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What’s inside nothing? This laser will rip it up to find out

Far from being empty, the vacuum of space could be brimming with mysterious virtual particles. We now have a machine powerful enough to tear it apart and see. By Jon Cartwright

IMAGINE a place far from here, deep in the emptiness of space. This point is light years from Earth, vastly distant from any nebula, star or lonely atom. We have many words for what you would find in such a place: a void, a vacuum, a lacuna. In fact, this nothingness is a sea of activity.

According to quantum theory, empty space is filled with virtual particles. They are always there, keeping reality ticking over smoothly. They are also completely undetectable – unless, that is, you have an incredibly powerful searchlight. “Usually when people talk about a vacuum, they mean something that’s empty,” says theorist Mattias Marklund at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. “But a laser can show you the vacuum’s secrets.”

To expose virtual particles, to transform them into something tangible, takes one serious laser. But that is exactly what physicists are putting the finishing touches to in Romania. Switched on for the first time a few months ago, this machine could not only reveal the truth about empty space, but also teach us about another big mystery: dark energy, the unknown entity accelerating the expansion of the cosmos. It is time to rip nothingness apart and see what is inside.

Exclusive: 600-million-year old blobs are earliest animals ever found

Fossils in China suggest that that some of the first animals in existence may have been carnivorous comb jellies similar to some species that still exist today

MOVE over, Dickinsonia. This 558-million-year-old creature was named the earliest known animal last year, but New Scientist can now exclusively reveal one that existed even earlier – by more than 40 million years. By Graham Lawton

This previously unknown animal comes from 600-million-year-old rocks in China and doesn’t have a name yet. While Dickinsonia was an Ediacaran – a primitive group of organisms that went extinct about 541 million years ago – the unnamed animal seems to have belonged to a group of animals that still exists today: comb jellies.

DeepMind AI thrashes human professionals at video game StarCraft II

Artificial intelligence has beaten humans at chess, Scrabble and Go – and now it has the better of us at real-time strategy video game StarCraft II. In two best-of-five series, DeepMind’s AI defeated two top-ranked professionals 5-0.

“This is of course an exciting moment for us,” said David Silver at DeepMind in a live stream watched by more than 55,000 people. “For the first time we saw an AI that was able to defeat a professional player.” By Chris Stokel-Walker

In StarCraft II, players have to control armies across a terrain. They have to build infrastructure, juggling short-term gain with long-term benefits. They also can’t always see the full map, so must act on hunches and intuition rather than firm action.

DeepMind created five versions of their AI, called AlphaStar, and trained them on footage of human games. The different AIs then played against each other in a league, with the leading AI accumulating the equivalent of 200 years of game experience.

With this, AlphaStar beat professional players Dario Wunsch and Grzegorz Komincz – ranked 44th and 13th in the world respectively.

“It looks like a big step forward,” says Sebastian Risi at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. We don’t yet know how much new innovation in the AI algorithms there is, but the way it’s trained seems to be key, he says.

Processing power

AlphaStar’s success came with some caveats: the AI played only on a single map, and using a single kind of player (there are three in the game). The professionals also had to contend with playing different versions of AlphaStar from match to match.

While the AlphaStar was playing on a single graphics processing unit, a computer chip found in many gaming computers, it was trained on 16 tensor processing units hosted in the Google cloud – processing power beyond the realms of many.

An experimental version of the AI did lose a game played live. This AlphaStar was trained for less time, was playing a different style, and crucially had its view restricted to the typical game view used by human players. The version that vanquished the pro gamers relied on a zoomed-out view of the entire map, but human players tend to use this less as it’s very difficult to perform many of the game’s moves in this view.

“I didn’t expect anything like this,” says Niels Justesen at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, “especially because previous attempts of learning StarCraft end-to-end have been very far from human level.”

Carbon dioxide levels will soar past the 410 ppm milestone in 2019

We will pass yet another unwelcome milestone this year. The average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is likely to rise by 2.8 parts per million to 411 ppm in 2019 – passing 410 ppm just a few years after first passing the 400 ppm mark.

That’s the forecast of Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK, who began making annual CO2 forecasts a few years ago to test our understanding of the factors involved. The Met Office began publicly releasing the forecasts last year.

The rise in atmospheric CO2 is the main cause of global heating. Before the industrial age began the CO2 concentration was around 280 ppm, and had not risen much higher for hundreds of thousands of years.

