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As our planet's permafrosts continue to melt in record-breaking heat, we can expect to find astonishing things from the ancient past. Like this huge wolf head, preserved since the last ice age and unearthed in incredible condition in Siberia in 2018, an estimated 40,000 years since being entombed in frozen wilderness. The giant head, discovered by a local man in 2018 along the shores of the Tirekhtyakh River in the Russian Republic of Sakha (aka Yakutia), measures a whole 40 centimetres in length (about 16 inches), making it unlike any existing wolf specimen scientists have studied from so long ago....

Newgrange is a prehistoric passage tomb in County Meath, Ireland. built during the Neolithic period around 3200 BC and predates monuments such as Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. The site consists of a circular mount with retaining walls and contains stone passages and chambers where human remains have been discovered on previous archaeology excavations by antiquarians from the 18th century. Normally we inherit two copies of the genome, one from each parent, but the individual buried in the chamber had genomes that were remarkably similar, suggesting that his parents were first-degree relatives and are a key indicator of inbreeding... Dan...

One of these Neanderthal genomes was from an individual (Vindija 33) found in Vindija Cave in Croatia, whereas the other Neanderthal genome (Denisova 5 or the Altai Neanderthal) and the Denisovan genome (Denisova 3) both came from specimens discovered in Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains... The researchers found that Chagyrskaya 8 lived 80,000 years ago, about 30,000 years after the Denisova 5 Neanderthal and 30,000 years before the Vindija 33 Neanderthal. They also found that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthal was a female and that she was more closely related to Vindija 33 and other Neanderthals in western Eurasia than to...

In past experiments, researchers have examined the same human gene's effect on the brain sizes of mice and ferrets. The brains did grow larger — but in those experiments, the team used an over-expression of the gene, rather than the typical human levels. So the effect could have been due to another hidden factor rather than the gene itself. Plus, crucially, mice and ferrets aren't primates — so they can't tell us how the introduction of the gene may have changed the brains of our modern ancestors. Primates are particularly interesting to researchers because — before now, they didn't know...

It's impossible not to notice that the left has made a cottage industry out of trashing Republicans and conservatives as racists and "angry white guys" while elevating Democrats as the party of racial diversity. As the Washington Examiner pointed out, "Joe Biden's pledge to choose a woman as his running mate, and his consideration of several black female officeholders for the role, has spurred considerable chatter about diversity in the nation's second-highest office." Charles Curtis, a Republican, was the first individual "with acknowledged non-European ancestry" to become vice president, the outlet reported. Serving under Herbert Hoover from 1929 through 1933,...

Arima · Seated at a table under a traditional Carib Indian thatch roof, cousins Jason Calderon and Rosa Bharath are busy hot-gluing sequins on decorations for Carnival, listening to pop music on the radio while clad in the latest teen fashions: hip T-shirts, knockoff adidas shoes and earrings that look like diamonds.

Pirates or no pirates, the islands of the Caribbean were settled and resettled by at least three successive waves of colonists from the American mainland, according to a new study. The examination of ancient DNA from 93 islanders who lived between 400 and 3200 years ago reveals a complex population history and ties to broader, inter-continental human expansions in both North and South America, according to an international research team... The Caribbean was one of the last regions in the Americas to be settled. Archaeological evidence suggests the first residents arrived about 8000 years ago, and that 3000 years later...

Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology... The long history of matings between Neanderthals, humans, and Denisovans has only recently been demonstrated through the analysis of ancient genomes. The ability of mammalian species, including ancient humans, to produce fertile hybrid offspring has been hard to predict, and the relative fertility of the hybrids remains an open question. Some geneticists have even said that Neanderthals and humans were...

Archaeological remains have shown that in the middle part the Stone Age, there were at least three different but partially contemporary cultural groups in Sweden. The groups are often called: Funnel Beaker culture, which is associated with Scandinavia's first farmers; Pitted Ware culture, which is mainly linked to fishing and hunting; and Battle Axe culture, which represents a blended culture of herding and farming... The researchers have analysed DNA from 25 Stone Age individuals from four Pitted Ware culture burial grounds on Gotland. About half of the individuals were buried in typical Pitted Ware culture graves and the other half...

One in three women in Europe inherited the receptor for progesterone from Neandertals -- a gene variant associated with increased fertility, fewer bleedings during early pregnancy and fewer miscarriages. This is according to a study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden... Progesterone is a hormone that plays an important role in the menstrual cycle and in pregnancy. Analyses of biobank data from more than 450,000 participants -- among them 244,000 women -- show that almost one in three women in Europe have inherited...

