UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

The story of human evolution is not a straight line but rather a series of branching events. We now know that Homo sapiens were contemporaries not only with their famous cousins, the Neanderthals, but also with Homo floresiensis, the Denisovans (a species that lived around a cave in the Altai Mountains of western Siberia), and according to a recent study with fifth species, called Homo luzonensis. The Denisovans, which were first discovered in 2010, are particularly intriguing and mysterious since scientists could study them only from a few bone fragments and teeth — until now.

Reporting in a new study published in Nature, researchers say they’ve identified a jawbone that belonged to a Denisovan that lived more than 160,000 years ago in the Himalayas.

The Baishiya Karst Cave where the Denisovan jawbone was found.

Credit: Dongju Zhang.

Denisovans were first discovered from a bone fragment in Denisova Cave (pictured) in Siberia. Researchers have now uncovered another specimen in the Tibetan Plateau.

(Photo Credit: rusak / iStock / Getty Images)

The lower jawbone with two remaining teeth was actually found three decades ago in the Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Platea. The Tibetan monk who found the stunning remains deep in the Himalayan mountains gave it to a local revered as a living Buddha, who passed it on scientists. A team of European and Chinese researchers has been carefully studying the jawbone ever since.

Researchers were not able to extract DNA from the mandible but managed to extract proteins from one of the molars. Their sequencing firmly identified the fossil as Denisovan — the first time researchers have identified the physical remains of a Denisovan outside the cave that gave them their name, Denisova Cave, in Siberia.

Researchers excavating the Baishiya Karst Cave.

Credit: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University.

Ancient tools and animals bones showing cut marks were also retrieved from the same cave which stands almost 3,350 meters (11,000 feet) up on the plateau. If these remains were indeed left by Denisovans, they suggest that the ancient humans had adapted to high-altitude, low-oxygen environments long before the regional arrival of modern Homo sapiens. In fact, these traits were likely passed down to the modern human gene poolthrough interbreeding between the two species. We know this likely happened because DNA extracted from the Denisovan teeth in Siberia had genes shared with modern humans, among them one that is common in Tibetans, allowing them to live at high altitudes with low oxygen levels.

Scientists were always puzzled about how Tibetan populations came to carry a Denisovan gene seeing as the Siberian cave wasn’t at a high altitude. The new findings have now connected the dots.

In the future, the team of researchers, which includes members from Lanzhou University in China and the Max Planck Institute in Germany, hopes to find further Denisovan fossils in China which might still hold viable DNA.

View of the virtual reconstruction of the jawbone after digital removal of the adhering carbonate crust. The jawbone is so well preserved that it allows for a virtual reconstruction of the two sides of the mandible.

(Credit: Jean-Jacques Hublin, MPI-EVA, Leipzig)

In 1969, the Apollo 10 crew jettisoned the lunar module 'Snoopy' from the Apollo command module into an orbit never to be seen again – or so they thought. The command module is pictured here on the far side of the moon

Before there was Apollo 11 and its historic first steps by a human on the Moon, there was Apollo 10 – when a crew and NASA support team obsessed with the Peanut cartoon strip sent a command module named Charlie Brown and a lunar module named Snoopy. While Charlie Brown carried the three crew members back safely to Earth, Snoopy was left behind in space and has become a treasure for astronomers both pro and amateur to search for. That hunt is over as Snoopy has been found in, still in orbit – not around the Moon but the Sun. These astronomers think NASA, or perhaps Elon Musk, should mount a mission to bring Snoopy home. They face objections from those who believe it would cost too much … and those who don’t believe Apollo 10 or any of the Apollo missions actually occurred.

“We don’t have any idea where he went. He just went boom and it disappeared right into the Sun.”

Apollo 10 crew members: left to right, Eugene Cernan, Tom Stafford and John Young

(NASA)

Eighty-eight-year-old Thomas Stafford is the last surviving member of the Apollo 10 crew and thought he’d never see Snoopy again after descending in it (with Eugene Cernan) to 15,000 meters above the surface, then jettisoning the descent module and returning to the command module, where they jettisoned Snoopy before heading home. The LM is only 4 meters wide and the only thing known about it was when and where it was jettisoned into a heliocentric orbit, but that was enough for British astronomer Nick Howes, who eight years ago began teaming up with with flight controllers, space dynamics experts and astronauts from the Apollo program to search for it.

“It was a strange anomalous object in approximately the right orbit and exactly the right size. The radar data was completely whack, as one astronomer put it. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen. We’re 99 percent convinced we’ve got it.”

Unfortunately, “strange anomalous object” is the best description Howes can give of what he and many others strongly believe is Snoopy. He, along with many space experts, space historians, former astronauts and others, believe that a mission should be sent to confirm the identification and bring Snoopy back.

“To recover one lunar module that is intact would be, I feel, quite special. The quality of engineering that went in to the Apollo program would probably mean that if power was restored you may even be able to fire up some of the systems. What I’m hoping is someone like Elon Musk can develop something and capture it and bring it back down.”

Would that convince doubters that the Apollo missions actually were real and not an elaborate hoax staged at some secret location – a large group of people whose number continues to grow?

“The thing that concerns me more and more about this is, as time passes and the Apollo landings are farther into the past and fewer people remember them, it might be easier to embrace these kinds of ideas.”

In a recent NASA presentation, Roger Launius, a former senior official at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and author of the new book, “Apollo’s Legacy: Perspectives on the Moon Landings,” expressed concern that 5% of Americans believe the Apollo moon landings were fakedand that percentage is growing fast. Launius blames this on a number of factors: Americans are getting dumber, Americans don’t trust their government agencies, Americans love conspiracy theories and Americans love profiting from the nativity of other Americans. He offers one way to try and convince these skeptics that there was no Apollo hoax: point out that our Cold War enemies and space race competitors, the Soviet Union, have never doubted the Moon landings.

“They had both the capability and the desire to disprove this, if it was true — you know, if we hadn’t landed on the moon but were faking it. And they never said a word. That’s a pretty strong element to me.”

Well, until recently at least. Dmitry Rogozin, the Director General of Roscosmos, has stated that one part of his space agency’s next moon mission will be to “verify whether they’ve been there or not.”

Will finding the Apollo 10 Snoopy module convince lunar landing doubters? When given the choice between believing “me or your lying eyes,” conspiracy theorists seem to continue to side with the conspiracists.

Sorry, Snoopy.