Many species of animals form social groups and behave collectively: An elephant herd follows its matriarch, flocking birds fly in unison, humans gather at concert events. Even humble fruit flies organize themselves into regularly spaced clusters, researchers have found.

Within those social networks, certain individuals will often stand out as “gatekeepers,” playing an important role for cohesion and communication within that group.

And now, scientists believe there is evidence that how central you are to your social network, a concept they call “high betweenness centrality,” could have a genetic basis. New research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications has identified a gene responsible for regulating the structure of social networks in fruit flies.

The study’s authors named the gene in question “degrees of Kevin Bacon,” or dokb, after a game that requires players to link celebrities to actor Bacon in as few steps as possible via the movies they have in common.

Inspired by “six degrees of separation,” the theory that nobody is more than six relationships away from any other person in the world, the game became a viral phenomenon three decades ago.

Senior author Joel Levine, a professor of biology at the University of Toronto who went to high school with Bacon in Philadelphia, said the actor was a good human example of “high betweenness centrality.”

Aware of Levine’s link with Bacon, study lead author Rebecca Rooke, a postdoctoral fellow of biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, suggested the gene’s name.

“The degrees of separation is a real-world thing for us,” Levine said.

Having high measures of centrality in a group network can be positive or negative, Levine explained.

“Patterns of sharing and communication can be absolutely wonderful,” he said. “You also have patterns that contribute to the spread of lethal diseases and infectious diseases, but the structure of the group is the same structure. It’s not a good or a bad or a positive or a negative.”

Levine said that the “degrees of Kevin Bacon” gene was specific to fruit flies’ central nervous systems, but he thought similar genetic pathways would exist in other animals, including humans. The study opened up new opportunities for exploring the molecular evolution of social networks and collective behavior in other animals.

The gene behind fruit fly social networks

The researchers investigated a number of gene candidates in fruit flies, a common lab organism used in the study of genetics.

“We found two versions of the dokb gene and one version produces networks with high betweenness centrality and the other version produces networks with low betweenness centrality,” Levine said.

“A network with a high average betweenness centrality indicates there are individuals in the network important for the flow of information from one part of the network to other parts.”

The team used gene-editing techniques to knock out and swap these distinct variants to see what happened among different strains of flies. This exchange influenced the patterns of interaction among a network of flies, with a social group taking on the pattern of the donor variant.

“The difference that we would see is a difference in group cohesion. It’s not a difference that you would see with your naked eye,” Levine said.

If you observe video footage of fruit flies in a dish in the lab, Levine said they appear to interact with one another, forming repeatable patterns specific to different strains that can be analyzed statistically.

“What we know is that there’s a repeatable structure to the groups that they’re in,” Levine said. “And we imagine that those structures facilitate how they live.”

In nature, fruit flies show group behavior when laying eggs and encountering predators, Levine said.

“In our paper, we don’t actually characterize what is flowing through the network, so it is hard to speculate what advantages/disadvantages there are to flies who form these different patterns of interaction,” he explained in an email.

“However, we do show that the two different dokb variants exist in several wild strains of flies spanning the globe and that one of these variants correlates with low elevation environments,” Levine said. “Perhaps in low elevations, certain patterns of interaction are advantageous? Again, we don’t directly test this, so it is just speculation.”

Allen J. Moore, a distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia’s department of entomology, said in an email that the research was “careful work” and he agreed with the findings.

“Although a first step — and we (and they) don’t know exactly how it works — it is fascinating to find a single gene that influences social cohesion,” said Moore, who wasn’t involved in the research but reviewed the paper before publication.

What fruit flies and humans share in common

Drosophila melanogaster, best known for hovering around fruit bowls, has been a model organism to explore genetics for more than 100 years. The insects breed quickly and are easy to keep.

While flies are very different from humans, the creatures have long been central to biological and genetic discovery.

“Fruit flies are useful because of the power of manipulation. We can investigate things experimentally in Drosophila that we can only examine indirectly in most organisms,” Moore said.

The tiny creatures share nearly 60% of our genes, including those responsible for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer and heart disease. Research involving fruit flies has previously shed light on the mechanisms of inheritance, circadian rhythms and mutation-causing X-rays.

Japan’s “Moon Sniper” lander has defied the odds for a third time, surviving yet another long, frigid lunar night despite not being designed to endure such harsh conditions, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Temperatures during the lunar night can plunge to minus 208 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 133 degrees Celsius), according to NASA. And Moon Sniper wasn’t expected to withstand even one lunar night, which is a period of darkness on the moon lasting about two weeks.

