When the news isn't... new

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/close.call.ap/index.html

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.

"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

Really? So thats new news is it? Well, no actually.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/050308_super_volcano.html

"About 74,000 years ago, in what is now Sumatra, a volcano called Toba blew with a force estimated at 10,000 times that of Mount St. Helens. Ash darkened the sky all around the planet. Temperatures plummeted by up to 21 degrees at higher latitudes, according to research by Michael Rampino, a biologist and geologist at New York University.

Rampino has estimated three-quarters of the plant species in the Northern Hemisphere perished.

Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, suggested in 1998 that Rampino's work might explain a curious bottleneck in human evolution: The blueprints of life for all humans -- DNA -- are remarkably similar given that our species branched off from the rest of the primate family tree a few million years ago."

And when was this announced to the world? 08 March 2005 06:30 am ET

I remember hearing that the 'public memory' was eight weeks, and that anything outside that envelope just disappears into the ether. Got that right! Even among Science Editors and News Editors it seems...