An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of fossils of a species of marine arthropods that lived a little more than 500 million years ago in the Permian period. Calling Tokummia Katalepsis, this species is one of the many discovered in Burgess Shale and is important because according to Cédric Ariz and Jean-Bernard Caron of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) it shows the origin of mandibulates (Mandibulata), a group of arthropods that includes millipedes, crustaceans and insects.

An article published in the journal “Science” describes a new method to collect DNA from sediments in archaeological sites, even when there are no bone remains. A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, successfully experimented with this method in sites of various nations, recovering DNA from various mammals including hominids, specifically Neanderthals and the mysterious Denisovans.

An article published in the magazine “Journal of Human Evolution” describes a study on the bones of Homo floresiensis (photo ©Mamoritai), the hominids nicknamed hobbits discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. A team led by the Australian National University (ANU) concluded that it was probably a sister species of Homo habilis, that there was no evidence that it evolved from Homo erectus and that it’s almost impossible for it to be Homo sapiens suffering from malformation.

An article published in the journal “The American Naturalist” describes a research on Slimonia acuminata, a species of sea scorpion that lived about 430 million years ago. According to Scott Persons and John Acorn, two scientists from the University of Alberta, this very ancient predator that could reach a length of about 40 centimeters (almost 16″) used its tail as a weapon to hit its prey.