If it looks like an ape …

The species that evolutionists have pegged as an early human ancestor seems to have more in common with apes, according to a recent analysis of the skeleton of a 3-year-old Australopithecus afarensis.

The toddler had ape-like feet with grasping toes, probably used to climb trees and cling to her mother when carried, researchers wrote this month in an article for Science Advances. Anthropologists unearthed the female, named Selam, in Ethiopia in 2000. The finding stirred excitement in the scientific community because it represented the most intact skeleton of this species found so far.

The adults of the species, the most famous being the Lucy skeleton discovered in 1974, were believed to have walked upright on two legs. Although scientists found only 40 percent of Lucy’s bones and scientific analysis showed that the creature was the size and shape of an ape, evolutionists became convinced it must have walked upright based on the position of the spinal cord and the shape of the pelvis. And if it walked upright, they reasoned, it must have been an ancestor of humans.

But analysis of Selam’s foot showed the juveniles of this species had ape-shaped feet. Zeresenay Alemseged, the paleoanthropologist who discovered Selam’s skeleton, told Live Science that even though the fossil’s big toe lined up with the other toes, similar to those of a human foot, the appendage curved inward like today’s tree climbing apes. Selam also had a much weaker heel than would have been required for walking upright.

“So that suggests [A. afarensis] grew their heels very differently than we do,” Jeremy DeSilva, lead author of the study, told Live Science. “Even though we have the same anatomy they had, we got it differently.”

Selam’s big toe and heel aren’t the only foot problem encountered by evolutionary scientists. Last year, anthropologists found evidence of human footprints on the Greek island of Crete that far predated Lucy, thus showing that humans could not have evolved from her species.

Evolutionists believe Lucy’s anatomy shows she was a human ancestor, not because they have found a link between humans and apes, but because they begin with the assumption that humans originated through evolutionary processes. Creationists instead interpret these scientific findings through the authority of the Bible.

In the final analysis, if it looks like an ape and climbs like an ape, it just might be an ape.

Distant galaxy hurls ghost particles at Earth

Astrophysicists have discovered that a galaxy outside the Milky Way, and 4 billion light-years from the Earth, is likely hurling subatomic ghost particles at us. These neutrinos, the second most abundant type of particle in the universe, have no electrical charge and nearly no mass. Billions of them can pass through a human in a second and remain unnoticed because they do not interact with matter.

IceCube, an instrument with sensors scattered under the ice at the South Pole, detects about 200 neutrinos per day. Most of them are low energy particles produced by cosmic rays, atom fragments that rain down on the Earth from outside the solar system. But last September, IceCube detected a neutrino with very high energy indicating it likely originated from some celestial body in deep space.

IceCube also allowed scientists to identify the neutrino’s precise incoming direction and it pointed to a very distant blazar. Blazars are special galaxies with a supermassive black hole at their core. The black hole draws in material that forms a hot, rotating disk and then spews out jets of particles that travel at nearly the speed of light.

France Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation, said the discovery was exciting because, until now, the only intergalactic travelers that could provide information about the universe were gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation. With this new discovery, neutrinos have become a third messenger from outer space that can give us “a more complete understanding of the universe, and important new insights into the most powerful objects and events in the sky,” she said in a statement. —J.B.

Discovery challenges assumptions about Jewish life under Roman Christian rule

For the past six years, archaeologists have worked to unearth mosaics from the ruins of a fifth century Jewish synagogue at an Israeli site in Galilee.

Although anthropologists have traditionally believed Jewish life suffered when Christianity spread, the team has instead found large, colorful artwork and elaborate detail depicting villagers flourishing under Christian rule during that era. “The mosaics decorating the floor of the Huqoq synagogue revolutionize our understanding of Judaism in this period,” Jodi Magness, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the excavations, said in a statement.

The team discovered the first mosaics depicting the Biblical story of Samson and the foxes in 2012. They have since uncovered mosaics of Samson carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders, Noah’s Ark, the parting of the Red Sea and a giant fish swallowing Pharaoh’s soldiers, three successive fish swallowing Jonah, and the building of the Tower of Babel. They also discovered the first non-Biblical story ever found decorating an ancient synagogue, which archaeologists believe depicts a legendary meeting between Alexander the Great and the Jewish High Priest. The team plans to continue excavations in the summer of 2019. —J.B.

Saturn’s song

Just two weeks before NASA’s Cassini spacecraft deliberately plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere, it detected the planet sending powerful plasma rays hundreds of thousands of miles to its moon, Enceladus. During the observations, described in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists discovered that the plasma waves travel on magnetic field lines between Saturn and Enceladus that act like an electrical circuit, allowing energy to flow back and forth. Although the plasma waves are not audible, researchers converted them into an audio file, which produced a spooky, space-age melody in much the same way a radio translates electromagnet waves into music.

Saturn and Enceladus display a different relationship than the Earth and its moon. Saturn’s magnetic field immerses Enceladus, its geologically active satellite, and the moon emits plumes of water vapor that become ionized and fill the environment around the planet. —J.B.