Incas Performed Complex Skull Surgeries
	One of the most developed pre-Columbian civilizations was the Inca empire, stretching through the highlands of Andes, in today's Ecuador, Peru, south Columbia, western Bolivia and northwest Argentina. The Inca civilization was outstanding because of its colossal architecture, its cities with paved and regular streets, sewage systems, roads, palaces, temples, but also the fortresses, agricultural terraces, irrigation ditches, and so on ... [read more >>]
	14 May 2008, 16:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Debunked Myth: Dinosaurs Did not Ram
	They are considered the rams of the dinosaur world. But the dome-headed dinosaurs were able to batter their heads only when teenagers, to avoid brain damage, as revealed by a new research published in the Palaeontologia Electronica journal. The pachycephalosaurs or thick-headed dinosaurs, not very large (up to ... [read more >>]
	29 March 2008, 06:20GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Skulls Say It: Humans and Neanderthals Split 300,000-400,000 Years Ago
	Our closest evolutionary relative was the Neanderthal man (Homo neanderthalensis). But when did we share a common ancestor? A new research published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" shows that gradual changes in human skull size and shape would indicate that, 300,000 to 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals and modern humans separated their evolutionary pathways. All previous estimates were DNA analy ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 03:47GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Boy Survives a Skull Stabbing with a 3 in (7.5 cm) Long Knife
	You could have not imagined a human surviving the thrust of a knife in the head. Especially in the case of a 10-year-old child. But BBC News has reported this odd case from Afghanistan. Major Stephen Gallacher, a Territorial Army medical officer from Caernarfon in Gwynedd, saved the life of a 10-year-old Afghan boy who had a three-inch (7.5 cm) knife stuck in his head. Gallacher, father-of-four, worked in the 208 Field Hospit ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Head Hunting, Painted Skulls and the Tree of Life
	Head hunting was a common practice in many Indigenous societies, from the Jivaro of the Amazon basin to the Dayaks of Borneo and many other Malay-Polynesian groups in Indonesia and Pacific islands. One of the most feared head hunter populations inhabits the island of New Guinea. The Asmat tribe is famous for its bloody inter-tribal wars, decapitations and ritualistic cannibalism. This people live in Irian Jaya, in southwestern New Guin ... [read more >>]
	12 March 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Human Is 7.2 Million Years Old!
	When Toumai ("Hope of Life" in the local Goran language) was found in Chad in 2001, that changed all the theories about human evolution. This ape-like human lived in a forested area, sharing its habitat with other monkeys and apes. It probably spent some time in the trees and perhaps walked upright. A French team has determined the age of Toumai at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old. When the nearly-complete crani ... [read more >>]
	29 February 2008, 04:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A 100,000-Year-Old Human Skull from China: Is it a Hybrid?
	Classical theory says Homo sapiens left Africa 50-60,000 years ago, entering Asia. But a new human skull, dated to be 80,000 to 100,000 years old, found in China, could rewrite the human evolution. The shattered fossil has been found in the Henan province, by a team led by Chinese archaeologist Li Zhanyang. While the Chinese report states that the fossil came from a modern human, experts are more tempted to say that the skull belongs to an ... [read more >>]
	21 February 2008, 03:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Women Have Thicker Skulls Than Men!
	Men are bigger than women and they have a reputation as being more thick-headed than the females. And here comes the surprise delivered by a new research published in the International Journal of Vehicle Safety: in fact, women have thicker skulls then men! The team made of researchers from the Ford Motor Co. and Tianjin University of Science and Technology developed a non-invasive method of measuring geometric traits of the hu ... [read more >>]
	25 January 2008, 05:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Have Two Human Skulls as Desktop Loudspeakers!
	First of all, I can understand that there are people out there freaking out as they see something that looks pretty much like a dead human's skull, but from this to saying that some plastic skull-shaped mini speakers are sick is a very-very long way. I showed these funny speakers to some friend and she was completely overtaken by the "horrid monstrosity"; skipping such behavior, I'll just tell you that these are pretty ... [read more >>]
	24 January 2008, 02:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Largest Rat Ever: One Tonne (2,200 Pounds)!
	Don't be fooled by the humble size of a mouse or rat because their extinct relatives were bigger than cows. And now, the largest rodent ever has been discovered: a one tonne Josephoartigasia monesi, as big as a big bison bull, which lived 2 million years ago. The impressive skull of 53 cm (1.8 ft) in length was encountered in a broken boulder on the coast of Uruguay by Andrés Rinderknecht of the Uruguayan National Museum ... [read more >>]
	16 January 2008, 04:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Xbox Live Cheaters Beware of Major Nelson's Wrath!
