A new bit of research published by the National Academy of Sciences showed evidence of one of the first creatures on this planet with a mouth and a butt. More specifically, this fossil called Ikaria wariootia, is one of the oldest known bilaterians. A bilaterian is an animal with two openings and a trough-gut.
In Washington D.C., the Museum of the Bible commissioned independent investigators to conduct research into the authenticity of their most valuable possessions. They had a collection of the "Dead Sea Scrolls", a set of texts, fragments of what were supposed to be the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible. Unfortunate for them, all 16 fragments in the museum's collection were forgeries.
While modern video games and gamers are more obsessed with mods and, sometimes, hacking to modify behavior and gain an upper hand, the console games of old had very little room for after-market modification. Instead, game developers would often sneak in some obscure techniques to make gamers' lives a bit easier or at least more amusing, a strategy that gave birth to an Easter egg culture that continues to exist today. One of the most popular and more usable Easter eggs is the now iconic Konami Code whose original programmer just died at 61 years of age.
Who loves public domain access to tons of historically significant and utterly beautiful contend... now in 3D? With the internationally recognized Creative Commons Zero (CCO) license in effect, The Smithsonian launched their Open Access initiative this week to the public for the first time. This system's launch included approximately 2.8 million 2D images and 3D models, rolling the lot directly into the public domain for all to enjoy - and use!
A slab of stone the size of a small child was discovered in southern Turkey with clues pointing to a lost civilization. "My colleague Michele Massa and I rushed straight there, and we could see it still sticking out of the water, so we jumped right down into the canal—up to our waists wading around," said Asst. Prof. James Osborne of the Oriental Institute. "Right away, it was clear it was ancient."
A Neanderthal skeleton, the first to be excavated in 25 years, has thrown preconceptions around the so-called Neanderthal burial debate back into disarray, suggesting funeral rites may not be a uniquely homo-sapien affair. Further exploration of remains in Shanidar Cave, a remote cache of Neanderthal bones in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, built on speculation from the mid-20th Century that our assumptions about the extinct species may be incorrect.
There's a Sony/Nintendo PlayStation prototype up for auction right now that'll end up going for many thousands of dollars by the time it's over. We've got devices today from both Sony and Nintendo that are far more powerful, more capable, more usable in every way. New devices don't look like the beige monstrosities of the early days of personal computers - that's not this, but this is not about that. This is about proof that the ephemeral world of gaming has a strange, awesome past.
This week NASA loaded their first Artemis mission Space Launch System (SLS) Rocket Core Stage onboard the Pegasus barge in New Orleans. This stage of the hardware needed for Artemis was loaded onboard the barge on January 8th with plans to deliver to NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. This ferry journey mimics that of the NASA Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s.
The creature called Dendromaia was discovered with a younger Dendromaia wrapped around it in fossil form. The fossil pair were dated to approximately 300-MILLION-years-old, making this the new eldest-known example of "parental care" in an animal on our planet Earth. Per research on this find, this puts parental care in animals approximately 40 million years BEFORE the otherwise eldest proof of this characteristic. This is now the eldest-known caring parent ever found.
The early years of the gaming industry are filled with myths and legends. Some remain hearsay, existing only as stories for the annals of history. Others do take on physical form even if extremely short-lived. The console that was supposed to be born from what would become two of the bitterest rivals in the industry is one of the latter but now the Nintendo Play Station will finally be up for grabs. At least for someone who has the millions to afford it.
For only the second time in modern history, mummified lions were discovered in an ancient human tomb. This tomb was uncovered 500 kilometers south of Saqqara, Egypt, at the Bubasteion necropolis near Luxor. This is the second major announcement from the Egypt Ministry of Antiquities in the area, the first of which was nearby at the Assasif necropolis, where 30 ancient coffins were discovered with human remains sealed within.
A new study shows that human teeth hold information on the body's health from the womb to the grave. Researchers at McMaster University point to the body's first permanent molars, revealing a life-long timeline of information that lasts even after the body is dead. Think of it like a cross-section of a tree - each ring tells a story, each story reveals important details about not only the tree, but the environment in which the tree was living.