History
Indian DNA links to 6 'founding mothers'
NEW YORK - Nearly all of today's Native Americans in North, Central and South America can trace part of their ancestry to six women whose descendants immigrated around 20,000 years ago, a DNA study suggests. Those women left a particular DNA legac...
Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher
High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Sea reptile is biggest on record
A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced. The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006.
China finds 100,000-year-old human skull: report
BEIJING - An almost complete human skull dating back 80,000 to 100,000 years has been unearthed in central China, state media reported Wednesday. The skull, consisting of 16 pieces, was dug up last month after two years of excavation at a site in ...
One-tonne rodent discovered in South America
A 1-tonne rodent has been discovered by scientists in Uruguay. But there is no need to worry, Josephoartigasia monesi is around 2 million years old and fossilised.
Indiana Jones meets the Da Vinci Code
Islam watchers blogged all weekend about news that a secret archive of ancient Islamic texts had surfaced after 60 years of suppression. Andrew Higgins' Wall Street Journal report that the photographic record of Koranic manuscripts, supposedly des...
Did mozzies, not a meteor, do for the dinosaurs?
The theory goes that dinosaurs were wiped out after an asteroid smashed into the Earth 65million years ago. But now it has been suggested they were sent into eternity by an equally catastrophic but somewhat smaller threat - biting insects.
Dashing Finns were first to get their skates on 5,000 years ago
The origins of ice-skating have been traced by scientists to the frozen lakes of Finland about 5,000 years ago, when people used skates made from animal bone. Researchers at Manchester Metropolitan University have calculated that skating on the pr...
Massive dinosaur discovered in Antarctica
CHICAGO—A new genus and species of dinosaur from the Early Jurassic has been discovered in Antarctica. The massive plant-eating primitive sauropodomorph is called Glacialisaurus hammeri and lived about 190 million years ago.
Ancient kangaroo didn't hop, say scientists
A 25 MILLION-year-old fossil has revealed that a predecessor of Australia's hopping kangaroo once galloped on all fours, had dog-like fangs and possibly climbed trees, scientists have reported.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery of what appears to be the world's most intact dinosaur mummy: a 67-million-year-old plant-eater that contains fossilized bones and skin tissue, and possibly muscle and organs.