Michelle Moran's Blog, page 116

Body parts cut from Galileo's corpse found after vanishing a century ago

An art collector has found a tooth, thumb and finger of the famous renaissance astronomer Galileo that had been missing for more than a century.

Read the rest on the DailyMail.

Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican scholar

by Richard Owen

A Vatican scholar claims to have deciphered the "death certificate" imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, or Holy Shroud, a linen cloth revered by Christians and held by many to bear the image of the crucified Jesus.

Read the rest on the Times.

Lincoln letter to schoolboy sells for $60,000

(CNN) -- Less than a month before the Civil War's start, a newly inaugurated President Lincoln took time from his frantic schedule to write to an Illinois boy whose classmates didn't believe he'd met the president.

Read the rest on CNN.

Sophisticated hunters not to blame for driving mammoths to extinction

by Ian Sample

Woolly mammoths and other large, lumbering beasts faced extinction long before early humans perfected their skills as spearmakers, scientists say.

Read the rest on the Guardian.

'Hobbits' are a new human species -- according to the statistical analysis of fossils

Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal...

The Vanished Army: Solving an Ancient Egyptian Mystery

By Ishaan Tharoor

In 525 B.C., the Persian Emperor Cambyses dispatched 50,000 of his soldiers to lay waste to an oasis temple in the Sahara because its oracle had spoken ill of his plans for world domination.

Read the rest in Time Magazine.

Heart Disease Found in Egyptian Mummies

ScienceDaily — Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too.

Read the rest on Science Daily.

Quest to find out what the Romans dropped down the drain

(Gareth Iwan Jones): The Great Drain, which carries the overflow from the Roman Baths, needs unblocking

Britain's oldest bath overflow is to be given its first thorough inspection nearly 2,000 years after it was built.

Read the rest on the Times Online.

Israel displays coins from ancient Jewish revolt

By MICHAEL BARAJAS

Humans Still Evolving as Our Brains Shrink

Evolution in humans is commonly thought to have essentially stopped in recent times. But there are plenty of examples that the human race is still evolving, and even accelerating.

Read the rest here.