Archaeology News

August 19, 2025

Top Headlines

Mexican Cave Stalagmites Reveal the Deadly Droughts Behind the Maya Collapse

Aug. 16, 2025 — Chemical evidence from a stalagmite in Mexico has revealed that the Classic Maya civilization’s decline coincided with repeated severe wet-season droughts, including one that lasted 13 years. These ...

Scientists Just Uncovered Three Ancient Worlds Frozen Beneath Illinois for 300 Million Years

Aug. 9, 2025 — Over 300 million years ago, Illinois teemed with life in tropical swamps and seas, now preserved at the famous Mazon Creek fossil site. Researchers from the University of Missouri and geologist ...

The First Pandemic? Scientists Find 214 Ancient Pathogens in Prehistoric DNA

July 11, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered DNA from 214 ancient pathogens in prehistoric humans, including the oldest known evidence of plague. The findings show zoonotic diseases began spreading around 6,500 years ...

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...

New Method Provides the Key to Accessing Proteins in Ancient Human Remains

May 30, 2025 — A new method could soon unlock the vast repository of biological information held in the proteins of ancient soft tissues. The findings could open up a new era for palaeobiological ...

Dinosaurs Could Hold Key to Cancer Discoveries

May 29, 2025 — New techniques used to analyze soft tissue in dinosaur fossils may hold the key to new cancer discoveries. Researchers have analyzed dinosaur fossils using advanced paleoproteomic techniques, a method that holds promise for uncovering molecular data ...

Long Shot Science Leads to Revised Age for Land-animal Ancestor

May 29, 2025 — The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. Thanks to new research, scientists believe that ...

Leprosy Existed in America Long Before Arrival of Europeans

May 29, 2025 — Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second species of bacteria responsible for leprosy, ...

Birds Nested in Arctic Alongside Dinosaurs

May 29, 2025 — Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new article. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds ...

Does Planting Trees Really Help Cool the Planet?

May 29, 2025 — Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total effect won't cancel out human-generated ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...

Bed Bugs Are Most Likely the First Human Pest, New Research Shows

May 28, 2025 — Researchers compared the whole genome sequence of two genetically distinct lineages of bed bug, and their findings indicate bed bugs may well be the first true urban ...

Latest Headlines

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Mysterious Denisovan Interbreeding Shaped the Humans We Are Today

Aug. 14, 2025 — Denisovans, a mysterious human relative, left behind far more than a handful of fossils—they left genetic fingerprints in modern humans across the globe. Multiple interbreeding events with distinct ...

Tiny Ancient Whale With a Killer Bite Found in Australia

Aug. 13, 2025 — An extraordinary fossil find along Victoria’s Surf Coast has revealed Janjucetus dullardi, a sharp-toothed, dolphin-sized predator that lived 26 million years ago. With large eyes, slicing teeth, ...

A 16-Million-Year-Old Amber Fossil Just Revealed the Smallest Predator Ant Ever Found

Aug. 9, 2025 — A fossilized Caribbean dirt ant, Basiceros enana, preserved in Dominican amber, reveals the species ancient range and overturns assumptions about its ...

Stunning “wonder Reptile” Discovery Rewrites the Origins of Feathers

Aug. 9, 2025 — The newly described Mirasaura grauvogeli from the Middle Triassic had a striking feather-like crest, hinting that complex skin appendages arose far earlier than previously believed. Its bird-like ...

Scientists Reexamine 47-Year-Old Fossil and Discover a New Jurassic Sea Monster

Aug. 4, 2025 — A new long-necked marine reptile, Plesionectes longicollum, has been identified from a decades-old fossil found in Germany’s Posidonia Shale. The ...

4,000-Year-Old Teeth Reveal the Earliest Human High — Hidden in Plaque

Aug. 1, 2025 — Scientists have discovered the oldest direct evidence of betel nut chewing in Southeast Asia by analyzing 4,000-year-old dental plaque from a burial in Thailand. This breakthrough method reveals ...

A Dusty Fossil Drawer Held a 300-Million-Year-Old Evolutionary Game-Changer

July 24, 2025 — A century-old fossil long mislabeled as a caterpillar has been reidentified as the first-known nonmarine lobopodian—rewriting what we know about ancient life. Discovered in Harvard’s museum ...

A 500-Million-Year-Old Fossil Just Rewrote the Spider Origin Story

July 24, 2025 — Half a billion years ago, a strange sea-dwelling creature called Mollisonia symmetrica may have paved the way for modern spiders. Using detailed fossil brain analysis, researchers uncovered neural ...

Ancient Recipes or Rituals? Neanderthal Bones Reveal a Prehistoric Culinary Mystery

July 18, 2025 — Neanderthals living just 70 kilometers apart in Israel may have had different food prep customs, according to new research on butchered animal bones. ...

Butchery Clues Reveal Neanderthals May Have Had “family Recipes”

July 17, 2025 — Neanderthals living in two nearby caves in ancient Israel prepared their food in surprisingly different ways, according to new archaeological evidence. Despite using the same tools and hunting the ...

