Blurs

Some of the most interesting evidence for ancient life does not look like a fossil. It can look like a wrinkle. Researchers studying Jurassic rocks in Morocco have identified unusual sedimentary structures that may record microbial communities living on the seafloor roughly 180 million years ago. That would not, by itself, be particularly surprising. Microbial life was already widespread in Earth's oceans. The strange part is where these structures formed. The sediments appear to have accumulated in relatively deep water — around 200 metres below the ancient ocean surface. That raises an important question. If sunlight was severely restricted at that depth, what was providing the energy for these organisms? One possibility is that they were not using sunlight at all. They may have been running an ecosystem on chemistry. And if that interpretation is correct, the discovery provides another reminder that the ancient ocean was probably far more biologically diverse — and far stranger ...

Rising from the hills of southern Zimbabwe are the enormous stone walls of Great Zimbabwe. Built without mortar, some of its granite walls reach around 11 metres high. Massive stone enclosures, passageways, towers and carefully constructed structures form the remains of a sophisticated urban centre. But Great Zimbabwe has another story — one that is less about the people who built it than about the people who later refused to believe they had. For centuries, European writers and colonial authorities struggled to accept that a monumental stone city in sub-Saharan Africa could have been constructed by local African societies. Instead, alternative explanations were invented. Some claimed it had been built by Phoenicians. Others suggested Arabs, Egyptians or even the biblical Queen of Sheba. The archaeological evidence tells a very different story. What is Great Zimbabwe? Great Zimbabwe is a large archaeological complex in modern-day Zimbabwe. Its name comes from the Shona term dzimbahwe, ...