Now it is rising ever faster because human emissions of the gas continue to increase. The average annual increase has risen from less than 1 ppm a year in the 1950s, when measurements began, to well over 2 ppm today. By Michael Le Page

Clear trend

While the long term trend is remorselessly clear, the annual rise varies greatly from year to year depending on how the weather affects the balance between plants taking up CO2 as they grow and releasing it as they decay or burn. During El Nino years, for instance, there can be extensive droughts and wildfires, leading to big jumps in CO2 levels.

The biggest ever annual rise, of 3.4 ppm, occurred in 2016 during a strong El Nino. The forecast rise of 2.8 would also be one of the largest rises on record.

CO2 concentrations at any one place also vary over the year, peaking at the end of the winter and falling as plants grow in summer. Betts’ forecast is for the monthly average at Mauna Loa in Hawaii to peak at 415 ppm in May and drop back to 408 ppm in September before rising even higher in 2020.

Terrible drivers could teach autonomous cars how to avoid crashes

Backseat driving can irritate even the most stoic of human drivers, but for autonomous vehicles those nagging comments could lead to the perfect road technique.

The software that powers autonomous vehicles is often trained on hours of footage of people driving. This footage normally only contains human drivers at their best, but this could mean that if an autonomous vehicle is faced with a pileup ahead, for example, it will only know how to stick in lane rather than swerving out. By Richard Kemeny

Battling AI algorithm tested on a quantum computer for first time

Machine learning is growing ever more sophisticated, thanks to algorithms which pit two artificial intelligences against each other. These algorithms, known as generative adversarial networks (GANs), have already been used to create art, crack encryption codes, and produce uncannily real pictures of faces and animals. By Donna Lu

Researchers have now combined GANs with another hot technology: quantum computing. Luyan Sun at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and his colleagues have created a GAN on a quantum circuit.

Apollo astronauts might have found a piece of Earth on the moon

When the Apollo 14 astronauts brought moon rocks back to Earth, they may have also brought back a little piece of home. A bit of granite found on the moon could be the first evidence that rocks can be chipped off Earth and land elsewhere. It’s also one of the oldest Earth rocks we’ve ever found, here or elsewhere. By Leah Crane

Rocks get tossed into space from the moon and end up on Earth as meteorites all the time, so the same should be true in the other direction. “Earth’s been hit by a lot of very big things, and it’s conceivable that some of those impacts have ejected material far enough away that it’s been able to escape the clutches of Earth and make it to the moon,” says William Bottke at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado.

Jeremy Bellucci at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and his colleagues have found one such object, a tiny piece of granite in a moon rock brought back by NASA’s Apollo 14 astronauts.

The researchers evaluated the chemical makeup and physical properties of zircon crystals in this piece of granite to figure out how they formed. They found that the crystals formed in an environment much richer in oxygen than the moon, and at unusually low temperatures and high pressures for lunar rocks.

“If it formed on the moon, it must have formed 167 kilometres deep,” says Bellucci. Even a massive impact on the moon would not be able to dig up rocks from that far down, he says.

While it is possible that the rock formed under unusual conditions on the moon, Bellucci says that the simplest explanation is that the rock actually came from Earth because it is similar to rocks that form in magma here.

Bottke says the jury is still out. “What they’ve pointed out is an interesting inconsistency and they’ve pointed out a possible hypothesis, and now we get to figure out whether it holds water or not,” he says. That could involve looking in other lunar samples for rocks that have chemicals not found on the moon, which would mean they are unambiguously from Earth.

Journal reference: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2019.01.010

Because this meteorite from Earth is so old – it was likely formed about four billion years ago, making it one of the oldest rocks from our planet that we’ve ever found – it could teach us about what the surface of Earth was like shortly after it formed about 4.5 billion years ago. The moon has changed much less since it formed than Earth has, so it’s a perfect spot to store a time capsule from the early years of our home planet.

A meteorite hit the moon during Monday’s total lunar eclipse

Observers of Monday’s lunar eclipse were blessed with the first known sighting of a meteorite impact during such an event.

The so-called “super wolf blood moon” was eagerly watched by millions of people around the world, mostly via live streaming video. During the eclipse, some people noticed a tiny flash, a brief yellow-white speck, popping up on the lunar surface during the online broadcasts.

One Reddit user raised the possibility that this was a meteorite impact and others scoured eclipse footage for evidence of the event. A flash is visible in at least three different videos.

