Archaeologica.org

The following is a list of physical traits that distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans; however, not all of them can be used to distinguish specific Neanderthal populations, from various geographic areas or periods of evolution, from other extinct humans. Also, many of these traits occasionally manifest in modern humans, particularly among certain ethnic groups. Nothing is known about the skin color, the hair, or the shape of soft parts such as eyes, ears, and lips of Neanderthals.[9]

A man told police not to blame him for crashing his truck into a light post — it was that unicorn behind the wheel. Prosecutor Ingrid Rosenquist said Phillip C. Holliday Jr. initially denied driving the truck involved in the March 7 crash in Billings. He told officers at the scene that a unicorn was driving, she said.


Holliday, 42, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony charges of criminal endangerment and drunken driving.


A pickup truck drove through a red light and nearly struck another truck in the intersection, according to court documents. The driver then made an erratic U-turn through a gas station, crossed the street and crashed into a light pole. Nobody was injured.


Holliday has five drunken-driving convictions. District Judge Gregory Todd kept his bail at $100,000 despite his lawyer arguing that Holliday's last such conviction was 14 years ago.

The peculiar 3,000-year-old skeletons belong to the Lapita people, the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Their DNA could shed light on how the many remote island specks surrounding Vanuatu were colonized, the researchers say

Ana Vicente and her team at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro began their quest for ancient pinworm RNA at San Pedro de Atacama, a pre-Incan village that was once part of an important trade route to the Pacific coast. Considered the driest place on earth, the region boasts 35 mm of rainfall in its wettest years and is considered a veritable time capsule for archaeologists, says paleoparasitologist Adauto Araujo, "There are so many bodies there, that archaeologists no longer excavate them."

Back in Brazil, when he rehydrates samples in a bath of trisodium phosphate, the stench sticks with the lab for three days, after which time he scans the samples for evidence of parasite eggs.

Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.

Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.

"It's as if there was a cattle raid or something," Bayliss said.

Now researchers from Italy's National Research Council in Bologna have found that bacteria are to blame. DNA tests and electron microscopy confirmed the presence of cyanobacteria, which leave a black residue when they dry out. Analysis of the chemical composition of the deposit showed that it came from cyanobacteria and not from petroleum-based pollution (Environmental Science & Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es062176s).

"Iranian officials wanted us to demonstrate that one of the causes of the blackening was the burning of the wells," says Alessandra Bonazza, who led the study. "I think they are probably disappointed by what we found."

Archeologists at the Khiva branch of the Samarkand Archeological Institute named after Jakhya Gulamov have made a sort of gift to Tolstov's 100th anniversary. During their excavation works in Kumbuz-tepa, near the town of Khazarasp, they had unearthed a Bronze Age site of hunters and cattle-breeders. Called Sharofat, the site is no less than 3,500 years old, according to experts.

The archeological-ethnographic complex expedition founded by Sergey Tolstov has been carrying out successful large-scale research into the history, archeology and ethnography of Central Asian peoples for over the span of seven decades now.