homo habilis until the end of the Paleolithic, human nutrition is very limited and characterized by few developments and changes:

Hunting, although considered to be the foundation of his diet, was a very often exhausting and disappointing practice, often dealing with very large prey, thus ending up feeding on carrion and insects, making the human an excellent opportunist rather than a skilled hunter.

In addition, gathering berries and wild fruits was the basis of one's diet, a practice, however, borne by women; in fact, it is thought that it was they who later led to the birth of agriculture: through the seeds that fell on the way back to the villages.

Fishing was also of great importance, but often left on the back burner, dealing with prey that could rarely feed entire groups and families.

The Mesolithic, the first glimmers of true food evolution

With the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, we see the transition from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic.

Major climate changes have disruptive effects on the planet's flora and fauna, making it impossible for humans to survive with pre-glaciation habits.

The scarcity of game and large prey prompts humans to embrace a sedentary lifestyle, and to a very different societal organization and their villages.

In fact, the first signs of prey-breeding practices begin, which are no longer killed, but caught and brought back to the villages, creating a kind of prolonged supply over time.

Not unimportant will be the invention of a weapon that will make herd hunting much easier: the bow.

Probably occurring around 6,000 B.C., it helped both in the search for livelihood and in the protection of villages.

The most significant discovery of the Mesolithic was the cultivation of cereals, in the area of the fertile crescent, Mesopotamia, some assume it was the production of wheat that eliminated the primordial need of the nomadic being.

We certainly cannot assume that the type of the first cereals grown had much in common with those consumed today, since over the centuries man modified the nature of cereals in order to make them more digestible to his organism.

Thanks to his own discoveries, the result of centuries of evolution, human beings went from being hunters and an "opportunistic animal" to a true breeder and farmer.

Neolithic, the pinnacle of development of the prehistoric period

Humans of the period by now have little or nothing in common with their Paleolithic ancestors: they created villages with more complex societal structures and more pronounced hierarchies than before; they also made family organization a priority by dividing even their members' possessions differently.

Inventions such as the wheel and the raft are the greatest technological developments of the period, and among the most significant of our existence.

During these millennia, sheep and cattle raising, and agriculture became the most important and widely used form of livelihood, thus decreasing dangerous practices such as hunting, while drastically increasing one's mortality rate.

In addition, man began to realize that having many children was not just a problem of mouths to feed, but a huge resource at the labor level.

Thus, a population increase never before took place, and thus the birth of large villages and much more populated establishments, the ancestors of cities.

But are there types of foods, whether simple nutritional habits or actual processed foods, that we still have, almost, directly in common with prehistoric humans today?

Yes.

So let us look at 3 examples of handed-down, and obviously modified, foods that have come down to us directly from remote periods in our history.

The consumption of insects, a lost custom

In today's Western culture, the consumption of insects, or derivatives of them, is a taboo.

A practice associated with poor quality food and poor hygienic conditions.

However, we forget to consider that this food was the basis of the prehistoric diet, especially of humans in the Paleolithic period: as mentioned earlier, the opportunistic instinct of humans, led them to eat larvae, grasshoppers and any other available and digestible insect.

It is therefore inferred how entomophagy (feeding on insects), is not a practice characteristic of peoples far from us, but present in the DNA of us all.

Obviously this practice was lost when diet and cuisine evolved?

Wrong, we do in fact have written evidence, including Aristotle's work "historia animalium," where the Greek philosopher spends time explaining to the reader the best methods of tasting various kinds of insects.

One example?

Aristotle declares that female larvae after copulation, are delicious, due to the sublime taste given by the eggs contained in it.

Polenta, an age-old dish, imprinted in our DNA

One may think that the oldest grain-based food is bread: however, we forget that in various Indo-European cultures, since ancient times, another cooked grain-based preparation, in the form of porridge, made its appearance.

Whether it was cooking on heated stones, or boiling in pouches from animal remains, human beings soon began eating doughs made from coarse flours and water.

In the case of cooking on hot stones, the first ancestors of bread were born, more specifically products similar to tortillas and Indian naan.

In the case of boiling, on the other hand, centuries before the appearance of terracotta, humans immersed red-hot stones inside containers of water in order to succeed in bringing products to a boil: in this case they added cereal flour to the water, which they cooked for a not-too-long time, until they obtained the first examples of polenta.

The Sumerians were among the first to prepare this dish, where, with flour made from grains such as millet and rye, they obtained a nutrient-rich mush with a huge energy intake.

It was certainly not the latter who extended it to other territories: the ease of its preparation and the need for only two ingredients meant that polenta played an important role for many peoples in different areas.

Nevertheless, it is important to note how it was the Greeks, in the centuries to come, who in turn made it a true substitute for bread and enriched the flavors through spices and savory sauces.

The name polenta came much later, with the Latin peoples: in fact, polenta comes from the word "puls," literally mush.

Jerky beef, not a modern invention

We all have a clear image of those huge shelves in supermarkets, with packages of jerky of all kinds and with all kinds of flavorings.

Well, what if I told you that this is not a product that is a child of modern drying techniques?

The need to obtain meat at times when hunting was difficult, for climatic reasons mainly, led many peoples of the earth to treat meat in a way that increased its durability.

Various archaeologists have found evidence of dried meat in various tombs in the area of ancient Egypt, dating as far back as 3,500 BCE.

Certainly the primordial methods did not always have the effectiveness of today's drying, in fact often the process to which meat was subjected was salting, despite this we see how a food on our shelves today, has roots far back.

Author:

Giorgio Pintzas Monzani is a Greek-Italian chef, writer and consultant who lives in Milan. His Instagram page can be found here.

Trapped 70,000-year-old artefact reveals hidden information about early humans

This new study demonstrates how the creative use of unconventional research methods turned an unfortunate archaeological sampling event into a scientific success story.

However, this scientific adventure was not a straightforward triumph.

Slicing history to pieces

A feeling of disbelief, and a rush of adrenalin ran through Magnus Haaland as he realised what had just happened. He was working on a preserved block of sediment collected during field work in South Africa. As he was slicing it up, he realised that he had cut through a large piece of ochre which had been accidentally trapped in his micromorphological block of sediment.

The block he was working on had been collected in Blombos Cave, in South Africa, also known as the cradle of human culture. This meant that the artefact, which he had just destroyed, could potentially be packed with important information about our ancestors who once lived in this cave 100,000 years ago.

BLOCK OF SEDIMENT: Magnus Haaland taking a block section from a profile at Blombos Cave.

(Photo: Ole Fredrik Unhammer)

Piecing back the story

Overwhelmed by what had just happened, Magnus decided he needed a drink and went to the local bar.

At the local pub he met his colleague André Strauss, specialised in using Micro CT scanning for reconstructing an otherwise destroyed material. Andre suggested that Magnus should look into Micro CT scanning with him. In addition, Magnus decided to contact Elizabeth Velliky – who he knew specialises in prehistoric ochre use. Maybe she knew about ways to find out if the ochre pieces were used by humans. She immediately was interested.

"The tricky part was that we only had one thin slice of this piece, so any marks that we see might either be from humans or natural causes. Without having the entire piece to look at, it was a real challenge! Thankfully he had several thin sections made from it, imagine taking a few slices from a loaf of bread, so we could piece together the story when we combined all those sections together," Velliky explains.

TRAPPED OCHRE: The large ochre piece cut into fragments in an impregnated block section.

(Photo: Magnus M. Haaland)

Creating new research avenues

Magnus Haaland, André Strauss and Elizabeth Velliky worked together on restoring the piece of ochre along with fellow SapienCE scientists Christopher Miller, Karen van Niekerk and Christopher Henshilwood. The scientific project produced several important findings which are presented in the in the international journal Geoarcheology.

"What are would you say are the most important findings from this study?"

"I suppose it depends on which author you talk to. I think Magnus would say that the major finding is that archaeologists shouldn’t be afraid of taking micromorphological block samples from their sites, because even if artefacts are caught in these blocks, there is still a lot of information that you can get from it, and it even opens some research avenues that otherwise wouldn’t be available - such as destructive analyses," Velliky says.

Elizabeth Velliky analysing the thin section of the ochre piece using Raman spectroscopy.

(Photo: Magnus M. Haaland)

For Velliky the major finding is how this project has created a new way to look at human-made marks on ochre pieces.

