“Other authors point out that symbolic and utilitarian functions are intimately linked among traditional populations,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues, “and that, as a result, it would have been difficult for a systematic use of ocher powders to exist over a long period of time without a symbolic dimension being rather quickly attached to it.”

Tens of thousands of years later, without direct evidence, all we can do is speculate. Which, to be fair, is tremendously interesting as long as it comes with the right caveats and understanding of its limitations. But there are a growing number of places and times where we do have direct evidence that Neanderthals were using color to signal something meaningful to each other, even if we don’t know whether the meaning was “Og is the deputy chief of all the people east of the river,” “Zogg belongs to the people who live in this valley, not that one,” or “Grogg really likes yellow.”

As D’Errico and his colleagues point out, that meaning probably varied from place to place, just as it does today. In most of Europe, white is the traditional color for a wedding, but in China, white is for funerals. Millennial gray is in its heyday in the US (send help), but elsewhere in the world, brighter colors are in vogue. And in some parts of Eurasia, Neanderthals seemed to prefer manganese-based black pigments, while elsewhere (like Crimea), reds and yellows were all the rage.

“This variability suggests different cultural trajectories, possibly involving community-level traditions, long-distance exchanges, or local innovation,” wrote D’Errico and his colleagues.

The real takeaway here is twofold: First, evidence continues to pile up that Neanderthals were just as smart, innovative, and creative as our species, and they’d developed their own nuanced culture and sophisticated tools long before the first Homo sapiens ventured into Eurasia. And second, the impulse to make art is rooted deep in our family tree.

Science Advances, 2025.  DOI: <a href="%22https://dx.doi.org/
10.1126/sciadv.adx4722  (About DOIs).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/crimean-neanderthals-made-stone-age-crayons-from-ocher-50000-years-ago/

For four decades, a frequently acrimonious debate has raged in paleontological circles about the correct taxonomy for a handful of rare fossil specimens. One faction insisted the fossils were juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex; the other argued that they represented a new species dubbed Nanotyrannus lancensis. Now, paleontologists believe they have settled the debate once and for all due to a new analysis of a well-preserved fossil.

The verdict: It is indeed a new species, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. The authors also reclassified another specimen as a second new species, distinct from N. lancensis. In short, Nanotyrannus is a valid taxon and contains two species.

“This fossil doesn’t just settle the debate,” said Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and head of paleontology at North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. “It flips decades of T. rex research on its head.” That’s because paleontologists have relied on such fossils to model the growth and behavior of T. rex. The new findings suggest that there could have been multiple tyrannosaur species and that paleontologists have been underestimating the diversity of dinosaurs from this period.

Our story begins in 1942, when the fossilized skull of a Nanotyrannus, nicknamed Chomper, was excavated in Montana by a Cleveland Museum of Natural History expedition. Originally, paleontologists thought it belonged to a Gorgosaurus, but a 1965 paper challenged that identification and argued that the skull belonged to a juvenile T. rex. It wasn’t until 1988 that scientists proposed that the skull was actually that of a new species, Nanotyrannus. It’s been a constant back-and-forth ever since.

As recently as 2020, a highly influential paper claimed that Nanotyrannus was definitively a juvenile T. Rex. Yet a substantial number of paleontologists still believed it should be classified as a distinct species. A January 2024 paper, for instance, came down firmly on the Nanotyrannus side of the debate. Co-authors Nicholas Longrich of the University of Bath and Evan Saitta of the University of Chicago measured the growth rings in Nanotyrannus bones and concluded the animals were nearly fully grown.

Dueling dinosaurs

Furthermore, there was no evidence of hybrid fossils combining features of both Nanotyrannus and T. rex, which one would expect if the former were a juvenile version of the latter. Longrich and Saitta had also discovered a skull bone, archived in a San Francisco museum, that did belong to a juvenile T. rex, and they were able to do an anatomical comparison. They argued that Nanotyrannus had a lighter build, longer limbs, and larger arms than a T. rex and likely was smaller, faster, and more agile.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/nanotyrannus-species-confirmed-its-not-just-a-baby-t-rex/

Hurricane Melissa made landfall in southwestern Jamaica, near New Hope, on Tuesday at 1 pm ET with staggeringly powerful sustained winds of 185 mph.

In the National Hurricane Center update noting the precise landfall time and location, specialist Larry Kelly characterized Melissa as an “extremely dangerous and life-threatening” hurricane. Melissa is bringing very heavy rainfall, damaging surge, and destructive winds to the small Caribbean island that is home to about 3 million people.

The effects on the island are sure to be catastrophic and prolonged.

A record-breaking hurricane by any measure

By any measure, Melissa is an extraordinary and catastrophic storm.

By strengthening overnight and then maintaining its incredible intensity of 185 mph, Melissa has tied the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 as the most powerful hurricane to strike a landmass in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the United States, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands.

