Google Backs
Private Moon Landing
BBC News
Search giant Google is offering a
$30m prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon.
The competition to send a robot craft to the Moon is being run
with the X-Prize Foundation.
To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform
a series of tasks such as shoot video and roam for specific
distances.
Firms interested in trying for the prize have until the end of 2012
to mount their Moonshot...
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Fossils Reveal Clues
on Human Ancestor
by John Noble Wilford, New York Times
The discovery of four fossil skeletons of early
human ancestors in Georgia, the former Soviet republic, has given
scientists a revealing glimpse of a species in transition, primitive
in its skull and upper body but with more advanced spines and lower
limbs for greater mobility.
The findings, being reported today in the journal Nature, are
considered a significant step toward understanding who were some of
the first ancestors to migrate out of Africa some 1.8 million years
ago. They may also yield insights into the first members of the
human genus, Homo.
Until now, scientists had found only the skulls of small-brain
individuals at the Georgian site of Dmanisi. They said the new
evidence apparently showed the anatomical capability of this extinct
population for long-distance migrations...
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Neanderthals'
Disappearance Gets More Mysterious
by Jeanna Bryner, Live Science
Stocky and well-suited for the cold,
Neanderthals once dotted the plains of Europe and western Asia
before vanishing from Earth more than 20,000 years ago.
The mystery of what caused their demise has baffled scientists for
decades, with one theory stating our hominid cousins failed to
survive a big ice age that Homo sapiens apparently endured. New
research rejects that thinking.
A study published in the Sept. 13 issue of the journal Nature
suggests abrupt global cooling was not the final calamity that wiped
out Neanderthals. The study does not, however, offer any direct
clues about what did finally kill off the Neanderthals.
"Our findings suggest that there was no single climatic event that
caused the extinction of the Neanderthals," said study team member
Katerina Harvati, a paleo-anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute
for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany...
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Baby Dinosaurs
Unearthed in China
BBC News
The fossilised remains of six
infant dinosaurs that died in a volcanic mudflow have been found in
China.
Researchers say the animals were less than four years old, and
probably formed a "creche" composed of babies from at least two
different clutches.
The Psittacosaurus discovery indicates the animals had started
forming social groups much earlier than previously thought, the
scientists add...
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