Glaciers in Central Asia have remained intact even as other parts of the world have seen rapid glacial loss. A new study shows that may be changing.#TheAbstract
They Were Some of Earth’s Last Stable Glaciers. Now, They’re Melting.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Scientists have long been puzzled by the sturdy glaciers of the mountains of central Asia, which have inexplicably remained intact even as other glaciers around the world rapidly recede due to human-driven climate change. This mysterious resilience may be coming to an end, however.
The glaciers in this mountainous region—nicknamed the “Third Pole” because it boasts more ice than any place outside of the Arctic and Antarctic polar caps— have passed a tipping point that could set them on a path to accelerated mass loss, according to a new study. The end of this unusual glacial resilience, known as the Pamir-Karakoram Anomaly, would have major implications for the people who rely on the glaciers for water.
Scientists suggested that a recent decline in snowfall to the region is behind the shift, but it will take much more research to untangle the complicated dynamics of these remote and under-studied glaciers, according to a study published on Tuesday in Communications Earth & Environment.
“We have known about this anomaly since the early 2000s,” said study co-author Francesca Pellicciotti, a professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), in a call with 404 Media. “In the last 25 years, remote-sensing has really revolutionized Earth sciences in general, and also cryospheric sciences.”
“There is no definite answer yet for why those glaciers were quite stable,” said Achille Jouberton, a PhD student at ISTA who led the study, in the same call. “On average, at the regional scale, they were doing quite well in the last decade—until recently, which is what our study is showing.”
This space-down view of the world’s glaciers initially revealed the resilience of ice and snowpack in the Pamir-Karakoram region, but that picture started to change around 2018. Many of these glaciers have remained inaccessible to scientists due to political instabilities and other factors, leaving a multi-decade gap in the research about their curious strength.
To get a closer look, Jouberton and his colleagues established a site for monitoring snowfall, precipitation, and water resources at Kyzylsu Glacier in central Tajikistan in 2021. In addition to this fieldwork, the team developed sophisticated models to reconstruct changes within this catchment since 1999.
While the glaciers still look robust from the outside, the results revealed that snowfall has decreased and ice melt has increased. These interlinked trends have become more pronounced over the past seven years and were corroborated by conversations with locals. The decline in precipitation has made the glacier vulnerable to summer melting, as there is less snowpack to protect it from the heat.
“It will take a while before these glaciers start looking wasted, like the glaciers of the Alps, or North America, or South America,” said Pellicciotti.
While the team pinpointed a lack of snowfall as a key driver of the shift, it’s unclear why the region is experiencing reduced precipitation. The researchers are also unsure if a permanent threshold has been crossed, or if these changes could be chalked up to natural variation. They hope that the study, which is the first to warn of this possible tipping point, will inspire climate scientists, atmospheric scientists, and other interdisciplinary researchers to weigh in on future work.
“We don't know if this is just an inflection in the natural cycle, or if it's really the beginning of a trend that will go on for many years,” said Pellicciotti. “So we need to expand these findings, and extend them to a much longer period in the past and in the future.”
Resolving these uncertainties will be critical for communities in this region that rely on healthy snowpack and ice cover for their water supply. It also hints that even the last stalwart glacial holdouts on Earth are vulnerable to climate change.
“The major rivers are fed by snow and glacier melts, which are the dominant source of water in the summer months, which makes the glaciers very important,” concluded Jouberton. "There’s a large amount of people living downstream in all of the Central Asian countries that are really direct beneficiaries of those water and meltwater from the glaciers.”
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Snowfall decrease in recent years undermines glacier health and meltwater resources in the Northwestern Pamirs - Communications Earth & Environment
The recent decline in glacier health and reduced runoff generation in the Northwestern Pamirs is primarily driven by substantially lower snowfall and snow depth since 2018, according to land-surface model reconstructions from 1999–2023 combining in-s…Nature
The world’s best solar telescope snapped unprecedented shots of a solar flare, revealing new details of these mysterious explosions.#TheAbstract
This Stunning Image of the Sun Could Unlock Mysterious Physics
Welcome back to the Abstract! What an extreme week it has been in science. We’ve got extreme adaptations and observations to spare today, so get ready for a visually spectacular tour of deep seas, deep time, and deep space.First up, a study with an instant dopamine hit of a title: “Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur.” Then, stories about two very different marine creatures that nonetheless share a penchant for brilliant outfits and toxic lifestyles; a baby picture that requires a 430-light-year zoom-in; and lastly, we must once again salute the Sun in all its roiling glory. Enjoy the peer-reviewed eye-candy!
Ankylosaurs: Swole from the start
Maidment, Susannah et al. “Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur.” Nature.
Paleontologists have discovered an ankylosaur that is epic even by the high standards set by this family of giant walking tanks. Partial remains of Spicomellus—the oldest known ankylosaur, dating back 165 million years—reveal that the dinosaur had much more elaborate body armor than later generations, including a collar of bony spikes up to three feet long, and fused tail vertebrae indicating an early tail weapon.
Ankylosaurs are known for their short-limbed frames, clubbed tail weapons, and thick-plated body armor that puts Batman to shame. These dinosaurs, which could reach 30 feet from beak to club, are mostly known from Late Cretaceous fossils. As a consequence “their early evolution in the Early–Middle Jurassic is shrouded in mystery due to a poor fossil record” and “the evolution of their unusual body plan is effectively undocumented,” according to a new study.
“Bring it.” Concept art of Spicomellus. Image: © Matthew Dempsey
In October 2022, a local farmer in the Moroccan badlands discovered a partial skeleton that fills in this tantalizing gap. The fossils suggest that the plates, spikes, and weaponized tails were features of ankylosaurian anatomy from the Jurassic jump.“The new specimen reveals extreme dermal armour modifications unlike those of any other vertebrate, extinct or extant,” said researchers led by Susannah Maidment of the National History Museum in London. “Given that Spicomellus is an early-diverging ankylosaur or ankylosaurid, this raises the possibility that ankylosaurs acquired this extravagant armour early in their evolutionary history, and this was reduced to a simpler arrangement in later forms.”
The Spicomellus puzzle set. Image: © Matthew Dempsey/ Maidment et al.
As you can see, this early ankylosaur was the living embodiment of the phrase “try me.” Two huge spikes, one of which is almost entirely preserved, flanked the “cervical half-ring” on the animal's neck. The fossils are so visually astonishing that at first glance, they almost look like an arsenal of spears, axes, and clubs from an ancient army.The team doesn’t hide their amazement at the find, writing that “no known ankylosaur possesses any condition close to the extremely long pairs of spines on the cervical half-ring” and note that the fossils overturn “current understanding of tail club evolution in ankylosaurs, as these structures were previously thought to have evolved only in the Early Cretaceous.”