"Before, these interpretations were highly subjective – as they depended on the site, the type of ochre, and the person looking at them. Now we know that there are a lot more subtleties to these marks, and that previously we may have been looking at, and analysing them the wrong way. Then Andre might tell you that he was particularly excited about the use of Micro CT scanning for reconstructing an otherwise destroyed material," she says.

Understanding human made marks on ochre pieces

Velliky says that the scientific work that came from the trapped ochre piece has been the most unique project she has been part of. She hopes that the paper can inspire more people to pay attention to micro-ochre fragments at their sites, and perhaps be more encouraged to collect samples.

"Often people see patches of red and dig through them, but I hope our study would encourage people to save these features so we can understand more about how people used ochre in the past. I think we need to create a universal way of talking about how humans used ochre and from there we can really start to discuss what that means for human cultural and symbolic evolution," she says.

RECONSTRUCTING AN OCHRE PIECE: The ochre piece reconstructed using Micro CT scanning.

(Photo: Magnus M. Haaland)

According to Velliky, ochre is crucial to understand early symbolic behaviour in humans because it isn’t a biological necessity for humans to survive, so the need for it is different than say tools used for hunting. She also thinks that 3D morphometrics provides a new and better way of studying human made marks on ochre pieces.

"Often, we just know that ochre was collected and used but there is sort of a gap during the actual production phase, or at least very superficial knowledge. If we can understand more about how humans interacted with this material and manipulated it, it could highlight more information that we previously missed or overlooked. By using 3D morphometrics, we can get a lot more detail on the marks, their size, features, and nuances, and understand a lot more about the people who were making them. If we can understand more about how humans interacted with this material and manipulated it, it could highlight more information that we previously missed or overlooked," Velliky says.

TRACES FROM EARLY HUMANS: Other pieces of ochre from Blombos showing traces of human use.

(Photo: Francesco d'Errico and Christopher Henshilwood)

Continuing the study

"You are working on a new scientific article now. How does this relate to your study on the trapped ochre piece?"

"This new article is about the microscopic ochre fragments, or ochre crumbs, found in the sediments at several cave sites in southern Africa. However, we are using the thin sections from Blombos Cave as a case study. After analysing the trapped ochre piece, we created a good technical workflow for easily and quickly identifying these micro-ochre pieces in thin section, as opposed to before where you would have to visually find each little piece. We then use several analytical techniques to see if they are different types of ochre, and if so, how many types are present. Our goal is to ultimately compare these micro-ochre fragments to the larger ochre pieces excavated at the site. The paper will hopefully be out in 2023," Velliky concludes.

Reference:

Haaland et al. Hidden in plain sight: A microanalytical study of a Middle Stone Age ochre piece trapped inside a micromorphological block sample, Geoarchaeology, 2020. DOI: 10.1002/gea.21830

The History of Writing: Tracing the Development of expressing Language by Systems of Markings

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by dimosthenis vasiloudis

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Protowriting, ideographic systems, or early mnemonic symbols came before more advanced writing systems in the evolution of writing in human societies (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier).

A subsequent development is true writing, in which the content of a spoken language is encoded so that another reader may reasonably reconstruct the identical utterance written down. It differs from proto-writing, which frequently forgoes recording grammatical words and affixes, making it harder or even impossible to reassemble the precise meaning intended by the writer unless a substantial amount of context is already known in advance.

Writing innovations

The idea that writing originated in a single civilization and was called "monogenesis" persisted for a long time. According to academics, all writing originated in Mesopotamia's ancient Sumer and spread around the world as a result of cultural diffusion. This argument holds that traders or merchants traveling between geographical locations passed on the idea of representing language by written signs, though perhaps not necessarily the specifics of how such a system operated.

The finding of ancient Mesoamerican scripts, far from Middle Eastern sources, demonstrated, however, that writing had been created more than once. In at least four ancient civilizations, including Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (about 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland portions of southern Mexico and Guatemala, writing may have independently originated (by 500 BCE).

Some academics have suggested that ancient Egypt "The earliest authentic examples of Egyptian writing differ from Mesopotamian writing in both structure and style, indicating that they must have emerged independently. Although there is still a chance that Mesopotamian "stimulus dispersion" occurred, the influence could not have extended beyond the dissemination of an idea."

Because there is no evidence of communication between ancient China and the Near Eastern literate civilizations, as well as because Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to phonetic representation differ, it is thought that ancient Chinese characters are independent creations.

The Vinča symbols.

The Rongorongo script of Easter Island, the Vina symbols from about 5500 BCE, and the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization are all controversial. Since none have been translated, it is unclear if they all represent real writing, protowriting, or something entirely different.

The earliest coherent texts date from around 2600 BCE, and Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are usually regarded as the earliest authentic writing systems. Both developed out of their ancestors' proto-literate symbol systems between 3400 and 3100 BCE. The Proto-Elamite script belongs to roughly the same time frame.

writing methods

Writing systems are distinct from symbolic communication systems. For most writing systems, reading a text requires some knowledge of the spoken language that goes along with it. In contrast, it's not always necessary to have a prior understanding of a spoken language to use symbolic systems like information signs, paintings, maps, and mathematics. Every human group has its own language, which is thought by many to be a natural and essential aspect of mankind.

Writing system development has been intermittent, uneven, and delayed, and old oral communication systems have only been partially replaced. Writing systems generally develop more slowly after they are formed than their spoken counterparts and frequently preserve traits and idioms that have been lost to the spoken language.

Three writing standards are thought to apply to all writing systems. First, writing must be comprehensive; it must have a meaning or purpose, and it must make a point or be able to convey that message. Second, whether they are physical or digital, all writing systems must include some kind of symbol that can be created on a surface. In order to facilitate communication, the writing system's symbols must resemble spoken words or speech.

The greatest advantage of writing is that it gives society a way to regularly and thoroughly preserve information—something that the spoken word could not previously do as successfully. Writing enables communities to communicate knowledge, transmit information, and

stages of development

Sumer

An ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia, is believed to be the place where written language was first invented around 3200 BCE.

Beginning with the Neolithic pottery phase, when clay tokens were used to keep track of particular quantities of animals or other goods, writing first appeared. These tokens were initially imprinted on the exterior of spherical clay envelopes, which were later used to keep them. Afterwards, flat tablets were gradually introduced in place of the tokens, and signs were recorded using a stylus. Towards the end of the fourth millennium BCE, Uruk was where actual writing was first discovered. Other areas of the Near East quickly followed.

The earliest recorded account of the development of writing is found in a poem from ancient Mesopotamia:

The Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote on it like a tablet because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat the message. It has never been possible to write on clay before.

Enmerkar and the King of Aratta, a Sumerian epic written around 1800 BCE

Although there is agreement among scholars as to the difference between prehistory and the history of early writing, there is disagreement as to when proto-writing became "real writing." The criteria are somewhat arbitrary. In the broadest sense, writing is a way of keeping track of information. It is made up of graphemes, which in turn can be made up of glyphs.

Many centuries of shattered inscriptions typically follow the advent of writing in a particular region. The presence of coherent texts in a culture's writing system is how historians determine a culture's "historicity".

Standard reconstruction of the development of writing. There is a possibility that the Egyptian script was invented independently from the Mesopotamian script.

A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general series of developmental stages:

Picture writing system: glyphs (simplified pictures) directly represent objects and concepts. In connection with this, the following substages may be distinguished:

• Mnemonic: glyphs primarily as a reminder.

• Pictographic: glyphs directly represent an object or a concept such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical.

• Ideographic: graphemes are abstract symbols that directly represent an idea or concept.

Pre-cuneiform tags, with drawing of goat or sheep and number (probably "10"): "Ten goats", Al-Hasakah, 3300–3100 BCE, Uruk culture.

Transitional system: graphemes refer not only to the object or idea that it represents but to its name as well.

• Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:

• Verbal: grapheme (logogram) represents a whole word.

• Syllabic: grapheme represents a syllable.

• Alphabetic: grapheme represents an elementary sound.

Designs on some of the labels or token from Abydos, carbon-dated to circa 3400–3200 BC and among the earliest form of writing in Egypt. They are remarkably similar to contemporary clay tags from Uruk, Mesopotamia.

The best known picture writing system of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols are:

• Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, c. 6600 BCE

• Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), c. 5300 BCE[24]

• Early Indus script, c. 3100 BCE

In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC).

Locations and timeframes

Comparative evolution

from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters

Proto-writing

The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of symbol systems that cannot be classified as proper writing, but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as "proto-writing". They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no natural language. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BC, and include:

• The Jiahu symbols found carved in tortoise shells in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BCE. Most archaeologists consider these not directly linked to the earliest true writing.

