Category: 7. Science

Of all the planets visible from Earth, Mars has always felt different. Its soft red glow has caught the eye of sky-watchers for centuries– distant, quiet, and strangely familiar. Even today, with everything we’ve learned, Mars still feels unfinished– a planet full of gaps in the story. Dry valleys, restless dust storms, and icy winds only add to its mystery. The more we discover, the more it leaves us wondering.

Here’s an interesting look at why Mars still has our attention– and why it probably always will.

New research uncovers a “fat factory” run by Neanderthals 125,000 years ago, revealing they planned and processed bone grease on a scale and with a complexity long thought unique to our own species.

Study: Large-scale processing of within-bone nutrients by Neanderthals, 125,000 years ago. Image Credit: Adobe Firely

In a recent study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers and archaeologists present and elucidate data from Neumark-Nord (Germany), comprising the remains of bones from 172 or more large mammals found in the lake landscape at a waterside site. Astonishingly, the bones were found to have been deliberately transported to the location and processed for their ‘bone grease’ (lipid and marrow) by Neanderthals of the Last Interglacial Period.

Aptly named a “fat factory”, this marvel of ancient hominid ingenuity marks the earliest well-documented case of large-scale bone grease processing, pushing back the timeline for this technology by more than 80,000 years. The findings reveal Neanderthals’ ability to support high-energy requirements and demonstrate a previously underappreciated sophistication in resource use and subsistence planning. Neanderthals, it seems, weren’t just hunter-gatherers; they were capable of complex and strategic resource exploitation.

Background

Human evolutionary studies pay special attention to dietary data, given the latter’s key role in facilitating the expansion and development of hominid species. Fat consumption and processing, in particular, are highly sought-after data sources due to their crucial role in the diets of hunter-gatherers and foragers. Fat is a fuel (life-saving in colder environments) and a precious resource for any meat-heavy diet.

Decades of archeological research have revealed that ancient humans (confirmed as early as 28,000 years ago, but presumably earlier) exploited ‘bone grease’, a lipid-rich substance obtained from the hollow cavities of vertebrae, long-bone epiphyses (joints), and other skeletal elements. This process was exceedingly time- and effort-intensive, but it rewarded these early humans with a calorie-dense food source that was critical to their survival.

Homo neanderthalensis are a now extinct species of ancient hunter-gatherers that lived between ~243,000 and 40,000 years ago. Like their later relatives, these animal-food-source-dependent hominids are well-documented to have opportunistically scavenged fat-rich marrow from long bones by breaking the bones to access the marrow and, in some ethnographic analogues, by further processing fragments to extract grease through boiling.

At Neumark-Nord, direct evidence for boiling is not present; however, there is substantial evidence for intensive bone fragmentation, fire use, and clustering of heated bone fragments, suggesting some form of lipid extraction involving heat.

However, until now, no evidence of this process involving resource intensification practices of any sort has been discovered, suggesting Homo sapiens (us) as the original inventors of comparatively large-scale and systematically organized bone processing.

The present study, however, provides robust zooarchaeological and stratigraphic evidence that Neanderthals undertook large-scale bone grease extraction at a dedicated location, predating prior firm evidence by at least 80,000 years.

About the study

The present study reinvestigates data from Neumark Nord, a preserved lakeside camp in eastern Germany where Neanderthals lived during the Last Interglacial. Earlier excavations (2004-2008) revealed open landscapes and evidence of large-game hunting, including elephants. However, the present research identified carcass remains found at the lakeshore with patterns of percussion damage, chopping marks, and refitable shaft segments, suggesting deliberate breakage.

The study leveraged the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution’s comparative collection for taxonomic identification of recovered archeological remains, crown height measurements for age-determination, and high-resolution microscopes in tandem with standardized zooarchaeology and taphonomy methods (e.g., Number of Identified Specimens [NISP]) for species abundance computations, skeletal element representation, and bone indices.