Melissa also tied the Labor Day storm, which struck the Florida Keys, as the most intense storm at landfall, measured by central pressure at 892 millibars.

Overall, Melissa is tied for the second strongest hurricane, measured by winds, ever observed in the Atlantic basin, behind only Hurricane Allen and its 190 mph winds in 1980. Only Hurricane Wilma (882 millibars) and Gilbert (888 millibars) have recorded lower pressures at sea.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/melissa-strikes-jamaica-tied-as-most-powerful-atlantic-storm-to-come-ashore/

In essence, it’s a type of symmetry breaking. Any two processes that act as activator and inhibitor will produce periodic patterns and can be modeled using Turing’s diffusion function. The challenge is moving from Turing’s admittedly simplified model to pinpointing the precise mechanisms serving in the activator and inhibitor roles.

This is especially challenging in biology. Per the authors of this latest paper, the classical approach to a Turing mechanism balances reaction and diffusion using a single length scale, but biological patterns often incorporate multiscale structures, grain-like textures, or certain inherent imperfections. And the resulting patterns are often much blurrier than those found in nature.

Can you say “diffusiopherosis”?

In 2023, UCB biochemical engineers Ankur Gupta and Benjamin Alessio developed a new model that added diffusiopherosis into the mix. It’s a process by which colloids are transported via differences in solute concentration gradients—the same process by which soap diffuses out of laundry in water, dragging particles of dirt out of the fabric. Gupta and Alessio successfully used their new model to simulate the distinctive hexagon pattern (alternating purple and black) on the ornate boxfish, native to Australia, achieving much sharper outlines than the model originally proposed by Turing.

The problem was that the simulations produced patterns that were too perfect: hexagons that were all the same size and shape and an identical distance apart. Animal patterns in nature, by contrast, are never perfectly uniform. So Gupta and his UCB co-author on this latest paper, Siamak Mirfendereski, figured out how to tweak the model to get the pattern outputs they desired. All they had to do was define specific sizes for individual cells. For instance, larger cells create thicker outlines, and when they cluster, they produce broader patterns. And sometimes the cells jam up and break up a stripe. Their revised simulations produced patterns and textures very similar to those found in nature.

“Imperfections are everywhere in nature,” said Gupta. “We proposed a simple idea that can explain how cells assemble to create these variations. We are drawing inspiration from the imperfect beauty of [a] natural system and hope to harness these imperfections for new kinds of functionality in the future.” Possible future applications include “smart” camouflage fabrics that can change color to better blend with the surrounding environment, or more effective targeted drug delivery systems.

Matter, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2025.102513 (About DOIs).

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/why-imperfection-could-be-key-to-turing-patterns-in-nature/

The sole bright spot is that, as of Monday, the core of the storm’s strongest winds remains fairly small. Based on recent data, its hurricane-force winds only extend about 25 miles from the center. Unfortunately, Melissa will make a direct hit on Jamaica, with the island’s capital city of Kingston to the right of the center, where winds and surge will be greatest.

Beyond Jamaica, Melissa will likely be one of the strongest hurricanes on record to hit Cuba. Melissa will impact the eastern half of the island on Tuesday night, bringing the trifecta of heavy rainfall, damaging winds, and storm surge. The storm also poses lesser threats to Hispaniola, the Bahamas, and potentially Bermuda down the line. There will be no impacts in the United States.

A sneakily strong season

Most US coastal residents will consider this Atlantic season, which officially ends in a little more than a month, to be fairly quiet. There have been relatively few direct impacts to the United States from named storms.

One can see the signatures of Erin, Humberto, and Melissa in this chart of Accumulated Cyclone Energy for 2025.

Credit: CyclonicWx.com

But this season has been sneakily strong. Melissa is just the 45th storm since 1851 to reach Category 5 status, as defined as having sustained winds of 157 mph or greater. Already this year, Erin and Humberto reached Category 5 status, and now Melissa is the third such hurricane. Fortunately, the former two storms posed minimal threat to land.

Before this year, there had only ever been one season with three Category 5 hurricanes on record: 2005, which featured three storms that all impacted US Gulf states and had their names retired, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/melissa-set-to-be-the-strongest-hurricane-to-ever-strike-jamaica/

For millennia, some of the world’s largest filter-feeding whales, including humpbacks, fin whales, and blue whales, have undertaken some of the longest migrations on earth to travel between their warm breeding grounds in the tropics to nutrient-rich feeding destinations in the poles each year.

“Nature has finely tuned these journeys, guided by memory and environmental cues that tell whales when to move and where to go,” said Trisha Atwood, an ecologist and associate professor at Utah State University’s Quinney College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. But, she said, climate change is “scrambling these signals,” forcing the marine mammals to veer off course. And they’re not alone.

