Jawbone from ancient land bridge reveals a mysterious human ancestor

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An intriguing object my husband and I saw during our honeymoon was the Robenhausen door at Switzerland’s National Museum Zurich. More than 5,500 years old, the wooden board is one of the most ancient preserved doors in Europe.

Archaeologist Jakob Messikommer uncovered the prehistoric object from the marshes in Wetzikon in 1868, according to the museum.

The door likely belonged to a Neolithic home in a village on Lake Pfäffiker — and seeing it caused me to wonder who built it, and who passed through it, thousands of years ago.

Rare artifacts like this, as well as fossils, help us determine where we came from and reveal more of humanity’s story.

We are family

When commercial fishing nets dredged up a fossilized jawbone off Taiwan’s coast in 2010, scientists puzzled over where it might fit on the human family tree.

Ancient protein fragments within the jaw’s teeth revealed the bone, known as Penghu 1, belonged to a Denisovan man who likely lived on a submerged land bridge that once connected what’s now China and Taiwan.

Denisovan fossil finds are hard to come by, which means scientists have scant evidence suggesting what our extinct mystery relatives might have looked like. But revisiting fossils in Taiwan’s National Museum of Natural Science may yield riveting clues.

Lunar update

Don’t forget to look up Saturday for a glimpse of April’s full moon, known as the pink moon, as it peaks at 8:22 p.m. ET.

Despite the nickname, which is a nod to springtime blooms, the moon will maintain its white-golden hue — but it may appear smaller.

That’s because this full moon is a micromoon, meaning that Earth’s satellite is at or near its greatest orbital distance from our planet — and April’s is the smallest micromoon of the year.

And in space exploration news, tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead NASA, said Wednesday he would “prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars,” among other potential shifts for the agency, during a Senate confirmation hearing.

Back to the future

The dire wolf that was the inspiration for the fearsome creatures in the “Game of Thrones” series once roamed North America. The real-life canine went extinct about 12,500 years ago — but scientists say they have resurrected the species through gene editing.

Biotech company Colossal Biosciences, which also has “de-extinction” plans to bring back the woolly mammoth, shared footage of its healthy dire wolves, both as adorable pups and as juveniles roaming a 2,000-acre site.

“Our team took DNA from a 13,000 year old tooth and a 72,000 year old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” said Colossal CEO Ben Lamm in a news release.

While experts may argue over how much genetic material constitutes a dire wolf, Colossal scientists have noted some unique behaviors in the wolves as they grow.

Fossils and fireballs

While dinosaurs won’t be making a comeback anytime soon, scientists have long debated whether the giants were already declining when an asteroid wiped them from the face of the Earth 66 million years ago.

New research adds to a growing body of evidence that, in fact, dinos were doing just fine before the deadly strike.

A team of researchers compared the fossil record of the four main dino groups that lived during the 18 million years before the mass extinction event with data modeling estimates and found a mismatch.

“If it weren’t for that asteroid, they might still share this planet with mammals, lizards, and their surviving descendants: birds,” said Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, a Royal Society Newton International Fellow at University College London.

Ocean secrets

Deep-sea mapping company Magellan has created a full-scale “digital twin” of the RMS Titanic, and the 3D underwater scan has shed new light on the ship’s final moments before it tragically sank 113 years ago.

The project is featured in a new National Geographic documentary about the doomed ocean liner, which now rests on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The scan reveals previously hidden details, including evidence to support a claim that 35 boiler room engineers sacrificed themselves to keep the power on for the ship, enabling the sending of distress signals. And the project’s findings exonerate an officer who was accused of abandoning his post at a crucial moment.

Take note

There is more to these stories than meets the eye:

— An enigmatic altar found in an ancient Mayan city contains bodies — and wasn’t made by the Maya. The ornately decorated structure may hold the key to unraveling the geopolitics of the time.

— Construction on a soccer field in Vienna, Austria, unveiled a mass grave of soldiers from nearly 2,000 years ago, revealing rare but gruesome evidence of clashes between the Romans and Germanic tribes.

— A vast ocean glow reported for more than 400 years has stumped scientists, but they say they’re getting closer to solving “milky sea” events.

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