A Jupiter-sized planet has been discovered orbiting a dead star and this may provide scientists with valuable information regarding what will happen when our own sun will eventually die in approximately 5 billion years.

The giant exoplanet is orbiting a white dwarf about 6,500 light-years away from us close to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The planet is approximately 40% larger than Jupiter and the white dwarf has about 60% of the mass of our sun.

When a sun-like star expands into a red giant, it burns through all of its hydrogen fuel and swells up. During this phase, it destroys any planets that are close to it. When the star no longer has an atmosphere, there is nothing left but a collapsed core which is called a white dwarf.

White dwarf

The fact that a planet was found still orbiting a white dwarf at a decently close range is baffling as it should have been destroyed. However, upon further analysis, researchers realized that the star and the planet formed at the same time. The planet is located approximately 2.8 astronomical units (AU) away from the white dwarf (one AU is the distance of Earth to our sun).

While it was thought that giant planets had to be situated a lot further away from the white dwarf in order to survive, this new discovery contradicts that theory. And it may not just be giant planets that can survive and still orbit white dwarfs and there may possibly be even smaller worlds doing the same thing.

So, what does that mean for our Solar System in 5 billion years? Joshua Blackman, who is an astronomy postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tasmania in Australia, explained, “This evidence confirms that planets orbiting at a large enough distance can continue to exist after their star’s death,” adding, “Given that this system is an analog to our own solar system, it suggests that Jupiter and Saturn might survive the Sun’s red giant phase, when it runs out of nuclear fuel and self-destructs.”

What will happen to our Solar System when our sun dies?

While Jupiter and Saturn may be safe, the inner planets – Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth – will probably be engulfed by the sun when it becomes a red giant. “Earth’s future may not be so rosy because it is much closer to the Sun,” noted David Bennett who is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, adding, “If humankind wanted to move to a moon of Jupiter or Saturn before the Sun fried the Earth during its red supergiant phase, we’d still remain in orbit around the Sun, although we would not be able to rely on heat from the Sun as a white dwarf for very long.”

Well, at least it won’t happen for about another 5 billion years so we’re safe for now. Their research was published in Nature.

As you will see this week, I’m on a bit of a Roswell kick. But, it’s worth it. Nineteen-Ninety-Four was the year in which the UFO research community got even more fired up by Roswell. It was all due to the publication of a U.S. Air Force report on the July 1947 event. Its title: Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident. Was the government about to come clean on the issue of what happened on the Foster Ranch? Were the remains of dead aliens about to be presented to the world? Not exactly, no. In fact, the military was heading into territory that was previously uncharted. Matters really began in the early part of 1993. That was when the late Steven Schiff – who was the Congressman for New Mexico at the time – approached the Department of Defense, seeking out the truth on the one alleged UFO case that just about everyone has heard of. Schiff mailed a letter to the Secretary of Defense at the time, Les Aspin. Schiff came right to the point and said: “Last fall I became aware of a strange series of events beginning in New Mexico over 45 years ago and involving personnel of what was then the Army Air Force. I have since reviewed the facts in some detail, and I am writing to request your assistance in arriving at a definitive explanation of what transpired and why.”

(Nick Redfern)

Roswell, New Mexico, 2017

Aspin chose not to reply to Schiff. That task was given to Colonel Larry G. Shockley, of the Air Force. Shockley informed Schiff that he had “referred this matter to the National Archives and Records Administration for direct reply to you.”  The response from the National Archives’ staff did not please Schiff or his staff: “The U.S. Air Force has retired to our custody its records on Project Blue Book relating to the investigations of unidentified flying objects. Project Blue Book has been declassified and the records are available for examination in our research room. The project closed in 1969 and we have no information after that date. We have received numerous requests concerning records relating to the Roswell incident among these records. We have not located any documentation relating to this event in Project Blue Book records, or in any other pertinent Defense Department records in our custody.”