The robotic vehicle, also known as SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, initially touched down on the lunar surface on January 19. The historic feat made Japan the third country this century, and the fifth ever, to land on the moon. The spacecraft touched down near the Shioli Crater, located about 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of the Sea of Tranquility, a region near the lunar equator, where Apollo 11 first landed humans on the moon.

But things didn’t quite go according to plan.

During descent, the spacecraft experienced an anomaly and landed on its nose, which meant its solar panels were facing west rather than upright and not receiving necessary sunlight to generate power. The lander had just enough energy to send back a mosaic of images before shutting down. The mission’s team in Japan remained hopeful that once sunlight could reach the solar panels again, the spacecraft might reawaken.

So far, Moon Sniper, which gained its nickname for the precision technology that allowed it to land about 55 meters (180 feet) from its target, keeps pleasantly surprising the team by waking up after each lunar night, taking new photos and transmitting them back before it goes back to sleep. The vehicle’s resilience in the face of lunar extremes is unique among missions that have landed on the moon in the past year, and experts have a couple ideas as to why that might be.

Riding out the lunar night

The mission team communicated with Moon Sniper on April 23 after the lander rode out its third lunar night. The spacecraft was able to transmit more images of its landing site.

“SLIM has maintained main functionality even after 3 nights on the Moon, which was not anticipated in the design!” the team shared on X, formerly known as Twitter.

In addition to surviving the extreme cold of the lunar night, Moon Sniper has also endured the searing temperatures of the lunar day, which can reach 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius), according to NASA.

The team shared that it’s closely monitoring SLIM’s condition in order to identify what components of the spacecraft could deteriorate over time as it experiences more of the lunar day and night environment.

JAXA engineers have been careful about how they communicate with SLIM when it first wakes up since the spacecraft is operating in such high temperatures, which could heat up the cameras and damage them. As a result, the mission team usually waits about a day after SLIM wakes up before commanding it to send back images.

So far, one of SLIM’s navigation cameras and the spacecraft’s Star Tracker have provided images from Moon Sniper’s experience on the lunar surface. The Star Tracker isn’t a true camera and instead was used to measure the direction of the spacecraft by tracking the alignment of the stars as the lander traveled to the moon. But the team has taken clever measures to make the most of Moon Sniper’s wonky landing.

“It was not originally planned to be used on the lunar surface, but in principle it can take pictures just like a camera, which led to its operation through ‘secret commands,’” the agency shared on X.

The spacecraft has two navigation cameras mounted in different directions. Given how Moon Sniper landed, one of those cameras is facing into space, but the other has a view of the landing site from the spacecraft’s perspective.

The sun has once again set near Shioli Crater, and Moon Sniper went into hibernation again on April 29, according to the agency.

“We plan to attempt to resume operation again in mid to late May, when SLIM’s solar cells start generating electricity. We appreciate your continued support,” the agency shared on X as Moon Sniper went to sleep once more.

Members of the mission team recently composed a song in honor of Moon Sniper’s inspiring journey that they call “15 Degree Slope.” The song encompasses every step of the surprising mission, from launching and traveling to the moon to the unexpected landing and “the awakening of resurrection,” team members shared on X.

The song borrows its name from the steep slope where Moon Sniper was intended to land. Now, the mission team believes the slope Moon Sniper landed on was about 10 degrees, which is still “surprisingly steep.”

A tale of two moon landings

In February, Houston-based space exploration company Intuitive Machines landed its uncrewed IM-1 mission, also known as Odysseus, at the lunar south pole, making it the first commercial spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon and the first US-made vehicle to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. But like SLIM, the “Odie” mission experienced a bit of a lunar rollercoaster ride that included having to rely on experimental technology to touch down and ultimately landing on its side.

On February 29, after seven days of operating, Odie went to sleep because it wasn’t intended to survive the lunar night. The Intuitive Machines team listened out in case Odie awakened in March, but the spacecraft never phoned home again.

“Odie was designed to only support his payloads, none of which were capable of lunar night, so we did not design him for more,” said Jack Fischer, former NASA astronaut and vice president of production and operations at Intuitive Machines. “There are measures we could have taken to allow for potentially lasting longer, but we were focused on economical, rapidly flown support of our payloads, as opposed to a nation-state sponsored mission.”

The fact that Odie landed near the moon’s south pole, while SLIM touched down near the equator, could affect survivability of the lunar night, Fischer said.

“It still depends on terrain, but the equator will generally have less issues with shadows and have more productive solar power generation (due to higher incidence angles) than Odie experienced at the South Pole,” he said.

Other factors that could increase survivability include keeping a chemical battery protected and working through extreme temperatures and a design that can feed solar power directly to the power system, both of which could be implemented in the future.

