A ground-breaking study published in Scientific Reports has, for the first time, identified minute traces of broomcorn millet consumption directly from human dental calculus, offering an unprecedented window into medieval diets and expanding the toolkit available to archaeologists for reconstructing ancient foodways. Researchers from Vilnius University, the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, the University of York, Frontier Laboratories Ltd., and the Institute of Archaeology in Kyiv applied an advanced analytical technique – thermal desorption gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (TD-GC/MS) – to human dental calculus recovered from the medieval Ostriv cemetery in central Ukraine (10th–12th centuries CE). The team successfully detected miliacin, a molecular biomarker uniquely abundant in broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum), in eight of the 31 individuals analysed. This represents the first direct molecular evidence of millet consumption retrieved from human dental calculus anywhere in the world.

This paper elucidates the ecological context of two theropod dinosaurs of differing body sizes inhabiting the lakeshore region of Otog Banner, Inner Mongolia. The larger theropod exhibited a walking gait characterized by relatively short stride lengths, whereas the medium-sized theropod demonstrated a digitigrade posture indicative of rapid locomotion, achieving speeds up to 45 km/h. This represents the highest recorded speed among theropod dinosaur trackways from the Cretaceous period worldwide to date. Furthermore, these findings provide critical empirical evidence for advancing the understanding of the maximal locomotive capabilities of medium-sized theropods.The results were published as the cover paper in the 11th issue of Science China: Earth Sciences for 2025.

A fingerprint has been found in the tars used to build the oldest known wooden plank boat in Scandinavia, which provides a direct link to the seaborne raiders who used the boat over 2,000 years ago. By analysing the tar itself, Lund University researchers are closer to solving the long-standing mystery of where the attackers in the boat came from.

A new study reveals that the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia (c. 6200–5500 BCE) produced the earliest systematic plant imagery in prehistoric art, flowers, shrubs, branches, and trees painted on fine pottery, arranged with precise symmetry and numerical sequences, especially petal and flower counts of 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64. This suggests that early farming villages in the Near East already possessed sophisticated, practical mathematical thinking about dividing space and quantities, likely tied to everyday needs such as fairly sharing crops from collectively worked fields, long before writing or formal number systems existed.