5+ day, 18+ hour ago   (649+ words) Africa’s giant herbivores did not simply vanish in a wave of extinctions. Their evolutionary family tree was slowly running out of new branches. A new study suggests that the long decline of animals such as elephants, hippopotamuses, and their extinct…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (736+ words) How quickly sediment accumulates on the seafloor appears to be the key factor determining whether fossils from different time periods become mixed together. A single layer of marine fossils can look like a snapshot of one ancient community even when…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (660+ words) A new study uses Hasmonean history and evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls to address a decades-old mystery. For decades, researchers have debated whether the Qumran sect’s unusual 364-day calendar ever governed daily religious life or existed only as an…...

3+ week, 13+ hour ago   (171+ words) A study challenges the idea that Barbarians simply dominated Europe during the Early Middle Ages. A new study from the HistoGenes project, whose co-PI includes Patrick Geary, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, is helping scholars build a…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (508+ words) A new integrated isotope study suggests that early increases in cereal grain size were driven by growing conditions rather than human selection. About 11,000 years ago, communities across southwest Asia began cultivating wild cereals, legumes, and fruit-bearing plants as they increasingly…...