“Surviving the night is critical for any effort to build meaningful infrastructure on the Moon, and IM is working on a host of options with experiments as soon as our IM-3 mission,” Fischer said. “Our goal is to first ‘survive’ the night where the spacecraft goes into a sort of hibernation (like SLIM has done) and wakes up on the other side. Ultimately, we want to ‘thrive’ through the night, and are doing just that with our Lunar Terrain Vehicle program, where the vehicle can do meaningful work through the lunar night.”

Fischer offered a tip of his cap to JAXA on the continued success of its mission.

“While I’m not an expert on the design of their vehicle, it is quite a feat for their spacecraft to have survived three lunar nights, no matter the circumstances,” Fischer said.

A race to the moon

Japan’s success with Moon Sniper is just one entry into a renewed race to land on the moon that has played out over the past few years.

India became the fourth country to land a robotic mission on the moon in August 2023 when the Chandrayaan-3 mission touched down near the lunar south pole. The Vikram lander and the Pragyan six-wheeled rover it deployed studied the moon for nearly two weeks before shutting down to sleep through the lunar night — but attempts to reawaken them were unsuccessful.

And the push for lunar exploration continues as China seeks to land a sample-collecting mission on the moon’s far side, or the side facing away from Earth, and NASA aims to establish a sustained human presence at the lunar south pole through its ambitious Artemis program.

The continued success of Moon Sniper comes during what Noah Petro, NASA project scientist for both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Artemis III, calls a “great new era of lunar exploration.”

Six of the groundbreaking Apollo missions returned lunar samples from different landing sites on the moon, but all of them were on the near side of the moon. Exploring new lunar regions provides new windows into understanding Earth’s satellite.

“For me, there is great joy in seeing missions land on the lunar surface,” Petro said. “Every time we land on the surface, we learn more about this unique lunar environment that we’re getting ourselves into. Building up this database of lunar knowledge of what it means to be and work on the surface of the moon helps us be better prepared for the Artemis missions.”

Staff and visitors have been left stranded and buildings submerged at Kenya’s famous Maasai Mara nature reserve, as the death toll in catastrophic flooding in the country’s southwest rose to at least 188 people.

Local authorities ordered some tourist facilities in the National Reserve to close after River Talek, one of the tributaries of the Mara River, burst its banks and swept through more than a dozen riverside tourist lodges and camps.

Videos on social media showed some buildings and vehicles fully submerged inside the popular park as tourists scrambled to leave affected areas.

Weeks of heavy rain and flash flooding has ravaged parts of Kenya for days, leaving dozens of people missing around the capital, Nairobi, and causing a devastating mudslide in the town of Mai Mahiu.

In Maasai Mara, camp owners were told to leave the affected properties and “move to higher ground further away from River Talek,” governor of Narok county Patrick Ole Ntutu said on Wednesday.

But local administrators went even further in their warnings, threatening legal consequences for people still left behind, even accusing those who stay of attempting suicide.

“We will forcefully evacuate anybody left in any homes or lodges along the river. We will take action against them because that is considered attempted suicide,” Narok county commissioner Kipkech Lotiatia told reporters.

Authorities said they had deployed two helicopters to rescue stranded tourists and local staff around the national reserve after receiving distress calls. The flooding was caused by swollen rivers after several days of continuous rainfall, the county said on X.

“We were being rained on from around 2 a.m. to 5.30 a.m. but we couldn’t get out and the planes coming to rescue us couldn’t get in one time.”

The Kenya Red Cross said it had rescued more than 90 people and at least 14 camps around River Talek had been closed.

While parts of the Mara have flooded before in Kenya’s so-called long rains season, locals say the scale of this year’s deluge has been unprecedented.

The country has deployed “corps from the Paramilitary Academy” of its National Youth Service to Narok to “join the multi-agency team for search and rescue operations following the heavy downpour,” a statement on X said.

The Horn of Africa, a region of East Africa that includes Kenya, is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Heavy rains have also affected Tanzania and Burundi.

“Kenya is facing a worsening flood crisis due to the combined effects of El Niño and the ongoing March-May 2024 long rains,” International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) CEO Jagan Chapagain said in a post on X earlier this week, referring to the climate pattern that originates in the Pacific Ocean along the equator and impacts weather all over the world.

“The unfolding devastation highlights the government’s obligation to prepare for and promptly respond to the foreseeable impacts of climate change and natural disasters,” said Nyagoah Tut Pur, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday. “Kenyan authorities should urgently ensure support to affected communities and protect populations facing high risk.”

