Jebel Sahaba: Analysis of Bones Reveals a Succession of Violence Rather Than a Prehistoric War
Since its discovery in the 1960s, the Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Nile Valley, Sudan), 13 millennia old, was considered to be one of the oldest testimonies…
CNRS
Africa’s Oldest Human Burial Site Uncovered – Child Buried 78,000 Years Ago
The discovery of the earliest human burial site yet found in Africa, by an international team including several CNRS researchers,[1] has just been announced in…
First Images of the Cosmic Web Reveal Unsuspected Presence of Billions of Dwarf Galaxies
In the Universe, galaxies are distributed along extremely tenuous filaments of gas millions of light years long separated by voids, forming the cosmic web. The…
Micrometeorites: More Than 5,000 Tons of Extraterrestrial Dust Falls to Earth Each Year
Every year, our planet encounters dust from comets and asteroids. These interplanetary dust particles pass through our atmosphere and give rise to shooting stars. Some…
Mars Didn’t Dry Up in One Go – Martian Climate Cycled Between Dry and Wet Periods
The Perseverance rover has just landed on Mars. Meanwhile, its precursor Curiosity continues to explore the base of Mount Sharp (officially Aeolis Mons), a mountain…
Discovery of a Bizarre, Winged “Eagle Shark” in the Cretaceous Seas
93 million years ago, bizarre, winged sharks swam in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. This newly described fossil species, called Aquilolamna milarcae, has…
Antarctica: Southern Ocean Cools at the Surface but Warms Up at Depth
Scientists from the CNRS, CNES, IRD, Sorbonne Université, l’Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and their Australian colleagues*, with the support of the IPEV, have…
Ancient Conch Shell Horn Plays Its Tune for the First Time in 18,000 Years – Hear It Here
Almost 80 years after its discovery, a large shell from the ornate Marsoulas Cave in the Pyrenees has been studied by a multidisciplinary team from…
Recognizing Liars From the Sound of Their Voice? Here’s How to Sound Confident and Honest
Faster speech rate, greater intensity in the middle of the word, and falling pitch at the end of the word: that is the prosody[1] to…
Two Scientists Have Figured Out What Caused Saturn’s Tilt
Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (Paris Observatory – PSL/CNRS) have just shown that…
A Single Gene “Invented” Hemoglobin Several Times
Thanks to the marine worm Platynereis dumerilii, an animal whose genes have evolved very slowly, scientists from CNRS, Université de Paris and Sorbonne Université, in…
New Lightweight Molecule-Based Magnet Exhibits Unprecedented Magnetic Properties
Magnets are to be found everywhere in our daily lives, whether in satellites, telephones or on fridge doors. However, they are made up of heavy…
Astrophysicists May Have Just Discovered the Hidden Matter of the Universe
Astrophysicists consider that around 40% of the ordinary matter that makes up stars, planets, and galaxies remains undetected, concealed in the form of a hot…
First Ever Large Survey of Distant Galaxies Yields Surprises for Astrophysicists
When the Universe was only a tenth of its current age its galaxies experienced a growth spurt. It was this period that the scientists in…
Was Earth’s Water Always Here? Unexpected Meteorite Composition Provides Origin Evidence
The Earth is the only planet known to have liquid water on its surface, a fundamental characteristic when it comes to explaining the emergence of…
“Mushballs”: Exotic Ammonia-Rich Hailstones Shed New Light on Jupiter’s Weather
Water is a key substance in the meteorology of planets and is believed to play a key role in their formation. Terrestrial storms are driven…
Mini-Neptunes Could Be Irradiated Ocean Planets
Many exoplanets known today are ‘super-Earths,’ with a radius 1.3 times that of Earth, and ‘mini-Neptunes,’ with 2.4 Earth radii. Mini-Neptunes, which are less dense,…
Unprecedented Ground-Based Discovery of Unusual Planetary System, WASP-148
Several interacting exoplanets have already been spotted by satellites. But a new breakthrough has been achieved with, for the first time, the detection directly from…