This incredible armor may have initially evolved as a sexual display that was adapted for defensive purposes by the rise of “multitonne predators” like T. rex. That might explain why the ornaments seemed to have simplified over time. Whatever the reason, the fossils demonstrate that ankylosaurs, as a lineage, were born ready for a fight.
In other news…
Now you sea(horse) me
We’ll move now from the extremely epic to the extremely twee. Pygmy seahorses, which measure no more than an inch, mimic the brightly-colored and venomous gorgonian corals that they symbiotically inhabit. Scientists have now discovered that these tiny animals achieved their extraordinary camouflage in part by discarding a host of genes involved in growth and immune response, perhaps because their protective coral habitats rendered those traits obsolete.
Basically we are very smol. Image: South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
“We analyzed the tiny seahorse’s genome revealing the genomic bases of several adaptations to their mutualistic life,” said researchers led by Meng Qu of the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The analysis suggests “that the protective function of corals may have permitted the pygmy seahorse to lose an exceptionally large number of immune genes.”Living in a toxic environment can have its benefits, if you’re a seahorse. And that is the perfect segue to the next story…
When life hands you arsenic, make lemon-colored skin
After a long day, isn’t it nice to sink into a scalding bath of arsenic and hydrogen sulfide? That’s the self-care routine for Paralvinella hessleri, a deep sea worm that “is the only animal that colonizes the hottest part of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the west pacific,” according to a new study.
Paralvinella hessleri. Wang H, et al., 2025, PLOS Biology, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b…)
So, how are these weirdos surviving what should be lethally toxic waters that exceed temperatures of 120°F? The answer is a "distinctive strategy” of “fighting poison with poison,” said researchers led by Hao Wang of the Center of Deep-Sea Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The worm stores the arsenic in its skin cells and mixes it with the sulfide to make a dazzling mineral, called orpiment, that provides its bright yellow hue.“This process represents a remarkable adaptation to extreme chemical environments,” the researchers said. “The yellow granules observed within P. hessleri’s epithelial cells, which are the site of arsenic detoxification, appear to be the key to this adaptation.”
My own hypothesis is that this worm offers an example of convergent evolution with Freddie Mercury’s yellow jacket from Queen’s legendary 1986 Wembley Stadium performance.
Mind the protoplanetary gap
Your baby photos are cute and all, but it’s going to be hard to top the pic that astronomers just snapped of a newborn planet 430 light years from Earth. This image marks the first time that a planet has been spotted forming within a protoplanetary disk, which is the dusty gassy material from which new worlds are born.
The protoplanet WISPIT 2b appears as a purple dot in a dust-free gap. Image: Laird Close, University of Arizona
Our “images of 2025 April 13 and April 16 discovered an accreting protoplanet,” said researchers led by Laird Close of the University of Arizona. “The ‘protoplanet’ called WISPIT 2b “appears to be clearing a dust-free gap between the two bright rings of dust—as long predicted by theory.”If Earth is the pale blue dot, then WISPIT 2b is the funky purple blob. Though stray baby planets have been imaged before in the cavity between their host stars and the young disks, this amazing image offers the first glimpse of the most common mode of planetary formation, which occurs inside the dusty maelstrom.
Welcome to the Arcade of Coronal Loops
We’ll close with yet another cosmic photoshoot—this time of everyone’s favorite star, the Sun. from the Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawaii. The telescope captured unprecedented pictures of a decaying solar flare at a key hydrogen-alpha (Hα) wavelength of 656.28 nanometers.
The images show coronal loops—dramatic plasma arches that can spark flares and ejections—at resolutions of just 13 miles, making them the smallest loops that have ever been observationally resolved. The pictures are mesmerizing, filled with sharp features like the “Arcade of Coronal Loops” (and note that the scale is measured in planet Earths) But they also represent a new phase in unlocking the mysterious physics that fuels solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
“This is initial evidence that the DKIST may be capable of resolving the fundamental scale of coronal loops,” said researchers led by Cole Tamburri of the University of Colorado Boulder. “The resolving power of the DKIST represents a significant step toward advancing modern flare models and our understanding of fine structure in the coronal magnetic field.”
May your weekend be as energetic as a coronal loop, but hopefully not as destructive.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
Extreme armour in the world’s oldest ankylosaur - Nature
The ankylosaurian dinosaur Spicomellus afer possessed a tail weapon and uniquely elaborate dermal armour.Nature
For years, researchers have puzzled over how two ingredients for life first linked up on early Earth. Now, they’ve found the “missing link,” and demonstrated this reaction in the lab.#TheAbstract
Scientists Make Breakthrough in Solving the Mystery of Life’s Origin
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Scientists have made a major breakthrough in the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth by demonstrating how two essential biological ingredients could have spontaneously joined together on our planet some four billion years ago.
All life on Earth contains ribonucleic acid (RNA), a special molecule that helps build proteins from simpler amino acids. To kickstart this fundamental biological process, RNA and amino acids had to become attached at some point. But this key step, known as RNA aminoacylation, has never been experimentally observed in early Earth-like conditions despite the best efforts of many researchers over the decades.
Now, a team has achieved this milestone in the quest to unravel life’s origins. As they report in a study published on Wednesday in Nature, the researchers were able to link amino acids to RNA in water at a neutral pH with the aid of energetic chemical compounds called thioesters. The work revealed that two contrasting origin stories for life on Earth, known as “RNA world” and “thioester world,” may both be right.
“It unites two theories for the origin of life, which are totally separate,” said Matthew Powner, a professor of organic chemistry at University College London and an author of the study, in a call with 404 Media. “These were opposed theories—either you have thioesters or you have RNA.”
“What we found, which is kind of cool, is that if you put them both together, they're more than the sum of their parts,” he continued. “Both aspects—RNA world and thioester world—might be right and they’re not mutually exclusive. They can both work together to provide different aspects of things that are essential to building a cell.”
In the RNA world theory, which dates back to the 1960s, self-replicating RNA molecules served as the initial catalysts for life. The thioester world theory, which gained traction in the 1990s, posits that life first emerged from metabolic processes spurred on by energetic thioesters. Now, Powner said, the team has found a “missing link” between the two.