(Nick Redfern)

Hanging out at Roswell, New Mexico

“Passing the buck” and “given the runaround” were the terms that filled Schiff’s head when he got the news. It was news that he was far from satisfied with. That same runaround continued for weeks, and, finally, for even months. By now utterly frustrated, angry and puzzled, Schiff finally chose to take another approach. It was a very ambitious move. Schiff contacted the Government Accountability Office (at the time, it was known as the General Accounting Office), which is the investigative body of the U.S. Congress. The GAO wasted no time in planning to tackle the mystery. Its staff, however, were beaten to the finish line. By whom? By the Air Force, that’s who. Although the USAF maintained that it held no records on Roswell, when word got out that the GAO was now on the hunt for the truth behind the Foster Ranch incident, the Air Force quickly launched its very own investigation. The result of that same investigation was the publication of the aforementioned July 1994 Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident. It would be another year before the GAO’s conclusions were revealed, specifically on July 28, 1995.

The GAO’s National Security and International Affairs Division wrote in their finished dossier: “DOD [Department of Defense] informed us that the U.S. Air Force report of July 1994, entitled Report of Air Force Research Regarding the Roswell Incident, represents the extent of DOD records or information concerning the Roswell crash.”  The GAO continued: “The Air Force report concluded that there was no dispute that something happened near Roswell in July 1947 and that all available official material indicated the most likely source of the wreckage recovered was one of the project MOGUL balloon trains. At the time of the Roswell crash, project MOGUL was a highly classified U.S. effort to determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research using balloons that carried radar reflectors.” The Mogul theory is the one which is still endorsed by the U.S. Air Force to this day. It should be noted, however, that not a single shred of documentation has ever surfaced from the Air Force’s archives and which conclusively proves that the Roswell debris was from a Mogul balloon train. The Mogul theory was, and still is, simply that – a theory and nothing else.

The mainstream media pretty much accepted the explanation of the Air Force, which was the predictable outcome: UFOs rarely attract the serious attention of respected, investigative journalists. Ufologists, meanwhile, rolled their collective eyes, unsatisfied with anything that wasn’t completely pro-UFO in nature. That was pretty much predictable, too. As for the GAO, well, behind the scenes its staff were privately puzzled – even angry, in some quarters – by the fact that the Air Force had, effectively, jumped the gun. And that is certainly accurate terminology. What the Air Force was supposed to have done was to offer any and all assistance that it could to the Government Accountability Office and to hand over copies of any and all relevant Roswell-based documentation in its possession. This was the same for each and every other agency which the GAO approached, too. The list included the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, and the CIA. That the Air Force hastily launched its own investigation, published a report, and quickly shot down any and all explanations beyond Project Mogul, made many people within Ufology conclude that the Air Force was engaging in a sizeable amount of what is commonly known as “damage control.”

(Nick Redfern)

Roswell, 2017

There are clear indications that Congressman Schiff had his suspicions that he had not been given the full, true story of what occurred at Roswell. His beef, however, was not with the GAO. In fact, Schiff personally praised the agency, calling its work on the Roswell case “professional, conscientious and thorough.” What Schiff was not happy with, were the eye-opening revelations that a massive number of records from the old Roswell Army Air Field could not be found. Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. Schiff told the press: “It is my understanding that these outgoing messages were permanent records which should never have been destroyed. The GAO could not identify who destroyed the messages, or why.”

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More than a century after first discovering cave art dating back to the Stone Age in Italy’s Romanelli Cave (they were found in 1905), a team of archaeologists, geologists, and paleontologists have recently found more drawings. The newly discovered Paleolithic art includes geometric designs, a bovid (hoofed mammal), and a bird.

The cave, which is located on the southeast coast of Italy and is only seven meters above the Adriatic Sea, was found back in 1874 but it was very difficult to get access to it based on its location. That’s why the first rock art was only discovered in 1905. The cave itself has two areas: an inner chamber; and a main chamber that had collapsed and where large boulders had fallen from the ceiling.

(Not Romanelli Cave)

The art that is in the main chamber is located up in a frieze (horizontally drawn art near the ceiling), and the ones in the inner chamber are in two wall alcoves (similar to a nook or opening). The newfound geometric patterns were created with a soft white material found in limestone caves called “moonmilk”.