• Vinča symbols, sometimes called the "Danube script", are a set of symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennia BCE) artifacts from the Vinča culture of Central Europe and Southeast Europe.

• The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium may also be an example of proto-writing.

• The Indus script, which from 3500 BCE to 1900 BCE was used for extremely short inscriptions.

The Dispilio Tablet

The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis's excavations of Dispilio in Greece, and carbon 14-dated to 5202 (± 123) BC.

It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, Greece.

Even after the Neolithic, a number of societies used proto-writing as a transitional form before adopting formal writing. Such a mechanism might have existed in the quipu of the Incas (15th century CE), often known as "talking knots". Another example is the pictographs created by Uyaquk before the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language developed the Yugtun syllabary around 1900.

Ancient writing

The Bronze Age saw the development of writing in a wide range of cultures. Indus script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Sumerian cuneiform writing, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica are a few examples. Around 1600 BCE, the Chinese script most likely evolved apart from the Middle Eastern scripts. It is also generally accepted that the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems, which include the Olmec and Maya scripts, had separate origins. In 2000 BCE, it is believed that the first real alphabetic writing was created for Hebrew laborers in the Sinai by assigning Semitic values to mostly Egyptian hieratic characters (see History of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet).

Ethiopia's Geez writing system is regarded as Semitic. With roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system, it is most likely of semi-independent origin. The majority of alphabets used today are either direct descendants of this one invention, many through the Phoenician alphabet, or were designed in direct response to it. The early Old Italic alphabet and Plautus (c. 750–250 BCE) were separated by around 500 years in Italy, while the Elder Futhark inscriptions and early works like the Abrogans (c. 200–750 CE) are separated by a similar amount of time in the case of the Germanic peoples.

Cuneiform writing

The first Sumerian script was derived from a system of clay tokens used to denote different types of goods. This had developed into a system of keeping accounts by the end of the fourth millennium BC, utilizing a stylus with a circular form that was impressed into soft clay at various angles to record numbers. A pointed stylus was used to gradually add pictographic lettering on this to show what was being counted. Writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the name "cuneiform") began to include phonetic features by the 29th century BCE and gradually replaced writing with a round stylus and a sharp stylus by about 2700–2500 BCE.

Cuneiform first started to represent Sumerian syllables around 2600 BCE. Ultimately, cuneiform writing evolved into a general-purpose system for writing numerals, syllables, and logograms. This alphabet was adapted to the Akkadian language starting in the 26th century BCE, and from there to others like Hurrian and Hittite. This writing system resembles Old Persian and Ugaritic scripts in appearance.

Hieroglyphics from Egypt

Literacy was concentrated among a well-educated elite of scribes, who played a crucial role in upholding the Egyptian empire through writing. To become scribes in the employ of temple, royal (pharaonic), and military authority, one had to come from a certain background.

According to Geoffrey Sampson, the general concept of expressing words from a language in writing was likely transmitted to Egypt via Sumerian Mesopotamia. Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into being a little after Sumerian script, and, possibly [were], invented under the influence of the latter." Despite the significance of early Egypt-Mesopotamia links, "no definitive judgment has been established as to the genesis of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt" due to the lack of direct evidence. However, it is stated and agreed upon that "a very compelling argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt" and that "the evidence for such direct influence remains fragile."

Egyptian writing does suddenly appear at that time, but Mesopotamia has an evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to around 8000 BCE. Since the 1990s, discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, may challenge the conventional idea that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. These glyphs were discovered in tomb U-J at Abydos; they were written on ivory and most likely served as labels for other items discovered there.

Even though he acknowledged that Egypt's geographic location made it a receptacle for many influences, Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar maintained that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols originated from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and that in regards to writing, "we have seen that a purely Nilotic, therefore African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality."

Elamite writing

The unintelligible Proto-Elamite writing first appears around 3100 BCE. Around the latter third millennium, it is thought to have evolved into Linear Elamite, which was later supplanted by Elamite Cuneiform, which was adapted from Akkadian.

Indus script

Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not these symbols constituted a writing system used to record the as yet unidentified language(s) of the Indus Valley civilisation.

The Indus script has been assigned to markings and symbols discovered at numerous Indus Valley civilization sites due to the hypothesis that they were used to transcribe the Harappan language. It is disputed whether the script, which was in use from roughly 3500 to 1900 BCE, is a Bronze Age writing script (logographic-syllabic) or merely proto-writing symbols. According to analysis, it was written in boustrophedon or from right to left.

early SEMITIC ALPHABETS

Around 1800 BCE in Ancient Egypt, the first "abjads," which mapped individual symbols to individual phonemes but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol, appeared as a representation of the language created there by Semitic workers. However, by that time, alphabetic principles had only a remote chance of being ingrained into Egyptian hieroglyphs for upwards of a millennium.

Did the Proto-Canaanite alphabet take its symbols independently of the hieroglyphs?

It is only until the end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script separates into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (c. 1400 BCE), Byblos syllabary, and the South Arabian alphabet (c. 1200 BCE). These early abjads remained of minor significance for several decades. The untranslated Byblos syllabary most likely had some influence on the Proto-Canaanite, which in turn provided inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet (c. 1300 BCE).

Anatolian hieroglyphs

The Luwian language was written down using Anatolian hieroglyphs, a native hieroglyphic script found in western Anatolia. Around the fourteenth century BCE, it initially appeared on royal seals of the Luwians.

Chinese characters

The corpus of inscriptions on oracle bones and brass from the late Shang dynasty is the earliest authenticated example of the Chinese script that has been found so far. The oldest of these is believed to date from about 1200 BCE.

There have been recent finds of tortoise-shell carvings from around 6000 BCE, such as Jiahu Script and Banpo Script, but it is debatable whether or not the carvings are complex enough to be considered writing. 3,172 cliff carvings from the period between 6000 and 5000 BCE have been found near Damaidi in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. They contain 8,453 different characters, including images of the sun, moon, stars, gods, and scenes of grazing or hunting.

Replica

of ancient Chinese script on an oracle turtle shell

These pictographs are thought to resemble the first Chinese characters that have been confirmed to be written. Writing in China would predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, traditionally recognized as the first manifestation of writing, by about 2,000 years if it were to be considered a written language. However, it is more likely that the inscriptions represent a type of proto-writing, comparable to the modern European Vinca script.

Early Greek and Cretan scripts

Cretan relics include hieroglyphic writing (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BCE, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). The Mycenaean Greek writing system, Linear B, has been decoded, but Linear A has not yet been. The three overlapping, but distinct, Aegean pre-alphabetic writing systems can be categorized according to their chronological order and geographic distribution as follows:

• Cretan Hieroglyphic / Crete (eastward from the Knossos-Phaistos axis) / c. 2100−1700 BCE

• Linear A / Crete (except extreme southwest), Aegean Islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), Greek mainland (Laconia) and west Minor Asia (Miletus and maybe Troy) / c. 1800−1450 BCE

• Linear B / Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns) / c. 1450−1200 BCE

The archaeological finds with signs of pre-alphabetic scripts in the Aegean

(Up) The finds with signs of Linear B script reach about 6,000 and constitute the majority of the pre-alphabetic written monuments of the Aegean.

(Middle) About 1,400 are the finds which imprint Linear A and make up a 11% of all pre-alphabetic inscriptions.

(Down) Cretan hieroglyphics occupies 2% of the available finds with only 400 finds.

Illustration: Dimosthenis Vasiloudis

Mesoamerica

The Cascajal Block, a stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing that predates the first Zapotec writing from around 500 BCE, was found in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is an example of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere.

Stela 12 and 13

from the southern end of Building L, in the Zapotec city of Monte Albán, Outside of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Maya script is one of numerous pre-Columbian scripts found in Mesoamerica, and it appears to have been the most well-developed and extensively deciphered. The earliest clearly identifiable Maya inscriptions date to the third century BCE, and writing continued to be used until just before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century BCE. A combination of logograms and syllabic symbols, utilized in Maya writing, is somewhat reminiscent of current Japanese writing.

IRON AGE WRITING

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which was used into the Iron Age, is all that the Phoenician alphabet is (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE). The Greek and Aramaic alphabets were derived from this alphabet. They eventually gave rise to the writing systems that are currently used everywhere, from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. The Greek alphabet, on the other hand, was the first to use specific symbols to represent vowel sounds.

