To the grand surprise of the investigators, when they removed that apparently normal and unremarkable rock, they found the remains of some three hundred persons. It was a communal grave from the end of the Neolithic, some 5,000 years ago. The bones are in a very good state of conservation, because the rock covering them most probably having protected them from the outside elements.
In Europe there are few archaeological sites containing such a large quantity of bones. Thus, the remains found
Using data from NASA’s Aqua satellite, agency scientists found heavy smoke from burning vegetation inhibits cloud formation. The research suggests the cooling of global climate by pollutant particles, called “aerosols,” may be smaller than previously estimated.
During the August-October 2002 burning season in South America’s Amazon River basin, scientists observed cloud cover decreased from about 40 percent in clean-air conditions to zero in smoky air.
Until recently, sci
Early life may have lived very differently than life today
As two rovers scour Mars for signs of water and the precursors of life, geochemists have uncovered evidence that Earth’s ancient oceans were much different from today’s. The research, published in this week’s issue of the journal Science, cites new data that shows that Earth’s life-giving oceans contained less oxygen than today’s and could have been nearly devoid of oxygen for a billion years longer than previously thought. T
Fossilised remains of sea creatures are commonly found in rocks in the mountains of the Basque Country. So, at some time in the past, Euskal Herria was under the sea. For example, during the Palaeocene period, some 65-55 million years ago. The region was then subtropical, and similar in appearance to the Australian Coral Reef.
Along the Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa coast, around Eibar, in Irati and in Urbasa, for example, we can see Palaeocene outcrops at the surface. During that period there were
Surprisingly, the probability that an earthquake should reoccur in any part of the world is smaller, the longer the time since the last quake took place. This is one of the conclusions reached by the physicist Álvaro Corral, researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Corral has been the first to observe that there is a relation between consecutive quake-to-quake time intervals that follows a universal distribution of probability. This in turn suggests the existence of a simple physica
Locked in Arctic Soils Into the Ocean, Researchers Say The Arctic Ocean receives about ten percent of Earth’s river water and with it some 25 teragrams [28 million tons] per year of dissolved organic carbon that had been held in far northern bogs and other soils. Scientists had not known the age of the carbon that reaches the ocean: was it recently derived from contemporary plant material, or had it been locked in soils for hundreds or thousands of years and therefore not part of
Period was previously thought to be ice-free
Arlington, Va.-Scientists using cores drilled from the New Jersey coastal plain have found that ice sheets likely caused massive sea level change during the Late Cretaceous Period -an interval previously thought to be ice-free. The scientists, who will publish their results in the March-April issue of the Geological Society of America (GSA) Bulletin, assert that either ice sheets grew and decayed in that greenhouse world or our understandin
When a new mom gazes at her baby, it’s not just her mood that lights up – it’s also a brain region associated with emotion processing, according to a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The study, published in the current issue of NeuroImage, explored what happens in the brain when mothers are shown pictures of their babies, as well as images of unfamiliar infants. While all the photos increased the amount of activity in a part of the brain associated with emotion, the imag
The Mediterranean Sea was a desert, millions of years ago. In contrast, the Sahara Desert was once a lush, green landscape dotted with lakes and ponds. Evidence of this past verdancy lies hidden beneath the sands of Egypt and Libya, in the form of a huge aquifer of fresh groundwater. An international team of geologists and physicists has found that this groundwater has been flowing slowly northward (at about the rate grass grows) for the past million years. Their findings have been accepted for March
Rainfall but Ultimately Increases Its Intensity
Air pollution and smoke suppress rainfall, but cause the remaining rain amounts to fall in greater intensities, with lightning and hail, says a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The researcher, Prof. Daniel Rosenfeld, was one of a group of scientists that included also participants from Germany, Sweden and Brazil who conducted measurements of smoke and its impact on the development of clouds and precipitation i
Against incredible odds, researchers working in separate sites, thousands of miles apart in Antarctica have found what they believe are the fossilized remains of two species of dinosaurs previously unknown to science.
One of the two finds, which were made less than a week apart, is an early carnivore that would have lived many millions of years after the other, a plant-eating beast, roamed the Earth. One was found at the sea bottom, the other on a mountaintop.
Journey to the bo
For the first time, researchers have identified organic material in interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), gathered from the Earth’s stratosphere, that was made before the birth of our Solar System.
The material was identified on the basis of its carbon isotopic composition, which is different from the carbon found on Earth and in other parts of the Solar System. Isotopes are variations of elements that differ from each other in the number of neutrons they have, making them similar chem
The permafrost in the mires of subarctic Sweden is undergoing dramatic changes. The part of the soils that thaws in the summer, the so-called active layer, has become deeper since 1970 and the permafrost has disappeared altogether in some locations. This has lead to significant changes in the vegetation composition and subsequent increase in emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. Methane is 25 times more potent compared to carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas.
Behind these new findin
Hamilton College professor/students publish findings in JACS
Researchers at Hamilton College have identified several methods for successfully determining the structures and thermodynamic values for the formation of atmospheric water clusters, which scientists have speculated may accelerate global warming. The Hamilton team’s findings were published in the March 3 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The greenhouse effect is caused by molecules that abs
Having marked its first anniversary on orbit, NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite has hit its stride. In concert with other satellites, SORCE’s observations of the sun’s brightness are helping researchers better understand climate change, climate prediction, atmospheric ozone, the sunburn-causing ultraviolet-B radiation and space weather.
In fall 2003, SORCE was fortunate to see and measure exceptionally high levels of the sun’s activities. In
The Vanuatu island arc, in the South-West Pacific, is 1 700 km long. It corresponds to a convergence zone where the Australian plate is slipping eastwards under the North Fiji Basin, which is part of the Pacific plate, thus generating earthquakes. On 26 November 1999, the central islands of Vanuatu, particularly Ambrym and Pentecost, were strongly shaken by a 7.5 magnitude surface earthquake followed by a tsunami. The earthquake and the many landslips it generated caused 10 deaths and considerable d
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