Study findings

By combining bone breakage analysis, refitting fragments, and wear patterns, researchers established that carcasses were partially butchered elsewhere, transported to the lake, then systematically processed to expose marrow and grease. In doing so, this study emphasizes that Homo neanderthalensis, and not we (Homo sapiens), were engaged in the earliest well-documented process of large-scale bone-lipid extraction at a dedicated site, marking a level of behavioral complexity previously thought to be unique to later humans.

Spatial analysis, pollen-based and luminescence stratigraphy dating, and validated these findings, further revealing that the observed patterns in which carcass remains clustered in the lakeside processing area, distinct from hunting debris or habitation refuse, underscored the site’s specialized function, dating the context to the Last Interglacial (~120,000 years ago). Named the “fat-factory,” this bone-lipid extraction site predates hypotheses of the process’s invention by more than 80,000 years, let alone archeological confirmations that are a mere 28,000 years old.

Taxonomic identification revealed that Neanderthals brought at least 172 large mammals, mainly horses, bovids, and cervids, which they butchered and transported from distinct but nearby hunting and butchery grounds to a fat factory for processing. Long bones show consistent percussion fractures, chopping marks, and clean longitudinal splits, standard methods to access marrow and grease that remained hidden to humanity until thousands of years later.

The scale and specialization of these practices emphasize nutritional planning: fat-rich bones were centrally processed and potentially shared across groups. It evidences behavioral complexity, carefully balancing transport logistics, site maintenance, and energy budgeting for maximum productive benefit, innovations previously thought to be restricted to advanced food-processing societies that emerged much later in human history.

The authors note, however, that while evidence points to specialized processing and possible resource sharing, limitations of the archaeological record mean that the precise social dynamics and duration of site use remain unresolved.

It is also important to note that these discoveries were made possible by the exceptional preservation conditions at Neumark-Nord, which enabled an unusually high-resolution archaeological and environmental reconstruction. This does not necessarily indicate that such behaviors were unique to this location or time.

Conclusions

Neanderthals at Neumark Nord weren’t just hunters and foragers; they were skilled subsistence strategists who developed a specialized food-processing system tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years earlier than previously believed. This discovery elevates their status as planners, not just the brutish eaters that most of us consider them to be.

In doing so, this paper enriches our understanding of Neanderthal social and dietary adaptations. It reminds us that even 125,000 years ago, early humans conceptualized and enacted intricate and energetically efficient behaviors to master their nutritional landscapes, although much about their social organization and the precise processes remains open for further research.

The study also highlights the diverse range of Neanderthal subsistence strategies that could be employed in response to local environments, resources, and preservation—a reminder to interpret archaeological evidence within its full ecological and taphonomic context.

At the RIKEN Center for Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) in Japan, the showdown between artificial intelligence and supercomputers has begun. It was here that Riken researchers, along with an international team of colleagues, used machine learning to enhance a simulation of galaxy evolution. The results were compared to direct numerical simulations, like those typically run on supercomputers, and AI won this round! In addition, this approach could shed light on the origins of the Milky Way and the elements essential to life as we know it.

The research was led by Keiya Hirashima, a Postdoctoral Researcher at iTHEMS and the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics. He was joined by colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), the Research Center for the Early Universe at the University of Tokyo, the Center for Planetary Science (CPS) at Kobe University, New York University, Princeton University, the Tohoku University of Community Service and Science, and the Japanese machine learning company Preferred Networks, Inc. (PFN).

The simulation tackled a key issue when it comes to galaxy formation, which is the role played by supernovae. Since opportunities to study these events are few and far between, scientists must rely on numerical simulations based on data gathered by telescopes and other observation methods. These simulations are remarkably complex since they must account for cosmological forces and possess high temporal resolution so major events are not missed. This includes supernovae, which evolve from core collapse to remnant in a few months to a few thousand years, orders of magnitude smaller than what typical simulations can achieve.

