Category: 7. Science

  • Astronomers capture dawn of new solar system for 1st time – DW – 07/20/2025

    Astronomers capture dawn of new solar system for 1st time – DW – 07/20/2025

    Astronomers have spotted the earliest known signs of rocky planet formation around a young, sun-like star for the first time.

    The discovery offers an unprecedented glimpse into what may have happened at the dawn of our own solar system.

    What did the researchers see?

    Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory’s ALMA array in Chile, researchers peered into the gas disk surrounding the infant star HOPS-315, about 1,370 light-years away.

    The star is just 100,000 to 200,000 years old — a newborn in cosmic terms — and is thought to be on its way to becoming a yellow dwarf like our sun.

    “We’ve captured a direct glimpse of the hot region where rocky planets like Earth are born around young protostars,” said lead researcher Melissa McClure of Leiden Observatory. “For the first time, we can conclusively say that the first steps of planet formation are happening right now.”

    “Our study shows that it could be a common process during the earliest stage of planet formation,” McClure said.

    HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation
    The orange streaks are jets of carbon monoxide blowing away from the central star and the blue dots are silicon monoxideImage: ALMA/M. McClure et al./AP/picture alliance

    The observations, published in the science journal Nature, show a glowing, lightning bug-like system against the dark void — a cosmic nursery where planets may one day emerge.

    While it’s impossible to say how many planets HOPS-315 might produce, its massive gas disk could support as many as eight — just like our solar system — though that process may take a million years or more.

    How did the team carry out the research?

    Thanks to a tilt in the star’s disk and a helpful gap in its outer region, the telescopes were able to detect signs of silicate minerals and silicon monoxide gas condensing.

    These are the very building blocks believed to have formed Earth and other rocky planets in our solar system over 4.5 billion years ago.

    The action is happening in a region similar to where our solar system’s asteroid belt sits — between Mars and Jupiter. These early-stage solids had never been directly observed in such young systems before, leaving scientists unsure whether Earth’s origin story was a rare case.

    What might it mean?

    Fred Ciesla of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study, called it a long-awaited breakthrough.

    “This is one of the things we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “There’s a rich opportunity here.”

    Astronomers hope similar discoveries will reveal how common planet formation is — and whether Earth-like worlds are a universal phenomenon or a rare cosmic fluke.

    “Are there Earth-like planets out there,” asked co-author Merel van’t Hoff of Purdue University, “or are we so special that we might not expect it to occur very often?”

    Edited by: Roshni Majumdar

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  • Combining blood meal analysis and parasite detection yields a more comprehensive understanding of insect host feeding patterns | Parasites & Vectors

    Combining blood meal analysis and parasite detection yields a more comprehensive understanding of insect host feeding patterns | Parasites & Vectors

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  • Soil on the Moon could sustain human life, study finds – Euronews.com

    1. Soil on the Moon could sustain human life, study finds  Euronews.com
    2. Lunar Regolith is a Surprisingly Good Resource for Supporting a Lunar Station  Universe Today
    3. Moon Dust Holds Water and Oxygen—Sunlight Makes it Possible  The Daily Galaxy
    4. Lunar soil can support life  Universe Space Tech
    5. ‘Magic’ moon tech: Chinese scientists find way to extract water, CO2, oxygen from lunar soil  Deccan Herald

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  • Dawn of a New Solar System: Watch Planets Begin to Form 1300 Light-Years Away – SciTechDaily

    1. Dawn of a New Solar System: Watch Planets Begin to Form 1300 Light-Years Away  SciTechDaily
    2. Refractory solid condensation detected in an embedded protoplanetary disk  Nature
    3. For the first time, astronomers witness the dawn of a new solar system  ESO.org
    4. Seeing the Exact Moment When New Planets Started Forming  Universe Today
    5. Birth of planet captured: Astronomers share rare glimpses of newborn planet about 1,300 light-yrs away –  Times of India

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  • Terrifying moment quake tears Earth open caught on video for first time ever – Science – News

    Terrifying moment quake tears Earth open caught on video for first time ever – Science – News

    A stunning, first-of-its-kind video of the ground literally cracking during a major earthquake is even more amazing than previously thought.

