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PALEONTOLOGY

Geology or Paleontology?

WASHINGTON - New findings in the sediments of a dried lake bed in Israel show that early hominids migrated into the region some 780,000 years ago. That's 250,000 years earlier than previously thought. They had brought with them stone tools from Africa, which were discovered and uncovered at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site.

Craig Feibel, a Rutgers University geologist, said that findings of rocks displaying signatures of a magnetic field reversal 780, 000 years ago, helped to pinpoint the date more precisely.

SCIENCE

NASA: Once bitten, twice shy

WASHINGTON - NASA is planning to put two separate, but identical, robot rovers on Mars, bouncing them onto the Red Planet in beach-ball-style landings 18 days apart in 2004.

Sending two spacecraft, officials said, will increase the chances of success after the failure of two Mars-bound spacecraft last year. They will search for water on Mars.

SCIENCE

Scientists create antimatter

GENEVA - European scientists announced plans to build atoms of antimatter, a substance physicists believe to be the mirror image of conventional matter in the universe, and then "cage" them for study.

The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN, said they plan to make atoms of antihydrogen.

It would be the first time that antiatoms have been slowed down enough to be caught and studied, intensifying global competition between scientists trying to decode the mystery of antimatter.

Compiled from the news wires by Stephen Humphries

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society