In ordinary numerical simulations, supernovae occur on timescales about 1000 times smaller than what supercomputers can achieve. Moreover, simulations capable of this level of temporal resolution take 1-2 years to complete and are restricted to relatively small galaxies. To overcome this bottleneck, the team incorporated AI into a simulation based on ASURA code, which combines N-body and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) methods to simulate galaxy formation. They also included the Framework for Developing Particle Simulator (FBPS) code to simulate chemical processes, and a machine learning (ML) model developed by Preferred Networks Inc.

This yielded what the team describes as the ASURA-FBPS-ML model, which allowed them to match the output of a previously modeled dwarf galaxy but got the result much more quickly. As Hirashima said in a RIKEN press release:

When we use our AI model, the simulation is about four times faster than a standard numerical simulation,” says Hirashima. “This corresponds to a reduction of several months to half a year’s worth of computation time. Critically, our AI-assisted simulation was able to reproduce the dynamics important for capturing galaxy evolution and matter cycles, including star formation and galaxy outflows.

To train their AI, the researchers fed it data from 300 simulations of an isolated supernova in a molecular cloud one million times the mass of our Sun. This produced a model capable of predicting the density, temperature, and 3D velocities of gas particles during the initial phase of supernova shell expansion, which typically lasts for 100,000 years after core collapse occurs. Compared to the kinds of direct numerical simulations performed by supercomputers, the new model yielded similar galactic structures and a star formation history within one quarter of the computing time.

This research illustrates the potential of incorporating AI into cosmological simulations, including models of how the entire Universe evolved since the Big Bang (ca. 14 billion years ago). “[O]ur AI-assisted framework will allow high-resolution star-by-star simulations of heavy galaxies, such as the Milky Way, with the goal of predicting the origin of the Solar System and the elements essential for the birth of life,” said Hirashima. Currently, the lab is using the ASURA-FBPS-ML model to run simulations of galaxies as large as the Milky Way, which could also lead to new theories about the origins of life in our galaxy.

The paper describing their findings appeared in The Astrophysical Journal.

Further Reading: RIKEN

How did ancient extinction events contribute to global climate change? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated a connection between the Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction (aka PTME or “Great Dying”) and increased global climate change, specifically increased greenhouse conditions for five million years after the event. This study has the potential to help researchers better understand the Earth’s climate history and how this has contributed to life on our planet.

For the study, the researchers used a combination of fossil record examination and computer models to simulate the amount of loss to plant life that occurred during the PTME. In the end, the researchers found that the amount of tree loss greatly contributed to increased levels of carbon dioxide due to a lack of carbon storage, resulting in increased levels of carbon dioxide for millions of years beyond the PTME. They note their results indicate that plant life loss are significant contributors to increased climate change.

“There is a warning here about the importance of Earth’s present day tropical forests,” said Dr. Benjamin Mills, who is a professor of Earth system evolution at the University of Leeds and a co-author on the study. “If rapid warming causes them to collapse in a similar manner, then we should not expect our climate to cool to preindustrial levels even if we stop emitting CO2. Indeed, warming could continue to accelerate in this case even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth’s past.” 

This study demonstrates how massive climate swings do not need an extinction-level event to trigger them, potentially giving humanity a warning about the future of Earth’s climate and what we can do to mitigate the threat.

What new connections between extinction events and climate change will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: Nature Communications, EurekAlert!

Neanderthals in central Germany 125,000 years ago employed an advanced method of food preparation, according to a recent study: systematically stripping fat from the bones of large animals using water and heat. The practice, uncovered at the Neumark-Nord 2 archaeological site, shows that Neanderthals had a much more advanced conception of nutrition, planning, and resource management than previously believed.

The research, published in Science Advances, was conducted by international researchers from MONREPOS (Leibniz Centre for Archaeology), Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology of Saxony-Anhalt. The study indicates that Neanderthals, in addition to smashing bones to access the marrow—a behavior shared by their earliest African ancestors—also crushed them into fragments and boiled them to obtain bone grease, a nutrient-rich resource.

