An international team of researchers has uncovered what appears to be fragments of 75 million-year-old DNA from a dinosaur hatchling, bringing the concept behind Jurassic Park one step closer to reality. Previously, it was broadly accepted that the maximum amount of time that DNA could survive in a fossil wasread more
An archaeological expedition aimed at plumbing the secrets of Chichen Itza’s underworld of the gods has uncovered the well-preserved remains of ancient humans and extinct animals that date back to the last ice age–far more than what the expedition’s members bargained for when they set out to map and explore the sacred network of Mayan caves. The nature of some of the fossils found there also hinted at the occurrence of a "catastrophic event" that embedded some of the bones in the walls of the cave.
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Mainstream science’s assumption that human habitation of the North American continent began toward the end of the last ice age, about 13,000 years ago, when the ice sheets that covered the northern end of the continent began to recede, allowing humans to cross the Bering land bridge from Asia. Controversial findings from various sites around the Americas suggest an even earlier migration, with humans apparently having been in what is now Florida 14,500 years ago, and in Chile 18,500 years ago. But a new discovery in Southern California may require science to move the generally-accepted date over by a full decimal point, as remains have been unearthed there that have been found to be 130,000 years old.
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A circle of ancient megaliths that has been discovered in the jungle of the Amazon has been challenging the long-held assumption by archaeologists that the inhabitants there were simply tribes of hunter-gatherers. The granite stones, first uncovered in the 1990s, have recently been found to have functioned as an astronomical observatory, much like its more famous sister site, Stonehenge.
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