1-NEW DINOSAUR: Fossil Fingers Solve Bird Wing Mystery?

June 17, 2009—The fossil hand of a long-necked, ostrich-like dinosaur recently found in China may help solve the mystery of how bird wings evolved from dinosaur limbs, according to a new study. 

The ancient digits belonged to a 159-million-year-old theropod dinosaur dubbed Limusaurus inextricabilis. Theropods are two-legged dinos thought to have given rise to modern birds. 

Although it was a distant relative of Tyrannosaurus rex, the newfound dinosaur was a small herbivore, said study co-author James Clark, a biologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The animal was about 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) long and had relatively short, clawless forearms. 

"Its head is [also] unusual because it doesn't have any teeth, so it would have had a beak of some sort, although not a sharp one," Clark said.

Primitive feathers may have covered the dinosaur's body, but there is no direct evidence for that.

L. inextricabilis appears to be an evolutionary snapshot of the transition between dinosaur fingers and the digits in modern bird wings, according to the study authors. 

Theropod hands and bird wings each have three bones that appear to have evolved from the digits on a common five-fingered ancestor. But the dinosaurs were thought to have retained the first, second, and third fingers, while birds kept the second, third, and fourth.

2-Early "Human" Is Ape After All, Discoverer Decides

Nearly 15 years ago Russell Ciochon shook our family tree when he announced that a fossil found in a Chinese cave was evidence of a new form of early human.But that was then. 

Today the anthropologist announced that the fossil, a partial jaw, is from an ape after all—a "mystery ape." And as controversial as the original theory was, Ciochon's reversal is also meeting with some criticism. 

The fossil was found in the 1980s in south-central China's Longgupo cave. According to Ciochon, "the jaw was very perplexing. It didn't fit in any category of hominin [early human ancestor] that we knew of in Asia, and it also didn't fit into any ape category." 

Ciochon and colleagues theorized that the fossil represented an unknown hominid who lived in Asia 1.9 million years ago—about a million years earlier than early humans are generally thought to have arrived in the region.

3-Facedown Burials Widely Used to Humiliate the Dead

Burying the dead facedown in ancient times didn't mean RIP, according to new research that says the practice was both deliberate and widespread. 

Experts have assumed such burials were either unusual or accidental. 

But the first global study on the facedown burials suggests that it was a custom used across societies to disrespect or humiliate the dead. 

Lead study author Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board detected a common thread in the burials she studied: "That society sanctioned this apparently negative treatment of the dead," she said. 

The unnerving burials often appear to signify "behavior that is out of the norm—it is not accepted, what [the dead] have done," Arcini said. 

Shaming the dead "is most probably a deep-rooted behavior in humankind." 

Social Status 

Arcini searched existing literature to make the first ever catalog of facedown burials from around the world. 

She found descriptions of more than 600 bodies from 215 grave sites, from Peru to South Korea. 

Dating from 26,000 years ago all the way up to World War I, these so-called prone burials include men, women, and children, though the majority were men. Facedown burials occurred in all sorts of graves, including single graves, double graves, and mass graves.

 

4-Bone Flute Is Oldest Instrument, Study Says

A vulture-bone flute discovered in a European cave is likely the world's oldest recognizable musical instrument and pushes back humanity's musical roots, a new study says. 

Found with fragments of mammoth-ivory flutes, the 40,000-year-old artifact also adds to evidence that music may have given the first European modern humans a strategic advantage over Neanderthals, researchers say. 

 The bone-flute pieces were found in 2008 at Hohle Fels, a Stone Age cave in southern Germany, according to the study, led by archaeologist Nicholas Conard of the University of Tübingen in Germany. 

With five finger holes and a V-shaped mouthpiece, the almost complete bird-bone flute—made from the naturally hollow wing bone of a griffon vulture—is just 0.3 inch (8 millimeters) wide and was originally about 13 inches (34 centimeters) long. 

Flute fragments found earlier at the nearby site of Geissenklösterle have been dated to around 35,000 years ago.

5-Hand Stencils Through Time

June 26, 2009--Clusters of hand stencils dating back 2,500 years cover the walls of Argentina's Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) in Patagonia. 

Prehistoric handprints and stencils span all continents and began appearing on rock walls around the world at least 30,000 years ago. 

"Our hands are one of the features that make humans unique, something that links us all," Pennsylvania State University archaeologist Dean Snow said.

6- "Glorious" Ancient Chamber Found in Israel

June 30, 2009--Inside a newly discovered underground chamber, Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal points to an unseen carving that he suspects may be a Zodiac sign that dates back to the Roman period around the first century A.D.

The largest human-made cave in Israel, the 1-acre (0.4-hectare) space in the Jordan Valley is thought to have begun as a quarry. In subsequent centuries it may have served as a monastery and a hideout for persecuted Christians or the Roman army, Zertal said.

Archaeologists working in the valley found the cave this past March when they came across a hole in a rock face. When they entered the chamber, the researchers found a huge hall lined with 22 thick pillars--giving the "impression of a palace," said Zertal, of the University of Haifa.

7-"Dinosaur Mummy" Has Skin Like Birds' and Crocodiles'

There's no evidence of goosebumps just yet, but a remarkably preserved dinosaur reveals that the prehistoric reptile had skin like that of birds and crocodiles, a new study says

. 

"This is the closest you're going to get to patting the animal," said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain's University of Manchester. 

Advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old "mummified" duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans. 

Such a discovery was possible because the dinosaur's skin fossilized before bacteria had a chance to eat up the tissue. 

Tyler Lyson, a teenager at the time, discovered Dakota, as the fossil was later dubbed, in 1999 on his family's North Dakota property.