Earlier this year, Atwood joined more than 70 other scientists to discuss the global impacts of climate change on migratory species in a workshop convened by the United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals. The organization monitors and protects more than 1,000 species that cross borders in search of food, mates, and favorable conditions to nurture their offspring.

More than 20 percent of these species are on the brink of extinction. It was the first time the convention had gathered for such a purpose, and their findings, published this month in a report, were alarming.

“Almost no migratory species is untouched by climate change,” Atwood said in an email to Inside Climate News.

From whales and dolphins, to arctic shorebirds and elephants, all are affected by rising temperatures, extreme weather, and shifting ecosystems, which are disrupting migratory routes and reshaping critical habitats across the planet.

Asian elephants, for instance, are being driven to higher ground and closer to human settlements as they search for food and water amidst intensifying droughts, fueling more frequent human-elephant conflicts, the report found. Shorebirds are reaching their Arctic breeding grounds out of sync with the insect blooms their chicks depend on to survive.

The seagrass meadows that migrating sea turtles and dugongs feed on are disappearing due to warmer waters, cyclones, and sea level rise, according to the report. To date, around 30 percent of the world’s known seagrass beds have been lost, threatening not only the animals that depend on them, but also humans. These vital ecosystems store around 20 percent of the world’s oceanic carbon, in addition to supporting fisheries and protecting coastlines.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/whale-and-dolphin-migrations-are-being-disrupted-by-climate-change/

This brings us to the technique being used here. In this case, the researchers placed the antibody genes in a circular loop of DNA called a plasmid. This is enough to ensure that the DNA doesn’t get digested immediately and to get the antibody genes made into proteins. But it does nothing to help get the DNA inside of cells.

The research team, a mixture of people from a biotech company and academic labs, used a commercial injection setup that mixes the injection of the DNA with short pulses of electricity. The electricity disrupts the cell membrane, allowing the plasmid DNA to make it inside cells. Based on animal testing, doing this in muscle cells is enough to turn the muscles into factories producing lots of broadly neutralizing antibodies.

The new study was meant to test the safety of doing that in humans. The team recruited 44 participants, testing various doses of two antibody-producing plasmids and injection schedules. All but four of the subjects completed the study; three of those who dropped out had all been testing a routine with the electric pulses happening very quickly, which turned out to be unpleasant. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the production of antibodies.

While there were a lot of adverse reactions, most of these were associated with the injection itself: muscle pain at the site, a scab forming afterward, and a reddening of the skin. The worst problem appeared to be a single case of moderate muscle pain that persisted for a couple of days.

In all but one volunteer, the injection resulted in stable production of the two antibodies for at least 72 weeks following the injection; the single exception only made one of the two. That’s “at least” 72 weeks because that’s when they stopped testing—there was no indication that levels were dropping at this point. Injecting more DNA led to more variability in the amount of antibody produced, but that amount quickly maxed out. More total injections also boosted the level of antibody production. But even the minimal procedure—two injections of the lowest concentration tested—resulted in significant and stable antibodies.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/dna-and-jolts-of-electricity-get-people-to-make-optimal-antibodies/

There are three species of bats that eat birds. We know that because we have found feathers and other avian remains in their feces. What we didn’t know was how exactly they hunt birds, which are quite a bit heavier, faster, and stronger than the insects bats usually dine on.

To find out, Elena Tena, a biologist at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, and her colleagues attached ultra-light sensors to Nyctalus Iasiopterus, the largest bats in Europe. What they found was jaw-droppingly brutal.

Inconspicuous interceptors

Nyctalus Iasiopterus, otherwise known as greater noctule bats, have a wingspan of about 45 centimeters. They have reddish-brown or chestnut fur with a slightly paler underside, and usually weigh around 40 to 60 grams. Despite that minimal weight, they are the largest of the three bat species known to eat birds, so the key challenge in getting a glimpse into the way they hunt was finding sensors light enough to not impede the bats’ flight.

Cameras, which are the usual go-to sensor, were out of the question. “Bats hunt at night, so you’d need night vision cameras, which together with batteries are too heavy for a bat to carry. Our sensors had to weigh below 10 percent of the weight of the bat—four to six grams,” Tena explained.

Tena and her team explored several alternative approaches throughout the last decade, including watching the bats from the ground or using military-grade radars. But even then, catching the hunting bats red-handed remained impossible.