By Matt Baker

In the first centuries of the Common Era, the Greek and Latin alphabets gave rise to a number of European scripts, including the Runes, Gothic, and Cyrillic alphabets, while the Aramaic alphabet developed into the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac abjads, the latter of which spread as far as Mongolian script. The Ge'ez abugida originated from the South Arabian alphabet. According to some academics, the Indian Brahmic family also descended from the Aramaic alphabet.

GRAKLIANI HILL WRITING

At Georgia's Grakliani Hill, behind a fallen altar from a temple dedicated to a fertility goddess from the seventh century BCE, an obscure script was uncovered in 2015. Grakliani's other temples' inscriptions, which depict animals, people, or decorative features, are different from these ones. Although its letters are rumored to be connected to ancient Greek and Aramaic, the script has no similarities to any known alphabet. In contrast, the earliest Armenian and Georgian letters come from the fifth century CE, right after the respective nations converted to Christianity. The inscription looks to be the oldest local alphabet ever uncovered in the entire Caucasus region. An portion of the inscription measuring 31 by 3 inches had been unearthed by September 2015.

Grakliani script on the basement of altar of goddess of fertility (XI-X c. BC)

Vakhtang Licheli, director of the State University's Institute of Archaeology, claims that "The writings on the temple's two altars have been kept in remarkably good condition. While the pedestal of the second altar is entirely covered with writings, the first altar has few clay letters carved into it." Unpaid students made the discovery. Inscriptions from Grakliani Hill were sent to Miami Laboratory in 2016 for beta analytic radiocarbon dating, which revealed that they were created between c. 1005 and c. 950 BCE.

WRITING IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician script for use with their own language in the early eighth century BCE, the history of the Greek alphabet officially began. The Greek and Phoenician alphabets share a lot of similarities in terms of their characters, and both alphabets nowadays are written in the same order. The Phoenician system's adapter(s) added three letters to the conclusion of the series, known as the "supplementals." The Greek alphabet evolved into a number of different forms.

Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens

One was utilized in southern Italy and west of Athens and is known as Western Greek or Chalcidian. The other variant, known as Eastern Greek, was spoken by the Athenians and in modern-day Turkey before spreading over the rest of the Greek-speaking world. The Greeks initially elected to write like the Phoenicians, from right to left, but subsequently switched to left to right. The lines would then alternately read from left to right, then from right to left, and so on. On occasion, though, the writer would begin the next line where the preceding one ended. Up until the sixth century, this style of writing, called "boustrophedon," mirrored the course of an ox-drawn plough.

Italic scripts and Latin

Cippus Perusinus

Etruscan writing near Perugia, Italy, the precursor of the Latin alphabet

All of the contemporary European scripts have their roots in Greek. The Latin alphabet, named after the Latins, a central Italian people who came to rule Europe with the emergence of Rome, is the most widely used descendant of the Greek script. Around the fifth century BCE, the Etruscan civilization, which employed a multitude of Italic scripts descended from the western Greeks, taught the Romans how to write. The other Old Italic scripts have not survived in very large quantities due to the cultural hegemony of the Roman state, and the Etruscan language is largely extinct.

WRITING DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

Roman rule in Western Europe fell apart, and the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire became the main centers of literary development. Latin, which was never a major literary language, lost prominence quickly (except within the Roman Catholic Church). Greek and Persian were the two main literary languages, but Syriac and Coptic were also significant.

Arabic quickly became a significant literary language in the area as a result of the development of Islam in the 7th century. Greek's status as a scholarly language soon lost ground to Arabic and Persian. The Turkish and Persian languages now use Arabic script as their principal writing system. The development of the cursive scripts for Greek, the Slavic languages, Latin, and other languages was also greatly inspired by this script.

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was also extended throughout Europe thanks to the Arabic language. The modern Spanish city of Cordoba had emerged as one of the world's leading intellectual hubs by the start of the second millennium and was home to the largest library at the time. Its location at the meeting point of the Islamic and Western Christian worlds encouraged intellectual growth and written exchange between the two cultures.

THE MODERN ERA AND THE RENAISSANCE

By the 14th century, Western Europe had experienced a renaissance, which had temporarily increased the significance of Greek while slowly restoring Latin's status as an important literary language. In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, a comparable but smaller emergence took place. As the Islamic Golden Era came to an end, Arabic and Persian also started to slowly lose ground. In order to codify the phonologies of the various languages, the Latin alphabet underwent several alterations as a result of the rebirth of literary development in Western Europe.

Writing has undergone steady change throughout history, in large part because of the emergence of new technologies. Technology advancements such as the printing press, computer, mobile phone, and pen have all changed how and what is written as well as the medium in which it is generated. Characters can now be generated with a button press rather than a hand motion, especially with the development of digital technology like the computer and the smartphone.

Africa's oldest known dinosaur has been discovered in Zimbabwe

Palaeontologists in Zimbabwe have unearthed remains of a new species of plant-eating dinosaur believed to have roamed across Africa some 230 million years ago. 

Key points:

• The dinosaur species is roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world

• The discovery proves 'early evolution of dinosaurs is still being written with each new find', says a palaeontologist

• The species is a relative of the sauropod, which walked on four legs

An international team of palaeontologists led by Virginia Tech uncovered the fossil of the long-necked sauropodomorph over the course of two digs in 2017 and 2019.

The fossil, which was near-complete barring some of the hand and portions of the skull, is the oldest-known definitive dinosaur found in Africa to date. 

Scientists said they estimated the Mbiresaurus raathi to have been 6 feet (183 centimetres) long and weighed anywhere from nine to 29 kilograms. They believe it stood on two legs and its head was relatively small like its herbivore relatives. 

Christopher Griffin in 2017, excavating part of the Mbiresaurus raathi skeleton, wrapped in a plaster field jacket.   (Supplied: Stephen Tolan via Paleobiology & Geobiology Research Group, Virginia Tech)

Christopher Griffin, who holds a PhD in geosciences from the Virginia Tech College of Science, believes the Mbiresaurus raathi was roughly equivalent in age to the oldest dinosaurs found anywhere in the world.

"The oldest known dinosaurs — from roughly 230 million years ago, the Carnian Stage of the Late Triassic period — are extremely rare and have been recovered from only a few places worldwide," he said in a study released by Virginia Tech.

Dr Griffin also said the exhibition was a major win. 

"The discovery of Mbiresaurus raathi fills in a critical geographic gap in the fossil record of the oldest dinosaurs and shows the power of hypothesis-driven fieldwork for testing predictions about the ancient past."  

Sterling Nesbitt, associate professor of geosciences, was also involved in the exhibition. 

Sterling Nesbitt and Christopher Griffin excavate a skeleton of a herrerasaurid dinosaur in 2019.   (Murphy Allen via Virginia Tech)

"Early dinosaurs like Mbiresaurus raathi show that the early evolution of dinosaurs is still being written with each new find and the rise of dinosaurs was far more complicated than previously predicted," he said.

Dr Griffin said that during the exhibition he immediately recognised the femur as belonging to a dinosaur. 

"I knew I was holding the oldest dinosaur ever found in Africa," he said.

"When I kept digging and found the left hip bone right next to the left thigh bone, I had to stop and take a breath — I knew that a lot of the skeleton was probably there, still articulated together in life position."

Oldest case of a rare genetic condition discovered

A group of international researchers has uncovered evidence of a super rare genetic condition that gives men an extra X chromosome, reporting the oldest clinical case of Klinefelter syndrome to date.

The evidence comes from a 1,000-year-old skeleton from Portugal.

Klinefelter syndrome is a rare genetic condition where individuals are born with an extra copy of the X chromosome, occurring in approximately one in 1,000 genetic-male births.

The study coordinated by Dr. João Teixeira, an ARC DECRA Fellow at The Australian National University (ANU), brought together a multidisciplinary team that combined genetic, statistical, archaeological and anthropological information to establish a definitive diagnosis.

The team began by analyzing genetic information obtained from a skeleton found in northeastern Portugal that had been radiocarbon dated to the 11th century by researchers from the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

"We were immediately excited the first time we looked at the results," Dr. Teixeira said. "However, ancient DNA, is often degraded and of low quality and abundance, meaning we were initially cautious."

The researchers say the findings will help establish a historic record for Klinefelter syndrome, as well as enhance understanding of its prevalence throughout human history.

"Our research shows the immense potential of combining different lines of evidence to study the human past, and the frequency of different health conditions through time," Dr. Teixeira said.

