Footprints
left by eight ancient hominins 1.43 million years ago beside a Kenyan lake have
puzzled researchers because they don’t look quite as expected for species known
to have lived there at that time.
Altogether,
21 hominin footprints have been found at the Lake Turkana site, known to
researchers as GaJi10, part of which was first discovered in 1978. They are not
the footprints of homo erectus or Paranthropus boisei,
James Woodford 2026
Sabre-toothed cats were top predators during the Pleistocene epoch. Image courtesy of Mauricio Anton/Science Photo Library.
Joel
Kontinen
In the ice age, the sabre-toothed cats were the top predators, they could bite through
hard bones. They are the descendants of the predators that lived after fall of Man in Genesis 3, when animals could eat other animals.
An analysis
of megafauna remains from Argentina reveals sabre-toothed cats could crunch
through bones, reshaping views about their supposedly weak sabres.
The study
focuses on the bones of several large South American herbivores uncovered from
Salto de Piedra, which lies about 350 kilometres south of Buenos Aires. Prior
work has uncovered the skeletons of an abundance of large animals from the
site, including giant armadillos, giant land sloths, mastodons and
sabre-toothed cats like Smilodon populator. The site is one of the only
robustly dated Pleistocene localities in Argentina, allowing researchers to
thoroughly track its animal populations over time.
Source:
Taylor Mitchell Brown 2026 Sabre-toothed cats could crunch through bone | New Scientist 22 July
Image courtesy of Shutterstock/Tatiana Bralnina.
Joel Kontinen
A new
discovery suggests it may also aid with weight loss, possibly by making the more
efficient at switching from using food for energy to using stored fat.
In
February 2026, a review of existing research concluded that intermittent fasting –
such as the 5:2 diet, where you eat as normal on five days a week
and restrict calories on the other two – is probably no more effective for
weight loss than doing nothing at all. But fasting can also involve eating no,
or very little, food for a single, continuous stretch of time, which is
sometimes done for religious reasons.
Source:
Emma Young 2026 Having a young biological age could help with weight loss | New Scientist 24 July
Image courtesy of NASA/Hubble Heritage, STScI/AURA/R. Fesen, Dartmouth, J. Morse, Univ. of Colorado
Joel
Kontinen
Dark energy dues
not exist, says a paper that some have claimed is controversial. The paper says that the universe is not expanding
so there is no need for dark energy,
Dark energy may not actually exist. This
is the conclusion of a controversial analysis that says not only have we got
this wrong, but the universe’s expansion isn’t speeding up either, rebuffing a
central pillar of modern cosmology. Though many researchers have yet to be
convinced.
Since Edwin
Hubble’s observations of pulsating stars in 1929, astronomers have known that
the universe is expanding. For decades, that expansion was expected to happen
at a roughly constant rate, but observations of a type of exploding star called
a Type Ia supernova in the 1990s changed this.
Source:
Matt von Hippel 2026
The film Ex Machina shows one way in which relationships with AI companions might go wrong. Image courtesy of BFA / Alamy Stock Photo.
Joel Kontinen
China has begun to negotiate relation with AI, But earnestly, something might go wrong with it. Only when individuals speak with others can there be real understanding. We were not taught to communicate with AI but with human individuals.
China has begun regulating interactions
with artificial intelligence in an attempt to protect its
citizens from overreliance and exploitation. While many countries have been
looking at rules around harmful content, China is the first to go a step
further in legislating what kind of relationships with AI are permissible.
The new rules came into force this month and
cover AI systems designed for sustained, human-like emotional interaction,
while excluding customer-service bots and productivity assistants like
straightforward AI chatbots.
Companies
must now inform users they are talking to an AI, encourage them to take breaks
and remind them of their usage. They must also monitor interactions to identify
if someone is becoming dependent or having a crisis, then direct them to
support or halt the conversation altogether.
Chris Stokel-Walker 2026 China is trying to regulate relationships with AI – can it work? | New Scientist 22 July
The newly recognised monkey species Colobus congoensis. Image courtesy of Daniel Rosengren
Joel Kontinen
A new Lazarus animal, black colobus monkey from a remote part of the Congo Basin rainforest, is thought to be severely threatened by poaching.
The monkey is known as Likweli to local people who hunt it for bushmeat, and it has been given the scientific name Colobus congoensis. It lives in one of the most inaccessible parts of Africa, without paved roads or infrastructure. This monkey is relative to other Asian colobine monkeys.
“A typical expedition involves multiple modes
of transportation: a flight, followed by a motorcycle ride, two days of hiking
on foot and finally travel by dugout canoe to reach the monkey’s range,”
says Kate Detwiler at Florida Atlantic
University.
Detwiler
and her colleagues believe the species’ mask-like face may represent ancestral traits that were present before the African and Asian colobine lineages
diverged over 8 million years ago. according to evolution, “If so, likweli may
have retained characteristics that were subsequently modified or lost in the
other African colobus species,” says Detwiler.
Scientists
first became aware of the species in 2008 when a team surveying on the banks of
the Lomami river, in what is now Lomami National Park, took a photo that showed
only a part of a monkey that had not been seen before, high in the canopy.
Then, in
November 2018, another group again spotted the monkey, which is about 1.3
metres long and weighs around 7 kilograms. Between 2018 and 2022, there
were 114 recorded observations of the new species, 25 of which were from
vocalisations.
Source:
James
Woodford 2026
A Romanesco broccoli. Image courtesy of Jon Sullivan. Joel Kontinen It is practically impossible to believe that some of the phenomen...
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