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It May Look Authentic; Here's How to Tell It Isn't

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond.
Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk ... New York Times

Neanderthal and Human Life at Ortvale Klde Rockshelter, Georgia

Why the Neanderthals Failed
Excavations in a Georgian cave suggest that the evolutionary advantage modern humans had over Neanderthals was a broader understanding of the resources in their environment, and not, as has been suspected in the past, the ability to hunt successfully. Results of investigations at Ortvale Klde are reported by an international group of researchers led by Daniel S. Adler in the February 2006 issue of Current Anthropology ... About Archaeology

Study suggests glaciers scraped Martian surface

Mysterious debris fields found far from the poles on Mars were made by glaciers, possibly formed just like glaciers are on Earth -- by the buildup of snow, researchers said on Friday ... Science News Article | Reuters.com

Neanderthal man floated into Europe, say Spanish researchers

Spanish investigators believe they may have found proof that neanderthal man reached Europe from Africa not just via the Middle East but by sailing, swimming or floating across the Strait of Gibraltar.

Prehistoric remains of hunter-gatherer communities found at a site known as La Cabililla de Benzú, in the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta, are remarkably similar to those found in southern Spain, investigators said. Stone tools at the site correspond to the middle palaeolithic period, when neanderthal man emerged, and resemble those found across Spain ... Guardian

Ahead of the game

New study reveals Neanderthals were as good at hunting as early modern humans.

The disappearance of Neanderthals is frequently attributed to competition from modern humans, whose greater intelligence has been widely supposed to make them more efficient as hunters. However, a new study forthcoming in the February issue of Current Anthropology argues that the hunting practices of Neanderthals and early modern humans were largely indistinguishable, a conclusion leading to a different explanation, also based on archaeological data, to explain the disappearance of the Neanderthals. This study has important implications for debates surrounding behavioral evolution and the practices that eventually allowed modern humans like ourselves to displace other closely-related species ... EurekAlert!

Fossil evidence for human evolution in China

This Web site, created by Dr Dennis A. Etler, focuses on human fossils found in China and contains: a catalog of fossils; a slideshow; and a handful of academic papers ... http://www.chineseprehistory.org/

On this beach, 700,000 years ago ...

One wintry day, two keen fossil collectors found a flint beneath these cliffs. It didn't look like much, but it turned out to be evidence for the earliest humans in Britain. Mike Pitts on the amateur archaeologists who rewrote history.

Given the choice, the bottom of a cliff with the tide coming in fast is not a place you'd work. For Paul Durbidge and Bob Mutch, however, the foreshore at Pakefield, south of Lowestoft, Suffolk, is precisely where they want to be. Especially in winter, and even more so when the storms are up. Because it's then that the fossils are exposed ... Guardian Unlimited

Broken ice dam blamed for 300-year chill

A three-century-long cold spell that chilled Europe 8200 years ago was probably caused by the bursting of a Canadian ice dam, which released a colossal flood of glacial meltwater into the Atlantic Ocean.

Two new papers, using different computer models, show that the massive freshwater flood accounts for evidence of the sudden climate change, which cooled Greenland by an average of 7.4°C, and Europe by about 1°C. It was the most abrupt and widespread cool spell in the last 10,000 years ... New Scientist Breaking News

Eagles used to prey on our ancestors

The answer to a scientific "who-done-it?" has revealed a chilling fact: We used to be bird food.

Scientists announced on Thursday they had definitive proof that the "Taung child," a 2-million year old apeman skull famed as one of the most dramatic human evolutionary finds, was killed and eaten by an eagle ... Science News Article | Reuters.com

Geologists Link the "Great Dying" to Volcanism

Roughly 252 million years ago, life on the earth nearly ceased to exist – as much as 90 percent of marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life died out. At around the same time, a vast up swelling of magma covered between one million and four million cubic kilometers of what is now Siberia. The eruption continued off and on for about a million years, with basalt lava and poisonous gases seeping up through cracks in Siberia's mantle. Now rocks from Italy may have linked the two events ... Scientific American.com