More signs emerge of New World settlers

before 20,000 years ago

South American site yields controversial tools of pre-Clovis campers
BY BRUCE BOWER
8:30AM, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
New finds support the controversial idea that people inhabited South America before Clovis hunters reached North
America around 14,000 years ago. Two sets of simple stone tools excavated at the base of a rocky slope in northeastern
Brazil were made by small groups of settlers, one that lived about 24,000 years ago and another from around 15,000
years ago, researchers say.
The ancient site, Vale da Pedra Furada, lies near other proposed pre-Clovis camps (SN: 4/20/13, p. 9), a team led by
archaeologist Eric Boda of Universit Paris Ouest Nanterre La Dfense reports in the SeptemberAntiquity. Microscopic
marks on 294 unearthed stones indicate that humans had sharpened the rocks. Radiocarbon dating of burned wood and
soil analyses yielded ages for those stones. The new findings challenge a long-standing view among archaeologists that
Clovis people first settled the Americas.
If the new dates hold, makers of un-Clovis-like tools trickled into South America before 20,000 years ago, writes
archaeologist Kjel Knutsson of Swedens Uppsala University in a comment published in the same Antiquity. But the sharp
stones may have been created by natural events, such as rock slides, or shifted into 24,000-year-old soil from younger
sediment layers, write Brazilian archaeologists Adriana Schmidt Dias of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in
Porto Alegre and Lucas Bueno of the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianpolis in another comment.


Plate tectonics spotted on Europa
Shifting landscape on Jupiters frozen moon is first outside Earth
BY THOMAS SUMNER
4:29PM, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
Plate tectonics churns the icy exterior of Jupiters moon Europa, researchers report September 7 in Nature Geoscience.
The finding marks the first evidence of plate tectonics elsewhere in the universe.
Earth is not unique weve found another body in the solar system with plate tectonics, says planetary scientist Simon
Kattenhorn of the University of Idaho in Moscow. This tells us that this process can happen on more than just rocky
planets like Earth.
While previous observations have seen surface reshaping, such as volcanic activity, on other planetary bodies, such as
Saturn's moon Titan (SN: 1/25/14, p. 14), Kattenhorn says Europa is the first found with a patchwork of drifting tectonic
plates.

Coral trout know when it's time for team
hunting
BY ASHLEY YEAGER
3:55PM, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

Coral trout seem to be as good as chimpanzees at knowing when to collaborate. When hunting for food, the trout team
with moray eels, which flush tiny fish snacks out of coral crevices if there's nothing appetizing in the open water. The trout
are able to determine which eel is a better hunting partner and select that one for finding food in the future, researchers
report September 8 in Current Biology. The results support the idea that a relatively small brain does not prevent some
fish from being able to comprehend information as effectively as apes do in situations relevant to their watery habitats, the
authors write.
Mystery mushroomlike sea creatures get
names
Specimens from off Australian coast resemble jellies but may represent
new phylum
BY SUSAN MILIUS
1:43PM, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
Little mushroom-shaped things collected in 1986 now have scientific names but no clear place on the tree of life.
Designated Dendrogramma enigmatica and D. discoides, they have what looks like a mouth at the base of a stubby stalk,
which widens into a disc smaller than a dime. Researchers hauled them up from Australias continental slope but
preserved them in fluids that shrank tissues and damaged DNA, making genetic analysis impossible. The mystery
organisms resemble, but lack important features of, both comb jellies and the phylum that includes stinging jellies.
Dendrogramma might even deserve their own new phylum, but scientists need more samples, say Jean Just of the
University of Copenhagen and colleagues September 3 in PLOS ONE.



Asteroids: A stepping
stone to Mars?
NASA says snagging an asteroid can get us closer to the Red Planet, but
many scientists disagree
BY STEPHEN ORNES
9:15AM, SEPTEMBER 8, 2014
People have long dreamed of visiting Mars. NASA, the U.S. space agency, now has a plan to help prepare astronauts for
a trip to the Red Planet. That plan, however, starts with a wild idea that sounds like it came from a wacky Saturday
morning cartoon: Capture an asteroid, then drag it to the moon.
NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, is designed to do just that. And it goes further: Once the asteroid is in place, a
spacecraft would bring people to visit it. The agency says ARM will help scientists develop the technology needed to send
people all the way to Mars. Indeed, the moon's neighborhood is different than the near-Earth environment. In many ways,
its more similar to the deep-space conditions that a Mars-bound spacecraft would encounter.
Asteroids are space rocks that orbit the sun. The largest, called Ceres (SEER-eez), is 1,000 kilometers (600 miles)
across. Its so big that it is classified as a dwarf planet. Most asteroids follow a path that takes them between Mars and
Jupiter. Some pass close enough to Earth to make scientists and everyone else nervous about a collision. And for
good reason: A giant asteroid impact could wipe out life on Earth.
NASA is considering two ways to grab a space rock. One calls for a spacecraft to deploy a giant, inflatable bag that would
surround an asteroid. After jacketing the space rock, the bag would cinch shut like a kitchen trash bag. Then the
spacecraft would slowly drag the big, bagged rock toward the moon.
The other plan may use a sticky-fingered robot to snatch a boulder off the surface of a much larger asteroid. A spacecraft
would then ferry that rock to the moon. There it would wait for astronauts to explore it later. To date, NASA has not
decided which asteroid it would like to hijack for study.
But if the mission were successful, We would have access to a completely new alien body that no one had ever touched
or seen, Tom Jones told Science News. He's a planetary scientist and former astronaut who has studied the ARM.
Some scientists, however, are skeptical. Moving an asteroid won't get people any closer to Mars, they say.
Theres nothing about pushing around a tiny space rock that has anything to do with getting humans to the moon or
Mars, Richard Binzel told Science News. A planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge, he studies near-Earth asteroids.
And Binzel isn't the only critic. Others say the planned mission to an asteroid wouldn't even deliver much in terms of new
science.
NASA's just looking for a place to go, Alan Harris told Science News. An asteroid scientist, he used to work at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He calls the mission good entertainment.
People have always been interested in space discoveries, and NASA says the ARM can play an important role in future
explorations. Robert Lightfoot Jr. is NASAs Associate Administrator. Getting to an asteroid can fuel the development of
new technologies that could eventually land people on Mars, he told Science News.
Still, he knows everyone will not agree on the best way to get to Mars. If theres one thing Ive learned in this industry, its
that people are going to have different approaches, he says. The primary goal for us is to get humans to Mars. To us,
the Asteroid Redirect Mission is the most logical and affordable step.