The United States has formally accused Russia of using chemical weapons “as a method of warfare” against Ukraine and imposed sweeping new sanctions on Russian firms and government bodies.

In a statement on Wednesday, the US State Department said it had “made a determination … that Russia has used the chemical weapon chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).”

It added that Russia had also used “riot control agents,” or tear gas, during the war in violation of the CWC.

“The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident, and is probably driven by Russian forces’ desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield,” it said.

The US conclusion tallies with testimony from Ukrainian troops who say they have faced increased encounters with gas and other irritant chemicals on parts of their frontline with Russia’s forces in recent months.

In a statement posted on social media in March, Ukraine’s armed forces said they had recorded more than a thousand incidents where Russia had used “tear gas munitions equipped with toxic chemicals that are prohibited for warfare,” with 250 cases in February alone.

The Kremlin dismissed the US accusations. Asked about them during a regular press briefing, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “We saw the news about this. These accusations are absolutely groundless, not supported by anything. Russia was and remains committed to its obligations in international law.”

Chloropicrin was widely used as a chemical warfare agent in World War I, but is no longer authorized for military use, and is now mostly used in agriculture, according to the CDC. It irritates the lungs, eyes, and skin, and can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea lasting for weeks, according to the CDC.

Under a 1991 law against the use of chemical and biological warfare, the State Department is “re-imposing restrictions on foreign military financing, US Government lines of credit, and export licenses for defense articles and national security-sensitive items going to Russia,” it said on Wednesday.

It added that it is sanctioning three Russian government entities linked to the country’s chemical and biological weapons programs and four Russian companies that contributed to those government bodies.

The announcement was part of a tranche of nearly 300 new sanctions against companies and figures in multiple countries for their support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including China, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Slovakia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The US has previously warned Russia against chemical warfare in Ukraine; in March 2022, a month after the invasion began, President Joe Biden said that NATO would respond if Russia used chemical weapons in Ukraine.

And last April at a G7 summit, the foreign ministers of member nations said in a joint statement that Russia would be met with “severe consequences” for any use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

Since then, US officials have warned of signs that Russia has done so anyway. In November, Mallory Stewart, the US assistant state secretary for arms control, deterrence, and stability, cited reports by Ukraine that Moscow was using riot control agents in the war.

The use of chemical weapons is banned by international law. Russia has signed those treaties and claims it doesn’t have chemical weapons, but the country has already been linked to the use of nerve agents against critics in recent years.

Those cases include the poisonings of Sergei Skripal and Alexey Navalny – the latter of whom died in February while jailed in a a penal colony in Siberia. The 47-year-old fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin had fallen unconscious after taking a walk, according to the Russian prison service; the cause of his death is unclear.

On Wednesday, the State Department said it would also impose new sanctions on three individuals linked to Navalny’s death: the director of the prison where Navalny was imprisoned; the head of solitary confinement who oversaw Navalny’s cell, as well as the walking yard where he allegedly collapsed and died; and the prison’s medical chief.

A photograph of a beaming Princess Charlotte has been released by the Prince and Princess of Wales to mark her ninth birthday.

The celebratory snap was posted to the couple’s official social media accounts on Thursday with a note of thanks “for all the kind messages today.” The photo is credited to Catherine, Princess of Wales, and was taken in the last few days in Windsor.

It’s the second photo in as many weeks from the Waleses, who last week celebrated their youngest son, Prince Louis’ sixth birthday. Prince William and Kate have made it a tradition to release portraits of their children each year to mark their birthdays.

Kensington Palace appears to be reclaiming some of the control and narrative by only posting to social accounts on the day, aware that any lack of honesty or sense of inauthenticity will spark all sorts of conspiracy theories like it did last time.

It’s been a difficult start to 2024 for Britain’s royal family. Kate has been away from her public duties since Christmas and is currently undergoing treatment for cancer.

Princess Charlotte was last seen in public during the British royal family’s traditional Christmas Day walk to church on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk. The nine-year-old was also seen earlier in December alongside her parents and siblings at her mother annual carol concert at Westminster Abbey in London.

At a visit to a school in the UK’s West Midlands last week, Charlotte’s father Prince William shared her favorite joke with students of St Michael’s Church of England High School – a “knock knock” gag involving an interrupting cow.

Charlotte is third in line to the throne, after her father and older brother Prince George. And while she may be one of the younger members of the family, her mom revealed in 2017 that she is “the one in charge.”

Royal-watchers may remember a clip of Charlotte at her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral in 2022, where she appeared to be reminding her elder brother George to bow as the late monarch’s coffin passed them at Wellington Arch. She was also spotted at a previous Trooping the Colour parade in London stopping her younger brother, Prince Louis, from waving perhaps a little too enthusiastically to the crowds as their carriage drove by.