As for the bird drawing, it was believed to have been a “rare depiction” of an auk (short-winged diving seabird). It was quite detailed with three short lines that were drawn near its eye that depicted its feathers. Auk drawings have previously been found in caves in France and Spain. However, birds aren’t normally found in Paleolithic art which makes the discovery in Italy very interesting. Additionally, whoever made the art used several different tools to make the drawings. (Pictures can be seen here.)

Entrance of the Romanelli Cave.

IGAG-CNR, MONTEROTONDO (RM), ITALY. PHOTO D. SIGARI

Image Credit : Antiquity

Image Credit : Antiquity

The Auk Head : Image Credit : Antiquity

A single panel of engraved art with an abstract gridlike motif.

GEOSCIENCES CENTER, COIMBRA UNIVERSITY, PORTUGAL. PHOTO D. SIGARI

Auks painted by Archibald Thorburn

(Via Wikipedia)

Dario Sigari from the Universita degli Studi di Ferrara described the art in further detail, “They [the new images] further confirm the existence of a shared visual heritage across a wide part of Eurasia during the Late Upper Paleolithic [period], opening new questions about social dynamics and the spread of common iconographic motifs around the Mediterranean Basin.”

He added that the excavations of the cave have revealed a new estimate that it was used by ancient humans between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago. “These new dates and the fact images are layered over each other suggest the cave was in used for a longer period than previously supposed, with multiple episodes of art-making.”

Ancient rock art isn’t the only interesting thing that was found in the cave as previous excavations have revealed animal bones, human bones, and numerous art objects such as stones that may have fell from the walls or ceiling.

Their study can be read in full here.

My previous article expanded further on the matter of the Roswell affair of 1947 having been a domestic, Top Secret experiment, rather than being the crash of a UFO from another world. And, this one will expand things even more. The late Leonard Stringfield, who passed away in 1994, was a UFO researcher who firmly believed that, since the 1940s, the U.S.  Government had secretly recovered a number of crashed UFOs and dead aliens, and which were stored and preserved a variety of military bases across the country – many at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Stringfield, too, however, was given a number of accounts relative to the issue of secret and shocking human experimentation on handicapped people; experimentation that was tied in with the Roswell affair. One of those stories came to Stringfield from a highly controversial figure in Ufology. His name was Timothy Cooper, a resident of Big Bear Lake, California and someone who exited the field of UFO research years ago. Far more than a few people in Ufology have very little time for Cooper, suspecting that many of the documents he supplied to the UFO community in the mid-1990s were bogus, rather than the highly classified papers that they were purported to be. They were bogus; there is no doubt about that. But, Cooper himself was not the forger. It’s the “pre-documents” era we have to take a look at, however. It paints a very different picture of Cooper to that which many ufologists have accepted.

Tim Cooper claimed to Stringfield in 1990 that he had numerous sources of the old-timer kind – some of who assured Cooper that, yes, aliens really did crash outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Others, however, quietly hinted to Cooper that the truth was far more controversial: a scenario involving human guinea-pigs – Japanese and handicapped individuals – and the creation of UFO-themed disinformation programs and faked, pro-UFO documents to hide the down-to-earth truth of the Roswell enigma. Also in 1990, Cooper supplied Stringfield one specific story which Stringfield decided to firmly keep under wraps until the following year, 1991, when he published it in a lengthy report on tales of crashed and secretly retrieved alien spacecraft. The story concerned a woman who Cooper first crossed paths with in 1989. He described her only as a nurse, and gave her the pseudonym of “Mary.”

In Cooper’s own words of 1990, and which Stringfield published: “She casually mentioned to me over coffee that ‘bodies’ were being flown to Los Alamos periodically from late 1945 to sometime in 1947. I asked her if she had seen these ‘bodies’ and she said no, but others had. I asked her where these ‘bodies’ were coming from. She said she did not know but it was rumored that they were human experiments for biological and nuclear medicine research. She thought they may have come from Japan after the war [italics mine]. I asked her why she thought that. She said that they were small bodies with deformed heads and limbs. The eyes were abnormally big, she was told. She did have some view of them in the morgue very briefly for a few minutes at some distance. I asked her why she was allowed to be present at the autopsies. She told me that she was asked to assist in the preparation and cleanup. I asked her again about the bodies. She said they were being flown in on special transport planes equipped with refrigerator units to keep the bodies from decomposing. The flesh was badly burned and charred. There was no hair on the heads and had a grayish-yellow color. That’s all she knew.”

