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A near-complete skull of the species Australopithecus anamensis was discovered in Ethiopia in 2016.Credit: Dale Omori/Cleveland Museum of Natural History
“Exceptionally rare” skull puts new face to human origins
An especially rare and well-preserved Australopithecus anamensis skull has highlighted new complexities in the origins of humanity. The species is generally thought to have evolved into Australopithecus afarensis — the species of the iconic ‘Lucy’ fossil. But features of the latest find suggest that A. anamensisshared the prehistoric Ethiopian landscape with Lucy’s speciesfor at least 100,000 years. Understanding how the two ape-like hominins are related is important because Lucy’s species might have been the one from which the ‘true’ human genus, Homo, evolved about 2.8 million years ago.
Funders threaten to abandon Facebook
Funders and researchers are losing patience with Facebook because the company has failed to provide all the data it promised to social scientists. The groups funding and running a project to investigate the effects of social media on democracy have given the company until 30 September to cough up the goods. Facebook blamed technical and legal complexities for the delay and said it will continue to try to share its data even if the funders bail.
Read more: Facebook gives social scientists unprecedented access to its user data (Nature, from May)
Secret space plane sets record
An uncrewed space plane operated by the US military has become the longest mission in a secretive programme. The Air Force’s latest Boeing X-37B has spent almost two years in orbit, breaking the record of just under 718 days set by the previous X-37B mission. The plane, which looks like a miniature space shuttle, is designed to carry out classified experiments in space and test space-flight technologies.
FEATURES & OPINION
When discovery means destruction
Powerful DNA-sequencing techniques have spurred an avalanche of discoveries about ancient humans, but each one comes at a price: the partial destruction of the specimens from which the DNA was taken. Anthropologists Keolu Fox and John Hawks call for researchers to think harder about safeguarding. “Unless some ground rules are established, future scientists, armed with better, potentially less-invasive methods for extracting DNA from ancient samples could well look back on this era as a time of heedless destruction, fuelled by the relentless pressure to publish,” says Fox and Hawks.
Biochemistry in a conflict zone
Biochemist Eqbal Dauqan conducted research while bombs dropped during Yemen’s 2015 civil war. She describes how she adapted to the war and her eventual move to Norway in 2018 — including the struggles of supervising a PhD student back home. “Sometimes she can’t access her e-mail through the Internet in Yemen, so I correct her papers by hand, photograph them and send them to her through WhatsApp,” says Dauquan.
All the ways we’ve tried to kill hurricanes
From seeding them with particles of silver iodide to chilling vast stretches of ocean water, so far no method mooted for dispersing hurricanes has managed to best the storms’ power and unpredictability. What we do know: you definitely shouldn’t nuke them. “I think the most likely outcome is you’d have a radioactive hurricane,” says meteorologist Kerry Emanuel.