Meanwhile, the little royal won hearts last year with her regal twinning with her mother when the pair attended King Charles’ coronation. For her grandfather’s big day, Charlotte wore a mini-me version of her mom’s ivory silk dress and silver headpiece.

Charlotte is the first British princess who wasn’t overtaken in the line of succession by a younger brother. That’s because her grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, changed the rules with the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 so that all royal children born after 2011 would have an equal right to the throne regardless of gender.

Two years later, Charlotte Elizabeth Diana was born on May 2, 2015 at St. Mary’s Hospital in west London. The change meant that did not lose her position in the line of succession after Prince Louis was born in 2018.

“You have to ask the Israelis,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Brigadier General Ali Belali says with a smirk when asked how many ballistic missiles the Islamic Republic fired towards Israel in its April 14 strike.

But he’s more than happy to show the missiles and drones Iran used in its first ever attack against Israel launched directly from Iranian soil.

“It was a punitive measure,” Belali says, as he uses a laser pointer to indicate the missiles deployed, towering above him in the exhibit.

Two weeks after the Middle East came to the brink of an all-out war, with Iran firing hundreds of projectiles toward Israel in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on an Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Tehran is keen to show the world that it is capable of fighting a wider conflict should it be faced with one.

On April 19, Israel responded with a suspected attack inside Iran’s borders. Both the Iranian and Israeli actions resulted in minimal damage and appeared by both sides to be aimed at restoring deterrence. That situation de-escalated, but the threat of war continues to loom large over the region as Israel’s offensive in Gaza grinds on.

At the permanent exhibit of the Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Forces in western Tehran, dozens of long- and medium-range ballistic missiles stand tall along with cruise missiles and drones. The exhibit is meant to show the development and progress of Iran’s drone and missile program.

Iran’s attack on Israel included drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The night sky over Israeli cities lit up as the country’s air defenses worked to intercept the projectiles. Meanwhile, the air forces of Israel, the US, the UK, France and Jordan were busy in the skies, also trying to take down as many Iranian drones and missiles as possible.

“NATO, The United States and Arab countries of the region wanted to create barriers for our drones, missiles and cruise missiles, but they failed,” Belali says. “The world was not able to stop us.”

The Israeli military said that “99%” of projectiles fired by Iran were intercepted by Israel and its partners, with only “a small number” of ballistic missiles reaching the country.

The Iranians claim they managed to hit two locations inside Israel, including the Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that ballistic missiles that reached Israel fell on the airbase and caused only light structural damage.

“Accurate, (to) less than five meters,” Brigadier General Ali Belali claims, standing in front of two of the ballistic missiles he says were involved in the strikes against Israel, the Ghadr and the Emad. The missiles have a range of more than 1,000 miles and can carry warheads between 450 and 500 kilograms (1,102 lbs), he says. Another missile, called Kheybar, which he says was also used, carries a warhead of about 320 kilograms, the general adds.

Region’s largest ballistic missile force

Iran’s ballistic missiles have long been a cause for concern for the US and its allies in the Middle East, who have called for curbs on the missile program to be part of any deal that Washington strikes with Tehran.

The US says Iran has the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East and considers its missile arsenal as one of its “primary tools of coercion and force projection.”

Iran has in the past insisted that its missile program is solely for defensive purposes.

Belali says Iran’s missile development is key to the Islamic Republic’s defense strategy. “In our defense capabilities we don’t rely on anyone. We have had good progress in this field and we will progress more. There are achievements that have not yet been talked about.”

Drones are equally as important for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards. The exhibit shows various stages of their drone development, starting from small wooden UAVs used in the Iran-Iraq war, all the way to models the Iranians claim have stealth capabilities.

One the most prominent is the Shahed 136, a cheap “fire and forget” drone, meaning a flight path is programmed, the UAV is launched, and it then independently flies towards the target area.

While the Iranians acknowledge using dozens of Shahed 136 drones to target Israel, both the US and Ukraine also accuse Tehran of giving hundreds to Russia, with Moscow using them to hit Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure. The Iranians have consistently denied those claims.

The Shaheds fly low and slow and usually attack in swarms, the general says, standing in front of an unmarked truck that serves as a secretive launching platform.

“Everything is preprogrammed. The flight route is chosen according (to) the enemy’s capabilities and blind spots of radars and all the elements that can help us reach the target.”

A 40-something woman was buried in a cave 75,000 years ago, laid to rest in a gully hollowed out to accommodate her body. Her left hand was curled under her head, and a rock behind her head may have been placed as a cushion.