    It’s the first time ground motion of this kind has been captured on video, with the crack curving as it moves. Geophysicist Jesse Kearse, a postdoctoral researcher currently at Kyoto University in Japan, told LiveScience in a statement that the curvy movement captured on video had previously been inferred from the geological record and from “slickenlines”—scrape marks on the sides of faults—but it had never been seen or captured in real time. 

    “Instead of things moving straight across the video screen, they moved along a curved path that has a convexity downwards, which instantly started bells ringing in my head,” Kearse said, “because some of my previous research has been specifically on curvature of fault slip, but from the geological record.”

    The video, captured during a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in Thazi, Myanmar, shows the violent shaking beginning in front of a residential home as the concrete driveway begins to crack on March 28, 2025. Ground ruptures during massive earthquakes are fairly common but usually documented after the fact and have never been captured on video. 

    Kearse told LiveScience that watching the video had chills on his spine shortly after it had been uploaded to YouTube. On his fifth or sixth viewing, he said he noticed the crack was curvy. He and his colleague at Kyoto University, geophysicist Yoshihiro Kaneko, then analyzed the video more closely and found that the crack curves at first and then accelerate to peak velocity at around 10.5 feet per second. 

    The video’s findings suggest that the curvature occurs because the stresses on the fault at the ground’s surface are less than the stresses deeper within the Earth. 

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    “The curvature holds important information about the dynamics of the rupture,” Kearse said in an annotated video of the slip he posted on YouTube.

    The differing stresses at the surface push the fault off its course, “and then it catches itself and does what it’s supposed to do,” Kearse said in the statement. The research was published on July 18 in the journal The Seismic Record.

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  • Orion, Pleiades, and Hyades are snapshots of the same star cluster across 800 million years

    Orion, Pleiades, and Hyades are snapshots of the same star cluster across 800 million years

    Recent research has revealed that three well-known star clusters — the Orion Nebula Cluster, the Pleiades, and the Hyades — are linked in a cosmic family tree. Though these clusters appear distinct today, advanced simulations now suggest they represent different stages in the life of a single, evolving star system. The Orion Nebula shows the early, dense beginnings. The Pleiades reflect a middle-age cluster, and the Hyades offer a glimpse of its older, more dispersed form.

    Astrophysicists at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Zanjan, Iran, and the University of Bonn modeled this evolution using high-precision direct N-body simulations. Their work, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, confirms what was long suspected: these clusters didn’t just form near each other in space — they likely evolved from the same initial group of stars.

    The Orion Nebula Cluster, located about 1,350 light-years away and only 2.5 million years old, contains roughly 4,000 stars packed into a compact, gas-rich region. Over time, clusters like this lose mass as powerful stellar winds, UV radiation, and supernova explosions push away the leftover gas. This process causes the cluster to expand rapidly.

    The constellation of the Orion and the Taurus with three open clusters: the ONC, the Pleiades, and the Hyades. See the text for further details. (CREDIT: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

    From Cradle to Dispersal

    As stars form in these compact clouds, energy from massive stars begins to eject the gas that helped create them. This early gas expulsion, happening within the first 10 million years, causes a dramatic shift. Clusters like Orion become “supervirial,” meaning they hold too much kinetic energy to stay tightly bound. As a result, they start to expand.

    Computer models show that by 100 million years — the current age of the Pleiades — the cluster loses about 53% of its stars but retains a stable core. Eventually, after roughly 700 million years, what remains resembles the Hyades cluster: a loose group of older stars with only 9% of the original members left.

    These long-term simulations, powered by the advanced nbody6 code, help researchers track how star clusters change under the influence of internal dynamics and external forces, such as the pull from the Milky Way’s tidal field. Dr. Ghasem Safaei and Prof. Hosein Haghi led the project, starting from dense, gas-rich initial states and evolving the system over 800 million years.

