ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Less known than Attila's Huns, the Avars were their more successful successors. They ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for almost 250 years. We know that they came from Central Asia in the sixth century CE, but ancient authors and modern historians debated their provenance. Now, a multidisciplinary research team of geneticists, archaeologists and historians has obtained and studied the first ancient genomes from the most important Avar elite sites discovered in contemporary Hungary. This study traces the genetic origin of the Avar elite to a faraway region of East Central Asia. It provides direct genetic evidence for one of the largest and most rapid long-distance migrations in ancient human history.

Polynesian explorers discovered a treasure trove of unique plants and animals when they arrived in the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, according to new research.

Geologists have provided critical new evidence for the timing of volcanic activity in the Karoo province, the largest of the Jurassic magma systems. The remnants of the province are widespread in southern Africa and Antarctica.

Prehistoric mammals bulked up, rather than develop bigger brains, to boost their survival chances once dinosaurs had become extinct, research suggests.

In order to understand and predict volcanic events even better, a better understanding of the diverse underground processes involved is required. A new way to detect such processes, even if they are very subtle, is to use fiber optic cables as sensors. The analysis of light that is backscattered in them when the cables are deformed by vibrations, for example, has now made it possible for the first time to determine the volcanic signature of the Sicilian volcano Etna very precisely.

New research provides a continuous look at a shift in climate, called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, that has puzzled scientists.