Like it or like it not, the Roswell affair is becoming more and more a top secret experiment, and much less a crashed UFO from another world.

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One of the newest and most mysterious sky events is the fast radio burst – a brief pulse of intense energy of varying length and frequency coming usually from other galaxies but occasionally originating in the Milky Way. As astronomers became better at picking them up, their strange behavior became stranger instead of explainable.

A good example is FRB121102 – first detected in 2012 in the direction of Auriga in the northern hemisphere using the Arecibo radio telescope. Since then, it has became the most active FRB and the target of the aptly-named Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in southwest China, which recently tallied the number of FRBs from FRB121102 and came up with a shocking total.

The completed Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) as seen from the air.
Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences)

“Here we report the detection of 1,652 independent bursts with a peak burst rate of 122 h−1, in 59.5 hours spanning 47 days.”

The journal Nature reports that FAST users Prof. LI Di and Dr. Wang Pei from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) watched as FRB121102 emitted 1,652 independent bursts during the 47 days between Aug. 29 and Oct. 29, 2019. That’s a record for the largest set of fast radio bursts and raises a number of questions, with the most obvious being, “What the heck is sending those fast radio bursts?”

“The total energy of this burst set already adds up to 3.8% of what is available from a magnetar and no periodicity was found between 1 ms and 1000 s, both of which severely constrains the possibility that FRB 121102 comes from an isolated compact object.”

In a press release, Dr. Wang Pei rejects the magnetar theory (magnetars are highly magnetized neutron stars) because emitting this amount of energy would probably destroy it. However, FRB 121102 was the first known repeater and now the most active, so if they’re not coming form one source, it’s a lot of sources in one tight formation – and those sources are pretty efficient at what they do.

Artist’s impression of the magnetar in star cluster Westerlund 1.
(Image: © ESO/L. Calçada)

“The high burst rate also implies that FRBs must be generated with a high radiative efficiency, disfavouring emission mechanisms with large energy requirements or contrived triggering conditions.”

That’s science-speak for ”We know what it isn’t, but we still don’t know what it is.” One thing Li Di and the rest of the researchers do know is this:

“As the world’s largest antenna, FAST’s sensitivity proves to be conducive to revealing intricacies of cosmic transients, including FRBs.”

Pat yourself on the back, Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope – you’re proving yourself to be more than just the world’s largest bowl of leaves.

Asteroids in our Solar System are very common as there are an estimated 1.1 to 1.9 million of them that have a diameter larger than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – there are millions more smaller asteroids. And now, astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) have photographed the 42 biggest asteroids that are located in the asteroid belt.

This is actually the first time ever that so many asteroids have been photographed in such great quality as explained by Pierre Vernazza from the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France, “Only three large main belt asteroids, Ceres, Vesta and Lutetia, have been imaged with a high level of detail so far, as they were visited by the space missions Dawn and Rosetta of NASA and the European Space Agency, respectively,” adding, “Our ESO observations have provided sharp images for many more targets, 42 in total.”

Vesta

(Via Wikipedia)

The majority of the 42 asteroids are larger than 100 kilometers (62 miles). The two largest asteroids are Ceres and Vesta which have a diameter of approximately 940 and 520 kilometers, respectively (584 and 323 miles, respectively). The two smallest asteroids, Urania and Ausonia, each measure approximately 90 kilometers (56 miles).

And not all of them look alike as astronomers have put them in two different categories – those that are spherical in shape (like Ceres and Hygiea) and others that are more odd-looking and “elongated” such as the “dog-bone” asteroid Kleopatra.

