An article published in the journal “Science Advances” reports a study that offers evidence that groups of Homo sapiens migrated from Africa using the Levant as a passageway to western Asia and northern Arabia. A team of researchers conducted a digging campaign in Jordan looking for traces of ancient human passages in what is now a desert but tens of thousands of years ago was an area covered by savannah and grasslands. The discovery of sediments dating back about 84,000 years containing tools created with the so-called Levallois technique in that area confirms that the Levant was part of at least one of the human migration routes from Africa.

An article published in the journal “Nature” reports a study on a trilobite fossil of the species Bohemolichas incola dating back to around 465 million years ago, in the Middle Ordovician period, which reveals the contents of its guts in the last meal that occurred before its death. A team of researchers subjected the fossil in an extraordinary state of preservation to a sophisticated synchrotron microtomography that made it possible to create a 3D reproduction that also shows the contents of its intestinal tract. That revealed that this trilobite ate some marine invertebrates such as ostracods, bivalves, and echinoderms.

An article published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B.” reports the identification of the oldest known jellyfish species, dating back to about 508 million years ago, in the Cambrian period. A team of researchers named it Burgessomedusa phasmiformis after examining 182 exceptionally well-preserved specimens that were found in the famous Burgess Shale in Canada. These up to 20 centimeters tall animals were equipped with over 90 short tentacles they could use to hunt other animals. This discovery helps to reconstruct the evolutionary history of jellyfish and in general of the phylum of cnidarians, one of the oldest.