Puzzling fossil discovery could reveal why Neanderthals disappeared

(CNN) — Some chapters of human history are more poignant to revisit than others.

The Battle of Waterloo ended a 23-year war, but thousands were killed on June 18, 1815, when allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and his forces south of Brussels.

Paintings, books and eyewitness accounts have preserved details of the conflict more than two centuries later. Until recently, only two complete skeletons from the battle had been found, leaving gaps in the somber tale of what horrors unfolded during and after the clash.

Now, archaeologists and military veterans have found the remains of amputated limbs and horses at the site that help tell the story of what happened in the battle’s aftermath.

But other chapters, like those describing the loss of our ancient ancestors, are harder to recover as time passes. A chance finding of bones in a cave is revealing clues of a much older tragic mystery.

We are family

Five teeth uncovered in a rock shelter in France’s Rhône Valley in 2015 could explain why Neanderthals disappeared from the face of Earth 40,000 years ago.

The once-in-a-lifetime find, nicknamed Thorin after a character in “The Hobbit,” has puzzled researchers for nearly a decade. While genetics suggested the Neanderthal was 105,000 years old, archaeological context indicated he lived 40,000 to 50,000 years ago.

New research found that Thorin belonged to a Neanderthal lineage isolated from other groups that unexpectedly lived nearby for 50,000 years, which made his DNA seem older than it was.

That isolation put Neanderthals at an evolutionary disadvantage and could have led to their demise.

Fantastic creatures

When scientists observed dark sleeper fish gulping down young Japanese eels, some of the eels were able to hatch an escape through the predator’s gills in a matter of minutes.

To get an inside look, researchers used an X-ray video system and observed the eels breaking free from within the fish’s stomach.

“Before capturing the first X-ray footage, we never imagined that eels could escape from the stomach of a predatory fish,” said Yuha Hasegawa, an assistant professor at Japan’s Nagasaki University.

“Witnessing the eels’ desperate escape from the predator’s stomach to the gills was truly astonishing for us.”

Across the universe

Colorful auroras over the mountains of New Zealand, the glittering Dolphin Head nebula and a sunlit silhouette of the International Space Station are just some of the winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.

The overall winner of the competition was photographer Ryan Imperio for his photo taken during the October 2023 annular solar eclipse.

The image captured the progression of Baily’s beads. The phenomenon is visible for brief moments during an eclipse when sunlight shines through the moon’s valleys and craters, creating glowing drops of light.

Separately, SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn crew made history this week after acing the first commercial spacewalk and setting other space exploration records ahead of its expected return in the coming days.

Force of nature

The world’s most devastating mass extinction wiped out more than 90% of all life on the planet about 252 million years ago — and now, scientists think they have discovered a climate phenomenon that played a pivotal role.

Previously, scientists thought carbon dioxide belched out by volcanic activity triggered a sudden warming of the planet, acid rain and ocean acidification.

But an intense, prolonged El Niño event that lasted years and originated from an ancient body of water much larger than today’s Pacific Ocean would have enhanced the effects of the volcanism.

Together, the two phenomena could have caused the Great Dying, and the catastrophic extinctions began on land before occurring in the ocean.

A long time ago

Some scientists have long believed that the population of Rapa Nui faced a ruinous decline hundreds of years ago. Also called Easter Island, it’s known for its hundreds of carved stone statues.

But a new analysis of ancient DNA from 15 of the island’s former residents who lived there within the past 400 years tells a different story.

The genetic analysis suggests that the island’s small population actually increased in size until the 1860s and that the island’s inhabitants reached the Americas in the 1300s, long before Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Meanwhile, the search for the origin of Stonehenge’s mysterious central Altar Stone is intensifying, and researchers have ruled out a seemingly likely ancient site as the source of the monolith.

Explorations

Take a closer look at these new findings:

— A physics breakthrough means that scientists are closer than ever to creating a nuclear clock, which ticks so steadily that it won’t lose a second even if it functions for 1 billion years.

— Lab-grown cocoa and fermented fava beans could be used to create the guilt-free chocolate of the future to avoid rising cocoa prices and the detrimental effects of cocoa farms.

— Rare, newly discovered fossils revealed that some species of massive ancient flying reptiles called pterosaurs soared like vultures, while others had a different flight style.

— NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore believes he and fellow astronaut Suni Williams could have returned to Earth aboard Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which returned empty last week, “but we just simply ran out of time,” he said.

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