Gorillas hum during meals

Gorillas sing and hum when eating, a discovery that could help shed light on how language evolved in early humans.

Sapiens DNA in Neanderthals suggests Homo sapiens left Africa earlier than thought

Remains of a Neanderthal woman who lived around 100,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains of Siberia reveal that human and Neanderthals mated much earlier than previously thought.

* Blogger Note: Neanderthals were humans, and the sapiens that bred with neanderthals clearly regarded them as 'us' not 'them'.  Interbreeding suggests that even 'different species' is an exaggeration.

New species of ancient tropical flower found in amber from the Dominican Republic

The discovery of a new species of ancient flower beautifully preserved in amber indicates that ancestors of today's daisies, mints and tomatoes flourished in Caribbean jungles up to 45 million years ago. The two flower fossils, found in the Dominican Republic, will help scientists understand how asterids — one of the world's three major evolutionary groups of flowering plants — spread around the globe. The amber formed sometime between 15 and 45 million years ago in a geological period known as the mid-tertiary, long before the Americas were joined by the Panama land bridge.

Hubble studies 'super-Earth' atmosphere for first time

The exoplanet, known as 55 Cancri e, orbits blisteringly close to its planet star, exhibiting temperatures of more than 1,700 degrees Celsius. Astronomers had thought it would lose most of its atmosphere due to the intense radiation of its parent star. But data from the Hubble space telescope shows the planet is surrounded by an atmosphere mostly made up of hydrogen and helium like a gas giant, such as Jupiter or Saturn.

DNA sheds light on European upheaval during the Ice Age

The population of Stone Age Europe underwent a radical transformation toward the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study of ancient DNA. The discovery also suggested that non-Africans rapidly dispersed across the world in a single wave around 50,000 years ago — not in multiple waves as previously thought.

Ancient wildebeest-like Rusingoryx had nose similar to hadrosaurs

An ancient herbivore related to the wildebeest had a bizarre nose like a dinosaur that lived tens of millions of years earlier. The fierce-looking Rusingoryx atopocranion, which roamed the savannas of Africa between 55,000 and 75,000 years ago, had large sinuses and a trumpet-like nasal passage.

Hundreds of galaxies behind the Milky Way now mapped

Hundreds of galaxies hidden from view behind the Milky Way have been unveiled in unprecedented detail for the first time. The discovery has provided astronomers with new information about a mysterious gravitational anomaly in intergalactic space known as the Great Attractor.

Aboriginal burning 'had little impact' on erosion rates in Australia's Southern Tablelands

The use of fire by Aborigines to modify their environment had little, if any, impact on the natural erosion processes that shaped parts of south-eastern Australia, a new study has found.

See post from 2013 Genes extinguish Aboriginal fire theory.

Octopuses have dramatic social lives, resolve fights using colour to mark their mood

Octopuses are social animals that change colours to resolve disputes and even throw debris at each other.  Octopuses have generally been viewed as solitary creatures, and their colour-changing abilities primarily as a means to hide from hungry predators.

Ancient Babylonian astronomers used calculus to find Jupiter 1,400 years before Europeans

The earliest known examples of mathematical and geometric astronomy have been identified in a series of ancient Babylonian cuneiform tablets. An analysis of the tablets reveals ancient Babylonians were able to calculate the position of Jupiter using geometric techniques previously believed to have been first used some 1,400 years later in 14th century Europe.