Jose Maria Madiedo at the University of Huelva in Spain has confirmed that the impact is genuine. For years, he and his colleagues have been hoping to observe a meteorite impact on the moon during a lunar eclipse, but the brightness of these events can make that very difficult – lunar meteorite impacts have been filmed before, but not during an eclipse. By Chris Baraniuk

On this occasion, Madiedo d\oubled the number of telescopes trained on different parts of the moon – from four to eight – in the hope of seeing an impact. “I had a feeling, this time will be the time it will happen,” says Madiedo.

After the eclipse, software automatically pinpointed a flash in imagery recorded by several of his telescopes. This helps to confirm that the flashes seen by live stream-watchers were not just optical anomalies on camera sensors.

“I was really, really happy when this happened,” says Madiedo. He notes that the flash was quite bright and it struck the moon at a moment when the eclipse was not overly luminous itself, perhaps making the strike easier to detect.

Although he has not yet formally calculated an estimate for the size of the space rock that collided with the moon, Madiedo thinks it probably weighed about two kilograms and was roughly the size of a football.

“The combination of a darkened surface and a lot of people watching made it much more likely that the flash of impact was seen – and it reminds us that the solar system is still a very dynamic place,” says Robert Massey at the Royal Astronomical Society.

Women could use their own uteruses as incubators for IVF embryos

By Clare Wilson

A woman’s own uterus could be used as an incubator for her IVF embryos before they are removed and chosen for pregnancy. There are early signs that the method could give higher pregnancy rates than standard IVF.

The new approach, developed by Swiss company Anecova, involves placing early embryos inside the womb in a tiny porous chamber to let them get nutrients and signalling chemicals, like hormones, from their mother. After five days, the chamber is …

Human or hybrid? The big debate over what a species really is

Humans once mated with Neanderthals so are we hybrids? How we see ourselves and the rest of nature is changing, raising the question of whether species even exist

By Colin Barras

BIOLOGY is a messy business. Witness these sage words: “It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists minds, when they speak of ‘species’… It all comes, I believe, from trying to define the undefinable.”

Strong stuff. And from a surprising source. Charles Darwin wrote those lines in a letter to fellow naturalist Joseph Hooker, just three years before the publication of On the Origin of Species. Darwin clearly had a problem with the word to which his name is now so intimately linked. It turns out he is not alone. Today, almost 160 years after he revolutionised biology, how to define a species is more problematic than ever.

You probably learned that a species is a group of individuals that can breed to produce fertile offspring, but this is just one of dozens of competing definitions. The lack of consensus on what a species is has big implications for how we think about the natural world and for our efforts to conserve it. But the problems go even deeper. Recent revelations about interbreeding between what some regard as separate species of ancient humans have left many of us wondering: who are “we”, who are “they” and are we actually all one and the same? In other words, how we define a species has become a question at the very heart of human identity. Perhaps it is time to rethink the whole concept.

Ways to keep your gaming system cool

Gaming hard and dominating opponents can raise your system’s temperature to higher than normal levels and put your system’s components at risk of overheating. Here are eight proven ways to keep your system cool, listed from easy to complex.

1. Close your system’s case

While it may seem counterintuitive, an open case doesn’t help regulate internal temperatures – it actually does the opposite and restricts them. A closed case helps your system remain cool because it reduces the impact of dust and debris on the cooling fans. Too much dust can make your fans slow down or quit working altogether, which is why it’s also important to clean the filters and dust out of your rig. Cases are designed for effective air handling, and with fans and proper intake, you can best maintain your system’s components.

2. Upgrade your CPU fan

Your CPU is one of the most sensitive and expensive components in your computer, and it has the highest potential to overheat. Most CPUs come preinstalled with lower-end fans that are engineered to cool your processor just enough to keep it running – and nothing more. For this reason, you’ll want to consider upgrading to a better CPU fan, which can help keep CPU temperatures down. Keep in mind, however, that your CPU fan can only cool to the lowest temperature in your case, regardless of how well-designed your CPU fan is.

3. Add a case fan

Upgrading your CPU fan is a start, but adding case fans can also be a big help. Since performance-enhancing memory and graphic cards generate a lot of heat, case fans can help increase airflow to your components by attaching to the front and back of your system. Most gamers install two case fans: one to move cool air into the PC, and another to move warm air out of the PC.

If you decide to add case fans, make sure that the intake and exhaust levels match. Why? If you install an 80mm fan in the front of your case and a 120mm fan in the back, the differential will create dead air and negative pressure, leading to an increased potential to overheat.