Associate Professor Bastien Llamas, Head of Molecular Anthropology at the Australian Center for Ancient DNA, said, "In recent years, ancient DNA helped rewrite the history of worldwide human populations. Our study demonstrates it is now a valuable resource for biomedical research and the growing field of evolutionary medicine."

The DNA was extracted by Ph.D. student at the University of Adelaide, Xavier Roca-Rada, who said "genetic analysis was undertaken to computationally map the degraded DNA fragments of the X and Y chromosomes to the reference human genome."

Given the well preserved state of the specimen, the researchers were also able to determine physical traits in the skeleton compatible with Klinefelter syndrome.

"Given the fragile state of the DNA, we developed a new statistical method that could take into account the characteristics of ancient DNA, and our observations to confirm the diagnosis," Dr. Teixeira said.

"While the study offers compelling evidence for the genetic history of Klinefelter syndrome, no sociological implications can be drawn from this diagnostic."

The researchers suggest their new method to analyze this particular skeleton can be further improved to study different chromosomal abnormalities in other archaeological specimens, including Down syndrome.

The study is published in The Lancet.

Scientists find a new asteroid crater that may shed light on Dinosaurs' extinction

Dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago after an asteroid plunged into the Gulf of Mexico

Scientists have discovered a new crater that may have landed to Earth around the time dinosaurs went extinct.  (REUTERS)

A previously undiscovered asteroid crater off the coast of West Africa may hold some answers about how Dinosaurs went extinct. 

Approximately 66 million years ago, a large asteroid, whose crater is named Chicxulub, slammed into the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, causing the destruction of the dinosaurs. However, researchers have now found a new asteroid crater off the coast of West Africa that impacted the Earth around the same time, according to a study released Thursday by Science Advances. 

Given the name the Nadir Crater, it is located off the coast of Guinea, West Africa, and is 300m below the sea and 400km from the nearest land with a diameter of 8.5km. Although Nadir is not as large as Chicxulub, an analysis of the age of nearby fossils indicates it is a very similar age. 

The discovery was made by Dr. Uisdean Nicholson, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK. Originally, he was examining seismic survey data when he fell came upon evidence of the crater. 

"These surveys are kind of like an ultrasound of Earth. I've spent probably the last 20 years interpreting them, but I've never seen anything like this," Dr. Nicholson told the BBC. "Nadir's shape is diagnostic of an asteroid impact. It's got a raised rim surrounding a central uplift area, and then layers of debris that extend outwards."

Some other researchers, such as Profession Sean Gulick have suggested that Nadir may have crashed into the Earth on the same as the Chicxulub Crater, but scientists can not make that determination until further inspections of the African crater. 

"A much smaller cousin, or sister, doesn't necessarily add to what we know about the dinosaurs' extinction, but it does add to our understanding of the astronomical event that was Chicxulub," Gulick said to the BBC.

The asteroid that caused the Chicxulub crater to fall in the Gulf of Mexico is measured to be 12km long, creating a 200km-wide depression. The crash caused destructive firestorms and tsunamis that put the Earth into an ice age, causing much of the world's species to perish. 

Dinosaur tracks unearthed in Texas state park as drought dries river

Newly uncovered dinosaur tracks at Texas's Dinosaur Valley State Park date back to 113 million years ago

The tracks were uncovered in the Paluxy River as its water level receded due to the major drought that has parched parts of northern Texas this summer, the park announced last week. The park is located near Glen Rose, southwest of Dallas.

"Due to the excessive drought conditions this past summer, the river dried up completely in most locations, allowing for more tracks to be uncovered here in the park," the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. "Under normal river conditions, these newer tracks are underwater and are commonly filled in with sediment, making them buried and not as visible."

Most dinosaur tracks at the park belong to two different species: a theropod called Acrocanthosaurus and a sauropod called Sauroposeidon, according to the park.

The park said that the tracks will likely get buried under sediment and water once it begins to rain. (Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park)

The newly unearthed footprints in the river belong to the Acrocanthosaurus, what officials described as a dinosaur that stood about 15 feet tall and weighed close to seven tons as an adult. Meanwhile, they said an adult Sauroposeidon stood about 60 feet tall and weighed about 44 tons.

The park shared photos online showing volunteers helping to clean out and shore up the dino tracks.

The park said the tracks belong to the Acrocanthosaurus and date back to 113 million years ago. (Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park)

However, with rain in the coming forecasts, the parks said it is likely the prehistoric tracks will soon be buried again beneath the river water.

Paul Baker | Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park

On Monday, residents of north Texas woke up to flash flooding brought on by as much as 10 inches of rain in some areas. 

The park said that the layers of sediment that will once again cover the footprints will help to protect the tracks from natural weathering and erosion.

"While these newer dinosaur tracks were visible for a brief amount of time, it brought about the wonder and excitement about finding new dinosaur tracks at the park," the state parks department said.

Bulgarian Paleontologist Identifies New Panda Species that Lived Here Some 6 Mln Years Ago

A close relative of today's giant pandas lived in the Balkans some six million years ago, according to a study by paleontologist Nikolai Spassov of the National Museum of Natural History with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He and Qigao Jiangzuo of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology with the Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article on this discovery in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in July.

In an interview for BTA, Prof Spassov explained that the discovery came after decades of trying to unravel the mystery of two fossilized teeth at the National Museum of Natural History. The teeth were probably brought to his predecessor at the Museum, Dr Ivan Nikolov, before the 1980s and a single handwritten label was left beside them. Only years later did Prof Spassov manage to determine that the label read "Gyuredjiya", which he later learned was the old name of Ognyanovo village (Northwestern Bulgaria). 

That led the paleontologist to coal deposits in that area, samples from which allowed him to date the teeth. He then compared them to those of extinct and present-day panda species. For his study, Prof. Spassov examined specimens in museums and institutes in China, Hungary, France, and Austria.  

The newly identified species of panda, named Agriarctos nikolovi in honor of Dr Nikolov, lived during the Miocene epoch in the Balkans' then swampy, forested areas. Prof. Spassov believes this species was the most evolved member of the independent giant panda lineage formed in Europe during the late Miocene. It is a close relative but not a direct ancestor of present-day giant pandas. Its size was similar or just slightly smaller, the paleontologist said.

While bamboo accounts for more than 99% of the diet of today's pandas, Agriarctos nikolovi is thought to have lived on other plants since its teeth were not strong enough to sustain the pressure from hard bamboo, and bamboo was rare in that epoch, Prof. Spassov's study found. The robust teeth were a good deterrent to predators.

Agriarctos nikolovi went extinct probably due to habitat loss as a result of the climate changes in Southern Europe at the end of the Miocene. During the so-called Messinian salinity crisis 5.96 to 5.33 million years ago, the waters of the Mediterranean dried up, likely depriving the pandas of their main sources of food and their humid, wooded habitats, Prof Spassov told BTA.

Prof Spassov recently told Bulgarian National Television two more fossil teeth have been found that he believes belong to Agriarctos nikolovi. Whether that is indeed the case will be determined after excavations in Western Bulgaria. 

Neanderthal vs. modern humans: Slow and steady wins the brain game

Small genetic changes separate modern humans from ancestral brain development.

Homo neanderthalensis adult male reconstruction. Artist: John Gurche. Photographer: Chip Clark. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Our closest human relatives are Neanderthals (split from modern humans at least 500,000 years ago) and their Asian relatives the Denisovans (split from modern humans around 800,000 years ago). The differences between Homo sapiens and these other groups are encoded in changes to the amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins in our cells and tissues.

About 100 amino acids changed in modern humans after these splits and spread throughout almost all of us. The biological significance of these changes, however, is largely unknown.

Researchers in Germany looked at changes to six of these amino acids occurring in three proteins. These amino acids play key roles in the distribution of chromosomes to the two daughter cells during cell division.

Since the remarkable work done in sequencing the Neanderthal genome this study furthers our understanding of the subtle differences between these ancient humans and modern humans. It may also shed some light on the evolutionary advantages that eventually saw modern humans outlive Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Authored by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in, the results are published in Science Advances.

To investigate how these six changes impact brain development, the scientists introduced the amino acids from modern human variants into mice. Interestingly, in those six amino acid positions, mice are identical to Neanderthals. That makes mice brains perfect for testing what happens when these amino acids are changed.

