ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Leafy vegetables accompany many West African dishes, such as pounded yam in the south of the region. Researchers have now successfully shown that the origins of such dishes date back 3,500 years.

A new study has determined the post-mortem interval of human skeletal remains using real samples, which has been made possible by the combination of two non-destructive analytical tools: Raman spectroscopy and chemometrics. This opens up new avenues for dating in the field of forensic medicine and anthropology.

Researchers have discovered a parasite present in seawater and which belongs to a primitive lineage; they have named it Txikispora philomaios. This organism will help to explain how multicellularity developed in animals.

Popular belief has been that small dogs, such as Pomeranians and Chihuahuas, exist because once dogs were domesticated, humans wanted small, cute companions. But researchers now identify a genetic mutation in a growth hormone-regulating gene that corresponds to small body size in dogs that was present in wolves over 50,000 years ago, long before domestication.

New insight into how our early ancestors dealt with major shifts in climate has been revealed.

A collection of fossil shells from marine snails and clams is challenging a theory that says the world's deadliest mass extinction was accompanied by severe ocean acidification. The study is the first to use shells from fossilized mollusks to investigate ocean chemistry, demonstrating a new tool that scientists can use to study the conditions of the planet's deep past.

As climate shifted 23,000 years ago, humans in Israel experienced a new abundance of food, according to a new study.

New research provides further evidence that rocks representing up to a billion years of geological time were carved away by ancient glaciers during the planet's 'Snowball Earth' period.