Powner and his colleagues didn’t initially set out to merge the two ideas. The breakthrough came almost as a surprise after the team synthesized pantetheine, a component of thioesters, in simulated conditions resembling early Earth. The team discovered that if amino acids are linked to pantetheine, they naturally attach themselves to RNA at molecular sites that are consistent with what is seen in living things. This act of RNA aminoacylation could eventually enable the complex protein synthesis all organisms now depend on to live.
Pantetheine “is totally universal,” Powner explained. “Every organism on Earth, every genome sequence, needs this molecule for some reason or other. You can't take it out of life and fully understand life.”
“That whole program of looking at pantetheine, and then finding this remarkable chemistry that pantetheine does, was all originally designed to just be a side study,” he added. “It was serendipity in the sense that we didn't expect it, but in a scientific way that we knew it would probably be interesting and we'd probably find uses for it. It’s just the uses we found were not necessarily the ones we expected.”
The researchers suggest that early instances of RNA aminoacylation on Earth would most likely have occurred in lakes and other small bodies of water, where nutrients could accumulate in concentrations that could up the odds of amino acids attaching to RNA.
“It's very difficult to envisage any origins of life chemistry in something as large as an ocean body because it's just too dilute for chemistry,” Powner said. For that reason, they suggest future studies of so-called “soda lakes” in polar environments that are rich in nutrients, like phosphate, and could serve as models for the first nurseries of life on Earth.
The finding could even have implications for extraterrestrial life. If life on Earth first emerged due, in part, to this newly identified process, it’s possible that similar prebiotic reactions can be set in motion elsewhere in the universe. Complex molecules like pantetheine and RNA have never been found off-Earth (yet), but amino acids are present in many extraterrestrial environments. This suggests that the ingredients of life are abundant in the universe, even if the conditions required to spark it are far more rare.
While the study sheds new light on the origin of life, there are plenty of other steps that must be reconstructed to understand how inorganic matter somehow found a way to self-replicate and start evolving, moving around, and in our case as humans, conducting experiments to figure out how it all got started.
“We get so focused on the details of what we're trying to do that we don't often step back and think, ‘Oh, wow, this is really important and existential for us,’” Powner concluded.
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.Thioester-mediated RNA aminoacylation and peptidyl-RNA synthesis in water - Nature
Aminoacyl-thiols reacting selectively with RNA diols over amine nucleophiles and demonstration of chemically controlled formation of peptidyl-RNA in water at neutral pH suggest an important role for thiol cofactors before the evolution of enzymes.Nature
Scientists filmed a bat family in their roost for months, capturing never-before-seen (and very cute) behaviors.#TheAbstract
Scientists Discovered Bats Group Hugging and It’s Adorable
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that ruled the roost, warmed the soul, and departed for intergalactic frontiers.It will be a real creature feature this week. First, we will return to the realm of bats and discover that it is, in fact, still awesome. Then: poops from above; poops from the past; a very special bonobo; and last, why some dead stars are leaving the Milky Way in a hurry.
Bat hugs > Bear hugs
Welcome to The Real World: Bat Roost. Scientists installed a camera into a tree hollow in Guanacaste, Costa Rica to film a tight-knit family of four spectral bats (Vampyrum spectrum) over the course of several months. The results revealed many never-before-seen behaviors including bats hugging, playing with cockroaches, and even breaking the fourth wall.
“We provide the first comprehensive account of prey provision and other social behaviors in the spectral bat V. spectrum,” said researchers led by Marisa Tietge of Humboldt University in Berlin. “By conducting extensive video recordings in their roost, we aimed to document and analyze key behaviors.”
Spectral bats are the biggest bats in the New World, with wingspans that can exceed three feet. They are carnivorous—feasting on rodents, birds, and even other species of bat—and they mate in monogamous pairs, which is unusual for mammals. But while huge flesh-eating bats sound scary, the new study revealed that these predators have a soft side.
For example, the footage captured a “greeting” ritual that included “a hugging-like interaction between a bat already in the roost and a newly arrived bat,” according to the study.
“The resident bat may actively approach or greet the newcomer as it reaches close proximity in the main roosting area,” the team said. “The greeting behavior is comparable to the initiation to social roosting, where at least one bat wraps its wings around the other, establishing a ball-like formation for several seconds. This behavior is often accompanied by social vocalizations.”
youtube.com/embed/NF4hOKhdCOA?…
There’s nothing like coming home after a graveyard shift to a warm welcome in a fuzzy ball-like formation. In keeping with their gregarious nature, the footage also showed that the bats are very generous with sharing prey, with only a single instance of a “tug-of-war” breaking out over dinner.“Prey provision was a clearly cooperative social behavior wherein a bat successfully captured prey, brought it to the roost where group members were present, and willingly transferred the prey to another bat,” the researchers said. “Audible chewing noises are a distinctive feature of this process.”
Loud chewers in any other context are profoundly irritating, but these bats get a pass because it’s kind of hard to be quiet while crunching through mouse bones perched upside-down.
In addition to all the hugging and prey-sharing, the bats were also observed playing together by chasing cockroaches or, in one case, messing with the camera by altering its position. I can’t wait for the next season!
In other news…
Skyward scat
Speaking of putting cameras in weird places, why not strap them to the bellies of seabirds? Scientists went ahead and did this, ostensibly to examine the flight dynamics of streaked shearwaters, which are Pacific seabirds. But the tight focus on the bird-bums produced a different revelation: Shearwaters almost exclusively poop while on the wing.
youtube.com/embed/SnJLvNyMjUA?…
“A total of 195 excretions were observed from 35.9 hours of video data obtained from 15 streaked shearwaters,” said authors Leo Uesaka and Katsufumi Sato of the University of Tokyo. “Excretion immediately after takeoff was frequent, with 50 percent of the 82 first excretion events during the flying periods occurring within 30 seconds after take-off and 36.6 percent within 10 seconds.”“Occasionally, birds took off, excreted, and returned to the water within a minute; these take-offs are speculated to be only for excretion,” the team continued. “These results strongly suggest that streaked shearwaters intentionally avoid excretion while floating on the sea surface.”
This preference for midair relief might allow seabirds to lighten their load, prevent backward contamination, and avoid predators that sniff out excrement. Whatever the reason, these aerial droppings provide nutrients to ocean ecosystems, so bombs away.
Please clean up after your 9,000-year-old dog
Hold onto your butts, because we’re not done with scatological science yet. A study this week stepped into some very ancient dog doo recovered from a frozen site on Siberia’s Zhokhov Island, which was inhabited by Arctic peoples 9,000 years ago.