Known as Shanidar Z, after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where she was found in 2018, the woman was a Neanderthal, a type of ancient human that disappeared around 40,000 years ago.

Scientists studying her remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments, a process that took nine months. They used the contours of the face and skull to guide a reconstruction to understand what she may have looked like.
The striking recreation is featured in a new documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals” produced by BBC for Netflix, which is available for streaming on Thursday.

With pronounced brow ridges and no chins, the skulls of Neanderthals look different from those of our own species, Homo sapiens, said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a paleoanthropologist and associate professor with the University of Cambridge’s department of archaeology who unearthed the skeleton and appears in the new film. The Shanidar Z facial reconstruction suggests that these differences might not have been so stark in life, Pomeroy said.

“There is some artistic license there, but at the heart of it is the real skull and real data on what we know about (these) people,” she said.

“She’s actually got quite a large face for her size,” Pomeroy added. “She’s got quite big brow ridges, which typically we wouldn’t see, but I think dressed in modern clothes you probably wouldn’t look twice.”

Neanderthals lived across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia Mountains for around 300,000 years, overlapping with modern humans for 30,000 years or so. Analysis of DNA from present-day humans has revealed that, during this time, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens occasionally encountered one another and interbred.

New analysis

When Pomeroy first excavated the skeleton, its sex wasn’t immediately obvious because only the upper half of the body was preserved. It lacked telltale pelvic bones. The team that initially studied the remains relied on a relatively new technique involving the sequencing of proteins inside tooth enamel to determine Shanidar Z’s sex, which is revealed for the first time in the documentary.

Those researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool estimated the specimen’s height to have been around 5 feet (1.5 meters) by comparing the length and diameter of her arm bones with data on modern humans. An analysis of wear and tear on teeth and bones suggested she was in her mid-40s at the time of her death.

“It’s a reasonable estimate, but we can’t be 100% sure, actually, that they weren’t older,” Pomeroy said. “What we can say is this is someone who had lived a relatively long life. For that society, they probably would have been quite important in terms of their knowledge, their life experience.”

The cave where Shanidar Z was buried is well-known among archaeologists because a Neanderthal grave discovered there in 1960 led researchers to believe that Neanderthals may have interred their dead with flowers — the first challenge to the prevailing view that the ancient humans were dumb and brutish. Subsequent research by Pomeroy’s team, however, has cast doubt on that flower burial theory.
Instead, they suspect the pollen discovered among the graves may have arrived via pollinating bees.

Still, over the years scientists have found increasing evidence of Neanderthals’ intelligence, sophistication and complexity, including art, string and tools.

Neanderthals repeatedly returned to Shanidar Cave to lay their dead to rest. The remains of 10 Neanderthals have been unearthed at the site, half of which appear to have been buried deliberately in succession, research has found.

Neanderthals may not have honored their dead with bouquets of flowers, but the inhabitants of Shanidar Cave were likely an empathetic species, research suggests. For example, one male Neanderthal buried there was deaf and had a paralyzed arm and head trauma that probably rendered him partially blind, yet he lived a long time, so he must have been cared for, according to research.

Shanidar Z is the first Neanderthal found in the cave in more than 50 years, Pomeroy said, but the site could still yield more discoveries. During the filming of the documentary in 2022, Pomeroy uncovered a left shoulder blade, some rib bones and a right hand belonging to another Neanderthal.

“I think our interpretation at the moment,” she said, “is that actually this is probably the remains of a single individual, which has then been disturbed.”

Reconstructing the skull

Pomeroy described reconstructing Shanidar Z’s skull, which had been crushed relatively soon after death as a “high-stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle.” The fossilized bones were hardened with a glue-like substance, removed in small blocks of cave sediment and wrapped in foil before researchers sent them to the University of Cambridge for analysis.

In the Cambridge lab, researchers took micro-CT scans of each block and used the scans to guide extraction of bone fragments. Pomeroy’s colleague Dr. Lucía López-Polín, an archaeological conservator from the Catalan Institute for Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution in Spain, pieced over 200 bits of skull together by eye to return it to its original shape.

The team scanned and 3D-printed the rebuilt skull, which formed the basis of a reconstructed head created by Danish paleoartists Adrie and Alfons Kennis, twin brothers who built up layers of fabricated muscle and skin to reveal Shanidar Z’s face.

Pomeroy said the reconstruction helped “bridge that gap between anatomy and 75,000 years of time.”

Colombia says it will break diplomatic relations with Israel on Thursday over its actions in Gaza.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro made the announcement at a rally in Bogotá’s Bolívar Square on Wednesday, describing the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza as “genocidal.”