In recent years, the technology and miniaturization finally caught up with Tena’s needs, and the team found the right sensors for the job and attached them to 14 greater noctule bats over the course of two years. The tags used in the study weighed around four grams, could run for several hours, and registered sound, altitude, and acceleration. This gave Tena and her colleagues a detailed picture of the bats’ behavior in the night sky. The recordings included both ambient environmental sounds and the ultra-frequency bursts bats use for echolocation. Combining altitude with accelerometer readouts enabled scientists to trace the bats’ movements through all their fast-paced turns, dives, and maneuvers.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/tracking-bats-as-they-hunt-birds-in-the-skies-above-europe/

State-of-the-art methodologies

Rascovan and his co-authors note in their paper that the 2006 study relied upon outdated PCR-based technologies for its DNA analysis. As for the virus family detected in the Kalingrad dental pulp, they argue that those viruses are both ubiquitous and usually asymptomatic in humans—and thus are unlikely to be the primary culprits for the diseases that wiped out the French army. So Rascovan’s team decided to use current state-of-the-art DNA methodologies to re-analyze a different set of remains of Napoleonic soldiers who died in Vilnius.

“In most ancient human remains, pathogen DNA is extremely fragmented and only present in very low quantities, which makes it very difficult to obtain whole genomes,” said Rascovan. “So we need methods capable of unambiguously identifying infectious agents from these weak signals, and sometimes even pinpointing lineages, to explore the pathogenic diversity of the past.”

An 1812 report from one of Napoleon’s physicians, J.R.L. de Kirckhoff, specifically noted typhus, dysentery, and diarrhea after the soldiers arrived in Vilnius, which he attributed to large barrels of salted beets the starving troops consumed, “greatly upsetting us and strongly irritating the intestinal tract.” Rascovan et al. note that such symptoms could accompany any number of conditions or diseases common to 19th-century Europe. “Even today, two centuries later, it would still be impossible to perform a differential diagnosis between typhus, typhoid, or paratyphoid fever based solely on the symptoms or the testimonies of survivors,” the authors wrote.

Over 3,200 individual remains, almost all men between the ages of 20 and 50, were excavated from the mass grave at Vilnius. Rascovan et al. focused on 13 teeth from 13 different individuals. To compensate for the degraded nature of the 200-year-old genome fragments, co-authors at the University of Tartu in Estonia helped develop a multistep authentication method to more accurately identify pathogens in the samples. In some cases, they were even able to identify a specific lineage.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/dna-analysis-reveals-likely-pathogens-that-killed-napoleons-army/

Aiming for LEO … This will be the first flight of Innospace’s HANBIT-Nano launch vehicle, standing roughly 72 feet (22 meters) tall with a diameter of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters). The two-stage rocket is powered by hybrid propulsion, consuming a mixture of paraffin and liquid oxygen. For its debut flight, the rocket will target an orbit about 300 kilometers (186 miles) high with a batch of small satellites from customers in South Korea, Brazil, and India. According to Innospace, HANBIT-Nano can lift about 200 pounds (90 kilograms) of payload into orbit.

A new record for rocket reuse. SpaceX’s launch of a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on October 19 set a new record for reusable rockets, Ars reports. It marked the 31st launch of the company’s most-flown Falcon 9 booster. The rocket landed on SpaceX’s recovery ship in the Atlantic Ocean to be returned to Florida for a 32nd flight. Several more rockets in SpaceX’s inventory are nearing their 30th launch. In all, SpaceX has more than 20 Falcon 9 boosters in its fleet on both the East and West Coasts. SpaceX engineers are now certifying the Falcon 9 boosters for up to 40 flights apiece.

10,000 and counting … SpaceX’s two launches last weekend weren’t just noteworthy for Falcon 9 lore. Hours after setting the new booster reuse record, SpaceX deployed a batch of 28 Starlink satellites from a different rocket after lifting off from California. This mission propelled SpaceX’s Starlink program past a notable milestone. With the satellites added to the constellation on Sunday, the company has delivered more than 10,000 mass-produced Starlink spacecraft to low-Earth orbit. The exact figure stands at 10,006 satellites, according to a tabulation by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who expertly tracks comings and goings between Earth and space. About 8,700 of these Starlink satellites are still in orbit, with SpaceX adding more every week.

China is on the cusp of something big. Launch startup LandSpace is in the final stages of preparations for the first flight of its Zhuque-3 rocket and a potentially landmark mission for China, Space News reports. LandSpace said it completed the first phase of the Zhuque-3 rocket’s inaugural launch campaign this week. The Zhuque-3 is the largest commercial rocket developed to date in China, nearly matching the size and performance of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, with nine first stage engines and a single upper stage engine. One key difference is that the Zhuque-3 burns methane fuel, while Falcon 9’s engines consume kerosene. Most notably, LandSpace will attempt to land the rocket’s first stage booster at a location downrange from the launch site, similar to the way SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters on drone ships at sea. Zhuque-3’s first stage will aim for a land-based site in an experiment that could pave the way for LandSpace to reuse rockets in the future.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/rocket-report-china-tests-falcon-9-lookalike-nasas-moon-rocket-fully-stacked/