A new analysis of some of the earliest mammals shows their complex brains evolved in stages, starting with the regions that handle the sense of smell.
Scientists have found ways to tease even more clues out of fingerprints’ telltale marks.
A worldwide scientific effort to catalog every living species has topped the one-million milestone. Six years into the programme, the total has reached 1 009 000, researchers report. They hope to complete the listing by 2011, reaching an expected total of about 1,75-million species.
About 75 000 years ago someone living in a cave overlooking the Indian Ocean bored holes in a set of shells and strung them as beads — the earliest known human jewellery. Uncovered in Blombos cave on the Indian Ocean shoreline in South Africa, the newly discovered beads were made from the shells of a type of mollusc.