Variations in small game hunting along the northern and eastern rims of the Mediterranean Sea and results from predator-prey simulation modeling indicate that human population densities increased abruptly during the late Middle Paleolithic and again during the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic periods. The demographic pulses are evidenced by increasing reliance on agile, fast-reproducing partridges, hares, and rabbits at the expense of slow-reproducing but easily caught tortoises and marine shellfish and, concurrently, climate-independent size diminution in tortoises and shellfish. The results indicate that human populations of the early Middle Paleolithic were exceptionally small and highly dispersed.

A 95-million-year-old fossil snake from the Middle East documents the most extreme hindlimb development of any known member of that group, as it preserves the tibia, fibula, tarsals, metatarsals, and phalanges. It is more complete than Pachyrhachis, a second fossil snake with hindlimbs that was recently portrayed to be basal to all other snakes. Phylogenetic analysis of the relationships of the new taxon, as well as reanalysis of Pachyrhachis, shows both to be related to macrostomatans, a group that includes relatively advanced snakes such as pythons, boas, and colubroids to the exclusion of more primitive snakes such as blindsnakes and pipesnakes.