Holocene

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A research team led by Pro. Zhou Weijian from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhengzhou University and the Xi'an Institute for Innovative Earth Environment Research, has revealed a new pattern of the Holocene temperature change in arid Central Asia. The results were published in Quaternary…

Comparison of extreme wildfire activity recorded from Qinghai Lake sediments with Holocene climatic events. Credit: Hao et al As a major Earth system component, wildfire plays an important role in the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems and climate system, with significant impacts on the atmosphere, radiation effects, vegetation, surface properties, global biogeochemical cycles and human survival. Understanding the interactions…

Carbon fiber has some amazing qualities, but easy recyclability isn't one of them. New Zealand based manufacturer Vélos Advancements is nonetheless using carbon fiber waste in the production of its limited-run high-end road bike, the Holocene Superbike.Plans call for just 100 Holocenes to be built next year, each one tailored to its buyer's specifications. Those specs will include a choice of Shimano, Campagnolo, FSA, SRAM, Vision or Classified components, along with a custom paint job on the monocoque carbon frame and…

Botanical remains from El Gigante. Credit: Thomas Harper The El Gigante rockshelter in western Honduras is among only a handful of archaeological sites in the Americas that contain well-preserved botanical remains spanning the last 11,000 years. Considered one of the most important archaeological sites discovered in Central America in the last 40 years, El Gigante was recently nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.…

In June and July 2021, an extreme heat wave swept across the historically temperate Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds of people and cooking over a billion sea creatures. Now, scientists have used information etched into tree rings to demonstrate that, yes, the heat wave was unlike anything the region had seen in a millennium.Could NASA's Electric Airplane Make Aviation More Sustainable?A study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science looked at tree rings in the Pacific Northwest going back over 1,000…

Mummified elephant seal remains. Credit: Brenda Hall Studying the response of Antarctic ice sheets to past warming episodes is essential to understand how they may respond to the present warming climate, as their melting and collapse can contribute to global sea level rise. Detailed records of past ocean temperatures close to the continent are rare, but clues to how ice sheets and sea ice responded to global conditions in the…

In Sayburç, Turkey, not far from the famous settlement of Göbekli Tepe, an archaeologist discovered an 11,000-year-old scene carved into a wall. It’s one of the oldest narrative depictions in the archaeological record.The narrative scene depicts five figures: two humans, a bull, and two leopards. One of the humans is holding a snake, or rattle, in its right hand. The other human figure is holding its penis. A full description of the narrative scene, along with interpretations of its meaning for theNeolithic community…

The Sumerian Great Ziggurat temple, in modern-day Iraq.Photo: Asaad NIAZI / AFP (Getty Images)Three new scientific papers provide a fascinating and comprehensive analysis of the genomes of 777 humans who lived from the Neolithic period (about 10,000 years ago) to the Ottoman period (around 1700 CE). Altogether, the research adds nuance to the story of human dispersal and connection since the dawn of civilization.Ancient DNA for the research came from sources representing a diversity of people across time. Some of the…

Digital reconstruction (computed tomography) of two skulls of the sample. Credit: Stanislava Eisová and Emiliano Bruner This week, the journal The Anatomical Record has published a study coordinated by Emiliano Bruner, who leads the Paleoneurology Group at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), that analyzes the distribution of certain craniovascular traits in four native populations from the…