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The grasslands, glaciers and snow-capped peaks of the Tibetan Plateau are breathtaking, but the vast expanse of Central Asia is also one of the harshest environments on Earth.
When I traveled to the plateau three decades ago, my head throbbed and I fainted from altitude sickness.
Archaeologists have long believed the Tibetan Plateau — more than 13,000 feet (about 4,000 meters) above sea level — was one of the last places on the planet to be settled.
But new research suggests that a mysterious species of ancient man was able to thrive on the so-called roof of the world long before Homo sapiens, our own species, came on the scene.
Researchers first identified Denisovans in 2010 using DNA sequences extracted from a rare small finger bone fragment found in Siberia.
Now, Baishiya Karst Cave, on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, is helping to answer many questions about who the Denisovans were.
Archaeologists have examined a jawbone and rib found at the cave site, along with thousands of animal bone fragments found during excavations in 2018 and 2019.
The analysis is shedding light on how extinct humans thrived in the Ice Age environment for more than 100,000 years.
With the June 25 return of the Chang’e-6 lunar mission, China’s government has something no other humans have encountered – soil and rocks from the far side of the moon.
China’s National Space Administration has said it will again share its lunar samples with scientists around the world – following the precedent NASA set after the Apollo missions.
But a US law known as the Wolf Amendment, which prohibits NASA from using government funds for bilateral cooperation with China or its agencies without authorization from Congress or the FBI, could prevent US access to the samples.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN this week that the federal agency was working to ensure that access to lunar soil samples would not violate the law. Results from the analysis of the samples could help scientists look back to the early days of the Moon, Earth and the solar system.
Take a moment to marvel at what researchers say is the world’s oldest known story. Painted on a cave wall in what is now Indonesia, it depicts three people interacting with a pig.
The research team used a new technique to date the calcium carbonate crust that formed on the art to more than 50,000 years old.
The discovery is the latest rock art to be found in the region’s intriguing limestone caves and is at least 33,000 years older than Europe’s famous Paleolithic sites such as Lascaux.
Some experts think that the paintings may have been a visual supplement to oral stories lost to time.
Rivers often change course as they flow. But a research team studying the Ganges, which winds its way from the Himalayas through India and Bangladesh, found evidence of something much more dramatic in its ancient past.
From data hidden in mud and sand grains, scientists discovered that a powerful earthquake changed the course of the river 2,500 years ago – the first time this natural phenomenon has been discovered.
The team found sand volcanoes—a hallmark of a river bed affected by an earthquake—and a large river channel that silted up around the same time.
If a similar earthquake were to strike today in the Ganges delta, more than 140 million people in the area could be affected.
Entomologist Dr. Gerard Talavera came across 10 painted lady butterflies on a beach about a decade ago in French Guiana. With torn wings riddled with holes, the bugs looked exhausted.
While a painted lady is a hardy long-distance traveler, with migration patterns that span thousands of miles, she usually travels overland so she can stop and rest.
Talavera, a senior researcher at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona in Spain, suspected that the butterflies had crossed the Atlantic Ocean without stopping. In a new study, he and an international team have pieced together what it took to make such an epic journey.
In other insect news, researchers have spotted ants amputating infected limbs of injured nestmates.
Dig into these thought-provoking reads.
— The rotation of the Earth’s core has slowed down in recent decades, a recent study confirmed. Here’s what that might mean.
– Paleontologists have discovered the fossils of a giant swamp creature with a skull shaped like a toilet seat that was likely a top predator 40 million years before dinosaurs appeared on Earth.
– The discovery of fossilized grape seeds has revealed why you should thank the death of the dinosaurs for your glass of red wine.
— A Massachusetts woman who lost a limb after a 2018 accident is walking and moving like anyone else now that she has a bionic leg fully connected to her brain.
– A new NASA radar image shows a small moon around an asteroid as it passed close to Earth.
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