Ceres

(Via Wikipedia)

Furthermore, the astronomers were able to calculate the masses of these asteroids and realized that they varied dramatically from one another. The four least dense asteroids (these include Sylvia and Lamberta) have a density of just 1.3 grams per cubic centimeter (about the same density as coal). The asteroids with the highest density (these include Psyche and Kalliope) have densities of 3.9 and 4.4 grams per cubic centimeter, respectively (they have a higher density than a diamond).

What this means is that the composition of each asteroid varies as explained by Josef Hanuš of the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, “Our observations provide strong support for substantial migration of these bodies since their formation. In short, such tremendous variety in their composition can only be understood if the bodies originated across distinct regions in the Solar System.” For example, the asteroids with the least amount of density would have formed past Neptune’s orbit and traveled inwards to where they are currently located. Their research was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics where it can be read in full.

Several images of the asteroids can be seen here.

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile, astronomers have imaged 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. Never before had such a large group of asteroids been imaged so sharply. The observations reveal a wide range of peculiar shapes, from spherical to dog-bone, and are helping astronomers trace the origins of the asteroids in our Solar System.

These images have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope as part of a programme that surveyed 42 of the largest asteroids in our Solar System. They show Ceres and Vesta, the two largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, approximately 940 and 520 kilometres in diameter. These two asteroids are also the two most massive in the sample.

Credit: ESO/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)

This poster shows 42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter (orbits not to scale). The images in the outermost circle of this infographic have been captured with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The asteroid sample features 39 objects larger than 100 kilometres in diameter, including 20 larger than 200 kilometres. The poster highlights a few of the objects, including Ceres (the largest asteroid in the belt), Urania (the smallest one imaged), Kalliope (the densest imaged) and Lutetia, which was visited by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Vernazza et al./MISTRAL algorithm (ONERA/CNRS)

Although research into the Roswell affair didn’t take off big time until the mid-to-late 1970s, the 1960s were not without significance when it comes to the case. For example, in 1966, Frank Edwards’ book Flying Saucers – Serious Business was published Chapter four of the book is titled “Pick Up the Pieces.” Edwards said of the case: “There are such difficult cases as the rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, who phoned the Sheriff that a blazing disc-shaped object had passed over his house at low altitude and had crashed and burned on a hillside within view of the house. The sheriff called the military; the military came on the double quick. Newsmen were not permitted in the area. A week later, however, the government released a photograph of a service man holding up a box kite with an aluminum disc about the size of a large pie plate dangling from the bottom of the kite. This, the official report explained, was a device borne aloft on the kite and used to test radar gear by bouncing the signals off the pie pan. And this, we were told, was the sort of thing that had so excited the rancher. We were NOT told, however, how the alleged kite caught fire – nor why the military cordoned off the area while they inspected the wreckage of a burned-out kite with a non-inflammable pie pan tied to it.”

Kevin Randle said of Edwards’ version of events: “While the report was essentially correct in a gross sense, the details were nearly all wrong. But the point is that Edwards had exposed the Roswell case to a wide audience in 1966, when the book was published. Nearly everyone ignored the case because of the lack of detail, other than a location in the then small and anonymous town of Roswell.”  Only three years later, however, the Roswell story was about to surface again. Not in the pages of a book, or even in the town of Roswell itself. The location was one most would never guess: a certain living-room in England. July 21, 1969 was a day on which history was made. That was the date on which Neil Armstrong became the very first member of the human race to set foot on our nearest neighbor, the Moon. History was also made in a very different way on that day, too. It may have been different, but it was no less important. For the person telling the story, it may have been even more important. July 21 was the day on which a notable revelation concerning Roswell surfaced. Not in the United States, as one might expect or assume, but right in the heart of the U.K.

(Nick Redfern)

The U.S. Government’s huge report on Roswell

The source of the story was Melvin E. Brown. He was a man who was stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field at the time of the mysterious crash in early July 1947. Several months later, however, Brown was given a brand new assignment. In England. It was while Brown was stationed in the United Kingdom that he met the woman who was destined to become his wife: Ada. The pair made a life for themselves in England and had three daughters. At the time of the Roswell affair, however, Brown was a sergeant in the military. Not only that, Brown – who passed away in 1986 – was a key figure in the Roswell story. Whether by accident or design, Brown chose July 21 as the day to reveal what he knew about a certain, amazing event that had occurred, back then, more than two decades earlier. One of Brown’s daughters – Beverly – said, years later: “In 1969, he told my sister and me that he was ordered to go out into the desert. He said that all available men were grabbed to go out to where a crashed saucer had come down…and there were several bodies.”