By analyzing the “paleofeces,” scientists were able to reconstruct the diet of these canine companions, which were bred in part as sled dogs. The results provide the first evidence of parasites in Arctic dogs of this period, suggesting that the dogs were fed raw fish, reindeer, and polar bear.
“The high infection rate in dogs with diphyllobothriasis indicates a significant role of fishing in the economic activities of Zhokhov inhabitants, despite the small amount of direct archaeological evidence for this activity,” said researchers led by S.M. Slepchenko of Tyumen Scientific Center. “The presence of Taeniidae eggs indicates that dogs were fed reindeer meat.”
The team also noted that after excavation, the excrement samples were “packaged entirely in a separate hermetically sealed plastic bag and labeled.” It seems even prehistoric dog poop ends up in plastic bags.
Kanzi the unforgettable bonobo
Playing hide-and-seek with bonobos is just plain fun, but it also doubles as a handy experiment for testing whether these apes—our closest living relatives—can track the whereabouts of people, even when they are out of sight.
Kanzi, a bonobo known for tool use and language skills, participated in experiments in which his caretakers hid behind screens. He was asked to identify them from pictures or voices and succeeded more than half the time, above chance (here’s a video of the experiment).
”Kanzi presented a unique and powerful opportunity to address our question in a much more straightforward way than would be possible with almost any other ape in the world,” said authors Luz Carvajal and Christopher Krupenye of Johns Hopkins University. “He exhibited not only strong engagement with cognitive tasks but also rich forms of communication with humans—including pointing, use of symbols, and response to spoken English.”
Kanzi was also a gamer who played Pac-Man and Minecraft. Image: William H. Calvin, PhD -
Sadly, this was one of Kanzi’s last amazing feats, as he died in March at the age of 44 in his long-time home at the Ape Initiative in Des Moines, Iowa. But as revealed by this posthumous study, Kanzi’s legacy as a cognitive bridge between apes lives on. RIP to a real one.Zero to 4.5 million mph in a millisecond
We will close with dead stars that are careening out of the galaxy at incomprehensible speeds. These objects, known as hypervelocity white dwarfs, are corpses of stars similar in scale to the Sun, but it remains unclear why some of them fully yeet themselves into intergalactic space.
“Hypervelocity white dwarfs (HVWDs) are stellar remnants moving at speeds that exceed the Milky Way’s escape velocity,” said researchers co-led by Hila Glanz and Hagai B. Perets of the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. “The origins of the fastest HVWDs are enigmatic, with proposed formation scenarios struggling to explain both their extreme velocities and observed properties.”
The team modeled a possible solution that involves special white dwarfs with dense carbon-oxygen cores and outer layers of helium, known as hybrid helium-carbon-oxygen (HeCO) white dwarfs. When two He-CO white dwarfs merge, it may trigger a “double-detonation explosion” that launches one of the objects to speeds of about 4.5 million miles per hour.
“We have demonstrated that the merger of two HeCO white dwarfs can produce HVWDs with properties consistent with observations” which “provides a compelling explanation for the origin of the fastest HVWDs and sheds new light on the diversity of explosive transients in the Universe,” the researchers concluded.
With that, may you sail at hypervelocity speeds out of this galaxy and into the weekend.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
Cooperative behaviors and social interactions in the carnivorous bat Vampyrum spectrum
Bats exhibit a diverse array of social behaviors, yet detailed studies on the intricacies of these interactions, particularly in rare species like the spectral bat (Vampyrum spectrum), remain scarce.journals.plos.org
In addition to Planet Nine, the solar system may also contain a closer, smaller world that could be spotted soon, according to a new preprint study.#TheAbstract
A ‘Warp’ In Our Solar System Might Be an Undiscovered World: Planet Y
Scientists have discovered possible hints of an undiscovered world in the solar system—nicknamed “Planet Y”—orbiting about 100 to 200 times farther from the Sun than Earth, according to a new study.The newly proposed planet, assuming it exists, is predicted to be somewhere between Mercury and Earth in scale, which would likely make it detectable within the next few years. It is distinct from Planet Nine or Planet X, another hypothetical planet that is predicted to be much larger and more distant than Planet Y.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Scientists speculated about the potential existence of Planet Y after discovering a strange “warp” in the Kuiper belt, which is a ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune, reports the study, which was posted on the preprint server arXiv on Wednesday.“We still are skeptical because it's not a ‘grand slam’ signal by any means,” said Amir Siraj, a graduate student in astrophysics at Princeton University who led the study, in a call with 404 Media. “At the most, it's a hint—or it’s suggestive of—an unseen planet.” The paper has been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Siraj said.
Siraj and his co-authors made the discovery while laying the groundwork for an upcoming search for Planet Nine. For more than a decade, scientists have debated whether this hypothetical world—roughly five to ten times as massive as Earth, making it a “super-Earth” or “mini-Neptune”—is orbiting at a distance of at least 400 astronomical units (AU), where one AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Scientists came up with the Planet Nine hypothesis after observing small celestial bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune called trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which appear to be gravitationally influenced by some hidden phenomenon. Planet Nine could be the culprit.
It’s an exciting time for Planet Nine watchers, as the next-generation Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile achieved first light in June. Rubin is expected to begin running its signature project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), by the end of 2025, and will spend a decade scanning the southern sky to produce a time-lapsed map that could expose Planet Nine, if it exists.
For this reason, scientists are gearing up for a worldwide race to be the first to spot the planet in the incoming LSST data. To prepare for the observational onslaught, Siraj and his colleagues have been developing new techniques to learn all they can about the murky Kuiper belt.
“This is something I've been focusing on for the past couple of years, particularly because we are going to be flooded very soon—knock on wood—with thousands of new TNOs from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s LSST,” said Siraj. “So, my philosophy for the past couple of years has been, well, let me make sure I know everything that I can know from all the efforts so far.”
To that end, the team developed an improved technique for measuring the mean motions of objects in the distant Kuiper belt and comparing them to the plane of the solar system. Ideally, the mean plane of the objects’ orbits should fall in line with the solar system’s plane, but deviations could point to more evidence for Planet Nine.
Instead, the team’s novel approach found that the Kuiper belt’s mean plane was tilted by about 15 degrees relative to the solar system plane at ranges of 80 to 400 AU. This “warp” could be caused by many factors, such as orbital resonances with known solar system planets. But it could also hint at the presence of a small rocky world, lurking anywhere from three-to-five times as far as the orbit of Pluto.
