New evidence, more questions. That's the thumbnail of the first new data reported in 10 years from Monte Verde, the earliest known human settlement in the Americas. Evidence from the archaeological site in southern Chile confirms Monte Verde is the Americas earliest known settlement and is consistent with the idea that early human migration occurred along the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago, but questions remain about just how rapidly that migration occurred........

Tiny marks on the teeth of an ancient human ancestor known as the andquot;Nutcracker Manandquot; may upset current evolutionary understanding of early hominid diet. Using high-powered microscopes, scientists looked at rough geometric shapes on the teeth of several Nutcracker Man specimens and determined that their structure alone was not enough to predict diet........

Researchers have put more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds. Molecular analysis, or genetic sequencing, of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein from the dinosaur's femur confirms that T. rex shares a common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators........

While waiting for colleagues at a small natural history museum in the state of Chiapas, Mexico last year, Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl chanced upon a discovery that has helped rewrite the evolutionary history of crabs and the shelled mollusks upon which they preyed. In a museum display case he recognized a 67- to 69-million-year-old fossil from the Late Cretaceous period of a big crab with an oversized right claw. Such crabs with claws of different sizes were not known to exist until the early Cenozoic era, about 20 million years later. Aside from being larger than most known Late Cretaceous crabs (about the size of today's Florida stone crabs) and having asymmetrical claws, this ancient crab also sported a curved tooth on the movable finger of the larger right claw. This was another specialized adaptation that paleontologists thought developed millions of years later for peeling snail shells open........

New geological evidence indicates the Grand Canyon may be so old that dinosaurs once lumbered along its rim, as per a research studyby scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the California Institute of Technology. The team used a technique known as radiometric dating to show the Grand Canyon may have formed more than 55 million years ago, pushing back its assumed origins by 40 million to 50 million years. The scientists gathered evidence from rocks in the canyon and on surrounding plateaus that were deposited near sea level several hundred million years ago before the region uplifted and eroded to form the canyon........

Paleontologists from the University of Rennes (France) and the ESRF have found the presence of 356 animal inclusions in completely opaque amber from mid-Cretaceous sites of Charentes (France). The team used the X-rays of the European light source to image two kilogrammes of the fossil tree resin with a technique that allows rapid survey of large amounts of opaque amber. At present this is the only way to discover inclusions in fully opaque amber........

I''ve been a little lax keeping up with paleontology these days, despite my daughter''s frequent reminder that I''ve yet to make the hadrosaur T-shirts she''s been asking for. Last month A Hadrosuarian dinosaur was found in the Coahuila desert of Mexico:

You can learn more about theVelafrons coahuilensis HERE and HERE.

Now this month they''ve uncovered another skull in that same area, this of a creature similar to triceratops. The expectation is that several other new species may be found.

I think a lot of us in who aren''t in the sciences tend to loose track of the .........

An international group of researchers, led by Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences, has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought........

CHICAGOImagine future archaeologists trying to understand Illinois, California or New York based on a few excavations in each of those states. They might excavate small areas in city centers, since those sites would probably be the first ruins they would come across. Meanwhile, the archaeologists they might fail to notice or study farms, suburbs, shopping malls, canals and airports........

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided researchers with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. In a collaborative project involving scientists from the Gera number of, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Gera number of and Durham University, UK, and his team used laser technology to collect microscopic particles of enamel from the tooth. By analysing strontium isotope ratios in the enamel - strontium is a naturally occurring metal ingested into the body through food and water - the researchers were able to uncover geological information showing where the Neanderthal had been living when the tooth was formed (Journal of Archaeological Science, February 11th, 2008)........

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, has discovered the remains in Madagascar of what may be the largest frog ever to exist. The 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links a group of frogs that lived 65 to 70 million years ago with frogs living today in South America........

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples. From the grueling work of analyzing the "attributes," the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize - and a popular target for antiquities looters - primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago........

Crayfish body fossils and burrows discovered in Victoria, Australia, have provided the first physical evidence that crayfish existed on the continent as far back as the Mesozoic Era, says Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin, who headed up a study on the finds. "Studying the fossil burrows gives us a glimpse into the ecology of southern Australia about 115 million years ago, when the continent was still attached to Antarctica," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory and an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne. During that era, diverse plants grew in what is today Antarctica and dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness along southern Australia river plains. The period is of particular interest to researchers since it is thought to bethe last time the Earth experienced pronounced global warming, with an average temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit - just 10 degrees warmer than today........

Like X-rays let doctors see the bones beneath our skin, "T-rays" could let art historians see murals hidden beneath coats of plaster or paint in centuries-old buildings, University of Michigan engineering scientists say. T-rays, pulses of terahertz radiation, could also illuminate penciled sketches under paintings on canvas without harming the artwork, the scientists say. Current methods of imaging underdrawings can't detect certain art materials such as graphite or sanguine, a red chalk that some of the masters are believed to have used........

The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and especially the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia. "On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from it most of the Peloponnesos can be seen," wrote Pausanias, in his famous, well-respected multi-volume Description of Greece. "Before the altar on the east stand two pillars, on which there were of old gilded eagles. On this altar they sacrifice in secret to Lykaion Zeus. I was reluctant to pry into the details of the sacrifice; let them be as they are and were from the beginning"........

Dinosaurs had pregnancies as early as age 8, far before they reached their maximum adult size, a new study finds. Scientists at Ohio University and University of California at Berkeley have found medullary bone the same tissue that allows birds to develop eggshells in two new dinosaur specimens: the meat-eater Allosaurus and the plant-eater Tenontosaurus. Its also been found in Tyrannosaurus rex........

New research challenges the generally accepted belief that substantial ice sheets could not have existed on Earth during past super-warm climate events. The study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego provides good evidence that a glacial ice cap, about half the size of the modern day glacial ice sheet, existed 91 million years ago during a period of intense global warming. This study offers valuable insight into current day climate conditions and the environmental mechanisms for global sea level rise........

Research on a treasure trove of amber has yielded evidence that France once was covered by a dense tropical rainforest with trees similar to those found in the modern-day Amazon. The 55-million-year-old pieces of amber was discovered in the Oise River area in northern France. In the new study, Akino Jossang and his colleagues used laboratory instruments to analyze the fossilized tree sap in an effort to link specific samples of amber to specific kinds of trees. The amber remained intact over the ages, while the trees from which it oozed disappeared. Efforts to make such connections have been difficult because amber from different sites tended to have very similar chemical compositions........

Asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct, but a new book argues that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force biting, disease-carrying insects. An important contributor to the demise of the dinosaurs, experts say, could have been the rise and evolution of insects, particularly the slow-but-overwhelming threat posed by new disease carriers. And the evidence for this emerging threat has been captured in almost lifelike-detail a number of types of insects preserved in amber that date to the time when dinosaurs disappeared........

Researchers have known for some time that most major groups of complex animals appeared in the fossils record during the Cambrian Explosion, a seemingly rapid evolutionary event that occurred 542 million years ago. Now Virginia Tech paleontologists, using rigorous analytical methods, have identified another explosive evolutionary event that occurred about 33 million years earlier among macroscopic life forms uncorrelation to the Cambrian animals. They dubbed this earlier event the "Avalon Explosion"........