Israel launched its assault in the Palestinian territory following terror group Hamas’ attacks on October 7, which left more than 1,200 people dead and saw more than 250 taken hostage – many of whom remain in captivity today.

Now nearing its eight month, Israel’s war in the isolated enclave has killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, condemned Colombia’s announcement and accused Petro of rewarding Hamas, which controls Gaza, saying he was siding with the “most despicable monsters known to humanity.” Katz also called Petro a “hate-filled, antisemitic president,” but said relations between both countries would remain warm despite the president’s actions.

Hamas said it “highly appreciated” Petro’s position, saying in a statement that it considered the decision “a victory for the sacrifices of our people and their just cause” and calling on other countries to follow suit.

South Africa has previously accused Israel of violating international laws on genocide, telling the United Nations’ top court that Israel’s leadership was “intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza” – a case which Israel dismissed as “absurd blood libel.”

The International Court of Justice later ordered Israel to “take all measures” to prevent genocide but stopped short of ordering its government to halt the war.

Regional neighbor Bolivia also cut diplomatic ties with Israel last year, citing “crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people” in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas.

This is a developing story. More to come.

Gatherings of people across north and central Gaza on Wednesday expressed gratitude to students on US college campuses who have been protesting the war in Gaza.

In Deir al-Balah, in front of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital, doctors, nurses, and medical staff held signs with messages that included “United against genocide,” “The killing of children must stop,” and “Teep on fighting for justice.”

Palestinians in Gaza have been showing support for the US protesters for several days. In several refugee camps in the Palestinian enclave on Wednesday, children could also be seen holding signs and banners with the names of different American universities where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been held, saying “thanks for your solidarity!”

“Arab populations haven’t cared about us, while students at American universities have felt with us, have felt the blood that spills from us, our buildings that get struck and our kids whose lives get destroyed … a thousand thanks to them,” she said.

The public appreciation from people in Gaza come amid growing controversy in the US over the campus demonstrations, which have spread across the country in recent weeks amid mounting tensions over Israel’s war on Hamas, launched after the terror group’s October 7 attack that left more than 1,200 dead.

The protests in the US are broadly aimed at demanding an end to Israel’s devastating assault in the Palestinian enclave, which has killed more than 34,000 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry, and is nearing its eighth month.

But critics say some demonstrations have crossed the line into anti-semitism. Israel has claimed the protests are being manipulated by “outside agitators.”

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan denounced the university demonstrations in a speech to the General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.

Erdan accused the demonstrations of being made up of “antisemitic protesters affiliated with outside agitators.” He said the students should face expulsion, while university professors and presidents should face “swift and severe action.”

The speech in the General Assembly followed a Security Council vote last month on a resolution that would have recognized a Palestinian state. That vote was vetoed by the US.

Erdan lashed out at his UN colleagues, accusing the General Assembly of spreading anti-Israel rhetoric which he claimed had helped galvanize the protesters. He yelled “shame” toward the countries seated in the hall.

Several colleges have recently hardened their stance by calling in law enforcement to clear their campuses – a crackdown hailed by former US President Donald Trump as “a beautiful thing to watch” at Columbia University in New York.

Meanwhile, Shiraz university in Iran’s Fars province has offered scholarships to students from universities in the US and Europe who are expelled over the protests.

Additional reporting by Artemis Moshtaghian and Richard Roth

An unusual asteroid traveling near Earth is thought to be a chunk of the moon, but exactly how it ended up zooming through the solar system has remained a mystery. Now, researchers say they’ve made a key connection in this cosmic puzzle.

The space rock, known as 2016 HO3, is a rare quasi-satellite — a type of near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun but sticks close to our planet.

Astronomers first discovered it in 2016 using the Pan-STARRS telescope, or Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, in Hawaii. Scientists call the asteroid Kamo’oalewa, a name derived from a Hawaiian creation chant that alludes to an offspring traveling on its own.

While most near-Earth asteroids originate from the main asteroid belt — between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter — new research has revealed that Kamo’oalewa most likely came from the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon’s far side, or the side that faces away from Earth, according to a study published April 19 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

It’s the first time astronomers have traced a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid to a lunar crater, said lead study author Yifei Jiao, a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and a doctoral student at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“This was a surprise, and many were skeptical that it could come from the moon,” said study coauthor Erik Asphaug, professor at the University of Arizona’s laboratory, in a statement. “For 50 years we have been studying rocks collected by astronauts on the surface of the moon, as well as hundreds of small lunar meteorites that were ejected randomly by asteroid impacts from all over the moon that ended up on Earth. Kamo’oalewa is kind of a missing link that connects the two.”