    Their findings matched observed traits such as size, mass, core radius, and star count at each phase. The results support the idea that a single ONC-like cluster could become the Pleiades and later the Hyades through natural aging.

    Snapshots Across Cosmic Time

    The ONC, Pleiades, and Hyades can be thought of as three snapshots in a stellar lifetime. Professor Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn explained it this way: “The Orion Nebula, Pleiades, and Hyades are like three different photos of the same person — as a baby, adolescent, and elderly.”

    All three clusters lie close together in the sky. The Orion Nebula sits near Orion’s Sword. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, appear as a small, bright grouping of stars. The Hyades form a V-shape in the constellation Taurus. Their proximity has long intrigued astronomers.

    Time evolution of the tidal-radii (⁠rt⁠) for different cluster models. The colored lines represent the simulated cluster models, with specific line styles distinguishing each model. (CREDIT: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

    Despite their differences in size, age, and structure, these clusters likely originated from the same formation process. The findings suggest that star clusters don’t form randomly but follow a preferred path, shaped by the physical conditions of their birth clouds.

    Dr. Kroupa and his team believe that such clusters are born from dense clumps in molecular clouds. These clumps produce stars in compact regions, often influenced by high rates of star formation, energy feedback, and gravity. As gas disperses, the remaining stars settle into a looser arrangement and slowly drift apart.

    Testing Star Formation Models

    To understand this better, scientists looked at two leading theories for how star clusters form. The first is hierarchical assembly, where small groups of stars merge over time to form larger clusters. The second is monolithic collapse, where a dense region in a molecular cloud rapidly forms a large cluster in one event.

    The time-evolution of the total number of stars (top panel) and total mass (bottom panel) within rt for different cluster models. (CREDIT: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

    Simulations by Banerjee and Kroupa in 2015 showed that the hierarchical model doesn’t work for clusters like NGC 3603 or R136. These clusters form too quickly and with too much structure for smaller groups to have time to merge. Instead, the monolithic model fits better, suggesting clusters form in one burst and then rapidly evolve as gas is lost.

    Further studies by researchers like Zonoozi and Marks found that mass segregation — the way heavier stars settle toward the center — also shapes the fate of a cluster. Clusters with more massive stars at birth tend to dissolve faster and grow larger over time.

    By applying these findings to ONC-like clusters, simulations showed that systems with an initial half-mass radius of 0.2–0.3 parsecs and 1200–2000 solar masses best match real-world data. When these clusters include lots of binary stars and strong mass segregation, they evolve just like the Pleiades and Hyades.

    Looking Deeper into the Sky

    This research also highlights how well computer models can match real-world observations. Combining detailed simulations with telescope data, scientists can now reconstruct the life story of star clusters from their formation to their slow dispersal.

    The evolution of 3D half-mass radii (⁠rh⁠, top panel) and the core radii (⁠rc⁠, bottom panel) of simulated star clusters over time. (CREDIT: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society)

    Prof. Akram Hasani Zonoozi, a co-author of the study, explained: “This research gives us a deeper understanding of how star clusters form and develop and illustrates the delicate balance between internal dynamics and external forces such as the gravitational pull of the Milky Way.”

    As star clusters like the ONC expand and lose stars, their shapes and brightness change. Over hundreds of millions of years, the transformation is striking. Yet their shared origin gives a clearer picture of how the galaxy shapes its stars.

    This work doesn’t just solve a mystery about three well-known clusters. It also helps refine models of how stars and galaxies evolve. These findings may even lead to better predictions about the life cycles of other star groups we observe throughout the universe.

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  • Lunar Soil Could Support Life On The Moon – Eurasia Review

    Lunar Soil Could Support Life On The Moon – Eurasia Review

    Scientists have developed a technology that may help humans survive on the Moon. In a study published in the Cell Press journal Joule, researchers extracted water from lunar soil and used it to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and chemicals for fuel—potentially opening new doors for future deep space exploration by mitigating the need to transport essential resources like water and fuel all the way from Earth. 

