Six Films Preserved from the Father of Forensic Science - WashU Libraries

A tiny piece of amber from Myanmar has captured a defensive maneuver that lizards still use today: shedding part of their tail to escape a predator. The fossil provides direct evidence that this defensive mechanism was already in operation in mid-Cretaceous forest ecosystems. General view of the amber piece from Myanmar, arrows highlighting the debris stuck to the initial resin flow at the level of the ventral surface of the tail. Image credit: Fabrikant et al., doi: 10.26879/1706.

Spotting a liar is a vital skill. We all want to be better at it because lies can affect us in any number of ways, some of them harmful. The trouble is, as studies have shown, reliably spotting when someone is lying is difficult. And there's a simple reason why: liars don't all look or behave the same way when they're lying.

A view of the pyramids of Giza, which are approximately 500 years younger than the Abydos tombs, in 1938. Image from the American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, shared under the licence CC BY-SA 3.0. Over 500 years before the building of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, First Dynasty kings were buried in a tomb surrounded by many burials of household officials and artisans — many of which seem to have taken place at the same time, a suspiciously high number of simultaneous deaths. The original excavators thought that these individuals were the victims of retainer sacrifice, where people are killed after the death of a ruler to act as their attendants in the afterlife. But they didn’t find evidence of any wounds on the bones, leaving the cause of death in doubt. Now a major re-examination of a sample of the remains, using modern forensic knowledge, has identified numerous instances of cranial trauma that were likely fatal. Scientists have confirmed that numerous burials clustered around First Dynasty tombs in Abydos, Egypt, reveal the sacrifice of royal household members after the death of kings.