Scholars Just Solved a 130-Year Literary Mystery—and It All Hinged on One Word

July 16, 2025 — After baffling scholars for over a century, Cambridge researchers have reinterpreted the long-lost Song of Wade, revealing it to be a chivalric romance rather than a monster-filled myth. The twist ...

Inside the Maya King’s Tomb That Rewrites Mesoamerican History

July 12, 2025 — A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology has emerged from Caracol, Belize, where the University of Houston team uncovered the tomb of Te K'ab Chaak—Caracol’s first known ruler. Buried with ...

North America’s Oldest Pterosaur Unearthed in Arizona’s Triassic Time Capsule

July 8, 2025 — In the remote reaches of Arizona s Petrified Forest National Park, scientists have unearthed North America's oldest known pterosaur a small, gull-sized flier that once soared above Triassic ...

This Team Tried to Cross 140 Miles of Treacherous Ocean Like Stone-Age Humans—and It Worked

June 26, 2025 — Experiments and simulations show Paleolithic paddlers could outwit the powerful Kuroshio Current by launching dugout canoes from northern Taiwan and steering southeast toward Okinawa. A modern crew ...

No Kings Buried Here: DNA Unravels the Myth of Incestuous Elites in Ancient Ireland

June 23, 2025 — DNA from a skull found at Newgrange once sparked theories of a royal incestuous elite in ancient Ireland, but new research reveals no signs of such a hierarchy. Instead, evidence suggests a ...

Buried for 23,000 Years: These Footprints Are Rewriting American History

June 29, 2025 — Footprints found in the ancient lakebeds of White Sands may prove that humans lived in North America 23,000 years ago — much earlier than previously believed. A new study using radiocarbon-dated ...

Monster Salamander With Powerful Jaws Unearthed in Tennessee Fossil Find

June 17, 2025 — A massive, extinct salamander with jaws like a vice once roamed ancient Tennessee and its fossil has just rewritten what we thought we knew about Appalachian amphibians. Named Dynamognathus ...

The 10,000-Mile March Through Fire That Made Dinosaurs Possible

June 13, 2025 — Despite Earth's most devastating mass extinction wiping out over 80% of marine life and half of land species, a group of early reptiles called archosauromorphs not only survived but thrived, ...

What a Dinosaur Ate 100 Million Years ago—Preserved in a Fossilized Time Capsule

June 10, 2025 — A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive glimpse into what these giant creatures actually ate. ...

2,000 Miles Through Rivers and Ice: Mapping Neanderthals’ Hidden Superhighways Across Eurasia

June 10, 2025 — Neanderthals may have trekked thousands of miles across Eurasia much faster than we ever imagined. New computer simulations suggest they used river valleys like natural highways to cross daunting ...

New Evidence Reveals Advanced Maritime Technology in the Philippines 35,000 Years Ago

June 9, 2025 — In a bold reimagining of Southeast Asia s prehistory, scientists reveal that the Philippine island of Mindoro was a hub of human innovation and migration as far back as 35,000 years ago. Advanced ...

Drone Tech Uncovers 1,000-Year-Old Native American Farms in Michigan

June 7, 2025 — In the dense forests of Michigan s Upper Peninsula, archaeologists have uncovered a massive ancient agricultural system that rewrites what we thought we knew about Native American farming. Dating ...

3,500-Year-Old Graves Reveal Secrets That Rewrite Bronze Age History

June 6, 2025 — Bronze Age life changed radically around 1500 BC in Central Europe. New research reveals diets narrowed, millet was introduced, migration slowed, and social systems became looser challenging old ...

Researchers Recreate Ancient Egyptian Blues

June 2, 2025 — Researchers have recreated the world's oldest synthetic pigment, called Egyptian blue, which was used in ancient Egypt about 5,000 years ...

Oldest Whale Bone Tools Discovered

May 27, 2025 — Humans were making tools from whale bones as far back as 20,000 years ago, according to a new study. This discovery broadens our understanding of early human use of whale remains and offers valuable ...

A Root Development Gene That's Older Than Root Development

May 26, 2025 — A gene that regulates the development of roots in vascular plants is also involved in the organ development of liverworts -- land plants so old they don't even have proper roots. The discovery ...

Mystery of 'Very Odd' Elasmosaur Finally Solved: Fiercely Predatory Marine Reptile Is New Species

May 23, 2025 — A mysterious sea monster fossil discovered decades ago in British Columbia has finally revealed its true identity — and it’s unlike anything scientists have seen before. Named Traskasaura ...

Earliest Use of Psychoactive and Medicinal Plant 'Harmal' Identified in Iron Age Arabia

May 23, 2025 — A new study uses metabolic profiling to uncover ancient knowledge systems behind therapeutic and psychoactive plant use in ancient ...

Ancient DNA Used to Map Evolution of Fever-Causing Bacteria

May 22, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from Borrelia recurrentis, a type of bacteria that causes relapsing fever, pinpointing when it evolved to spread through lice rather than ticks, and how it ...

Scientists Have Figured out How Extinct Giant Ground Sloths Got So Big and Where It All Went Wrong

May 22, 2025 — Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got so ...