ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Hunter-gatherers made use of open woodland conditions in the millennia before Stonehenge monuments were built, according to a new study.

A remote community in Ireland was adaptable enough to persist through a millennium of environmental change, according to a new study.

The lake level of the Dead Sea is currently dropping by more than one meter every year -- mainly because of the heavy water consumption in the catchment area. However, very strong lake level drops due to climate changes are also known from earlier times. At the end of the last ice age, for example, the water level dropped by almost 250 meters within a few millennia.

A multidisciplinary research team has investigated whether Neanderthals were well adapted to life in the cold or preferred more temperate environmental conditions. Based on investigations in Lichtenberg in the Wendland region (Lower Saxony, Germany), the researchers showed that during the last Ice Age, Neanderthals visited their northernmost settlement areas even during cold phases -- albeit more frequently in the summer months.