    “We never fully imagined the ‘magic’ that the lunar soil possessed,” said Lu Wang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. “The biggest surprise for us was the tangible success of this integrated approach. The one-step integration of lunar H2O extraction and photothermal CO2 catalysis could enhance energy utilization efficiency and decrease the cost and complexity of infrastructure development.” 

    Space agencies have floated the idea of using the Moon as an outpost for far-flung explorations of the cosmos for decades. However, the need to supply such a base with adequate resources to support its inhabitants—especially water—has been a barrier to making it a reality. A single gallon of water costs about $83,000 to ship by rocket, according to the study, with each astronaut drinking about four gallons per day.  

    Soil samples analyzed from the Chang’E-5 mission provide evidence of water on the lunar surface, which the authors suggest could allow human explorers to harness the Moon’s natural resources to meet their needs while avoiding the costs and logistical challenges of transporting those resources. However, previously developed strategies for extracting water from lunar soil involved multiple energy-intensive steps and didn’t break down CO2 for fuel and other essential uses.  

    To advance this research, Wang and colleagues developed a technology that would both extract water from lunar soil and directly use it to convert the CO2 exhaled by astronauts into carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen gas, which could then be used to make fuels and oxygen for the astronauts to breathe. The technology accomplishes this feat through a novel photothermal strategy, which converts light from the Sun into heat. 

    The scientists tested the technology using lunar soil samples gathered during the Chang’E mission as well as simulated lunar samples and a batch reactor filled with CO2 gas that used a light-concentrating system to drive the photothermal process. The team used ilmenite, a heavy black mineral and one of several reported water reservoirs in lunar soil, to measure photothermal activity and analyze the mechanisms of the process. 

    Despite the technology’s success in the lab, the extreme lunar environment still poses challenges that will complicate its usage on the Moon, according to the authors, including drastic temperature fluctuations, intense radiation, and low gravity. Additionally, lunar soil in its natural environment does not have a uniform composition, which leads to it having inconsistent properties, while CO2 from astronauts’ exhalations might not be enough to offer a basis for all the water, fuel, and oxygen they need. Technological limitations also continue to present a barrier, with current catalytic performance still insufficient to fully support human life in environments beyond Earth, said Wang. 

    “Overcoming these technical hurdles and significant associated costs in development, deployment, and operation will be crucial to realizing sustainable lunar water utilization and space exploration,” the authors write. 

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  • New Study Reveals How Corals Teach Their Offspring To Beat The Heat – Eurasia Review

    New Study Reveals How Corals Teach Their Offspring To Beat The Heat – Eurasia Review

    Plunge into the shallows off the Florida Keys, Hawaiʻi or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and you are likely to meet a startling sight. 

    Where there were once acres of dazzling coral — an underwater world of dayglo greens, brassy yellows and midnight blues — is now a ghostly landscape, with many reefs seemingly drained of their pigment. 

    Caused by stressful conditions like warming ocean temperatures, coral bleaching is a leading threat to some of our planet’s most diverse and vital ecosystems. 

    Now, a team of researchers has found that some corals survive warming ocean temperatures by passing heat-resisting abilities on to their offspring. 

    The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, are the result of a collaboration between Michigan State University, Duke University and the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, or HIMB, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. This work, funded by the National Science Foundation and a Michigan State University Climate Change Research grant, is crucial in the race to better conserve and restore threatened reefs across the globe. 

    Coral reefs are habitats for nearly a quarter of all marine life, protecting coastlines from storms and erosion and supporting the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. Though still alive, bleached corals are at a much higher risk of disease, starvation and eventual mortality.  

    In their latest study, the team explored how resistance to thermal stress is passed down from parent to offspring in an important reef-building species known as rice coral. These findings are helping researchers breed stronger, heat-tolerant generations to better face environmental stress.  