4. Add a memory cooling fan

Memory is one of the components that’s most likely to overheat, especially when overclocking. A cooling fan directed at the memory helps eliminate dead spots of airflow within your system’s memory area.

5. Check your system’s power supply fan

A PC’s power supply has an integrated fan. If you don’t have a case fan, the power supply fan is the only thing pushing hot air out of your system. If it’s not working properly, your system will heat up quickly. If your power supply fan isn’t working, replace it as soon as possible.

6. Get a water cooling kit

For gaming systems with high-end CPUs and overclocked components, often the fastest fans can’t keep up with increased temperatures. To solve this problem, many gamers opt for water cooling kits as a way to cool the CPU.

In a water cooling kit, a pump cycles cold water down to the CPU in self-contained tubes, then pumps the water out of the system where it can be cooled before returning to the CPU for additional cooling. If you’re comfortable performing a technical installation, water cooling kits are safe and relatively affordable. You can add life to your build and get extremely creative with water cooling, too.

When using a water cooling kit, make sure the memory is getting plenty of airflow from cooling fans since a water block does not move any air in this area.

How to delete your Instagram profile

If you rummage through Instagram’s settings using the Web interface, the only option you’re going to find is to temporarily disable your account. However, if you know the secret link, you can delete your account permanently. Here we’ll cover both options. Note that Instagram doesn’t allow you to delete or temporarily disable your account in the mobile app — you’ll need to use your browser and the Web interface for that.

Temporarily disabling your Instagram account using the web interface

Open your browser and go to Instagram.com.

Click your profile avatar in the top right corner of the screen.

Click Edit profile, next to your name.

Scroll down to find the Temporarily disable my account link, and click it.

Select the reason you are disabling the account, enter your password, and click the Temporarily Disable Account button.

Click Yes. Your account is now disabled, which means that your profile, comments and likes will be hidden until or unless you re-enable your account.

Permanently deleting your Instagram account using the Web interface

Open your browser and go to https://www.instagram.com/accounts/remove/request/permanent/.

Select the reason you are disabling the account, enter your password, and click the big red button that reads Permanently delete my account.

Click OK.

That’s it, your account has been deleted. Note that in this case there is no way to restore your account. So, if you have any doubts, choose the safer option and disable the account temporarily.

How to re-enable your Instagram account

If you chose not to permanently delete, but only to temporarily disable your account, you can re-enable it simply by logging in using either the app or the Web interface at Instagram.com.

Unlike Twitter, Instagram does not permanently disable your account after it’s been temporarily disabled for a certain amount of time, so do not worry that it will vanish if you forget about it for a while. However — and also unlike Twitter — Instagram does not allow you to re-enable your account right after you have temporarily disabled it. According to Instagram, it takes several hours to disable an account, so after you’ve done it, you’ll need to wait those several hours before re-enabling it.

How to back up your photos on Instagram

Getting rid of social networks is somewhat trendy now — ironically, sometimes it’s trending on social networks, as with #DeleteFacebook. Instagram is no exception. People may have very different reasons to delete their accounts, but the general idea of leaving the second biggest social network is quite popular nowadays.

Perhaps, speaking of irony, you found this post on social media as well.

My reason for dumping Instagram is a popular one: Scrolling through a feed of pictures of other people’s tasty food and beautiful vacation spots makes my life seem depressingly drab by comparison. After 5 minutes on Instagram, I feel like my life is boring (it’s not), so I have decided to leave the social media platform.

In this post, I’ll explain how to back up your Instagram profile and then temporarily disable it or leave the social network for good, permanently deleting your profile.

How to back up your Instagram profile

On the one hand, Instagram is rather generous when it comes to backups, letting you download not only all of your photos, but also your other information: likes, comments, contacts, captions for your photos (including hashtags), searches, settings, and more.

On the other hand, everything but photos will be packed in JSON files (JavaScript Object Notation). You can still read (more like parse) them using some simple text editing software such as Notepad, WordPad, or TextEdit, but the format isn’t exactly handy.

Anyway, the main reason for requesting an Instagram backup is probably to get photos. Good news: You’ll get them in JPEG format, sorted in folders by date. Bad news: They’ll be low-resolution — 1080×1080. That’s how Instagram stores them, so there’s no reason to expect anything different, but you should be prepared.

