Cube-Shaped Skull Discovered In Ancient Site

Nearly every corner of the world contains archaeological evidence of the ancient practice of artificial cranial deformation. The Huns of Central Asia are a well-known example, but so are the Hirota people of ancient Japan, the Maya of Central America, and even members of the peasant class in Toulouse, France, around the end of the 19th century.

Today, some cultures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Vanuatu in the South Pacific still practice the tradition.

Most of these examples—both historical and contemporary—form pointed skulls by binding an infant’s head while the skull bones fuse (typically up until the age of two). It’s not incredibly common to see a cube-shaped skull, but the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) recently reported one such discovery in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas near the Balcón de Montezuma—an archaeological site occupied by various ethnic groups between 650 B.C.E and 1200 C.E.

One of these communities, around the year 400 C.E., contained roughly 90 houses and a variety of artifacts. As the archaeologists sifted through these finds, they discovered what appeared to be a parallelepiped, or cube-shaped, skull. Artificial skull deformation was a common practice among the Maya, but hasn’t been documented in this particular site.

"Not only was intentional cranial deformation identified for the first time for this type of site, but also a variant with respect to the models recognized in Mesoamerica, not reported, until now, in the area," biological anthropologist Jesús Ernesto Velasco González said in a translated press statement. Velasco González noted that similar deformations occurred at the El Zapotal archaeological site in Veracruz, located further south along the Gulf of Mexico, so scientists tried to piece together potential migration leaks. However, those didn’t quite pan out.

"Stable oxygen isotope studies in collagen and bioapatite samples from bone and teeth, a technique used to infer the geographic origin of the second individual's skeletal remains, indicate that he was born, lived, and died in this part of the mountains," Velasco González said in a press statement. "Therefore, the results rule out a direct mobility relationship with the groups of El Zapotal or those further south."

The reasons why the people of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica—or any people, for that matter—practiced skull formation are almost as varied as the people groups themselves. Sometimes it was a marker of social hierarchy, sometimes it was a religious rite, and sometimes it was just for aesthetics. Although the health effects are debated, it’s largely believed that this practice doesn’t decrease the size of the skull, and as such, health impacts are mostly negligible (though some research has asserted that the practice could impact cognitive or memory function).

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Why Are Dolphins Swimming with Orcas?

There is a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins sighted off the coast of British Columbia cooperating with orcas, a traditional enemy that’s better known for taking out great white sharks than friendly interaction.

Scientists say they have documented the dolphins and a local population of killer whales known as Northern Resident orcas teaming up to hunt the orcas’ staple food: salmon. Though other groups of orcas feast on dolphins, Northern Residents do not. Still, it is the first time this type of cooperative behavior has been documented between the two marine mammals, researchers reported.

"Seeing them dive and hunt in sync with dolphins completely changes our understanding of what those encounters mean," said Sarah Fortune, Canadian Wildlife Federation chair in large whale conservation and an assistant professor in Dalhousie University’s oceanography department. Fortune was the lead author of the study, which published in the journal Scientific Reports.

To witness the dolphins and orcas interacting, the researchers captured drone footage as well as underwater video by attaching suction tags to the orcas that were equipped with cameras and hydrophones.

Their footage showed that the killer whales traveled toward the dolphins and followed them at the surface level. The underwater footage revealed that the killer whales were also following dolphins on their dives of up to 60 meters (197 feet), where the orcas were able to prey on Chinook salmon.

Though light levels are low at those depths, Fortune said cameras picked up the killer whales catching salmon, with clouds of blood billowing from their mouths, and hydrophones picked up the crunch of a kill.

To understand better what was happening, the researchers also eavesdropped on the echolocation clicks made by dolphins and orcas, which allow animals to navigate and sense their environment by listening to the returned echoes of the noises they make.

"We can look at the characteristics of these clicks to infer whether a whale is actively chasing a prey for a fish and also whether it may have caught the fish," Fortune said.

The researchers recorded 258 instances of dolphins and orcas interacting between 15 and 30 August 2020.

They found that all the whales that interacted with dolphins also engaged in killing, eating and searching for salmon.

Put together, the data Fortune and her colleagues collected suggested that the killer whales, fearsome predators able to take on great whites and whale sharks several times their size, were essentially using the dolphins as scouts.

"By hunting with other echolocating animals like the dolphins, they might be increasing their acoustic field of view, providing greater opportunity to detect where the salmon are. That’s sort of the prevailing thought here," she explained. Using dolphins in this way would also allow the orcas to conserve energy, with salmon often hiding at depths to try and avoid predators such as orcas.

But what do dolphins get out of the interactions?

The video Fortune and her colleagues collected showed that once the orcas caught their prey and shared it with the pod, the dolphins were quick to eat the leftovers.

But salmon isn’t a core part of a dolphin’s diet, so greater access to food likely wasn’t the sole motivation, Fortune said. By hanging out with the orcas, dolphins likely gain protection from other orca pods that pass through the area and hunt dolphins.

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Study Shows Underwater "Storms" Affecting Glacier

Swirling underwater "storms" are believed to have aggressively melted the ice shelves of two vital Antarctic glaciers, with potentially "far-reaching implications" for global sea level rise.

Antarctica is like a fist with a skinny thumb stuck out toward South America. Pine Island Glacier is near the base of this thumb. Thwaites — known as the Doomsday Glacier because of the devastating impact its demise would have on global sea level rise — sits next to it.

Over the past few decades, these icy giants have experienced rapid melting driven by warming ocean water, especially at the point where they rise from the seabed and come afloat as ice shelves.