    “The Coral Resilience Lab in Hawaiʻi has developed amazing methods to breed and rear corals during natural summer spawning,” said Spartan biochemist and study co-author Rob Quinn, whose lab takes samples of these corals and generates massive datasets on their biochemistry with instruments at MSU. 

    “This is a true scientific collaboration that can support coral breeding and reproduction to cultivate more resilient corals for the warming oceans of the future.” 

    A colorful crowd 

    The kaleidoscopic of shades we associate with healthy coral is the product of a bustling exchange of resources between a coral animal and its algae partners.  

    When all is well, you might think of this relationship as that of tenants living in a home and paying a bit of rent. 

    In exchange for cozy, sheltered spaces found within the coral tissue as well as nutrients, algae use photosynthesis to produce sugars. These sugars can provide up to 95% of the energy that coral needs to grow and form the sprawling, breathtaking reefs we know. 

    In tropical waters often lacking nutrients, disruptions in this exchange — like those that occur during bleaching events — can be disastrous.  

    When looking at a specimen of coral that’s suffered bleaching, you’re glimpsing a coral that’s “kicked out” its algae, leaving behind a pale skeleton. 

    “Corals are like the trees in an old growth forest; they build the ecosystems we know as reefs on the energetic foundation between the animal and algae,” explained Crawford Drury, an assistant researcher at the Coral Resilience Lab at HIMB and co-author of the study. 

    In the waters of Kāneʻohe Bay, the Coral Resilience Lab is spearheading research to best understand this coral reef ecology and the molecular mechanisms driving thermal stress. 

    The lab is likewise pioneering the breeding of thermally resistant coral for experiments and the restoration of reefs, a highly specialized process few labs in the world can achieve.  

    So, while you’d usually be hard pressed to find fresh coral for study in East Lansing, MSU’s partnership with the Coral Resilience Lab has led to a globe-spanning collaboration that closes the gap between field and laboratory. 

    “HIMB and MSU have developed a really amazing partnership. I’m just happy they’ve let me be a part of it. I can’t wait to see what comes out of it next,” said Ty Roach, a visiting faculty at Duke University and lead author of the new study. 

    Heat-resistant hand-me-downs 

    In the wild, rice coral takes on a dizzying array of shapes, from jutting, spiky protrusions to flat, tiered terraces — all identifiable by the tiny grain-like projections that lend the species its name. 

    When samples arrive at MSU, Quinn applies an analytical approach known as metabolomics to understand the complex biochemistry of the organisms.  

    Like a snapshot of life in motion, metabolomics allows researchers to get an idea of what’s occurring within a cell or tissue sample at a precise moment in time. 

    Leveraging advanced instrumentation found in MSU’s Mass Spectrometry and Metabolomics Core, the team searched for biochemical signatures associated with bleaching resistance in their samples. 

    This included analyzing coral sperm, eggs, embryos and larvae, as well as their algal “collaborators.” 

    Through their analyses, the researchers discovered that both coral and algae pass along the biochemical signature of thermal tolerance, and that this tolerance was successfully maintained from parent coral into the next generation.   

    Given rice coral’s method of reproduction and the numerous stages of the coral life cycle, this was an impressive feat.  

    “Corals usually spawn based on the lunar cycle; for our experiment, this means late nights around the summer new moons and months of work rearing coral larvae and juveniles,” said Drury. 

    This summer, Quinn group graduate student Sarah VanDiepenbos had the chance to join Coral Resilience Lab researchers to witness one such nighttime coral spawning and breeding event.  

    “It was such a serene, beautiful experience. The timing is impeccable, as the process only lasts 20 to 30 minutes total,” VanDiepenbos explained. 

    “The coral bundles slowly float upward, trying to find another gamete to combine with once they get to the surface. This release is gradual, so they can have a maximum chance of finding spawn from a different coral,” she added. 

    Tougher genes for warmer seas 

    While many species of corals uptake symbionts from the surrounding seawater, rice coral provide their eggs with algae, handing this relationship down from parent to child. 