Lead author of the study, Felipe Mora-Bermúdez, says the changes result in more accurate transfer of genetic data in cell division. “We found that three modern human amino acids in two of the proteins cause a longer metaphase, a phase where chromosomes are prepared for cell division, and this results in fewer errors when the chromosomes are distributed to the daughter cells of the neural stem cells, just like in modern humans.”

The team also checked to see if the opposite would be true. If they replaced the modern human amino acids with those present in Neanderthals, would they see faster and less accurate mitosis?

They introduced the ancestral amino acids in human brain organoids. Organoids are miniature organ-like structures that can be grown from human stem cells in the lab which mimic aspects of early human brain development.

Left side: microscopy image of the chromosomes (in cyan) of a modern human neural stem cell of the neocortex during cell division. Right side: same type of image, but of a cell where three amino acids in the two proteins KIF18a and KNL1, involved in chromosome separation, have been changed from the modern human to the Neanderthal variants. These “neanderthalized” cells show twice as many chromosome separation errors (red arrow). Credit: Felipe Mora-Bermúdez / MPI-CBG.

“In this case, the metaphase became shorter and we found more chromosome distribution errors.” According to Mora-Bermúdez, this shows that those three modern human amino acid changes in the proteins are responsible for the fewer chromosome distribution mistakes seen in modern humans compared to Neanderthal and chimpanzees. He adds that “having mistakes in the number of chromosomes is usually not a good idea for cells, as can be seen in disorders like trisomies and cancer.”

“Our study implies that some aspects of modern human brain evolution and function may be independent of brain size since Neanderthals and modern humans have similar-sized brains. The findings also suggest that brain function in Neanderthals may have been more affected by chromosome errors than that of modern humans,” adds co-author Wieland Huttner.

Svante Pääbo, who also co-supervised the study, adds that “future studies are needed to investigate whether the decreased error rate affects modern human traits related to brain function.”

Originally published by Cosmos as Neanderthal vs. modern humans: Slow and steady wins the brain game

Hundreds of ancient treasures seized by US Customs returned to Mexico

Mexico has recovered more than 400 archaeological treasures dating back hundreds of years after they were seized in the U.S.

The 428 artifacts include arrowheads, spear tips and knives, in addition to tools and hide scrapers dating back to between 900 A.D. and 1600 A.D. They have also recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old marine oyster.

The treasures were handed over to Mexico's consulate in Portland, Oregon, by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office.

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. They got by the US authorities. (/ Zenger)
INAH/Zenger

Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past (INAH) launched a press release from Zenger Information on Tuesday, which stated: “The INAH has preserved many items from desert cultures, comparable to projectile factors, flint knives, shell and bone artifacts, marine fossils and natural parts.

“They had been seized by america Customs and Border Safety and delivered to the Mexican consulate in Portland.”

The institute stated it obtained the articles from the Mexican Ministry of International Affairs after the ministry obtained the articles from america.

The Mexican company additionally stated: “Throughout the formalization of the cargo, which happened on the State Division’s headquarters, the efforts of the U.S. authorities, whose Customs and Border Safety Company seized the amount of things associated to historical cultures settled in northern Mexico, had been highlighted delivered them to the Mexican consulate in Portland, Oregon.”

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. Treasures recovered from america included arrowheads, scrapers created from shell and bone, and knives.
INAH/Zenger

Jaime Alejandro Bautista Valdespino, Deputy Director of the Register of Movable Archaeological Monuments at INAH, who oversaw the handover, stated that based on preliminary info, the objects transferred to Mexico by diplomatic mail “dated to the late Postclassic interval (AD 900-1600). ) and are related to human teams from the desert cultures who settled within the areas now occupied by the Northern Mexico and Southern United States entities.

Objects included arrowheads, scrapers created from shell and bone, and knives. The artefacts handed over additionally included varied marine fossils from the Exogyra Genus – an extinct genus of fossil sea oysters.

The Exogyra date again about 60 million years, to the Cretaceous Interval.

One of many objects seized by Mexican authorities in an undated picture. Authorities stated the artifacts had been confiscated by america Customs and Border Safety Company and delivered to the Mexican consulate in Portland.
INAH/Zenger

Archaeologist Alejandro Bautista stated that every of the 428 items “will likely be protected by the INAH and registered within the Establishment’s Public Register of Archaeological and Historic Monuments and Zones, with the opportunity of them changing into a part of exhibitions in museums”.

Bautista harassed the significance of sustaining cooperative relationships with overseas governments to advertise a tradition of restitution and urged individuals to chorus from looting nationwide heritage websites and unlawful commerce.

This story was supplied to Newsweek by Zenger Information.

Jurassic fossils found at 'remarkable' farm site dating back to dinosaur era

Fossils found in farmer's field off M5 in Cotswolds

Jurassic fossil found at a farm off the M5 in the Midlands near Stroud (Image: Dean Lomax)

Fossils dating back a staggering 183 million years have been unearthed from a Midland farmer's field off the M5. The archaeological treasures have been dug up from Court Farm at Cotswolds village Kings Stanley and date back to an era when dinosaurs roamed the region.

The dig site off the M5 where Jurassic fossils were found (Image: Steve Dey)

A team of palaeontologists discovered preserved fish, marine reptiles, squids and rare insects in what they believe was once a Jurassic sea that spanned near to Worcestershire. Layers of limestone have kept the fossils intact at the field belonging to Adam Knight.

Despite being hidden for thousands of years, photos of the fish fossils show that even their eyeballs, scales and fins can still be seen clearly. Among the finds was the head of a Pachycormus Jurassic fish.

Dr Dean Lomax, a palaeontologist and visiting scientist at The University of Manchester, said: “The site is quite remarkable, with numerous beautifully preserved fossils of ancient animals that once lived in a Jurassic sea that covered this part of the UK.

Beautifully preserved fish head from the period when dinosaurs roamed the region

(Image: Dean Lomax)

“Inland locations with fossils like this are rare in the UK. The fossils we have collected will surely form the basis of research projects for years to come.”

Fossil collectors Sally and Neville Hollingworth were behind the discovery. It's not the first time they have struck gold as they also uncovered remains of mammoths at Cotswold Water Park.

One of the Jurassic fossils found in the farmer's field

(Image: Dean Lomax)

Mr and Mrs Hollingworth, who were on BBC One documentary Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard last year, said: “These fossils come from the Early Jurassic, specifically a time called the Toarcian.

"The clay layers exposed at this site near Stroud have yielded a significant number of well-preserved marine vertebrate fossils.

"The fossils are comparable to the famous and exquisitely preserved similar fauna of the Strawberry Bank Lagerstätte from Ilminster, Somerset – a prehistoric site of exceptional fossil preservation.

"Excavations at Kings Stanley have revealed a rich source of fossil material, particularly from a rare layer of rock that has not been exposed since the late 19th Century.”

A team of eight scientists were involved in the latest dig this Summer. During that time, roughly 200kg of clay was collected and sieved in a state-of-the-art sediment processing machine to extract small teeth and bones.

Many specimens collected will be donated to Stroud's Museum in the Park to add to its palaeontology collection.

Nigel Larkin, specialist palaeontological conservator, said: “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Give a palaeontologist a fossil fish and they will tell you the species, the age of the rock, the climate of the time when the fish was alive, plus the water depth and salinity and plenty of other information.

"This site - already an interesting farm in a beautiful setting - is one big outdoor classroom.”

The Paleolithic Mysteries of the Underwater 'Cosquer Cave' in France

The Cosquer Cave is located in the Calanque de Morgiou in Marseille, France, near Cap Morgiou. The entrance to the cave is located 37 m (121 ft) underwater, due to the Holocene sea level rise. The cave can now be accessed by divers through a 175 m (574 ft) long tunnel; the entrance is located 37 m (121 ft) below sea level, which has risen since the cave was inhabited. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene, the shore of the Mediterranean was several kilometers to the south and the sea level up to 100 m (330 ft) below the entrance of the cave.

It was regularly visited for several thousand years, over a period ranging from 27,000 to 14,000 BC. However, it was first authenticated by an expert on the Neolithic called Jean Courtin, as it proved impossible to find an archaeologist specialising in the Palaeolithic capable of diving to a depth of 37 metres and swimming along a dark, relatively narrow passageway.

The cave contains various prehistoric rock art engravings. Its submarine entrance was discovered in 1985 by Henri Cosquer, a professional diver. The underwater passage leading to the cave was progressively explored till 1990 by cave divers without the divers being aware of the archaeological character of the cave. It is only in the last period (1990-1991) of the progressive underwater explorations that the cave divers emerged in the non-submerged part of the cave.