“It was certainly a big surprise,” Siraj said. “If this warp holds up, the best explanation we can come up with is an undiscovered and relatively small inclined planet, roughly 100 to 200 AU from the Sun. The other thing that was exciting to us is that, whether the warp is real or not, it will be very quickly confirmed or refuted within the first few years of LSST’s operation.”
If there truly is an undiscovered Mercury-ish world beyond Pluto, it is probably a homegrown member of the solar system that was ejected by the turbulent environment in the early solar system. Planet Nine, in contrast, could have either formed in the solar system, or it could have been a wandering exoplanet that was gravitationally captured by the solar system.
“The solar system probably formed with a lot of planetary embryos,” Siraj said. “There were probably a lot of bodies that were roughly Mercury-mass and most of them likely were just scattered out of the solar system like balls in a pinball machine during the violent stages of solar system formation.”
“That would definitely be the most likely and possible formation scenario for such an object,” he added. “I think it would be very unlikely for an orbit like this to be produced from a capture event.”
Time will tell whether or not the warp represents a lost world that was kicked out of our local neighborhood more than four billion years ago. But the intense focus on the outer solar system and its many mysteries, spurred by LSST, is sure to bring a flood of new discoveries regardless. Indeed, the hypothetical existence of Planet Y does not rule out the existence of Planet Nine (and vice versa) so there may well be multiple mysterious worlds waiting to be added to our solar family.
“It is really remarkably hard to see objects in the outer solar system,” Siraj said. “These kinds of measurements were not even remotely possible 20 years ago, so this speaks to the technological progress that's been made. It is potentially putting us into an era in astronomy that's unfamiliar these days, but was much more familiar in, say, the 1700s or 1800s—the idea of adding another planet to our own solar system.”
Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet
Planet Nine's existence was discovered by Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown through mathematical modeling and computer simulations.California Institute of Technology
A 500-year-old human hair in a rare khipu challenges the long-held idea that only elite men created these knotted records in the Inka empire.#TheAbstract
A Strand of Hair Just Changed What We Know About the Inka Empire
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies that stood out to me this week, covering everything from silver to scat.First, a story about an ancient Andean tradition that will somehow end with a full-sized replica of a person posthumously made with his own hair. Enjoy the ride!
Then: the health risks of climate change for children; you’ll never guess what came out of this otter’s butthole; and wow, Vikings sure were good at raiding, huh.
The tangled origins of Inka khipus
For thousands of years, Andean peoples have woven intricate patterns, known as khipus, that encode information into clusters of knots and multi-colored threads. Made from cotton, wool, and often human hair, khipus are an idiosyncratic form of writing used for a range of purposes like arithmetic, census-keeping, calendrical cycles, and more.
Spanish invaders, who overthrew the Inka empire in the 16th century, reported that only high-ranking bureaucratic men became khipu-makers (khipukamayuqs)—though this assertion has been challenged in the past by Indigenous sources.
Now, a strand of human hair woven into a 500-year-old khipu has resolved this centuries-old question. Scientists performed an isotopic analysis of the hair, revealing that the individual who wove it into the khipu was likely a low-status commoner with a simple plant-based diet. The discovery confirms that khipus were made by people from different classes and backgrounds, and that Inka women probably made them as well.
Khipukamayuqs “have been viewed primarily as imperial male elites who played key roles in running the empire,” said researchers led by Sabine Hyland of the University of St. Andrews. “However, the indigenous chronicler, Guaman Poma de Ayala”—who lived in the 16th century—”stated that women also made khipu records, explaining that females over fifty “[kept] track of everything on their [khipu],” the team added.
Hyland and her colleagues found a solution to the discordant accounts in a khipu called KH0631, which was made around the year 1498. Though the provenance of the khipu is not known, the primary cord was made of human hair, allowing them to unravel the diet of this ancient khipukamayuq from the elemental composition of their tresses.
The primary cord of KH0631. Image: Sabine Hyland
The sampled strand was more than three feet long, and would have taken about eight years to grow. Carbon and nitrogen analysis of the hair indicated that it belonged to an individual that “ate a plant-based diet consisting primarily of tubers and greens with little consumption of meat or high-status plants such as maize,” according to the study. Strontium analysis showed “little marine contribution to the diet, indicating that the individual likely lived in the highlands.” Overall “this diet is a characteristic of low-status commoners, unlike the diet of high-status elites who consumed considerably more meat and maize,” the researchers said.The team speculated that this long-haired khipukamayuq could have just been a proto-vegan, but that wouldn’t explain why there was so little maize in their diet given elites were professional beer drinkers.
“Obligatory drinking of maize beer formed a central feature of Inka ceremonies of governance in which high-ranking khipukamayuqs participated,” the researchers said. “Given the symbolic importance of hair in the Andes, and the frequent use of hair on the primary cord to indicate the khipukamayuq, our results indicate that the creator of KH0631 was likely a non-elite commoner” suggesting that “khipu literacy in the Inka Empire may have been more inclusive and widespread than hitherto thought.”
IIn addition to broadening our understanding of khipukamayuq origins, the study is full of amazing insights about veneration of hair in Inka culture.
“Hair in the ancient Andes was a ritually powerful substance that represented the individual from whom it came,” the researchers said. “Historically, when human hair was incorporated into a khipu’s primary cord, it served as a ‘signature’ to indicate the person who created the khipu.”
“For important ceremonies, the Inka emperor sacrificed his own hair,” they added. “His hair clippings were saved during his lifetime; after death, they were fashioned into a life-size simulacrum revered as the emperor himself.”
I strongly suggest we revive this funerary practice, so start saving your hair clippings for your wake.
In other news…
The kids are not going to be alright
The climate crisis is a tragedy for people of all ages, but kids are among the most exposed to harm. A new study provided an exhaustive review of climate-related threats to babies, children, and adolescents, which include: food insecurity, malnutrition, water scarcity, bad air quality, infectious diseases, exposure to extreme weather, displacement, trauma, and mental illness.
“Children are particularly affected by adverse environmental influences, as their immature organ systems are less able to cope with thermal stress and disease,” said researchers led by Paula Reichelt of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. “Moreover, their developmental stage makes them especially vulnerable to long-term consequences; early-life nutrient or health disruptions can lead to permanent impairments in growth and development.”
A visual summary of climate-related threats to children. Image: Reichelt, Paula et al.