	In the video games world, there are different categories of gamers: the dorky gamer that just loves to play games all day long; the normal gamer that loves to play games but see girls and friends over a beer and generally has a life too; and the unscrupulous gamer that is a dorky one who also hacks in consoles and accounts and steals stuff. According to EvilAvatar, some found ... [read more >>]
	31 October 2007, 06:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Huge Duck-Billed Dinosaur
	This was a giant in the world of the duck-billed dinosaurs. It lived in what is now southern Utah, some 75 million years ago. The well-preserved skull reveals a muscular vegetarian, with hundreds of teeth and huge jaws. "It could have eaten whatever [vegetation] was in its way," said lead researcher Terry Gates, a paleontologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The skull comes from Late Cretaceous period ... [read more >>]
	04 October 2007, 07:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Wrist Bone Points to Flores "Hobbit" as a Unique Human Species
	You can imagine the shock of the scientists looking in 2003 for traces of ancient human migration from Asia to Australia to stumble onto a new human species where they least expected: the "hobbit" human species discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. A vivid debate tried to establish whether the "Flores man" was a dwarfish human species or a diseased Homo sapiens. The grapefruit-size skull made some scientist ... [read more >>]
	24 September 2007, 05:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Spectacular Fossil Whale Fall
	A dead zebra in the African savanna means a fiesta for the vultures around. But if we're talking about dead whales, this fiesta can last for decades. And there are specialized marine communities which are adapted for this purpose. This is called whale fall and the first recognized one was in 1989 in southern California. Whale carcasses falling to the deep-ocean floor form an oasis of life in a deserted area, attracting a speciali ... [read more >>]
	21 September 2007, 05:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

World's Most Expensive Piece of Contemporary Art: Diamond-encrusted Skull Sold for $100 Million!
	The head hunters from the rainforest could definitely not achieve this. A diamond-covered human skull made by British artist Damien Hirst was sold to an investment group for $100 million. The skull named "For the Love of God" has a platinum top, 8,601 gemstones embedded on it and it is regarded as the world's most expensive piece of contemporary art. The buyers are unknown but a spokeswoman for the White Cub ... [read more >>]
	05 September 2007, 16:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Genocide of a Mysterious Ancient Culture, Proven by Massacres
	This is one of the most mysterious cultures of the New World. The obscure native culture named Gallina occupied a small zone of northwestern New Mexico around A.D. 1100 but by 1275 they were all gone. Now, seven Gallina skeletons (five adults, one child and one infant), appearing to have been victims of a brutal massacre in an ancient campaign of genocide, could solve more of their mystery. "The newfound skeletons could provid ... [read more >>]
	16 July 2007, 02:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Human Skulls for Drinking Cups, Human Thigh Bones as Blow Horns
	Indian smugglers do not trade only with the bones of the endangered tigers, but also with those of their co-nationals. Indian police has arrested a gang of four men in the city of Jaigaon, who had hundreds of human skulls and thigh bones which they were going to pass into the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan for use in Buddhist monasteries. "During interrogation they confessed that the hollow human thigh bones were in great demand in mo ... [read more >>]
	25 June 2007, 09:24GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Gunshot Victim in America
	This is like finding the tomb of Jesus: archaeologists have discovered the oldest gunshot victim amongst Native Americans, nearly 500 years old. "We didn't expect it. We saw this skull and saw the almost round hole and thought people must have been shooting around here recently. But the skull was ancient, and a recent bullet strike would simply have shattered it," said Guillermo Cock, who discovered the remains near Lima ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 08:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Panda Bear Ever Found!
	The cute aspect of the giant panda, resembling a living teddy bear, turned this animal into the symbol of the fight for the preservation of endangered species. Even if a real bear, this species eats 99 % bamboo. Now researchers have discovered the fossil skull of the earliest known bear from the panda genus (Ailuropoda) in southern China. The skull is 2-3 million years old and the ancestor of modern giants, Ailuropoda microta, appeared ... [read more >>]
	19 June 2007, 06:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Our Ancestors, Dumber Than We Thought
	What best characterizes a monkey or an ape? It's the big brain. But when researchers got a new fossil of a common ancestor of monkeys and apes (humans included), they found out that the 29 million-year-old creature has not such a big brain as expected. "The finding indicated that primate brain enlargement evolved later than once thought," said the scientists involved in the research. They have investigated a rem ... [read more >>]
	15 May 2007, 03:42GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The First Gladiator Graveyard Ever Discovered
	Romans considered themselves civilized, seeing the others – with the exception of the Greeks – as barbarians. But between 264 BC and 404 AD, the Roman society enjoyed some of the cruelest and inhuman games: the gladiator fights, a sport in which thousands of people were slaughtered in the Roman arenas for the delight of the public. In the Roman society, gladiator glory was celebrated in everything from mosaics to graffiti and oil l ... [read more >>]
	04 May 2007, 07:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Did Biting Appear?
	The ferocious bites of a tiger or crocodile haunt our imagination. But the biting ability is an adaptation to life on land. The question is: when did biting evolve? A new study shows that ancient fish could have evolved in ancient bony fish. Bony fish predominantly catch their prey by suction, easy to see if you watch the fish in an aquarium when they are offered living small crustaceans or worms to eat: you can see how they ... [read more >>]
	17 April 2007, 04:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia