While examining modern and ancient DNA from horses as part of an effort to figure out when the animals were domesticated, a team of genetic scientists realized that the Paleolithic representations of horses at France’s Pech-Merle Cave are realistic representations of what people saw in the wild. “What we found is that there were really only these three color patterns – spotted or dappled; blackish ones; and brown ones. These are the three phenotypes we find in the wild populations. And then we realized these three phenotypes are exactly the ones you see in cave paintings,” said Michael Hofreiter of the University of York.

New, high-resolution photographs of Tanzania’s Laetoli footprints have led to a different interpretation of this earliest record of an upright, bipedal gait. It had been thought that the prints represented a family of three Australopithecus afarensiswalkers. “So instead of having three individuals of different sizes, with the sizes related to different ages, there are probably four individuals of the same size moving through this area, perhaps not traveling as a group,” explained Brent Breithaupt of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

The earliest-known dates for human occupation of Qatar have been obtained from a 7,500-year-old hearth preserved far beneath the desert sands. Shell ornaments, flint tools, pottery, food remains, and obsidian from Turkey have also been found.

The Bogazköy Sphinx returned to Turkey from Germany last summer, and will soon go on display in its home region of Central Anatolia. It will be reunited with a second sphinx that had been housed in Istanbul.

Susan Kane, director of the Cyrenaica Archaeological Project, plans to build a new relationship with Libya’s Department of Antiquities with the help of a grant from the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. “We weren’t sure the Gaddafi government would ever support this project. This is a fragile time for Libya. There is a concern about whether or not the government will take cultural heritage under consideration. I think there will be more interest from the interim government in preserving these sites,” she said.

Scientists at Austria’s Innsbruck University think Oetzi the Iceman may have died from a fall while mountain climbing. “His death could have been a mountaineering accident rather than him being shot by an arrow as previously thought. The arrow injury could have been an old injury,” said team leader Wolfgang Recheis.

The London Court of appeals ruled last week that the Barakat Gallery must return a collection of 5,000-year-old artifacts smuggled from Jiroft to Iran.

Scholars want to be able to study the little-known Garamantes culture in Libya. Through satellite images, they have learned that it covered a wider area than had been thought. “The important thing to realize is that this was an urban and sedentary agricultural culture that existed in the middle of the Sahara,” said David Mattingly of the University of Leicester.

Two prehistoric American Indian sites were discovered near a historic bridge in Missouri during a survey prior to road work. One of the sites is between 1,200 and 1,500 years old, and the other is 3,000 to 5,000 years old.

In West Virginia, a man who pleaded guilty to an unauthorized excavation in New River Gorge National River Park received two years probation. “When he was stopped, the defendant had Native American artifacts in his possession. Other Native American artifacts were recovered from piles of dirt that defendant created,” read his plea agreement.

Here are some tips for traveling to Carnac, France, where tourists can visit seven fields covered with Neolithic alignments of standing stones.

As the drought in Texas continues, shipwrecks and cemeteries have been exposed in rivers and lakes. “It’s kind of both an opportunity and a misfortune. It does give us an opportunity to view these resources, but we don’t have the (financial) resources to deal with them,” said Pat Mercado-Allinger of the Texas Historical Commission.

Megadroughts also took place in the southwestern U.S. during the mid-twelfth century and in the second century A.D., according to a new study of tree rings conducted by researchers from the University of Arizona. “These megadroughts lasted for decades, much longer than our current drought. And the climatic events behind these previous dry periods are really similar to what we’re experiencing today,” explained geoscientist Cody Routson.