Science news this week: An enigmatic human relative, dark matter discovery and mysterious lights in the sky during nuclear weapons tests

This week’s biggest science news took us on a journey through human prehistory, with the discovery that the mysterious, 3.4 million-year-old "Burtele foot" in Ethiopia may have belonged to an enigmatic human relative who lived at the same time as our ancestor "Lucy."

This study is a significant one for many reasons, not only showing differences in how offshoots of humanity’s family tree walked (with the Burtele foot being adapted for life in trees), but also having the potential to rewrite assumptions about who our ancestors really were.

And on the darker and stranger sides of hominin history, we also covered a case of gruesome prehistoric cannibalism, likely among neanderthals, and the interbreeding of modern humans with archaic humans such as 'hobbits'.

A hominid-foot hop forward in time and over the ocean to the U.S.-Mexico border also brought us news of stunning rock art, starting 6,000 years ago and spanning roughly 175 generations, that depicts Indigenous Americans’ conception of the universe. On display are creation stories, complex calendars and human-like figures stretched to the length of giant dachshunds.

Meanwhile in Ancient Egypt, the discovery of hundreds of misplaced funerary figurines suggests a pharaoh moved another ruler's body and stole his tomb. And in medieval Spain, a knight with an unusually elongated head likely had Crouzon syndrome that causes the premature fusing of skull bones, archaeologists have discovered.

Dark matter finally detected?

Did a NASA telescope really 'see' dark matter? Strange gamma-rays spark bold claims, but scientists urge caution

Dark matter is one of the universe's most mysterious components. It makes up 27% of our universe, with ordinary matter accounting for only 5%, but because it does not interact with light, it can't be detected directly.

Yet this week, a new study claimed to have spotted characteristic gamma-ray flashes that could be a smoking gun for the mysterious substance. The potential origin comes from hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, which are 500 times heavier than protons and the prime candidates for dark matter.

Much more work is needed to rule out other explanations, so astronomers are responding to the claims with characteristic caution. But if they can finally unveil the mass-ter of disguise, it will offer a major boost for our best theory of the universe.

Discover more space news

—How dangerous are interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS?

—Marooned no more! Stranded Chinese astronauts finally have a way home following launch of unmanned 'lifeboat'

—RIP 'other ATLAS': Watch the doomed comet explode into pieces in incredible new images

Life's Little Mysteries

Did Neanderthals have religious beliefs?

We know a handful of details about Neanderthals’ enigmatic lives — they buried their dead, kept animal skulls, made rock art and etched drawings onto bear bones. But do these proclivities for ritualistic practices, hinting at a spiritual side, mean our ancient relatives had religious beliefs?

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Did China back the world’s first AI cyber attack?

Experts divided over claim that Chinese hackers launched world-first AI-powered cyber attack — but that's not what they're really worried about

The artificial intelligence lab Anthropic is known for its dramatic claims about its chatbot, Claude's capabilities. So when company representatives announced this month that their software had been hijacked by a Chinese state-sponsored espionage group to plan and execute a 90% autonomous cyber espionage attack on 30 worldwide organizations, we were a little skeptical.

Live Science chased up the claims with experts in a report revealing that even if the automation narrative is exaggerated, they’re now very concerned about the abilities of AI models to accelerate widespread hacking attempts.

Discover more technology news

—Popular AI chatbots have an alarming encryption flaw — meaning hackers may have easily intercepted messages

—New semiconductor could allow classical and quantum computing on the same chip, thanks to superconductivity breakthrough

—Switching off AI's ability to lie makes it more likely to claim it's conscious, eerie study finds

Also in science news this week

—Scientists pull up first riches from 'Holy Grail of shipwrecks' that sank off Colombia in 1708

—Chinese particle detector tests 'portal to physics beyond the Standard Model' — with outstanding results

—Two stars spiraling toward catastrophe are putting Einstein's gravity to the test

—'Like a sudden bomb': See photos from space of Ethiopian volcano erupting for first time in 12,000 years

Beyond the headlines

'No easy explanation': Scientists are debating a 70-year-old UFO mystery as new images come to light

Over 70 years ago and before humanity had launched the first satellite, astronomers captured several bizarre star-like flashes that appeared in the sky and vanished within an hour.

Now, as new researchers revisit the photographic plates that captured those mysterious images, Live Science contributor Sharmila Kuthunur wrote a fascinating story on their supposed correlation with Cold War nuclear weapons tests and UFO reports. Could the three phenomena be connected? Here’s how researchers are trying to find out.

Something for the weekend

If you're looking for something a little longer to read over the weekend, here are some of the best interviews, opinion pieces and science histories published this week.

—The evolution of life on Earth 'almost predictably' led to human intelligence, neuroscientist says [Interview]

—Climate change is real. It's happening. And it's time to make it personal. [Opinion]

—Astronomy graduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovers a signal of 'little green men,' but her adviser gets the Nobel Prize — Nov. 28, 1967 [Science history]

Science in motion

100,000 mph 'comet fragment' explodes in green fireball over Great Lakes, eerie videos show

A green fireball that exploded over Michigan’s Great Lakes was likely a fragment from a comet, and you can watch its 100,000 mph (160,000 km/h) descent through the atmosphere in eerie new footage captured by the Michigan Storm Chasers.

We’re still getting to the bottom of the comet this fragment could have split from, but its one-off occurrence suggests it wasn’t part of a wider shower.

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