“Due to the relatively modest global efforts by political decision-makers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, further global warming and the associated negative developments in child and adolescent health are likely,” the team concluded.“Relatively modest” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. While I recognize the allure of doomerism or tuning out from these horrible realities, I recommend carrying around a manageable dose of incandescent rage at all times over the world we’re leaving behind to kids who had nothing to do with this mess.
Parasite lost (in otter poop)
You have to love a study that was inspired by an otter crapping out a weird red worm on a dock in the Chesapeake Bay. Curious about the poopy parasite, researchers sought out other otter “latrines” and discovered that these furry floaters eat a lot of parasites, probably because infected prey is often easier to catch. In this way, otters efficiently remove parasites from ecosystems; it may be a bummer for any infected prey on the otter menu, but is beneficial to the wider population.
“This study is the first to characterize river otter latrines and diet in a tidally influenced estuarine habitat within the Chesapeake Bay,” said researchers led by Calli Wise of Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
“Our results indicate that river otters consume a wide range of terrestrial and aquatic fauna, primarily consisting of finfish and crustaceans, but also including frogs and ducks,” the team said. “Multiple parasite species were identified, including parasites of river otters and those infecting prey, indicating that parasites likely play an important role in both prey availability and otter health.”
Tl;dr: Otters are parasite vacuums. Yet another reason to love these cuddly creatures and forgive their more unsavory attributes.
Some Viking booty, as a treat
We’ll end, as all things ideally should, with treasure. A new study tracks down the likely origins of a hoard of gold and silver items—including a sword pommel, jewelry, and several ingots—that were stashed by Vikings in the English town of Bedale, North Yorkshire, more than 1,200 years ago.
The Bedale Hoard. Image: York Museums Trust
Vikings are well-known for their epic raids (source: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla) and this particular hoard included far-flung loot sourced from across Europe and the Middle East.“The results indicate a dominant contribution of western European silver, pointing to the fate of loot seized by the Vikings during their raids on the Continent in the ninth century,” said researchers led by Jane Kershaw of the University of Oxford. “Nonetheless, Islamic silver is also present in several large ingots: silver from the east—the product of long-distance trade networks connecting Scandinavia with the Islamic Caliphate—permeated Viking wealth sources even in the western part of the Viking overseas settlement and should be seen as a significant driver of the Viking phenomenon.”
“The Vikings were not only extracting wealth locally; they were also bringing it into England via long-distance trade networks,” the team concluded.
With that Viking spirit in mind—skål, and see you next week.
North American river otters consume diverse prey and parasites in a subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay
IntroductionThe North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) occurs from freshwater to marine habitats across North America, yet very little information ex...Calli M. Wise (Frontiers)
Long before modern supply chains, ancient hominins were moving stone across long distances, potentially reshaping what we know about our evolutionary roots.#TheAbstract
A New Discovery Might Have Just Rewritten Human History
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.For more than a million years, early humans crafted stone tools as part of the Oldowan tradition, which is the oldest sustained tool-making industry in the archaeological record. Now, scientists have discovered that Oldowan tool-makers who lived in Kenya at least 2.6 million years ago transported high-quality raw materials for tools across more than seven miles to processing sites.
The find pushes the recorded timeline of this unique behavior back half-a-million years, at minimum, and reveals that hominins possessed complex cognitive capacities, like forward planning and delayed rewards, earlier than previously known, according to a study published on Friday in Science.
Hominins at this site, called Nyayanga, used their tools to pound and cut foraged plants and scavenged animals, including hippos, to prepare them for consumption. Intriguingly, the identity of the tool-makers remains unknown, and while they may have been early humans, it’s also possible that they could have been close cousins of our own Homo lineage.
“I've always thought that early tool-makers must have had more capabilities than we sometimes give them credit for,” said Emma Finestone, associate curator and the Robert J. and Linnet E. Fritz Endowed Chair of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who led the study, in a call with 404 Media.
“I was excited to see that at 2.6 million years ago, hominins were making use of many different resources and moving stones over large distances,” she added.
While many animals craft and transport tools, hominins are unique in their ability to identify and move special materials across long distances, which the team defines as more than three kilometers (or 1.86 miles). This innovation reveals a capacity for forward planning, complex mental maps, and delayed payoff of food consumption.
“What's unique is the amount of effort put into moving resources around a landscape,” said Finestone. “There's several steps involved, and there's also time in between these efforts and the reward. Although you see that to some extent in other animals, humans really separate themselves, especially as we get further and further in evolutionary time, in terms of the complexities of our foraging system."
Nyayanga amphitheater in July 2025. Image: T.W. Plummer, Homa Peninsula Paleoanthropology Project
Previously, the earliest record of this behavior in hominins came from a site called Kanjera South, which is about two million years old. Both sites are on the Homa peninsula, a region dominated by soft rocks that are not durable as tools; this may have prompted early hominins to search elsewhere for high-quality resources, such as quartz, chert, and granite.Given that long-distance material transport was present at Kanjera South, the discovery of similar behavior at Nyayanga was not completely unexpected—though Finestone and her colleagues were still surprised by the scope and variety of materials these hominins gathered.
“Often, when you're dealing with these really old archeological assemblages, it's dominated by one type of raw material that's coming from a single source, or a few sources that are really nearby,” said Finestone. “Nyayanga has a lot of different raw materials, and they're using a variety of different sources, so that was surprising and exciting to us.”
Finestone and her colleagues have made many discoveries during their decade-long excavation at Nyayanga. The team previously reported that the tool-makers butchered hippopotamus carcasses which were probably scavenged rather than hunted, providing the earliest evidence of hominin consumption of large animals, according to a 2023 study led by Thomas Plummer, a professor of anthropology at Queens College, City University of New York.
That study also reported fossils from Paranthropus, a close hominin cousin of our own Homo genus, which went extinct more than a million years ago. So far, these are the only hominin remains recovered from Nyayanga, raising the possibility that the Oldowan tool-making industry was not limited to our own human lineage.
“It is interesting because Paranthropus is not traditionally thought to be a tool-user,” Finestone said. “There's debate over whether Paranthropus made tools or whether it was only genus Homo that was making Oldowan tools. I don't think that evidence at Nyayanga is definitive that Paranthropus was the tool maker. It's still an open question. But because we found Paranthropus remains at Nyayanga, and we haven't found anything from genus Homo—at least yet—there's definitely reason to consider that Paranthropus might have been manufacturing these tools.”
