Ancient Ceramic Cups Reveal Oldest Direct Evidence of Beer in Mesopotamia

Archaeologists have long known beer was important in the ancient world, but mainly from writings and drawings—finding actual archaeological evidence of the fermented beverage has been a major challenge.

But archaeologists have now employed a new technique to detect beer residues in nearly 2,500-year-old clay cups dug up in a site in northern Iraq.

“What Elsa [Perruchini] has demonstrated is the chemical signature of fermentation in the vessels that also contains the chemical signatures consistent with barley,” says Claudia Glatz, a senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of Glasgow and a coauthor of a study published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science. “Putting those together is the interpretation that this is barley beer.”

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine. 

Lizards With Bigger Toes and Smaller Hind Legs Survive Hurricanes

It was August 2017, a few days before a catastrophic hurricane would sweep through the small Caribbean island archipelago of Turks and Caicos, and some residents were woefully unprepared. While islanders were busy equipping houses or flying out of the country, many of the endemic island lizards lacked the evolutionary chops to deal with the coming deluge.

Colin Donihue, a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, and his colleagues had just wrapped up a study in which they filmed, captured and measured Turks and Caicos anoles in an effort to see whether a planned eradication of invasive black rats on the islands would have any effect on the lizards’ behavior and bodies.

All went according to plan until four days after Donihue left. Hurricane Irma hit Turks and Caicos before moving northwest to strike the Florida mainland then its devastating trail was followed about two weeks later by Hurricane Maria, which would go on to wreak havoc on Puerto Rico and Dominica.

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine.

Rare half-female, half-male cricket leads a complicated life

An extremely rare cricket with female sex organs but male wings and behaviour is giving biologists insights into sexual behaviour.

Gynandromorphs, creatures that possess both male and female characteristics, are extremely rare. They sometimes appear in butterflies, other bugs and even in birds – occasionally the individuals are literally split right down the middle.

Read more at New Scientist.

Genes That Jump Between Species Could Rewrite Our Understanding of Evolution

Where do you get your genes?

The obvious answer is from your parents, whose egg and sperm fused to create the unique combination of genetic material that makes you, you. But surprising new research throws a wrench into that well-known story: It turns out that large quantities of genetic material found in humans actually jumped from other species sometime in the past, and this process may be a major driver of evolution in animals from platypuses to humans.

According to the researchers, the idea that a significant amount of DNA transfers horizontally, rather than vertically, could change our understanding of how humans and other animals came to be. “It shows that this foreign DNA that could have come from anywhere could somehow end up in us and start changing things,” says Atma Ivancevic, a post-doctoral researcher in bioinformatics at the University of Adelaide in Australia and the lead author of a study recently published in Genome Biology.

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine.

Some Animals Take Turns While Talking, Just Like Humans. Why?

A good conversation should proceed like a tennis match: players each take turns responding, knowing instinctively when to speak and when to listen. This kind of lively banter is often considered uniquely human, a trait that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. But in fact, sophisticated, back-and-forth conversations are happening all around us.

They might occur in a low, barely audible rumble felt through the pads of giant elephants’ feet, or the singsong chatter of skylarks. They might involve the delicate hand gestures of chimpanzees, or whale songs that travel thousands of miles through lonely oceans. In some cases they exist only in the brief bioluminescent flashes between frisky fireflies in the dark.

Read more at Smithsonian Magazine. 

Tinder for Cheetahs? Big Cats Are Attracted by Urine Smell

Zoos looking to breed cheetahs in captivity are trying to get over a serious matchmaking roadblock. But giving bachelorettes a scented array of male urine might help improve breeding efforts.

“There’s so much information that passes through urine. It makes sense that it’s a conduit for [the cheetahs] to be able to make a choice on what would be a good mate,” says Regina Mossotti, director of animal care at the Endangered Wolf Center in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the lead author of a study published in June in Zoo Biology. Mossotti says her research is the first to show large carnivores can detect how genetically related an individual is to them based on the scent of its pee. The things she and her team learned could improve captive breeding programs and help to conserve the speedy felines.

Read more at Scientific American.

Origin of Mysterious 2,700-Year-Old Gold Treasure Revealed

NEW CHEMICAL ANALYSIS has solved the mystery regarding the origin of the Carambolo Treasure, a magnificent hoard of ancient gold objects discovered by Spanish construction workers near Seville in 1958.

When the 2,700-year-old treasure was first found, it instantly sparked speculation and debate about Tartessos, a civilization that thrived in southern Spain between the ninth and sixth centuries B.C. Ancient sources describedthe Tartessians as a wealthy, advanced culture, ruled by a king. That wealth, and the fact that the Tartessians seemingly ‘disappear‘ from history about 2,500 years ago, has led to theories equating Tartessos with the mythical site of Atlantis.

Read more at National Geographic.

Some Rivers Are So Drug-Polluted, Their Eels Get High on Cocaine

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED EELS hyped up on cocaine could have trouble making a 3,700-mile trip to mate and reproduce—new research warns.

And while societies have long grappled with ways to cope with the use of illicit drugs, less understood are the downstream effects these drugs might have on other species after they enter the aquatic environment through wastewater.

So, in the name of research, scientists pushed cocaine on European eels in labs for 50 days in a row, in an effort to monitor the effects of the experience on the fish.

Read more at National Geographic.

The Maya civilization used chocolate as money

Your Hershey bar may have been worth its weight in gold in Mayan times. A new study reveals that chocolate became its own form of money at the height of Mayan opulence—and that the loss of this delicacy may have played a role in the downfall of the famed civilization.

The study is on the right track, says David Freidel, an anthropologist and Maya expert at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who was not involved with the work. Chocolate “is a very prestigious food,” he says, “and it [was] almost certainly a currency.”

Read more at Science. 

These frogs walk instead of hop, video reveals

Frogs and toads jump, swim, climb, and even glide. But four strange species of amphibians have evolved a decidedly unfroglike characteristic: a preference for walking. Now, scientists have discovered how they do it.

The Senegal running frog, the bumblebee toad, the red-banded rubber frog, and the tiger-legged monkey frog don’t walk like dogs or other four-legged beasts. Instead, they crawl low to the ground like a cat creeping up on prey.

Read more at Science.