“This was intensive, organized, and strategic,” said Dr. Lutz Kindler, the study’s lead author. “Neanderthals were clearly managing resources with caution—planning hunts, transporting carcasses, and rendering fat in a task-specific area. They understood both the nutritional value of fat and how to access it efficiently.”

At least 172 large mammals, such as deer, horses, and aurochs, were butchered here. The production of bone grease, which required huge quantities of bone to be worthwhile, was previously considered to be something limited to Upper Paleolithic modern humans. This find pushes back the timeline by thousands of years and represents a fundamental shift in our knowledge of Neanderthal diet and adaptation.

The Neumark-Nord complex, discovered in the 1980s by archaeologist Dietrich Mania, is a full interglacial ecosystem. Excavations from 2004 to 2009 revealed several zones with various Neanderthal activities: deer hunting and light butchering in one, straight-tusked elephant processing in another, and fat removal in a third, specialized area. Remarkably, cut-marked remains of 76 rhinos and 40 elephants were also discovered at nearby sites like Taubach.

“What makes Neumark-Nord so exceptional is the preservation of an entire landscape, not just a single site,” said Leiden University’s Prof. Wil Roebroeks. “We are seeing a range of Neanderthal behaviors within the same landscape.”

The activities of the Neanderthals at Neumark-Nord not only demonstrate high sophistication but were also likely to have long-term environmental impacts. Prof. Roebroeks warned that their mass hunting of slow-reproducing species undoubtedly left a significant impact on fauna in the region during the Last Interglacial period.

The finds depict the Neanderthals as more capable and more intelligent than the stereotype of the brutish caveman. The “fat factory” at Neumark-Nord reveals a species that could plan for the future, manage its environment, and maximize nutrition in resource-poor environments.

Dr Yousuke Kaifu was working at an archaeological site on the Japanese islands of Okinawa when a question started to bubble in his mind. The pieces unearthed in the excavation, laid out before him, revealed evidence of humans living there 30,000 years ago, arriving from the north and the south. But how did they get there?

“There are stone tools and archaeological remains at the site but they don’t answer those questions,” Kaifu, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Tokyo, says.

In the Paleolithic era, or the old stone age, technology was rudimentary, he says. “I thought it was great they reached those islands with such simple technology. I wanted to experience it.”

So Kaifu devised an adventurous plan that would see a team of researchers take to the sea in a 225km canoe trip from Taiwan to Japan’s Yonaguni island.

Yonaguni is the closest of the Ryukyu islands – a chain stretching south-west from Kyushu to Taiwan – but it lies across one of the world’s strongest currents. The voyage was reminiscent of the famed 1947 Kontiki crossing by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, which proved it was possible that peoples from South Americas paddled to Polynesia.

But first, Kaifu’s team needed a boat. Any vessel used by the original Paleolithic travellers had long since disintegrated. The team used traditional techniques to build rafts made of bamboo and reed, but ocean tests found they were too slow to battle the Kuroshio current, which was even stronger at the time of the Paleolithic crossing.

“Through those failed experiments we gradually learned the difficulty of the crossing, but at the same time we knew the Palaeolithic people were on the island. They had succeeded, so there must be a resolution which we just hadn’t found,” Kaifu says.

Eventually, the team built a heavy, unstable but workable dugout canoe out of Japanese cedar, and identified Wushibi bay on Taiwan’s east coast from which to launch the “Sugime”.

Crucially, Yonaguni is not visible from Taiwan’s shore but can be seen on a clear day from its mountains, near Taroko. The researchers believed it likely that the early migrants had seen it, and that they were well aware of the strength and behaviour of the Kuroshio current from fishing ventures.

