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Some chapters of human history are more moving to revisit than others.
The Battle of Waterloo ended a 23-year war, but thousands were killed when the Allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and his troops south of Brussels on June 18, 1815.
Paintings, books and eyewitness accounts preserve details of the conflict more than two centuries later. Until recently, only two complete skeletons from the battle have been found, leaving gaps in the grim story of the horrors that unfolded during and after the clash.
Now archaeologists and war veterans have found remains of amputated limbs and horses at the site, helping to tell the story of the battle’s aftermath.
Other chapters, however, such as those describing the loss of our ancestors, become increasingly difficult to find as time goes by. A chance discovery of bones in a cave provides clues to a much older, tragic secret.
We are a family
Five teeth uncovered in 2015 in a rock shelter in the French Rhône Valley could explain why Neanderthals disappeared from the earth 40,000 years ago.
The unique find, nicknamed Thorin after a character from The Hobbit, has puzzled researchers for nearly a decade. While genetic studies suggested the Neanderthal was 105,000 years old, archaeological research suggested he lived between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.
New research has found that Thorin belonged to a Neanderthal lineage that was isolated from other groups and unexpectedly lived nearby for 50,000 years, making his DNA appear older than it actually is.
This isolation put the Neanderthals at an evolutionary disadvantage and may have led to their extinction.
Fantastic creatures
When scientists observed sleeper fish devouring young Japanese eels, they found that some of the eels were able to hatch within minutes and escape through the predator’s gills.
To get a glimpse inside, the researchers used an X-ray video system and watched as the eels freed themselves from the fish’s stomach.
“Before we took the first X-rays, we never imagined that eels could escape from the stomach of a predatory fish,” said Yuha Hasegawa, assistant professor at Japan’s Nagasaki University.
“Watching the eels desperately flee from the predator’s stomach into the gills was truly astonishing for us.”
Through the universe
Colorful northern lights over the mountains of New Zealand, the glittering Dolphin Head Nebula and a sunlit silhouette of the International Space Station are just some of the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
The overall winner of the competition was photographer Ryan Imperio with his photo taken during the annular solar eclipse in October 2023.
The image shows the movement of Baily’s pearls. The phenomenon is visible for brief moments during a solar eclipse when sunlight shines through the valleys and craters of the moon, creating glowing drops of light.
Separately, SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew made history this week after completing the first commercial spacewalk and setting more space exploration records ahead of their expected return in the next few days.
Force of nature
The world’s most devastating mass extinction event, which occurred around 252 million years ago, wiped out over 90% of all life on the planet. Scientists now believe they have discovered a climate phenomenon that played a crucial role.
Until now, scientists assumed that carbon dioxide released by volcanic activity caused sudden warming of the planet, acid rain and acidification of the oceans.
But an intense, long-lasting El Niño event lasting several years and originating from a primordial body of water much larger than today’s Pacific Ocean would have further amplified the effects of volcanism.
Together, these two phenomena may have caused the Great Extinction. The catastrophic extinctions began on land before occurring in the sea.
A long time ago
Some scientists have long believed that Rapa Nui’s population experienced a ruinous decline hundreds of years ago. The island is also called Easter Island and is known for its hundreds of carved stone statues.
But a new analysis of ancient DNA from 15 former inhabitants of the island who lived there over the last 400 years tells a different story.
Genetic analysis suggests that the island’s small population actually grew until the 1860s and that the island’s inhabitants reached the Americas in the 14th century, long before Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Meanwhile, the search for the origin of Stonehenge’s mysterious central altar stone is intensifying, and researchers have ruled out a likely ancient site as the source of the monolith.
Explorations
Take a closer look at these new findings:
— A breakthrough in physics means scientists are closer than ever to developing an atomic clock that ticks so smoothly that it wouldn’t lose a second even if it operated for a billion years.
— Lab-grown cocoa and fermented fava beans could be used to create the guilt-free chocolate of the future, avoiding rising cocoa prices and the harmful effects of cocoa farming.
– Rare, newly discovered fossils have shown that some species of giant ancient flying dinosaurs, called pterosaurs, soared like vultures, while others had a different flight style.
— NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore believes he and fellow astronaut Suni Williams could have returned to Earth aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule. The capsule returned empty last week, “but we just ran out of time,” he said.
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