The prehistoric paintings were not immediately discovered by the divers to first emerge from the other side of the sump. The cave was named after Henri Cosquer, when its existence was made public in 1991, after that three divers became lost in the cave and died.

Prehistoric artists drew and painted animals but never humans, apart from their hands. From this point of view, the Cosquer cave is no exception.

Four fifths of the cave, including any cave wall art, were permanently or periodically submerged and destroyed by sea water. 150 instances of cave art remain, including several dozen paintings and carvings dating back to the Upper Paleolithic, corresponding to two different phases of occupation of the cave:

• Older art consisting of 65 hand stencils and other related motifs, dating to 27,000 years BP (the Gravettian Era).

• Newer art of signs and 177 animals dating to 19,000 years BP (the Solutrean Era), representing both "classical" animals such as bison, ibex, and horses, but also marine animals such as auks and a man with a seal's head.

In the cave, marine animals make up a significant proportion of the figures. Auks, seals, fish and various markings that may represent jellyfish were painted or engraved on the walls. An auk can also be seen on the “ceiling”. This is probably a great auk, which was still widespread in the North Atlantic in the nineteenth century.

Cosquer isn't the only site that features hand stencils. In fact, this appears to be a pattern that is specific to the Gravettian culture in Europe. The hands may have been mutilated or injured, but the most plausible hypothesis is that they represented a kind of code, a language of communication between hunter-gatherers, like that used not so long ago by the indigenous peoples of North America. But the meaning of these signs or codes is no longer accessible to us today.

The men, women and children whose handprints have been found in the cave were Homo sapiens sapiens, in other words, they were identical to modern humans in every way. It should be borne in mind that people in the prehistory never lived deep inside caves but rather near the cave mouth, under shelter, or in the open air.

Ancient Forest Found Inside A Giant Sinkhole In China

The residents of Leye County in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region are no strangers to sinkholes. The area's 29 majestic sinkholes and underground caves have earned themselves a UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. But the one explored by scientists in early May 2022 harbored an extraordinary secret — a pristinely-preserved ancient forest.

Lixin Chen, founder of the Guangxi 702 Cave Expedition Club, and his team first descended inside the massive chasm on May 6, 2022. It did not take them long to reach firm ground to walk on. But the group soon realized they were nowhere close to the bottom of the 630-foot-deep sinkhole. They had to traverse through a dense undergrowth of lush green vines and trees as high as 130 feet for a few hours to get there.

Chen and his team had to trek the dense forest to reach the sinkhole's lowest point. (Credit: Hanshun Gong/Atlas Obscura)

Chen told Atlas Obscura that the environment reminded him of a scene from the movie Avatar. "The tree vines were entangling us like spider webs, and you have no idea how deep your next step was going to be," he says. "The plants were so brittle that you could pull them down with your hands, but they'd recover just as quick. When we came back [up], the path was hidden again."

The scientists have since returned to the sinkhole which they named "The Eagle" several times. They have found three collapsed caves, evidence of an ancient underground river, and a small underground lake. Chen says, "I wouldn't be surprised to know that there are species found in these caves that have never been reported or described by science until now."

An underground lake inside The Eagle (Credit: Lixin Chen/Atlas Obscura)

Tiankeng, or "heavenly pit," the Mandarin name for these enormous sinkholes, is a common feature of karst terrain. The natural landscapes primarily comprise carbonate rocks like limestone and dolomite. When rainwater falls on the rocks, a chemical reaction causes small cracks and tunnels to start forming in the rock structure. Over time, these cracks widen due to erosion and eventually collapse in on themselves, opening up giant sinkholes or caves.

The sinkholes, left undisturbed by human activity, can be an oasis for life, especially for previously unknown species. The massive chasms are also a conduit to underground water reservoirs, or aquifers. Karst aquifers are the primary water source for over 700 million people worldwide.

8 million-year-old hipparion fossils found in Xinjiang

Fossils of Hipparion fauna have been found in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Fossils of Hipparion fauna are found in Wenquan county, Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Archaeologists with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) recently discovered these fossils which could date back to 8 million years ago at a hillside in a pasture in Wenquan county.

The fossil beds are concentrated and dense, and some fossils are interrelated. After preliminary analysis and identification, the fossil group is left by Hipparion and common members of Hipparion fauna such as antelope, Palaeotragus and Tetralophodont which existed at the same time, according to Wang Shiqi with IVPP.

Hipparion fauna was widely distributed in the mid-latitude region of Eurasia 8 million to 5 million years ago, and their fossils were found in many provinces in northern China, Greece and Turkey.

In Xinjiang, Hipparion fauna only appeared in Wenquan county, making it a key location to link the distribution of Hipparion fauna at the east and west ends of Eurasia, which is of great significance for the study of paleoecological evolution during this period.

This fossil discovery site has high scientific research value, and will be excavated in a planned way in the future, Wang said.

Wenquan county is located in the west of the Mongolian autonomous prefecture of Bortala in Xinjiang. Mammalian fossils were reported to have been discovered here as early as the 1960s.

These are 12,000 year-old footprints left by humans during the Ice Age

Archaeologists have found an incredible array of ancient human footprints at an Air Force test and training range in Utah.

In the last month, US archaeologists working with the country’s Air Force have found 88 human footprints thought to date back at least 12,000 years.

The prints were found at a site called Trackway, just half a mile from the equally impressive Wishbone Site. In 2016 archeologists discovered a likely 12,300 year-old fire pit, charcoal, charred bird bones, projectile points, stone tool and even tobacco at Wishbone.

In fact, this was the earliest evidence for human use of the substance.

We might not think much of the footprints we leave behind, but they give archaeologists all kinds of information from the types of animals living in an area to the way they walked, jumped and ran.

Footprints discovered on an archaeological site are marked with a pin flag on the Utah Test and Training Range (Credits: US Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)

Although the Utah testing range is now largely arid, it was once a wetland home to a wide range of animals, including megafauna like giant ground sloths. And it was also home to humans.

‘Based on excavations of several prints, we’ve found evidence of adults with children from about 5 to 12 years of age that were leaving bare footprints,’ said Dr Daron Duke, a principal investigator with the Far Western Anthropological Research Group.

‘People appear to have been walking in shallow water, the sand rapidly infilling their print behind them — much as you might experience on a beach — but under the sand was a layer of mud that kept the print intact after infilling,’ he said.

‘We found so much more than we bargained for,’ added Anya Kitterman, Hill Air Force Base’s Cultural Resource Manager.

A footprint discovered at ‘Trackway’ is marked with a pin flag on the Utah Test and Training Range, July 18, 2022 ( Credits: US Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)

Although the team hasn’t yet had its research peer-reviewed and published, Duke says archaeologists can estimate the age of the footprints by considering how the landscape itself has changed over time.

There haven’t been the kind of wetland conditions needed to produce tracks like this for at least 10,000 years, he said.

‘Our long-term work on the geochronology of this area suggests these prints are likely more than 12,000 years old,’ he added.

There’s plenty more work to be done to understand the people who left these footprints behind. The team have collected the infill of the prints to look for organic materials that can be radiocarbon dated, for example.

Members of local Native American tribes are being consulted on the footprints, as well as taken to visit the excavation site. The team say it’s vitally important to have indigenous group’s perspectives, as the footprints will have been left by their ancestors.

‘There is an immediate human connection to seeing human footprints,’ Duke said. ‘To see them from a distant past, especially so much different than it looks today, can be impactful. They were very happy to see this, and it was personally rewarding for me to be able to show it to them. We will continue to talk to them about it.’

More footprints…

Meanwhile, British archaeologists have also made impressive footprint finds at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, New Scientist reports.

An astonishing archaeological area, the park is home to the oldest footprints ever found in North America. Tought to date back some 23,000 years, their discovery was announced last year in the journal Science.

The oldest footprints in North America were found in White Sands National Park in New Mexico (Credits: Bournemouth University)

Bournemouth University’s Matthew Bennett and colleagues have found footprint evidence of ancient children playing in the muddy remants of a giant ground sloth’s trackway.

Bennett has been working at the site for years, and was first author on last year’s Science study describing 23,000-year old human prints.

He and his team found large, 40cm-long footprints they believe a sloth that stood up to 3m tall left behind as it lumbered through the wetlands.

Around these prints — and around one in particular — are a mess of children’s footprints that deformed what was likely still wet depressions.

