March/April 2016 Issue

VANUATU: Analysis of seven 3,000-year-old skulls from the oldest cemetery in the South Pacific, on Efate, an island in Vanuatu, is helping explain how the region was settled. The people of this island nation today resemble Melanesians—natives of Australia and New Guinea—more than Polynesians, such as natives of New Zealand and Hawaii. Osteological data are showing that a people called the Lapita, who first colonized the Pacific, looked more like Polynesians. Melanesians apparently came later and the groups intermarried. In places such as Vanuatu and Fiji, Melanesian traits won out, while Polynesian ancestry dominated elsewhere, as people island-hopped to the east. —Samir S. Patel

EAST TIMOR: For 45,000 years, people on Timor coexisted with the biggest rats the world has ever known, some upwards of 10 pounds. A project there found new fossils from several giant rat species previously undocumented by science. Cut and burn marks on some bones indicate that people ate the rodents, but it wasn’t until about 1,000 years ago that the creatures went extinct (related species still exist elsewhere in maritime Southeast Asia). Paleontologists speculate that the introduction of metal tools around that time allowed people to clear more giant rat habitat. —Samir S. Patel

EGYPT: It took eight weeks of delicate surgery—using some traditional materials—but the mask of Tutankhamun is now back on display at the Egyptian Museum after its long beard was knocked off by museum workers and then hastily reattached using epoxy resin. The concern was that the clumsy, crusty repair job would be irreversible, but an international team removed the epoxy with wooden tools and has reattached the beard with beeswax. —Samir S. Patel