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Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa? Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News   December 27, 2005 -----snip------They believe that early-human fossil discoveries over the past ten years suggest very different conclusions about where humans, or humanlike beings, first walked the Earth. New Asian finds are significant, they say, especially the 1.75 million-year-old small-brained early-human fossils found in Dmanisi, Georgia, and the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" fossils (Homo floresiensis) discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia. -----snip------"What seems reasonably clear now," Dennell said, "is that the earliest hominins in Asia did not need large brains or bodies." These attributes...

Our solar system may not be unique after all. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered gases which precede the formation of DNA and protein in the dust swirling around a young star which is located at a distance of 375 light-years. “This discovery is exciting since it is the first time that these building blocks of more complex molecules have been found near a star which is similar to the Sun,” said Fred Lahuis of Leiden Observatory and the Dutch Space Research Institute while speaking to DNA. Dr Lahuis is the lead author of a forthcoming paper on this discovery...