One of those who had the opportunity to interview Beverly in person was English UFO sleuth, Timothy Good, the author of the acclaimed Above Top Secret. She told him: “They had to form a ring around whatever it was they had to cover, and everything was put on trucks. They were told not to look and to take no notice, and were sworn to secrecy.”  The story then got even more amazing, as Beverley revealed: “I can remember my dad saying he couldn’t understand why they wanted refrigerated trucks. And him and another guy had to sit on the back of a truck to take this stuff to a hangar. They were packed in ice. And he lifted up the tarpaulin and looked in, and saw three – or possibly two – dead bodies.”  Tom Carey and Don Schmitt record that Beverly described the dead crew as having “big heads with slanted eyes.” In her interview with Tim Good, however, Beverly made a very intriguing and revealing statement. She said that the bodies her father saw back in ‘47 “…looked Asian [italics mine],” but had larger than normal heads and lacked any hair. “They looked a yellowy color.” There is also this from Beverly to Tim: “…they could have passed for Chinese [italics also mine].”

It is one thing to say that the bodies looked somewhat Asian; however, specifically stating that the bodies which Melvin Brown saw “could have passed for Chinese” strongly suggests they were extremely human-looking. There is a very good reason for that: they were human. Remember, too, that the “Chinese” comment was made to Beverly Bean by her father – nothing less than a first-hand witness to the bodies. And, as a first-hand source he should have known what it was that he saw. Near death in 1986, Brown told his family, “It was not a damn weather balloon.”  No, it was not a weather balloon. But, it did involve human guinea-pigs. There was not a single extraterrestrial at Roswell. That’s because all of them were human. Aliens never crashed outside of Roswell.

More than 50 footprints have been found in the sand on the Greek Island of Crete and they are exceptionally old. While they were initially discovered in 2017, they have since been analyzed and confirmed as being more than 6 million years old. This means that they are the oldest ever footprints found of pre-humans (predecessors of early humans).

A team of international researchers from Greece, Germany, England, Egypt, and Sweden, which was led by Tübingen scientists Uwe Kirscher and Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen, confirmed that the footprints were made by pre-humans.

The prints were fossilized in beach sediments and were discovered close to the west Cretan village of Trachilos. After their discovery, experts used micropaleontological and geophysical techniques in order to date them back to 6.05 million years ago.

(Not the footprints found in Crete)

This discovery has certainly provided experts with quite valuable information regarding the early evolution of using feet to move around as described by Per Ahlberg who is a professor at Uppsala University, “The oldest human foot used for upright walking had a ball, with a strong parallel big toe, and successively shorter side toes,” adding, “The foot had a shorter sole than Australopithecus. An arch was not yet pronounced and the heel was narrower.”

To put this into better perspective, the footprints are millions of years older than those made by the same species as the famous Lucy. “The tracks are almost 2.5 million years older than the tracks attributed to Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) from Laetoli in Tanzania,” explained Uwe Kirscher. Furthermore, the tracks found in Crete are from the same time period as previous fossils found in Kenya belonging to the upright-walking species of Orrorin tugenensis; however, only femurs were found but no foot bones or even footprints.

(Not the footprints found in Crete)

Additionally, since Crete was connected to the Greek mainland 6 million years ago, the footprints could have been made by a pre-human species called Graecopithecus freybergi. In fact, remains belonging to the species were previously discovered in Athens, Greece, that dated back 7.2 million years. The study was published in Scientific Reports where it can be read in full.

A photo of one of the footprints can be seen here.

Interestingly, this news comes just days after it was reported that ancient footprints found in New Mexico that date back 23,000 years could be the earliest evidence of humans inhabiting the Americas.