    “To have this algae’s thermal tolerance remain through an entire generation and all the stages of coral development, that’s surprising, and promising for the future of coral reefs,” Quinn said, who’s also an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 

    Especially compelling was the fact that the earliest stages of the coral lifecycle, like embryos and larva, showed chemical signatures linked to whether parent organisms were thermally tolerant or not. 

    This means that not only do offspring receive heat-resistant genes, but also beneficial molecules to give them a head start against heat stress.  

    “Some of the most interesting findings from this work is that coral lipid biochemistry is maintained through all stages of development during reproduction,” Quinn said. 

    “Importantly, these lipids come from both the host coral and its algal symbiont, indicating there is crosstalk between them to prepare the next generation to resist bleaching,” he added.  

    In showing how inherited thermal resistance originates from both coral and algae, this research provides deeper insight into the finely tuned, symbiotic microcosm found in corals across the world’s oceans. 

    Most exciting for the team is how these findings are contributing to the science behind the restoration of reefs and the breeding of stronger, more heat-tolerant coral generations.   

    “Our metabolomics research at MSU could support reef restoration efforts at places like the Kāneʻohe Bay by identifying corals that are resistant to bleaching,” Quinn said. 

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  • Uranus Really Is Hotter Than It Has Any Right to Be : ScienceAlert

    Uranus Really Is Hotter Than It Has Any Right to Be : ScienceAlert

    A new analysis of decades’ worth of observations has revealed that Uranus does indeed emit more heat than it receives from the rays of the Sun.

    This conclusion, arrived at by two independent teams of scientists, finally resolves a puzzle that first emerged when Voyager 2 cruised past the stinky planet all the way back in 1986. Those observations suggested that Uranus was not emitting any excess heat – a finding that put it at odds with all the other giant planets in the Solar System.

    A team led by planetary scientist Xinyue Wang, formerly of the University of Houston, now at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has now found that Uranus is emitting around 12.5 percent more heat than it receives from the Sun.

    This is consistent with findings about Uranus made by a team led by planetary physicist Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford in the UK, made available earlier this year on arXiv.

    Related: For The First Time, Scientists Have Detected X-Rays Coming Out of Uranus

    An image obtained by JWST of the rings of Uranus. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. DePasquale)

    “This means it’s still slowly losing leftover heat from its early history, a key piece of the puzzle that helps us understand its origins and how it has changed over time,” Wang says.

    “From a scientific perspective, this study helps us better understand Uranus and other giant planets. For future space exploration, I think it strengthens the case for a mission to Uranus.”

    Previous research has already shown that Voyager 2’s flyby occurred at a time when elevated solar activity was making Uranus behave in anomalous ways. It is, therefore, perhaps not surprising to find that other readings made by the probe may have misrepresented the planet’s usual state of existence.

    However, the findings of Wang’s team still suggest that something weird is going on with the planet. Jupiter emits 113 percent, Saturn 139 percent, and Neptune 162 percent more heat than they receive from the Sun. Since Neptune is farther from the Sun than Uranus, the distance can’t be an explanation for Uranus’s lower internal temperature.

    YouTube Thumbnail frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>

    This suggests that there’s still something weird happening inside the giant – whether it’s a different internal structure, or something about its evolutionary history. This difference, the researchers say, underscores the need to probe our Solar System’s overlooked outer planets.

    “A future flagship mission to Uranus would provide critical observations to address more unresolved questions of this enigmatic ice giant,” they write in their paper.

    The research has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

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  • Sperm Whale Tooth from Prehistoric Iberia Shines New Light on Ancient Rituals

    Sperm Whale Tooth from Prehistoric Iberia Shines New Light on Ancient Rituals

    In a remarkable discovery, archaeologists have uncovered a sperm whale tooth at the Valencina de la Concepción-Castilleja de Guzmán site, located southwest of Seville, Spain. This find, dating to the 3rd millennium BCE, is the first of its kind on the Iberian Peninsula, offering new insights into prehistoric Iberian cultures. The tooth was uncovered during an excavation project in 2018, when a section of the Copper Age mega-site, known as Nueva Biblioteca, was being dug up as part of a new municipal library construction. The discovery marks a crucial moment in understanding the complex relationship between ancient communities and the marine world, which may have been tied to ritualistic practices.