With luck, the team may uncover more fossils from these ancient hominins that could shed light on their place in the family. Finestone and her colleagues are also working on constraining the age of the Nyayanga artifacts, which could be anywhere from 2.6 million to three million years old.
But for now, the study marks a new milestone in the evolution of Oldowan tools and their makers, which eventually dispersed across Africa and into Europe and Asia before they were succeeded by new traditions (like the one from our story last week about yet another group of ancient tool-makers with an unknown identity).
The stones once used to butcher hippos and pound tubers offer a window into the minds of bygone hominins that pioneered technologies that ultimately made humans who we are today.
“What's really interesting about humans and their ancestors is we're a technologically dependent species,” Finestone said. “We rely on tools. We're obligate tool users. We don't do it opportunistically or occasionally the way that a lot of other animals use tools. It's really become ingrained in our way of life, in our survival, and our foraging strategies across all people and all cultures.”
“What was exciting about this study is that you see this investment in tool technology, and you see tools becoming ingrained in the landscape-scale behaviors of hominins 2.6 million years ago,” she concluded. “We might be seeing the roots of this importance that technology plays in our foraging behaviors and also just the daily rhythms of our life.”
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Subscribe to 404 Media to get The Abstract, our newsletter about the most exciting and mind-boggling science news and studies of the week.
Scientists have discovered the culprit behind sea star wasting disease, the most devastating marine epidemic on record.#theabstract
Billions of Sea Stars Mysteriously Turned to Goo. Now We Know Why.
Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that gave me hope, sent me back in time, and dragged me onto the dance-floor.First, what’s your favorite cockatoo dance move? To be fully informed in your response, you will need to review the latest literature on innovations in avian choreography. Then: salvation for sea stars, a tooth extraction you’ll actually like, ancient vortex planets, and what to expect when you’re an expecting cockroach.
Everybody do the cockatoo
If you play your cards right as a scientist, you can spend all day watching cockatoos dance online and IRL. That’s what one team of researchers figured out, according to a new study that identified 17 cockatoo dance moves previously unknown to science.
“Anecdotally, parrots (Psittaciformes) have been reported to show ‘dancing’ behaviour to music in captivity which has been supported by studies on a few individuals,” said researchers led by Natasha Lubke of Charles Sturt University. “However, to date it remains unclear why parrots show dance behavior in response to music in captivity when birds are not courting or in the absence of any potential sexual partner.” Cockatoos, by the way, are a type of parrot.
It’s worth pursuing this mystery in part because parrots are popular pets and zoo attractions that require environmental enrichment for their welfare while in captivity. Listening to music and dancing could provide much-needed stimulation for these smart, social animals.
To that end, the authors watched dozens of videos of cockatoos on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, with search terms like “birds dancing Elvis,” “bird dancing to rap music” and “bird dancing to rock music.” They also played music and podcasts to a group of captive birds—two sulphur crested cockatoos (Cacatua galerita), two Major Mitchell cockatoos (Lophochroa leadbeateri) and two galahs (Eolophus roseicapilla)—housed at Wagga Wagga Zoo in Australia.
Illustration of the 10 most common recorded dance movements. Ethogram descriptors based on Keehn et al. [3] and illustrations by Zenna Lugosi. Image: Lubke et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b…)
The results expanded the existing database of cockatoo dance moves from classics like headbang, foot-lift, and body roll to include new-wave choreography like jump turn, downward walk, and fluff (wherein “feathers are fluffed” in a “fluffing event” according to the study).All the birds that the team studied onsite at the zoo also danced at least once to audio playback of the song “The Nights” by Avicii. They even danced when music was not playing, bopping around to silence or to tips from the financial podcast “She’s on the Money.”
“Dance behaviour is perhaps a more common behaviour in cockatoos than previously thought,” the team concluded. “Further research is required to determine the motivational basis for this behaviour in captivity.”
It will be interesting to see what forthcoming studies reveal, but my own prediction is that the motivational basis falls under Lady Gaga’s edict to “Just Dance.”
In other news…
Solving the mystery of what’s killing billions of sea stars
Over the past decade, a devastating illness has killed off billions of sea stars in what is the largest marine epidemic on record. Scientists have finally identified the culprit that causes sea star wasting disease (SSWD) as the bacteria Vibrio pectenicida, which is from the same family that causes cholera in humans (Vibrio cholerae).
Sea stars infected with SSWD form lesions and rapidly disintegrate into goo in mass mortality events that have upended ecosystems on the Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico. The isolation of the agent involved in these grotesque die-offs will hopefully help restore these vital keystone species.
Hakai Institute research scientist Alyssa Gehman checks on an adult sunflower sea star in the US Geological Survey’s Marrowstone Marine Field Station in Washington State. Image: Kristina Blanchflower/Hakai Institute
“This discovery will enable recovery efforts for sea stars and the ecosystems affected by their decline,” said researchers led by Melanie Prentice of the Hakai Institute and the University of British Columbia.Psst…you have some ancient atmosphere stuck in your teeth
For the first time, scientists have reconstructed atmospheres that existed more than 100 million years ago by studying the teeth of dinosaurs that breathed in this bygone air.
A team analyzed oxygen remnants preserved in the dental enamel of roughly two dozen dinosaur teeth including sauropods (such as Camarasaurus), theropods (including Tyrannosaurus), and the ornithischian Edmontosaurus (go Oilers). This data enabled them to infer carbon dioxide concentrations of around 1,200 parts per million (ppm) and 750 ppm in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, respectively.
This is in line with other findings that have found wild swings in CO2 levels during the dinosaur age, likely due to volcanic activity. Earth’s current atmosphere is about 430 ppm, and is rapidly rising due to human-driven greenhouse gas emissions.
Skull with teeth of a Kaatedocus siberi found at Howe Ranch, Wyoming, USA. Image: © Sauriermuseum Aathal
“Fossil tooth enamel can thus serve as a robust time capsule for ancient air [oxygen] isotope compositions,” said researchers led by Dingsu Feng of the University of Göttingen. “This novel form of analysis can “provide insights into past atmospheric greenhouse gas content and global primary productivity.”Vortex planets from the dawn of light
The first planets ever born in the universe may have formed in vortices around ancient stars more than 13.6 billion years ago. These stars were made of light elements, such as hydrogen and helium, but each new generation forged an itty-bit of heavier elements in their bellies that could potentially provide basic planetary building blocks.
