Every part of the human body has evolved from that of our ancient ancestors - except one

Man's appearance may have changed drastically over the millennia, but one part of our anatomy has stayed very much the same - our feet.

Analysis of the bones of one of our ancient cousins, Homo naledi, revealed striking similarities with modern day man.

The huge haul - as yet undated - were discovered in a small, dark chamber at the back of the Rising Star Cave in South Africa.

The announcement sparked joy among scientists as it filled in another piece of our species' evolutionary history.

Now a team of anthropologists from Dartmouth College have carried out a painstaking analysis of the 1,600 fossil fragments , of which 107 are foot bones.

These include one nearly-complete adult foot and parts thought to have belonged to two other adults and a juvenile.

A study detailing the results of the analysis is to be published in the journal Nature Communications today.

Lead author Doctor Jeremy DeSilva said his team found that the "foot and ankle are very much like those of modern humans in form, structure and probable function".

He added: "It was a striding long-distance traveller with an arched foot and a non-grasping big toe with subtle differences from humans today in having somewhat more curved toes and a reduced arch.

"It looks like what the foot of Homo erectus might look like.

"Homo erectus is the earliest human with body proportions similar to our own, with long legs, short arms.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/every-part-human-body-evolved-6583916

The Universe is expanding Faster than the scientists thought!

The universe is expanding 5 to 9 percent faster than astronomers had thought, a new study suggests.

"This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 percent of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter and dark radiation," study leader Adam Riess, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in a statement.

Riess — who shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating — and his colleagues used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study 2,400 Cepheid stars and 300 Type Ia supernovas.

http://www.space.com/33061-universe-expanding-faster-than-thought-hubble.html

 - See more at: http://www.space.com/33061-universe-expanding-faster-than-thought-hubble.html#sthash.ZEnvpo8I.dpuf

'Assassin' Captures a New Supernova, and Photographers Take Aim - See more at: http://www.space.com/33042-assassin-new-supernova-amateur-astronomer-photos.html#sthash.7ao6672m.dpuf

A star exploded over the weekend. Or rather, the exploding star became visible to telescopes on Earth, and was spotted by a dedicated search for these stellar outbursts. 

In the galaxy M66, about 35 million light-years from Earth, according to NASA, a star somewhere between 8 and 50 times the mass of the sun reached the end of its fuel supply. Without its internal furnace running, the star begins to implode. The in-falling material, combined with an increasingly hot core, caused the dying star to explode into a Type II supernova. 

This particular supernova was spotted by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN, which is pronounced "assassin"). Using a total of eight telescopes in two different locations, ASAS-SN surveys the sky for the sudden appearance of very bright spots of light, which could be supernovas.

- See more at: http://www.space.com/33042-assassin-new-supernova-amateur-astronomer-photos.html#sthash.7ao6672m.dpuf

http://www.space.com/33042-assassin-new-supernova-amateur-astronomer-photos.html