How to back up your Instagram using Android or iOS appTo download a backup of your Instagram profile on a smartphone or a tablet, you need to do the following:Open the Instagram app.Tap your profile icon in the bottom right corner.Tap the menu icon in the top right corner, then tap Settings, which is hidden in the bottom right corner of the menu.Scroll down to Privacy and Security and select Data Download.Accept the default or change the e-mail address for delivery.Confirm the e-mail address and type in your Instagram password.Wait up to 48 hours (more usually just a few minutes) for Instagram to e-mail you a link to download the archive with all of your data.Click the link, log in to the Instagram website with your login and password, and click Download data to start downloading the ZIP archive with your photos and other profile information.How to back up your Instagram using the Web interfaceGetting your Instagram profile backup in a Web browser is somewhat easier, especially if you’re using a desktop or a laptop. Follow these steps:Go to Instagram.com and log in.Click your profile avatar in the top right corner of the screen.Click Edit profile next to your name.In the menu on the left, select Privacy and Security.Scroll down and click Request Download under the Data Download subheading. Instagram will send you the e-mail with the link to the archive of your profile photos and other information.The rest is the same as above: Open the e-mail and click the link.Log in to the Instagram website.Click Download data to start downloading the ZIP archive with your photos and other information from your profile.Now that you’ve backed up your photos, you can delete your Instagram profile.

Tips to Keep Your Computer Safe

If you keep your anti-virus software updated and establish strong passwords for your online accounts, changing them on a regular basis, you’ve got all your bases covered. Or, do you? To make your online experience truly secure and keep those identity thieves at bay, read on for some lesser-known tips.

1. Check Your Firewall

Checking your firewall sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. If you own a Windows-based system, just go to your control panel and type “firewall” in the search box. If your firewall is “on” or “connected,” then you’re good to go. If you own a Mac, click the Apple icon on your toolbar, go to “system preferences,” then “security,” then “firewall.” Making sure you have a firewall in place can go a long way toward keeping criminals out. Make sure that you share some of your folders only on the home network. If you don’t really need your files to be visible to other machines, disable file and media sharing completely.

2. Back Up Your Data

Backing up your data protects you in the event of a computer crash or electrical outage or surge, like a lightning storm might produce. It also helps if you fall prey to the newer type of ransomware, which encrypts your sensitive data. You can do your back-up manually by transferring important documents to an external hard drive, or using a service like Carbonite. If you don’t have a significant amount of data to store, use a service like Dropbox, where you get 2GB of storage for free. Kaspersky PURE has backup functionality as well, including Dropbox integration.

3. Stay Away From Rogue Websites

Spotting a rogue website can be difficult, but there are a few things you can do to hone your skills. Look for a green lock in the address bar and the code prefix “https://” at the beginning of the URL while visiting banking sites, entering your credit card data or accessing your web mail. Be careful when shopping at a website that ships items from overseas, and don’t click on links sent to you in email messages, go directly to the website itself instead.

4. Avoid Deals That Are Too Good to Be True

If you see a deal for 90% off The Beatles Collection CD, it very well could be a knock off. Even worse, some sites are known to lure customers in with an amazing deal, and once they have your credit card information they’re never to be heard from again – your identity may be compromised and there’s not even a product to show for it. The simple rule of thumb here is: If it looks to good to be true then it probably is.

5. Never Divulge Sensitive Information

No matter what website you’re on be careful of the sensitive information you reveal. Although it’s pretty much common knowledge not to give out your social security number or credit card information unless you trust a website completely, you should be just as careful with your social media profiles as well. Revealing information as innocent as your pet’s name or mother’s maiden name could lead to identity theft, because you probably use the same data as the security question on some other website.

6. Avoid Opening Unknown Emails

Never open an email from an unknown or suspicious source, and definitely never open any attachments contained in them. You have to be careful of emails coming from people on your contact list as well, especially if the sender’s account has been hacked. If an email from someone you regularly communicate with has a suspicious link and unusual content, delete it and immediately alert this person that his or her account may have been compromised. This will help you prevent hacking and phishing scams where you may be a target.

A great way to give yourself an overall umbrella of protection is to use Kaspersky products. Its Internet security and anti-virus software protects you from malware, spyware, and viruses, and it comes with parental controls as well. Doing some of the legwork on your own certainly helps keep you safe, but use Kaspersky if you want to make sure all your bases are covered.

by David Bowen - a contributor who writes about technology, online security, and computer maintenance tips.

