The eastern half of North America is definitely not dreaming of a white Christmas this season: the forecast is calling for record-breaking warm temperatures this week, with some regions to see temperatures 35º Fahrenheit (19ºC) above normal. Temperatures are expected to briefly dip over Christmas itself, but are expected to rise again for the remainder of the year.
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A recent study has made a controversial analysis of a fossilized femur, originally excavated from Southwest China’s Maludong (‘Red Deer Cave’) in 1989. The study says that the small leg bone in question originally belonged to an early hominid, such as Homo habilis or Homo erectus, and is only estimated to be 14,000 years old, along with other remains retrieved from the site. However, this find presents a problem for paleontologists: hominids such as this are thought to have gone extinct roughly 1.5 million years ago.
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Throughout human history, many unfortunate individuals have fallen victim to crippling phobias, from natural fears such as arachnophobia, to fears acquired from traumatic events, leading to PTSD. These conditions can take sometimes years, even lifetimes to cure, and some individuals never truly overcome their phobias. However, a new therapy that re-writes the memories associated with these fears can cure an individual of their phobia — in roughly two minutes.
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Researcher Andrew Collins has recently published an article outlining the discovery of the link between carvings that appear on a small bone plaque, and the megaliths at the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site where the plaque was found. These carvings may have provided us with a clue that implies that the researchers that have been studying the site may be seeing the site’s orientation entirely backward.
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