2021

Excavation in the Galería de las Estatuas cave site (Photo courtesy Javier Trueba - Madrid Scientific Films. All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Science” reports the extraction of nuclear DNA belonging to Neanderthals from sediments excavated in deposits in northern Spain and Siberia. A team of researchers led by Benjamin Vernot of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, used techniques to extract DNA from sediments developed over the past few years. At the Spanish site, this made it possible to discover DNA linked to different Neanderthal populations with one population being replaced by another about 100,000 years ago.

The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard (Italian edition)

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The novel “The Crystal World” by J.G. Ballard was published for the first time in 1964 fixing up previously published short fiction.

Dr. Edward Sanders begins a journey up the Matarre River in Cameroon to reach the place where his colleague and ex-lover Suzanne Clair and her husband Max work in the Mont Royal leprosy treatment facility. The journey is made more complicated by unrest that adds to rumors of strange events that some of Sanders’ fellow travelers want to investigate.

The travelers find a passage but one of them, the photographer Matthieu, is found dead in the river covered with mysterious crystals. During the journey, the others discover that an unexplained phenomenon is leading to the progressive transformation of the forest into crystals.

The Homo erectus fossil cataloged as KNM-ER 2598

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An article published in the journal “Nature Communications” reports a research on a fossil bone attributed to a Homo erectus that led to the discovery of two other fossils in the same area, near the east shore of Lake Turkana, Kenya. A team of researchers led by Ashley Hammond, assistant curator in the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Anthropology, conducted an investigation to try to understand whether that skull bone really was the oldest fossil of Homo erectus or, as some suspected, it came from a more recent layer and got moved by water or wind. The survey supports the age attributed to the fossil of nearly 1.9 million years.

Transgalactic by James Gunn

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The novel “Transgalactic” by James Gunn was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the second book in the Transcendental trilogy and follows “Transcendental”.

When Riley awakens in the Transcendental Machine, he discovers that he is on a planet inhabited by creatures similar to carnivorous dinosaurs. A sentient species also inhabits it, but what interests Riley most is that the Machine builders left a still-functioning starship. Together with one of the natives, he sets out in search of Asha.

When Asha awakens in the Transcendental Machine, she discovers that she is on a planet inhabited by a humanoid species who treats her as a kind of deity. She’s only interested in leaving the planet, and luckily for her, it’s not isolated but there’s a Dorian embassy. Asha convinces the local ambassador to lend her a starship and she, along with one of the natives, sets out in search of Riley.

A lower molar of one of the modern humans discovered in Bacho Kiro Cave

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An article in the journal “Nature” reports a genetic study on some human beings who lived in Bacho Kiro Cave, in today’s Bulgaria, the most ancient modern humans dated so far with reasonable certainty. A team of researchers managed to obtain DNA from the available bones, which was analyzed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The comparison with the genetic characteristics of today’s European and Asian populations shows how those ancient humans spread and that they had some Neanderthal ancestors.