In addition to helping confirm Kamo’oalewa’s potential relationship to the moon, the findings could ultimately lead to other revelations — including how the ingredients for life made their way to Earth.

Once upon a crater

Measuring between 150 and 190 feet (46 and 58 meters) in diameter, Kamo’oalewa is about half the size of the London Eye Ferris wheel. During orbit, it comes within 9 million miles (14.5 million kilometers) of Earth, making it a potentially hazardous asteroid astronomers keep track of and learn more about in case it ever strays too close to our planet.

Previous research focused on the asteroid’s reflectivity, which unlike typical near-Earth asteroids is similar to lunar materials, as well as the space rock’s low orbital velocity in relation to Earth, a quality that suggests it came from relatively nearby.

For the new study, astronomers used simulations to narrow down which of the moon’s thousands of craters could have been the asteroid’s point of origin.

Based on the modeling, the team determined that the impactor that potentially created the asteroid would need to be at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) in diameter to dislodge such a massive fragment. When the object hit the moon, it likely dug Kamo’oalewa out from beneath the lunar surface, sending the space rock flying and leaving a crater larger than 6 to 12 miles (10 to nearly 20 kilometers) in diameter.

These simulations also helped the team search for a relatively young crater, given that the asteroid is only estimated to be a few million years old, while the moon is believed to be 4.5 billion years old.

These parameters helped researchers zero in on Giordano Bruno, a 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) crater estimated to be 4 million years old, as the likely spot where Kamo’oalewa started its journey.

The anatomy of an impact

The study’s simulations showed that Kamo’oalewa was excavated from the lunar surface at several miles per second.

“You’d think the impact event would pulverize and distribute the (lunar material) far and wide,” Asphaug said. “But there it is. So, we turned the problem around and asked ourselves, ‘How can we make this happen?’”

Based on their models, the team believes the impact event sent tens of hundreds of 32.8-foot (10-meter) fragments flying into space. Yet Kamo’oalewa survived as a massive, singular fragment.

“While most of that debris would have impacted the Earth as lunar meteorites over the course of less than a million years, a few lucky objects can survive in (sun-centric) orbits as near-Earth asteroids, yet to be discovered or identified,” Jiao said.

Understanding how such a giant chunk of the moon could remain intact enough to become an asteroid could help scientists studying panspermia, or the idea that the ingredients for life may have been delivered to Earth as “organic hitchhikers” on space rocks such as asteroids, comets or other planets.

“While Kamo’oalewa comes from a lifeless planet, it demonstrates how rocks ejected from Mars could carry life — at least in principle,” Asphaug said.

Kamo’oalewa specimen: A connecting puzzle piece

Studying crater impacts on the moon can also help scientists better understand the consequences of asteroid impacts should a space rock pose a threat to Earth in the future.

“Testing the new model of Kamo’oalewa’s origin from a specific, young lunar crater paves the way for obtaining ground-truth knowledge of the damage that asteroid impacts can cause to planetary bodies,” said study coauthor Renu Malhotra, a planetary sciences professor at the University of Arizona, in a statement.

China’s Tianwen-2 mission, launching in 2025, will visit Kamo’oalewa with the aim of collecting samples from the asteroid and eventually returning them to Earth.

“It will be different in important ways from any of the specimens we have so far — one of those connecting pieces that help you solve the puzzle,” Asphaug said.

Studying a sample excavated from the lunar far side could reveal insights into a part of the moon that has been less studied and shed light on the composition of its subsurface. Given that the impact likely happened a few million years ago — relatively young on astronomical timescales — the samples could also help scientists study how space radiation causes weathering and erosion on asteroids over time.

“The exciting thing is that when a space mission visits an asteroid and returns some samples, we have surprises and unexpected outcomes, that usually go beyond what we were anticipating,” said study coauthor Dr. Patrick Michel, astrophysicist and director of research at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France. “So, whatever Tianwen-2 will return, it will be an extraordinary new source of information, as all asteroid missions so far.”

For a long time, astronomers thought it was impossible for meteorites to come from the moon until lunar meteorites were found on Earth, said Noah Petro, NASA project scientist for both the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Artemis III. Petro was not involved in the study.

The hope is that future samples could confirm the lunar origin of Kamo’oalewa.

“Going there and finding out is absolutely a way to go about it now,” Petro said. “It’s a great, great reminder that we live in a very exciting solar system and we live in a very exciting corner of the solar system with our moon. There’s no other place, no other planet in our solar system with a moon like our moon. And things like this are great reminders of how special the Earth-moon system is.”