The team of five included professional paddlers as well as the scientists, but no one who had made such a journey, let alone without modern navigation. The day they set out, the weather was not good, Kaifu recalls, with choppy seas and clouds obscuring the stars they needed to find their way. Instead, they had to rely on another ancient technique, monitoring the direction of the swell to keep their own direction stable. “Polynesian and Micronesian people did it, and we learned the technique,” says Kaifu, who travelled on the crew’s escort vessel, “the safe place”, he laughs.

For 45 hours they paddled, suffering muscle aches, fatigue, cramps and even hallucinations. “Surrounded only by the sea, clouds, and sky, they were uncertain about their position,” the report’s journey log notes.

But their arrival on the second night was anti-climactically untraditional.

Still almost 40km away, “they found the island by the lighthouse, which was unfortunate”, Kaifu said.

“But the beautiful moment for me was the time of [the previous day’s] dawn, the sun was coming up and the sky became gradually light, and we saw the clouds on the horizon. But at one point on the horizon the clouds were different, so there must be something under the clouds. That was the moment we were sure the island was there. Just like the ancient people, the ancestors, it was good to capture the island from the natural signature.”

The team made the journey in 2019, with support from Japan’s National Museum of Science and Nature, Taiwan’s National Museum of Prehistory, and crowdfunding donors. Last week they published two papers and a 90-minute documentary on their findings, on the journey itself and on the ocean modelling of the route’s treacherous currents and unpredictable weather.

“Paleolithic people are often regarded as ‘inferior’ among the general public, primarily due to their ‘primitive’ culture and technology,” the report said. “In sharp contrast, our experiment highlighted that they accomplished something extraordinary with the rudimentary technology available to them at the time.”

There is much unknown about the early migration of humans. Homo sapiens are believed to have spread across the world with large-scale maritime expansion occurring at least 50,000 years ago. A 2017 study in northern Australia found it could have been 15,000 to 30,000 years earlier than that.

The team’s report noted growing consensus in the scientific community that the maritime migrations were driven by intentional seafaring more than accidental drifting, but without really knowing much about how. Kaifu’s team found that while the journey from Taiwan to an unseen island was treacherous and required skill, strength and a lot of luck, it was possible.

Almost six years to the day since his team paddled away from Wushibi, Kaifu is excited recalling the details of their “imperfect” journey.

“We anthropologist and archeologists who have studied human migration in the past, we draw a line on a map,” Kaifu said. “But behind each of those lines there must be a great story. Crossing the ocean can’t be represented by a simple line. I wanted to know the real story behind those migrations.”

What can the climate history of Mars teach scientists about whether the Red Planet once had the ingredients for life as we know it? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the geological, atmospheric, and surface processes that might have played a role in Mars losing its ability to host life on its surface. This study has the potential to help scientists put constraints on when Mars could have had life and where to look for it.

For the study, the researchers developed a model that discussed how solar radiation, liquid water, carbonate formation with rocks, atmospheric pressure, and carbon dioxide all worked in tandem to determine whether the surface of Mars could sustain life as we know it. In the end, they found that while increased solar radiation resulted in liquid water existing on the surface, this also led to carbonate formation that absorbed atmospheric carbon dioxide, ultimately limiting the amount of liquid water that existed. Essentially, a negative feedback loop was created. The researchers note Mars going to several cycles of wetness and dryness worsened this feedback, resulting in the desert planet we see today.

“For years, we’ve had this huge unanswered question for why Earth has managed to keep its habitability while Mars lost it,” said Dr. Edwin Kite, who is an associate professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. “Our models suggest that periods of habitability on Mars have been the exception, rather than the rule, and that Mars generally self-regulates as a desert planet.”

Carbonate rocks were the limiting factor in solving this conundrum, but NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered some carbonate rocks earlier this year, which helped scientists unlock a unique geological mystery regarding the climate history of Mars.

Image of Mt. Sharp on Mars captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

What new discoveries about Mars’ climate history will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: Nature, EurekAlert!