Rechavi's group obtained DNA from minuscule bits that either fell off or were removed from 26 Dead Sea Scroll fragments. Those samples contained no writing. After excluding DNA left by people who had handled the scrolls, the scientists identified DNA of animals used to make the ancient parchments. All fragments were made of sheepskin except for two made from cow skin... Four Qumran fragments from the Hebrew Bible's book of Jeremiah likely came from two different versions of that book, the investigators find. Two sheepskin fragments belonged to one book and two cow skin fragments belonged to another. Cows couldn't...

The researchers used advanced ancient DNA capture techniques to retrieve ancient DNA from 25 individuals dating back 9,500-4,200 years and one individual dating back 300 years from northern and southern East Asia... Prof. FU and her team found that these Neolithic humans share the closest genetic relationship to present-day East Asians who belong to this "second layer." This suggests that by 9,500 years ago, the primary ancestries composing the genetic makeup of East Asians today could already be found in mainland East Asia. While more divergent ancestries can be found in Southeast Asia and the Japanese archipelago, in the Chinese...

Microscopic signatures of malting could help reveal which prehistoric people had a taste for beer. Ancient beer is difficult to trace, because many of beer’s chemical ingredients, like alcohol, don’t preserve well (SN: 9/28/04). But a new analysis of modern and ancient malted grain indicates that malting’s effects on grain cell structure can last millennia. This microscopic evidence could help fill in the archaeological record of beer consumption, providing insight into the social, ritual and dietary roles this drink played in prehistoric cultures, researchers report online May 7 in PLOS ONE. Malting, the first step in brewing beer, erodes cell...

At some point in the past two millennia — peanuts on an evolutionary time scale — humans transformed their horses into equine speed demons. Selective breeding had a price, though, beyond $30,000 vials of pedigreed racehorse sperm. Unhelpful mutations plagued the animals. The current population of domesticated horses is about 55 million, but at some point in their history, their genetic diversity crashed. The Y chromosomes of all the world's stallions are now quite similar, suggesting that only a relatively few males were the ancestors of today's horses. Humans have not always bred so selectively, according to a study published...

...Prof. Haak will also try to detect more plague DNA in hundreds of skeletons from the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. So far, DNA evidence from a dozen skeletons points to little variability between the strains of Yersinia pestis in such remains, suggesting that the pestilence spread rapidly across the continent. The speed may owe to another human advance at this time -- the domestication of wild horses, which may literally have carried the disease into Europe. "We see the change from wild local horses to domesticated horses, which happened rapidly at the beginning of the Bronze Age," said...

Genetic enhancement may not be restricted to the pages of sci-fi novels for much longer. For example, scientists have already inserted genes from tardigrades — tiny, adorable and famously tough animals that can survive the vacuum of space — into human cells in the laboratory. The engineered cells exhibited a greater resistance to radiation than their normal counterparts... Tardigrades and "extremophile" microbes, such as the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans, "are a great, basically natural reservoir of amazing traits and talents in biology," added Mason... "Maybe we use some of them." Harnessing these traits might also someday allow astronauts to journey...

Neanderthals selected rib bones from specific animals to make the lissoirs (French for 'smoothers'), which are bone tools that have been intentionally shaped and used on animal hides to make them softer and more water resistant, according to new research led by paleoanthropologists from the University of California, Davis. Scientists know that some Neanderthals produced bone tools. These include the discovery of five nearly identical fragments of lissoirs from two Paleolithic sites in southwest France: Pech-de-l'Azé I (Pech I) and Abri Peyrony. These specialized tools are often worn so smooth that it's impossible to tell which animal they came from...

An international team of scientists led by the University of Adelaide's Davies Research Centre has shown that it is possible to disentangle the DNA sequences of the chromosomes inherited from the mother and the father, to create true diploid genomes from a single individual. In a report published in Nature Communications, and funded by the Davies Research Centre over the past 15 years, the researchers have shown that genomes of two important modern-day cattle breeds, Angus (Bos taurus taurus) and Brahman (Bos taurus indicus), can be completely decoded from a single hybrid individual carrying the genetics of both breeds, using...

For decades, the enormous disease-curing potential of human stem cells has been thwarted by the inability to produce sufficient quantities of mature human cells in vivo -- in a living organism. Now, a team led by University at Buffalo scientists has developed a method that dramatically ramps up production of mature human cells in mouse embryos. Producing human cells in vivo is critical because cells made in a petri dish often do not behave the same way that cells do in the body. The research was published on May 13 in Science Advances. "This is fundamental research that allows us...

A 3,400-year-old Canaanite fort discovered in the heart of the modern Israeli city of Nahariya will be incorporated into a residential high-rise to be built at the spot. The Bronze Age citadel apparently served as an administrative center serving Mediterranean mariners... It had been destroyed at least four times by fire and was rebuilt each time... Among the artifacts discovered in the ruined citadel's rooms are ceramic figurines with human and animal forms, bronze weapons, and pottery vessels that hadn't been made locally -- they had been imported. That is further testimony to the extensive trading relations among the peoples...