By running simulations of this early epoch, known as cosmic dawn, researchers led by Linn E.J. Eriksson of the American Museum of Natural History found that small rocky worlds, on the scale of Mercury or Mars, could coalesce from dust and pebbles trapped in so-called “vortices,” which are like cosmic eddies that form in disks around newborn stars.
As a consequence, this “suggests that vortices could trigger the formation of the first generation of planets and planetesimals in the universe,” the team said.
Congratulations to everyone who had “ancient vortex planets from cosmic dawn” on their bingo card this week.
Wash it all down with a glass of cockroach milk
We began with cockatoos and we’ll close with cockroaches. Scientists have been bothering sleepy pregnant cockroaches, according to a new study on the Pacific beetle mimic cockroach, which is one of the few insects that produces milk and gives birth to live young.
“To our knowledge, no study has investigated the direct relationship between sleep and pregnancy in invertebrates, which leaves open the questions: do pregnant individuals follow similar sleep and activity patterns to their non-pregnant counterparts, and how important is sleep for successful pregnancy?” said researchers led by Ronja Frigard of the University of Cincinnati.
Biologists found that pregnant cockroaches need more sleep and those that are sleep-deprived have babies that require longer gestation to develop. Image: Andrew Higley
As it turns out, it’s very important! The team disrupted pregnant cockroaches by shaking their containers four times during their sleeping period for weeks on end. While the well-rested control group averaged 70 days for its gestation period, the sleep-deprived group took over 90 days to deliver their young. In addition, “when chronic sleep disturbance occurs, milk protein levels decline, decreasing nutrients available to the embryos during development,” the team concluded.For those of us who have been woken up at night by the scuttling of cockroaches, this study is our revenge. Enjoy it while you can, because the smart money is on cockroaches outliving us all.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
Dance behaviour in cockatoos: Implications for cognitive processes and welfare
Parrots (Aves, Psittaciformes) in captivity have been reported to show dance behaviour in response to music, which may involve complex cognitive processes including imitation, vocal learning and entrainment.journals.plos.org
Stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi reveal a long-lost population of human relatives; their identity, and how they crossed the sea, is a mystery.#TheAbstract #science
Million-Year-Old Evidence of Epic Journey Near ‘Hobbit’ Island Discovered by Scientists
Scientists have discovered million-year-old artifacts made by a mysterious group of early humans on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, according to a breakthrough study published on Wednesday in Nature.The extraordinary find pushes the archaeological record of Sulawesi back by about 800,000 years, and confirms that hominins, the broader family to which humans belong, crossed treacherous ocean passages to reach the island, where they crafted simple tools.
The tool-makers may have been related to a group of archaic humans—nicknamed “hobbits” for their short stature—that lived on nearby Flores Island. But while the hobbits left behind skeletal remains, no fossils from the Sulawesi group have been unearthed. The tools, found at a site called Calio in South Sulawesi, are the only record of their existence for now.
“The discovery of these ancient stone tools at Calio is another important piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the movements of early hominins from the edge of the Asian landmass into the isolated zone of islands known as Wallacea,” said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University and a co-author of the new study, in an email.
“A major question remaining is the identity of the archaic humans of Sulawesi,” he added, noting that they might be Homo erectus, or descendents of this influential early human species that migrated from Africa to Asia. ”But until we have their fossils, who they were will remain a mystery.”
Stone tools dated to over 1.04 million-years-old, scale bars are 10mm. Image: M W Moore
The discovery was made by Budianto “Budi” Hakim, an Indonesian archaeologist who has spent decades searching for traces of archaic humans in Sulawesi. Hakim spotted one of the artifacts while scouring the region’s sandstone outcrops, prompting an excavation that unearthed a total of seven flaked tools crafted from chert rock. The remains of extinct elephants and pigs were also found in the sedimentary layers at the site, hinting at an ancient origin.The team used two independent methods to date the tools, both of which placed their age at a minimum of 1.04 million years old, making the artifacts the earliest evidence for hominin occupation of Sulawesi by far.
“Budi has been searching for this evidence for much of his life, so it is very exciting indeed,” said Brumm. “But it is not so surprising that we now have evidence for hominins on Sulawesi by one million years ago; we have long suspected that there had been a very deep history of human occupation of this island based on the discovery (in 2010) of stone tools on Flores to the south that date to at least a million years ago. Sulawesi was probably where the first hominins to set foot on Flores actually came from, so it made sense to us that the human presence on Sulawesi would go back at least as far as a million years, if not considerably earlier.”
“And personally, it did not surprise me that Budi unearthed this new find,” he continued. “He is a renowned figure in Indonesian archaeology and undoubtedly has the ‘golden touch.’”
The tools are sharp-edged flakes that were probably cut from larger rocks obtained from a nearby river channel. Like many tools made by hominins across time and regions, they would have been useful for cutting and scraping materials, though their exact purpose is unknown.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
The tools “can’t tell us very much about the behaviour or cognitive capacities of these early humans, other than that they were tool-makers who clearly understood how to choose stones with suitable properties and to fracture them in a controlled way to produce a supply of usable tools,” explained Brumm. “Over the past 2.5 million years, many different hominin species (including our own, Homo sapiens) have made stone tools that are essentially indistinguishable from the Sulawesi tools.”In addition to their mysterious identity, it is unclear how these early humans crossed ocean waters to reach these island shores, given that the shortest distance between the Asian mainland and Sulawesi would have been 30 miles, at minimum.
“This is too far to swim (in any case the ocean currents are too strong),” Brumm explained. “It is also very unlikely these archaic hominins had the cognitive ability to develop watercraft that were capable of making sea voyages, or indeed of the advanced planning required to gather resources and set sail over the horizon to an unseen land.”
“Most likely, they crossed to Sulawesi from the Asian mainland in the same way rodents and monkeys are suspected to have done; that is, by accident, perhaps as castaways on natural ‘rafts’ of floating vegetation,” he concluded.
It’s incredible to imagine these early humans getting caught up in tides or currents, perhaps stranded at sea for days, only to serendipitously wash up on a vast island that would become home to untold generations. Hakim, Brumm, and their colleagues hope to find more evidence of this long-lost population in the coming years, but for now, the stone tools offer a rare window into the lives of these accidental seafarers and their descendants.
Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene - Nature
Early Pleistocene artefacts at Calio suggest that Sulawesi was populated by hominins at around the same time as Flores, if not earlier.Nature
Scientists Made a ‘Woolly Mouse’ in Quest to Resurrect Mammoths
They are cute, but are they mammoths? No. They are mice.Becky Ferreira (404 Media)