Easy Ways to Keep Your Computer Safe

We all love to use the computer and spend hours surfing the internet, whether for information, work or entertainment. However, we must be extra careful to keep our machine running smoothly and with data secure, keeping them away from unscrupulous individuals. So here are some basic but important tips to protect your computer. Check it out: 1st. Make sure your Firewall is working The firewall is an important software that is already installed on your computer, which protects you from hackers who try to steal important information such as personal details and passwords. Fortunately, Windows and Apple computers have a firewall that works very well.

2nd. Always Upgrade the Operating System Both Microsoft and Apple are constantly upgrading their operating systems to keep computers safe / Insurance. Windows has automatic updates, and Apple updates can be done with a few clicks.

3rd. Install Antivirus It is essential to have an antivirus on any computer. This important software protects your machine from intruders that try to enter your system through unauthorized software downloads or codes. This applies a lot more to Windows than MacOS, because a lot of the malicious programs that steal information are made to invade Windows. We rarely see information about viruses and malware that invade Apple computers. It is believed that these malicious software are made for Windows by having a much larger number of Microsoft system users compared to Apple users. If you are in doubt about which to install, the most popular are AVG and Panda, which have free download options and have a good reputation in the market. The ideal is to download on the official websites of each of them.

Why a postdoc might not advance your career

Two studies reiterate that very few postdoctoral researchers land academic posts — and suggest that the skills postdocs learn are not sought by employers outside academia.

Of the 97 postdocs interviewed in 2016 and early 2017 for the Research Policy paper, 84 had originally planned to go on to an academic career. At the time of publication, five of those postdocs, or 6%, had in fact landed tenure-track positions, but many of the rest will eventually have to pursue other options, says lead author Christopher Hayter, a higher-education researcher at Arizona State University in Tempe. “It’s shocking when a postdoc at a top research institution can’t find a job in academia,” he says, “but that’s par for the course.”

Hayter’s interviews with industry representatives for the study underscored another problem: postdocs can have a hard time competing for non-academic jobs. One potential employer interviewed said that postdocs “have all the academic science skills you don’t need, and none of the organizational skills that you do”.

To partly remedy that mismatch, Hayter suggests that more universities could offer programmes that teach postdocs entrepreneurial skills. “They may not decide that they want to be entrepreneurs, but it would at least open their minds to other possibilities,” he says.

‘Little Foot’ hominin emerges from stone after millions of years

Scientists are starting to piece together the evolution of a 3.67 million-year-old early human who may have been among the first to walk like we do.

A species first

Little Foot’s skull bones and teeth are so unusual that Clarke and his colleagues have categorized her as a distinct species4. They chose not to give this species a new name, but instead designate it as Australopithecus prometheus.

A. prometheus was suggested in 1948 on the basis of a skull fragment found roughly 250 kilometres north of Johannesburg6, but quickly fell out of fashion when researchers decided it was simply an unusual representative of an already recognized species, called A. africanus. Clarke doesn’t think that Little Foot belongs to A. africanus, and says the simplest option is to resurrect the name A. prometheus for Little Foot and a handful of similar fossils.

The preprint also suggests that A. prometheus is potentially an ancestor of a group of hominins called Paranthropus4, which co-existed with early Homo species for about a million years.

Lee Berger, an archaeologist also at Wits University who was not involved in the excavations, but is working on publications about Little Foot, disagrees with the decision to resurrect A. prometheus. In a paper that is scheduled to be published on 10 December in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Berger argues that the name A. prometheus was never properly defined.

He hasn’t yet decided whether Little Foot constitutes a distinct species — but if she does, Berger thinks a new name is needed.

Berger adds he is disappointed by the lack of solid information in the papers on the age and locomotion findings — he would have liked to have seen detailed measurements of the fossil bones, for instance. “There’s no data — there are almost no measurements of the fossils,” he says. Berger hopes to provide those data in his own publications — although he is still at an early stage of his analysis.

Crompton responds that the locomotion paper is essentially an overview that attempts to reconstruct how Little Foot moved by drawing on the solid data given in the other papers. More-detailed data can be found in the team’s other papers, he says.

Gabriele Macho, a biological anthropologist at the University of Oxford, UK, agrees that the locomotion paper is light on solid data, but notes that the team acknowledges that it is a work in progress.

She looks forward to see more-detailed papers in the future. “The positive thing is this skeleton is tremendously important,” she says. “No question about it.”

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