ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Using DNA from greenhouse-grown plants representing all species and hundreds of varieties of watermelon, scientists discovered that watermelons most likely came from wild crop progenitors in northeast Africa. The study corrects a 90-year-old mistake that had previously tied watermelons to South Africa. The genetic research is consistent with newly interpreted Egyptian tomb paintings that suggest the watermelon may have been consumed in the Nile Valley as a dessert more than 4,000 years ago.

Researchers report the climate clues that can be found by analyzing the magnetic fossil particles, or magnetofossils.

Researchers proposed five strategies to untangle the impacts of colonialism on research and thinking in ecology.

Scientists analyzed ground movements measured by Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) satellite data and GPS stations to precisely model where magma intruded and how magma influx changed over time, as well as where faults under the flanks moved without generating significant earthquakes.

Forensic archaeologists and anthropologists have started to recover the bodies of victims executed by the Franco regime at the end of the Spanish Civil War during an excavation in the Ciudad Real region of Spain.

CT scans of a 25 million year-old fossil skull show the Aetiocetus weltoni had both teeth and baleen, unlike modern whales.