5,300-Year-Old Otzi The Iceman Yields Oldest Known Human Blood 

Researchers have found blood cells in the famous 5,300-year-old mummy found by hikers in the Austrian Alps years ago. A detailed analysis of his remains has also revealed that he would have  died a quick death from his wounds. Ötzi the Iceman’s blood is the oldest known to science.

Ötzi was a victim of homicide. Researchers say he suffered a quick, violent death that was over quickly but may not have been painless, National Geographic reports. He had an arrow wound, but his death probably came from a blow to the back of his head.

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Meet T. Rex’s Vegetarian Cousin: Chilesaurus 

Therapods, a group of dinosaurs that include the likes of Tyrannosaurs and Velociraptors, are typically viewed as ferocious predators, but a team of researchers has reportedly discovered the vegetarian cousin of these vicious meat-eaters at a site in southern Chile.

Fernando Novas of the Argentinian Museum of Natural Sciences and his colleagues reported the discovery in Monday’s edition of the journal Nature, explaining that the bizarre, enigmatic lizard lived during the Late Jurassic period and telling National Geographic that it looked like a strange mash-up of therapods, saurpods, ornithischians, and basal crocodyliforms.

The creature was named Chilesaurus diegosuarezi in honor of the son of the geologist who first discovered the bones, and Novas told Nat Geo that his team initially believed it was just a typical Jurassic-era dinosaur. They soon discovered that the specimen was anything but typical.

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Debate Continues Over Whether Stone Age People Were Peaceful Or Warlike 

There is a debate among archaeologists, anthropologists and psychologists about whether prehistoric people were violent and warlike or whether there was widespread peace in prehistory. A new archaeological study has found that Neolithic cave paintings in eastern Spain along the Mediterranean Sea show some images of violence, but such art from the period is not universal.

“The portrayal of violence in Levantine paintings is restricted to just a few examples and types of violent acts: battles; ambushes; execution squads; fighting or combat; and wounded archers,” writes Professor Esther Lòpez-Montalvo of the University of Toulouse, France, in the April 2015 issue of the journal Antiquity. “There are also other representations of violence and death that may be considered exceptional by their uniqueness.”

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How Monster Mosasaurs Gave Birth 

They weren’t in the delivery room, but researchers at Yale University and the University of Toronto have discovered a new birth story for a gigantic marine lizard that once roamed the oceans.

Thanks to recently identified specimens at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, paleontologists now believe that mighty mosasaurs — which could grow to 50 feet long — gave birth to their young in the open ocean, not on or near shore.

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