Bennett and colleagues’ best explanation is that, 11,500 years ago, relatively fresh sloth prints filled up with water, creating at least one puddle around which three to five children frolicked.

The research has not yet been published, so it hasn’t yet been reviewed by other academics.

Ice age children frolicked in 'giant sloth puddles' 11,000 years ago, footprints reveal

"All kids like to play with muddy puddles."

An illustration of children from the last ice age splashing in puddles on a ground sloth trackway in what is now New Mexico. (Image credit: Karen Carr/National Park Service)

More than 11,000 years ago, young children trekking with their families through what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico discovered the stuff of childhood dreams: muddy puddles made from the footprints of a giant ground sloth.

Few things are more enticing to a youngster than a muddy puddle. The children — likely four in all — raced and splashed through the soppy sloth trackway, leaving their own footprints stamped in the playa — a dried up lake bed. Those footprints were preserved over millennia, leaving evidence of this prehistoric caper, new research finds.

The finding shows that children living in North America during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago) liked a good splash. "All kids like to play with muddy puddles, which is essentially what it is," Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in the U.K. who is studying the trackway, told Live Science.

Bennett has traveled to White Sands more than a dozen times in the past five years, locating and analyzing footprints left by ice age humans and megafauna (animals heavier than 99 pounds, or 45 kilograms). He and his colleagues have already made a number of remarkable finds, including human footprints dating to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, which are the earliest 'unequivocal evidence' of people in the Americas.

The discovery of the children's and sloth's muddy prints haven't been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but Bennett plans to write about them in the coming months as a methods paper, to help scientists who are studying similar trackways determine how many people were present and how old those individuals were when they created the tracks. For instance, the tracks that Bennett analyzed aren't an accurate representation of the children's feet, as the squishy mud distorted each print, but Bennett was able to compare the preserved, smeary footprints with modern growth data to deduce the children's ages.

He found that there were more than 30 footprints crisscrossing the sloth trackway, likely from children between the ages of 5 and 8 years old, Bennett said.

A digitally created image showing a section of the trackway left by the ground sloth. The ground sloth's print likely filled with water and soon became trampled by ice age children, who left their own footprints at the site. (Image credit: David Bustos;Matthew Bennett)

The now-extinct giant ground sloth, possibly Nothrotheriops, left its trackway after walking through the area on all fours. Each sloth print is actually a double print, Bennet said. "As it puts its forepaws down, the rear paw comes and steps on it," he explained. This combination of front and back paw gives the prints a kidney shape.

Each of the giant ground sloth footprints measures nearly 16 inches (40 centimeters) long, and the beast would have been anywhere from the size of a cow to as big as a bear, Bennet said. The footprints are shallow, about 1.2 inches (3 cm) deep, but it seems that was deep enough for them to fill with water and intrigue the children.

"We see children's tracks very frequently at White Sands," most likely because, just like today's children, these youngsters raced around, leaving hundreds of footprints a day, Bennett said. 

The children and adults in the group were "almost certainly" foragers who stuck together while searching for food, he added. "In the past, you would have just taken your kid to work. And if work was walking across the former lake bed in order to track an animal, you would have taken your child with you."

It's challenging to date footprints without a detailed stratigraphy — or studying the rock layers — of the site and without finding any organic matter, which can be radiocarbon dated. But based on the discovery of the 23,000-year-old prints and the fact that ground sloths went extinct around 11,000 years ago, these once-splashy children’s prints were likely made between 23,000 and 11,000 years ago, Bennet said. 

Originally published on Live Science.

1.2 billion-year-old groundwater is some of the oldest on Earth

The abundance of hydrogen and helium make it a possible energy source.

Groundwater that was recently discovered deep underground in a mine in South Africa is estimated to be 1.2 billion years old. Researchers suspect that the  groundwater is some of the oldest on the planet, and its chemical interactions with the surrounding rock could offer new insights about energy production and storage in Earth's crust.

In fact, Oliver Warr, a research associate in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto in Canada and lead author of a new study about the groundwater discovery, described the location in a statement as a "Pandora's box of helium-and-hydrogen-producing power." 

The South African groundwater was also enriched in the highest concentration of radiogenic products — elements produced by radioactivity — yet discovered in fluids, according to the study, demonstrating that ancient groundwater sites may one day potentially serve as energy sources.

The gold and uranium mine, known as Moab Khotsong, sits about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Johannesburg and is home to one of the world's deepest mine shafts, plunging to depths of 1.86 miles (3 km) below the surface at its deepest, according to the mine(opens in new tab).  

The new find follows the prior discovery of approximately 1.8 billion-year-old groundwater made during a 2013 research expedition (also led by Warr). That finding occurred at Kidd Creek Mine in Ontario, which lies beneath the Canadian Shield, a geologic structure comprised of igneous and metamorphic rock dating to the precambrian supereon (4.5 billion to 541 million years ago). The Canadian Shield spans 3 million square miles (nearly 8 million square km), and Warr referred to it as a "hidden hydrogeosphere" — an abundance of hydrogen — in a blog post(opens in new tab) published July 5. 

"One of the most exciting parts about this new discovery is that at first we thought the groundwater at Kidd Creek was an outlier," Warr told Live Science. "But now we have this brand-new site located somewhere different with a completely different geologic history that also preserves fluid on a billion-year timescale. It looks like this is a feature of these environments, which represent about 72% of the total continental crust by surface area."

Until now, "We only had one data point, and it's pretty hard to say that, yes, this is applicable to the entire world," Warr said. "But this new site reaffirmed what we considered to be true: that these systems trap water over extremely long time spans." 

Warr described the way that rocks release this billion-year-old groundwater as similar to the way that liquid escapes from a water balloon. 

"These deep mines are the perfect location for what we do, since, as researchers, we don't have the time or the money to put a hole in the ground, but that's what a mine does. When they drill bore holes, the water that has been trapped inside the rock starts gushing out — it's like piercing a water balloon — and we're able to capture it."

After collecting the samples at Moab Khotsong, Warr and his team of international researchers examined their contents and found that the water contained properties that resembled those of water at Kidd Creek.

"In these deep settings, water is held in cracks in the rock and, over time, they interact, resulting in uranium, which then decays over millions, and even billions, of years, creating noble gases," Warr said. As these noble gases accumulate in the water, researchers can measure their concentrations and how long they were present within the rock.

Warr explained that the samples collected contained high salt content — about eight times more than that of seawater — as well as concentrations of uranium, radiogenic helium, neon, argon, xenon and krypton. They also found the presence of hydrogen and helium, both of which are important energy sources. This finding offers a previously unseen glimpse of helium diffusion from deep within the planet, an important process to consider as we face an ongoing helium shortage, and could hint at energy production under the surface of other planets, too, according to the study.

"As long as there is water and rock, you'll see the production of helium and hydrogen — and that doesn't necessarily mean this has to be taking place only on Earth," Warr said. "If there is water on the subsurface of Mars or any other rocky planet, helium and hydrogen could be generated there too, leading to yet another energy source."

The findings were published June 30 in the journal Nature Communications

Originally published on Live Science.

Limestone Wall In Bolivia Has Over 5000 Dinosaur Footprints Belonging To 10 Different Species

A wall in Bolivia is covered in thousands of dinosaur footprints, and it's becoming a major tourist attraction

Photograph by Yatlik.com

Cal Orcko, located 3 miles south of downtown Sucre in Bolivia, is home to the world's largest and most diverse collection of dinosaur footprints from the Cretaceous Period.

The limestone cliff hosts about 5,000 dinosaur footprints, with many dating back 68 million years.

Discovered on the grounds of the local cement company Fancesa in 1985, the cliff was closed off to tourists after mining conditions and erosion began damaging the area.

After eight years of closures, tours started last year to allow visitors the opportunity to marvel at these footprints.

From the Parque Cretacico, which hosts a museum and dinosaur models, fossils, and paleontological information, you can take a one-hour guided tour to select areas of the wondrous paleontological site.

Flickr/Médéric

You'll also get to peak at "under footprints," the oldest layer of prints, which date back 70 million years.

The site contains the footprints of at least eight different species and stands as an ever-changing record of history in the Cretaceous era.

Flickr/Jenny Mealing

As parts become eroded, new prints are continuously being found in the area, which is why the park has submitted Cal Orcko to the Unesco World Heritage list in an effort to continue preserving the footprints.

Photograph by Carsten Drossel

Photograph by Gerardo Diego Ontiveros