earliest

Gruesome Skull Discovery Contains The Earliest Evidence of Ear Surgery

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An ancient skull uncovered at a 6,000-year-old megalithic monument in Spain still holds signs of what would have been a brutal ear surgery. Archaeologists suspect the patient probably had a double-sided acute middle ear infection, which can cause earaches and fevers.    Without treatment, fluid can gather behind the eardrum, possibly causing a visible lump … Read more

Archeology: Hybrid animal in 4500-year-old tomb is earliest known bred by humans

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Early Bronze Age people in Syria crossed donkeys with wild asses to make prized horse-like hybrids, demonstrating advanced understanding of animal breeding Life 14 January 2022 By Alice Klein Equid skeletons from Tell Umm el-Marra, Syria Glenn Schwartz/John Hopkins University The bones of horse-like creatures unearthed in a 4500-year-old royal tomb in Syria are the … Read more

The Earliest Unequivocal Evidence of Our Species May Be Even Older Than We Realized

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The course of human evolution never did run smooth. The emergence of hominins on the continent of Africa is full of twists, turns, gaps, and dead ends, which makes it all the more difficult to retrace the rise of our own species.   Today, we still don’t really know when or where the first Homo … Read more

1st orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship Mars rocket pushed to March at the earliest

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We’ll have to wait a bit longer for the orbital debut of SpaceX’s Starship Mars rocket. SpaceX had been aiming to launch Starship on its first orbital test flight in January or February, provided that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) wrapped up a programmatic environmental assessment (PEA) of the company’s South Texas launch site … Read more

Our earliest, ‘half-alive’ ancestor needed little boost from heat | Science

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How Earth changed from a lifeless ball of rock, water, and gases to a blue planet teeming with organisms is one of science’s greatest puzzles. Life had to assemble out of chemical building blocks about 4 billion years ago. Some scientists have invoked spectacular sources of energy for life’s spark, such as a comet impact … Read more