In northern Mexico, archaeologists say they have uncovered three Clovis projectile points associated with the remains of 12,000-year-old gomphotheres, an extinct animal similar to mammoths. It had been thought that gomphotheres and humans did not cross paths.  

Some geneticists are critical of the DNA analysis of 11 royal Egyptian mummies, including the family of Tutankhamun. Eline Lorenzen of the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum in Copenhagen says that the study is “not seen as rigorous or convincing.”  

Discovery News reports that King Tut’s tomb will not be closed this year after all. “It is a long-term plan that has not been decided upon yet,” explained Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.  

The face of a young woman who died 2,600 years ago has been reconstructed by a team of German and English scientists. Her remains, which show evidence of chronic illness and hard labor, were found in a bog in northwestern Germany.  

Here’s an update on the exhumation of 100 sets of human remains at a construction site in Los Angeles. The site was once the first Catholic cemetery in the city’s history. “So many different kinds of folks are buried there, it’s really a reflection of L.A. in that time period,” said Wendy Teeter of UCLA’s Fowler Museum.

A 1,100-year-old Sican tomb has been discovered in coastal northern Peru. The noble buried within the tomb was found “sitting on a litter, with a mask, crown and several gold and silver objects that show his high rank,” said Carlos Elera, director of the Sican Archaeology Project. 

Archaeologist Yoichi Watanabe of Japan’s Yamagata University claims to have found two new, small geoglyphs in Peru’s Nazca province. One depicts a human head, the other an animal figure.  

An unnamed antiquities collector has returned four mummies to Chile, one of which may be 7,000 years old.  

Pop singer Boy George has returned an icon looted from a Cyprus church in the 1970s. Church officials spotted the painting in his home during a televised interview.  

Archaeologists and ecologists from Arizona State University are studying the Agua Fria National Monument to learn how people used this environment in prehistory. “The monument is a giant laboratory. It allows us to work on the entire landscape of a prehistoric community, which contains hundreds of habitation, agricultural and special-purpose sites,” explained archaeologist Katherine Spielmann.  

Scientists from Barcelona, Spain, have developed a new way to register artifacts using bi-dimensional data matrix codes. The labels can be applied directly to the artifacts, and have been shown to reduce coding errors to one percent.  

Just for fun, tour the home of a nineteenth-century French gentleman of leisure, Louis Mantin. He willed his home to the town of Moulins on the condition that it remained untouched for 100 years.