On the afternoon of February 24th, 2019, police in Greenville, South Carolina were alerted about a single-car crash along Piedmont Highway. Troopers arrived on the scene (pictured above on the right) and found the body of 21 year-old Jayla Thomas-Smith (pictured left) inside the vehicle. It was originally believed that Jayla died as a result of the car accident, however upon closer examination, it was determined that Jayla had actually been shot to death. At that point, the investigation into her death turned into a homicide case.

At this time, no suspects or persons of interest have been announced in Jayla’s case. Jayla’s family members believe that Jayla planned to meet up with somebody that day, but they do not know who she planned to meet. Jayla’s aunt told reporters, “Where they found her at, that’s not a place that she would go to. It didn’t make any sense for her to be out there underneath a billboard, literally almost under a ditch.” Jayla’s aunt asked for her identity not to be revealed, as she is fearful of Jayla’s killer, who is still on the loose.

$269,500/4 br/3000 sq ft

Peoria, IL 

A strange new species may have joined the human family. Human fossils found in a cave on Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, include tiny molars suggesting their owners were small; curved finger and toe bones hint that they climbed trees. Homo luzonensis, as the species has been christened, lived some 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, when the world hosted multiple archaic humans, including Neanderthals and Denisovans, and when H. sapiens may have been making its first forays into Southeast Asia.

“This is a truly sensational finding,” says Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia. The paper, published this week in Nature, “sent shivers down my spine.”

3 years ago MIT grad student Katie Bouman led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole. 

Today (first time ever) that image of a black hole was released. It is larger than the size of our entire solar system

On 11 May, 2011, Amy Pitzen, who lived in Aurora, Illinois, with her husband, Jim, and their 6-year-old son, Timmothy, removed Timmothy from school, claiming there was a family emergency. The two then spent a few hours at a local zoo before driving to Gurnee and checking in to a water park hotel. The next day, Amy and Timmothy travelled to Wisconsin Dells and checked into another water park hotel.

Finally, on 13 May, Amy called her family and informed them that Timmothy was alive and well. They confirmed that they could hear Timmothy chatting in the background. This was the last time the family heard from Amy or Timmothy. The next morning, Amy was found deceased in their hotel room, having slashed her wrists. Timmothy was nowhere to be seen. Amy left behind a suicide note that explained that Timmothy was “with people who love him and will take care of him,” but that he would never be found.

CLEVELAND, OHIO —The elusive Denisovans, the extinct cousins of Neanderthals, are known from only the scraps of bone they left in Siberia’s Denisova Cave and the genetic legacy they bequeathed to living people across Asia. A new study of that legacy in people from New Guinea now suggests that, far from being a single group, these mysterious humans were so diverse that their populations were as distantly related to each other as they were to Neanderthals.