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21 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Kennewick Man Gets His Day in Court

by Science News Staff

EUGENE, OREGON--A group of scientists has won a round in a legal battle over a 9300-year-old skeleton that could hold important clues to the peopling of the Americas. The researchers...

20 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Birds Survived the Big One?

by Science News Staff

Many people think that the catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago--probably a giant asteroid--also took out most archaic birds and mammals, too. If so, modern birds...

18 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

Earliest Eastern Americans

by Science News Staff

SEATTLE--Newly dated fish bones and artifacts reveal that early Archaic Indians were basking in the Florida sun almost 10,000 years ago. The finding, reported here Saturday at the annual meeting...

12 February 1997 | ScienceNOW

The Origin of Insect Flight

by Erik Stokstad

Scientists have never known just what to make of flying insects. The fossil record shows that they arose on the scene some 500 million years ago, but just how insects...

24 January 1997 | ScienceNOW

Dating the Scum of the Earth

by Science News Staff

By 2.7 billion years ago, the cooling Earth had formed a crust of continental rock about as thick as today's terra firma. The finding, reported in today's Science,* appears to...

22 January 1997 | ScienceNOW

Scientists have discovered stone tools in Ethiopia that appear to be 2.6 million years old, making them the "oldest known artifacts from anywhere in the world," says Rutgers University paleoanthropologist...

21 January 1997 | ScienceNOW

Beijing's First Settlers Unearthed

by Science News Staff

BEIJING--Chinese scientists here have unearthed the first evidence of prehistoric human activity in present-day Beijing. The discovery of stone tools and other artifacts, estimated to be 20,000 years old, is...

13 December 1996 | ScienceNOW

King of Dinosaur Skulls

by Science News Staff

Paleontologists have unearthed in Madagascar one of the most complete dinosaur skulls ever found. The discovery sheds new light on a little-known dinosaur called Majungasaurus, which lived on the island...

12 December 1996 | ScienceNOW

Early Human Species May Have Coexisted With Our Own

by Science News Staff

The thought of another human species coexisting with our own seems rather, well, alien. But this may have been the case a mere 27,000 to 53,000 years ago. A report...

11 December 1996 | ScienceNOW

North America's Oldest Creepy-Crawlies

by Science News Staff

The discovery in Canada of three arthropod fossils has pushed back the dates of the first fully terrestrial animals in North America by tens of millions of years. A report...

9 December 1996 | ScienceNOW

Farewell to Matriarch of Archaeology

by Science News Staff

Mary D. Leakey, the distinguished archaeologist and matriarch of the famous Leakey clan of scientists, died last night in Nairobi, Kenya. She was 84. Leakey made numerous major discoveries--of both...

4 December 1996 | ScienceNOW

Stone Age Sea Merchants

by Science News Staff

BOSTON--Trading on the Pacific's high seas may have begun 2500 years earlier than archaeologists have thought, according to an analysis of volcanic glass shards presented here at the annual meeting...

25 November 1996 | ScienceNOW

Pottery Reveals Polynesia's Settlers

by Science News Staff

Archaeologists working in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea have found evidence that the some of the legendary seafarers who first settled Polynesia 3600 years ago were from the...

19 November 1996 | ScienceNOW

Jaw Sheds Light on Early Humans

by Science News Staff

Scientists have discovered in Ethiopia what may be the earliest known fossil from a member of our own genus, Homo: an upper jaw dated at about 2.33 million years old....

11 November 1996 | ScienceNOW

Connecticut's Ancient Crocodilian Creature

by Science News Staff

A fossilized skull found in a Connecticut park appears to belong to a crocodilelike reptile that lived 212 million years ago, about the time that dinosaurs began to roam the...

6 November 1996 | ScienceNOW

Earliest Earthlings

by Science News Staff

Chemical signatures in rocks unearthed in Greenland suggest that life began nearly 4 billion years ago--about 400 million years earlier than the oldest known fossils, says a report in the...

30 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

Dinosaurs: A Meteoric Rise as Well as Demise?

by Science News Staff

DENVER--Most scientists believe that a meteor or comet wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, Gregory Retallack, a geologist from the University of Oregon, Eugene, claims to have...

29 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

Making Music Neandertal Style

by Science News Staff

DENVER--Researchers have found what they believe is the world's oldest musical instrument: a hollow bone fragment that appears to be a flute. Bonnie Blackwell, a geologist and archaeologist at Queens...

28 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

Ancient Animals Unearthed

by Science News Staff

DENVER--Scientists have excavated near the Arctic Circle in Russia what they believe are the oldest fossils of a mollusk-like animal. The fossils, dated between 550 million and 560 million years...

21 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

Dinosaurs: Our Fine Feathered Friends?

by Science News Staff

A fossil dinosaur in China appears to have had a mane of feathers running down its neck, back, and tail--making it the first known feathered dinosaur and giving scientists compelling...

8 October 1996 | ScienceNOW

French Museum: Anthropology Makes Way for Art

by Science News Staff

President Jacques Chirac announced on 7 October that a major new Museum of Civilization and Early Arts will be created here in the Chaillot Palace, across the river Seine from...