rewrites

A small obsidian artifact found in the Texas Panhandle provides compelling evidence of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado’s expedition across the area over 470 years ago. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.comCould a family’s obsidian blade be a clue to the expedition’s trail?It’s a small piece of obsidian, just over 5 centimeters long, likely found on a hard-scrabble piece of ranchland in the Texas panhandle. But when SMU anthropologist Matthew Boulanger looks at it, he gets a mental image of Spanish explorer Francisco…

Reconstruction of Ceoptera evansae. Credit: © NHM & Witton 2021Scientists unveil a new pterosaur species from Scotland, offering insights into the diversity and global spread of early flying reptiles and challenging established views on their evolutionary timeline.A new species of pterosaur from specimens found on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, has been announced by scientists from the Natural History Museum, University of Bristol, University of Leicester, and University of Liverpool.Insights Into Pterosaur Diversity and…

Scientists uncovered a elegantly carved saddle made from several pieces of birch wood from an ancient cave in Mongolia. Credit: William Taylor/ CU BoulderIn April 2015, an ancient cave burial at Urd Ulaan Uneet, located in the high Altai Mountains of western Mongolia, was plundered by thieves. Upon their arrest, police discovered various artifacts, including a finely crafted saddle composed of multiple birch wood pieces.Now, in a new study, researchers from Mongolia collaborating with University of Colorado Boulder…

It’s just another day on the mean streets of Judea circa 33 A.D., where people hang out on sunbaked corners talking smack, working-class stiffs scramble to get by, and Roman centurions — the L.A.P.D. of their day — stop and frisk anyone who they feel matches the description of a suspect. (As in: anyone that does not look like a white Roman centurion.) If you’re lucky, you might get to see a chariot street race already in progress, like the one between Clarence (LaKeith Stanfield) and Mary Magdalene (Teyana Taylor). He…

Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune The British musician and filmmaker Jeymes Samuel wanted to make a biblical epic like “Ben-Hur,” with a side order of biblical-adjacent “Spartacus,” but his way. The result is the satiric/earnest/rollicking/mellow amalgam called “The Book of Clarence,” starring LaKeith Stanfield as a dope-dealing striver in 33 A.D. Jerusalem. The trailer looks like an action comedy, and it isn’t that, really, thought it contains both action (chariot street racing, gladiator bone-crunching) and comedy.…

Diamond is a promising material for data storage, and now scientists have demonstrated a new way to cram even more data onto it, down to a single atom. The technique bypasses a physical limit by writing data to the same spots in different-colored light.Diamond has great potential as a data storage medium – recent developments have produced 2-inch (5-cm) wafers of the stuff that can store the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs. Intriguingly, it works not by writing data to the diamond itself but to tiny nitrogen defects…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Prehistoric men hunted; prehistoric women gathered. At least this is the standard narrative written by and about men to the exclusion of women. The idea of "Man the Hunter" runs deep within anthropology, convincing people that hunting made us human, only men did the hunting, and therefore…

NASA’s Spitzer Telescope’s 2008 discovery of a unique protoplanetary disk around SZ Cha, with unusual ultraviolet radiation, was contradicted by the James Webb Telescope’s later findings of typical radiation levels. These conflicting observations, particularly the differing neon signatures, suggest a significant and previously unobserved change in the disk’s radiation exposure. This challenges current models of planet formation and necessitates further research.The contrast between the James Webb Space Telescope’s…

“Pixel Ripped 1978 brings Atari nostalgia to VR in a charming adventure that feels a little too removed from reality at times.” Pros Authentic Atari references Clever meta gameplay Inventive 3D worlds Charming Easter eggs Cons Repetitive Dot combat Undeveloped Bug story…

New evidence suggests that the Marinoan Ice Age, one of the most severe ice ages in Earth’s history, may not have entirely frozen the planet as previously thought. Instead, it was more of a “Slushball Earth,” with patches of open water supporting life in the shallow mid-latitude seas. The finding, published in Nature Communications, is based on geological samples and ancient algae from over 600 million years ago.Geologists have uncovered evidence suggesting that the planet did not experience complete glaciation during the…