Adult-like proportions may have given baby titanosaurs an advantage when they hatched

Unlike some types of dinosaurs that were reliant on their parents after they hatched, the offspring of the world's largest vertebrates to have ever walked the Earth were probably independent soon after birth.

Monster black hole 3 billion times the mass of the sun formed by trio of colliding galaxies

Three colliding spiral galaxies 1.8 billion light years from Earth have produced a monster black hole weighing in at 3 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Oldest ever human genome sequence may rewrite human history

The oldest ever human nuclear DNA to be reconstructed and sequenced reveals Neanderthals in the making – and the need for a possible rewrite of our own origins.  The 430,000-year-old DNA comes from mysterious early human fossils found in Spain’s Sima de los Huesos, or “pit of bones”.

Insects may have had basic 'consciousness' more than 500 million years ago

Recent neuro-imaging suggests insects are fully hardwired for both consciousness and egocentric behaviour, providing strong evidence that organisms from flies to fleas exhibit both. Consciousness comes in many levels, and insects have the capacity for at least one basic form: subjective experience.

Saharan silver ant's hairs reflect light to beat the desert heat

Saharan silver ants (Cataglyphis bombycina) grow flashy body hairs that cause total internal reflection of light like a prism, a technique also used in manmade fibre optics.

Did the Sun eat a primordial super-Earth?

At least one super-Earth — a planet that is larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune — could have formed close to the Sun, suggests a new study.

Giant prehistoric bears evolved to fill scavenger gap

Ancient bears evolved to become giants so they could scavenge prey killed by others, a new study suggests.

Blogger Comments:

Note that this reporting misconstrues evolution in terms of purpose instead of cause and result.

Dolphins have a language that helps them solve problems together

Bottlenose dolphins have been observed chattering while cooperating to solve a tricky puzzle – a feat that suggests they have a type of vocalisation dedicated to cooperating on problem solving.

South America's prehistoric people spread in two waves

When the first prehistoric people trekked into South America toward the end of the Ice Age, they found a wondrous, lush continent inhabited by all manner of strange creatures like giant ground sloths and car-sized armadillos.

Supernovae may have played a role in Earth's evolution

The Earth was bombarded by debris from a series of stellar explosions with the closest supernova occurring about 2.3 million years ago.

Monster black hole discovered in an unlikely galaxy

Astronomers have found a monster black hole, some 17 billion times more massive than the sun, in a modestly sized galaxy, raising suspicions supermassive black holes may be more common than originally thought.

Missing Y chromosome kept Sapiens apart from Neanderthals

Modern humans diverged from Neanderthals some 600,000 years ago – and a new study shows the Y chromosome might be what kept the two species separate.

It seems we were genetically incompatible with our ancient relatives – and male fetuses conceived through sex with Neanderthal males would have miscarried. We knew that some cross-breeding between us and Neanderthals happened more recently – around 100,000 to 60,000 years ago.

Neanderthal genes have been found in our genomes, on X chromosomes, and have been linked to traits such as skin colour, fertility and even depression and addiction. Now, an analysis of a Y chromosome from a 49,000-year-old male Neanderthal found in El Sidrón, Spain, suggests the chromosome has gone extinct seemingly without leaving any trace in modern humans.

This could simply be because it drifted out of the human gene pool or, as the new study suggests, it could be because genetic differences meant that hybrid offspring who had this chromosome were infertile – a genetic dead end.

Modern men have no traces of Neanderthal DNA on their Y chromosome, the first-ever analysis of the male Neanderthal sex chromosome has revealed.

Human sacrifice may have helped build and sustain social class systems

Elaborate ritual killings such as being crushed under a newly built canoe and decapitation after being rolled off a house laid the foundations of class-based structures in modern societies, a new study of Austronesian cultures suggests.

Blogger Comment:

In terms of Joseph Campbell's four functions of mythology, this is the sociological function: justifying and maintaining the social order.  The other functions are the pedagogical, cosmological and mystical.

Exoplanet 55 Cancri e has solid and liquid surfaces

Astronomers have, for the first time, mapped a nearby "super-Earth" exoplanet to find that one hemisphere is almost completely molten rock, while the other half is almost completely solid.

Ancient 'Kite Runner' carried its young attached to its body by threads

A tiny arthropod from 430 million years ago, Aquilonifer spinosus, had a novel way of hauling around its young: it stashed them in individual capsules tethered to its body, like kites at the end of a piece of string.

Homo floresiensis disappeared when Homo sapiens arrived

The disappearance of Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores has been pushed back to 50,000 years ago after excavations revealed flaws in the original dating of the controversial species of primitive humans.

Blogger Comment:

We didn't eat them.  No.

Planet Nine might be an exoplanet stolen by the sun

The hypothetical ninth planet at the fringes of our solar system might have been captured from a star passing by long ago.