The new study, published last month in Nature Geosciences, is the first to systematically analyze how the ocean is melting ice shelves over just hours and days, rather than seasons or years, its authors say.

"We are looking at the ocean on very short 'weather-like' timescales, which is unusual for Antarctic studies," said Yoshihiro Nakayama, a study author and an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College.

The underwater storms they focused on — called submesoscales — are fast-changing, swirling ocean eddies.

"Think of these like little water twirls that spin around really fast, kind of like when you stir water in a cup," said study author Mattia Poinelli, an Earth system science researcher at the University of California, Irvine and a NASA research affiliate. However, in the ocean, these eddies are not small — they can span up to around 6 miles.

They form when warm and cold water meet. To return to the cup analogy, it’s the same principle as when you pour milk into a cup of coffee and see tiny swirls spinning around, mixing everything together.

The phenomenon is similar to how storms form in the atmosphere — when warm and cold air collide — and like atmospheric storms, they can be very dangerous.

The eddies spin up in the open ocean and race underneath ice shelves. Sandwiched between the complex, rough base of the ice shelf and the seafloor, the eddies churn up warmer water from deeper in the ocean, which enhances melting when it "hits" vulnerable ice, Nakayama said.

The scientists used computer models as well as real-world data from ocean instruments to analyze the impact of these underwater storms.

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Romans Used Volcanic Ash ‘Hot-Mix’ As Concrete

Roman concrete is often hailed as a major engineering feat. It has allowed the Empire’s monumental structures to remain standing for two thousand years.

Many of the buildings, bridges, and aqueducts built by Roman architects are still operational.

Now, a new discovery at a perfectly preserved Pompeii construction site has revealed the long-held secret behind this legendary longevity.

"We were blessed to be able to open this time capsule of a construction site and find piles of material ready to be used for the wall. With this paper, we wanted to clearly define a technology and associate it with the Roman period in the year 79 C.E.," said MIT Associate Professor Admir Masic, who led the research.

The team uncovered the Romans' "hot-mixing" technique.

In hot-mixing, lime fragments, volcanic ash, and other dry ingredients were mixed before water was added, generating heat.

The intense heat generated during the mixing trapped highly reactive lime as tiny, gravel-like "clasts" within the concrete. When cracks inevitably formed over thousands of years, these lime clasts dissolved, actively filling and repairing the damage.

In this new research, Masic’s team analyzed an exquisitely preserved ancient construction site in Pompeii, unearthed from the 79 C.E. eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The study involved analyzing samples from various construction stages: pre-mixed raw materials, a wall being built, completed walls (buttress and structural), and mortar used for repairs.

The Pompeii construction site provided the most definitive proof that the Romans employed hot-mixing for concrete.

Concrete samples from the site contained the characteristic self-healing lime clasts. The team also discovered intact quicklime fragments, pre-mixed with other dry ingredients, in a raw material pile, confirming the vital first step of the hot-mixing process.

"These results revealed that the Romans prepared their binding material by taking calcined limestone (quicklime), grinding them to a certain size, mixing it dry with volcanic ash, and then eventually adding water to create a cementing matrix," Masic noted.

The site also yielded a treasure trove of information about the volcanic ash itself.

Pumice particles, reacting with the concrete’s internal environment over time, created new mineral deposits, further strengthening the material.

This process significantly enhances the concrete’s long-term strength and its capacity for self-repair years after the monumental Roman structures were initially built.

"This material can heal itself over thousands of years, it is reactive, and it is highly dynamic. It has survived earthquakes and volcanoes. It has endured under the sea and survived degradation from the elements," said Masic.

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A New Recyclable Building Material That Absorbs CO2

Robots may not be pouring concrete yet, but biological chemistry just might, thanks to a new material that captures carbon instead of emitting it.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researchers have developed a carbon-negative building material that could reshape what sustainable construction looks like.

The team has created enzymatic structural material, or ESM, a durable, moldable, and recyclable substance produced through a low-energy, bioinspired process.

The breakthrough comes from work led by Nima Rahbar, the Ralph H. White Family Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering at WPI.

Rahbar’s team used an enzyme that transforms carbon dioxide into solid mineral particles. Those particles are then bound and cured under mild conditions, allowing the mixture to form structural components within hours.

That speed alone sets it apart. Traditional concrete demands high temperatures and weeks of curing. ESM forms far faster, and with a fraction of the environmental impact.

Rahbar says the global dependence on concrete urgently needs rethinking.

"Concrete is the most widely used construction material on the planet, and its production accounts for nearly 8 percent of global CO2 emissions," he said. He added that the new method "doesn’t just reduce emissions—it actually captures carbon."

According to the researchers, producing a single cubic meter of ESM sequesters more than 6 kilograms of CO2.

In contrast, the same amount of conventional concrete emits around 330 kilograms.

Beyond emissions, ESM’s ability to cure quickly, adjust in strength, and be recycled makes it a candidate for applications such as wall panels, roof decks, and modular building parts.

Its repairability could also reduce the long-term costs of upkeep, an often overlooked component of construction waste.

"If even a fraction of global construction shifts toward carbon-negative materials like ESM, the impact could be enormous," Rahbar said.

The potential applications stretch far beyond everyday buildings. Lightweight, fast-forming, and low-energy structural materials are valuable in disaster relief zones, where speed can shape recovery.

ESM could also play a role in affordable housing, climate-resilient infrastructure, and circular manufacturing systems that prioritize recycling over disposal.

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