    The sperm whale tooth is a rare artifact, and its discovery shines a light on the significance of marine life in ancient cultures. Researchers, led by Dr. Samuel Ramírez-Cruzado Aguilar-Galindo, have conducted a detailed study of the tooth, which reveals much about its journey from the sea to the hands of ancient humans. Published in PLOS One, this research provides critical insights into the cultural importance of the tooth, exploring its role in prehistoric rituals and its possible connections to large marine creatures that might have been revered by these ancient societies.

    The Significance of the Discovery in Valencina

    Valencina de la Concepción, a major archaeological site, is known for its rich array of findings, including stone tools, pottery, and animal remains. This discovery is particularly noteworthy as it represents the first-ever sperm whale tooth from the 3rd millennium discovered on the Iberian Peninsula. Prior to this, only one other sperm whale tooth had been found in the western Mediterranean—at the Monte d’Accoddi site in Sardinia. This places the Valencina find in a significant archaeological context, emphasizing the rarity and the importance of the artifact.

    The tooth itself, measuring 13.2 cm, has been the subject of extensive analysis, offering valuable clues about the life of the whale from which it came. The tooth’s wear patterns, including a smooth fracture and material loss, indicate that it was likely an old specimen at the time of its death. “It belongs to an old specimen,” explains Dr. Ramírez-Cruzado Aguilar-Galindo, “based on the wear visible on the labial side, and a smoothed fracture with loss of material on the lingual side that indicates that it was produced during the animal’s life.” These signs reveal that the tooth underwent considerable wear while still part of the living whale, a detail that adds to the artifact’s intriguing history.

    Image
    The tooth of sperm whale. Credit: Ramírez-Cruzado Aguilar-Galindo et al. 2025

    The Journey of the Tooth From the Sea to Land

    The sperm whale tooth’s journey from the depths of the ocean to the archaeological site has been meticulously reconstructed through taphonomic analysis. After the whale’s death, the tooth likely spent time on the seafloor, where it was subject to the actions of scavengers, possibly sharks. As noted in the study, the tooth shows clear evidence of tooth marks, indicating that it was scavenged by marine predators. Over time, it became encrusted with marine organisms such as sponges and gastropods, which colonized the surface of the tooth.

    At some point, the tooth was likely brought to the surface through a natural event, such as a storm or powerful tidal action. “The interesting thing about both teeth is that they are the only sperm whale teeth from the Neolithic-Chalcolithic time found in archaeological contexts in Europe, at the moment,” says Dr. Ramírez-Cruzado Aguilar-Galindo. “Both were found in very important places, almost sacred, I would say, which speaks of the importance given to these pieces.” This suggests that the sperm whale tooth was considered a rare and valuable object, worthy of reverence by the people who eventually discovered it.

    ImageImage
    View of the transverse fracture. Credit: PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0323773

    Ritualistic and Cultural Context in Copper Age Iberia

    The discovery of the sperm whale tooth at Valencina provides evidence of ritualistic practices among Copper Age societies. In the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, it was common for large animal remains to be included in ritual deposits, often as grave goods for the socially elite. The tooth from the sperm whale may have held similar significance, potentially as a token of power or reverence for the marine world.

    Dr. Ramírez-Cruzado Aguilar-Galindo supports this theory, suggesting that the ancient inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula might have recognized the tooth as originating from a massive marine animal. “I support the idea that they knew the animal it came from or at least that it came from a huge marine animal,” he explains. “People at that time knew their surroundings, the resources, they would have contact with other communities. For example, in Portugal, there are objects made with sperm whale bones, so for the Copper Age as well, so who knows if they share stories about big sea creatures?” This points to a possible cultural exchange between ancient Iberian communities and those in neighboring regions, further highlighting the value placed on such extraordinary items.

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