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Advances in the analysis of ancient DNA have upended the scientific community’s view of how human populations migrated both into and around the North and South American continents, illustrating the rapid and complex movement of humanity into the western hemisphere towards the end of the last ice age. Aside from unraveling more of the mystery of the origins of the Americas’ first inhabitants, the studies also aided in the repatriation of a long-lost ancestor of a Native American tribe in Nevada, and the discovery of an individual with DNA from Australia that lived on the east coast of modern-day Brazil — over 10,000 years ago.
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A new analysis of a small rock called the Hypatia Stone, presumed to be a fragment from a comet, reveals that it might either be from outside the Solar System, or older than the Sun itself.

Discovered in 1996 in the same region of the Eastern Sahara as the odd phenomenon known as Libyan Desert glass, a 2013 analysis of the Hypatia Stone discovered that it was of extraterrestrial origin, and was hypothesized to be a fragment of a cometary nucleus. However, a new analysis has found that the stone’s odd atomic composition doesn’t even match any known meteorite samples, implying that it is either from outside the Solar System, or it predates the formation of the Solar System itself.
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