Science news this week: Life on Mars, weird water and a curious human cousin
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The data comes from mudstones in Jezero crater, which once hosted a deep lake. Last year, researchers described a piece of rock with patterns resembling those left by microorganisms on Earth as one of the clearest signs yet of past Martian microbes. Now, scientists have confirmed the widespread presence of complex carbon-based molecules in this area of the crater, which they suggest indicate the presence of fossilized microbes.
Going even further back in history, new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed how early galaxies lived fast and died young, offering a possible preview of our own galaxy's death. Elsewhere in space, JWST captured the formation of a distant star, 1,280 light-years away in the constellation Orion, while the Euclid space telescope snapped the most detailed photo of the Milky Way ever taken. Homo naledi surprised scientists once again this week.
Found in a South African cave in 2013, the small-brained, two-legged relative to modern humans is thought to have lived around 300,000 years ago. Since its initial discovery, the enigmatic hominin has shocked scientists with a string of baffling revelations. In 2023, researchers found evidence that H.
naledi may have used fire in the cave. This early hominin may also have buried its dead. Now, archaeologists have analyzed genetic material in the enamel of nearly two dozen skeletons at the site and found that they are all female.
"The bottom line is this is a weird result from an already weird hominin," Elizabeth Sawchuk, curator of human evolution at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. —Hanging lamp in the form of a sandaled right foot: A 1,600-year-old bronze lamp with multilayered Christian symbolism
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