King Richard III
It may have been a pretty shitty political year, but it was a pretty decent year for science. Here's
a few of the big breakthroughs of the year.
- The earliest evidence of human cognition and creativity was discovered in a shell that had been found more than a century ago. Reexamining the shell showed carvings that date from between 430,000 and 540,000 years ago. That suggests that Homo erectus was far more sophisticated than ever imagined, and that the beginnings of human development stretch back much, much further back in time.
- A womb transplant resulted in a healthy birth, bringing new options to women with missing or non-functioning uteruses to carry children.
- Is Earth's twin Kepler-186f? The planet discovered in April is about the size of Earth, and is the right distance from its star to have water.
- A skeleton found during construction in a parking lot in Leicester, England has been identified as King Richard III's with DNA.
- Type I diabetes might just be curable with stem cells. Scientist got a step closer to that by "converting human embryonic stem cells into β cells at quantities large enough to make cell transplantation feasible."
There's more discoveries listed here.