Archeologists have found a gold funeral mask that is believed to be approximately 3,000 years old. It was discovered in a tomb in the ancient noble city of Zhengzhou in central China.

Given that modern treasures are typically made of bronze and jade, the piece is thought to be the oldest gold object ever discovered in central China.&nbsp;Unlike gold masks unearthed at ancient Shu civilization sites in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the mask from China's Central Plains culture is large enough to cover a person's complete face.

Watch |&nbsp;Archaeologists unearth pre-human tooth dating back 1.8 million years

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Speaking to China News Service, Huang Fucheng, a researcher at the Zhengzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology disclosed that the gold mask is large enough to cover an adult's entire face at 7.2 inches (18.3 cm) long and 5.7 inches (14.5 cm) wide and weighs 1.4-ounce (40 grams).

The gold mask was discovered among the ruins of a Shang dynasty (1600 BC–1046 BC) tomb in Shangcheng county, Henan province.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/palestinian-farmer-unearths-a-byzantine-era-mosaic-in-gaza-517207">Palestinian farmer unearths a Byzantine-era mosaic in Gaza while planting olive tree</a>

Talking to Henan Broadcasting System Gu Wanfa, director of the Zhengzhou Municipal Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology said that the gold mask was probably meant to keep the deceased's spirit whole and may have represented that they possessed an "imperishable gold body" reported SCMP.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/a-rare-frozen-in-time-ramses-ii-era-burial-cave-found-in-israel-517768">A rare ‘frozen in time’ Ramses II-era burial cave found in Israel</a>

“There has been a saying about bubaijinshen, or an imperishable gold body, since ancient times in China. [The gold mask] proves that the concept had existed since the Shang dynasty,” he said.

According to Chen Lüsheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China in Beijing, the recently discovered Zhengzhou tomb is a major discovery for research into the Shang Dynasty's burial customs and may potentially offer fresh insight into the beginnings of Chinese civilization.

Archeologists have found a gold funeral mask that is believed to be approximately 3,000 years old. It was discovered in a tomb in the ancient noble city of Zhengzhou in central China.

Archeologists have found a gold funeral mask that is believed to be approximately 3,000 years old. It was discovered in a tomb in the ancient noble city of Zhengzhou in central China. Given that modern treasures are typically made of bronze and jade, the piece is thought to be the oldest gold object ever discovered in central China. Unlike gold masks unearthed at ancient Shu civilization sites in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the mask from China's Central Plains culture is large enough to cover a person's complete face. Watch | Archaeologists unearth pre-human tooth dating back 1.8 million years Speaking to China News Service, Huang Fucheng, a researcher at the Zhengzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology disclosed that the gold mask is large enough to cover an adult's entire face at 7.2 inches (18.3 cm) long and 5.7 inches (14.5 cm) wide and weighs 1.4-ounce (40 grams). The gold mask was discovered among the ruins of a Shang dynasty (1600 BC–1046 BC) tomb in Shangcheng county, Henan province. Also read | Palestinian farmer unearths a Byzantine-era mosaic in Gaza while planting olive tree Talking to Henan Broadcasting System Gu Wanfa, director of the Zhengzhou Municipal Research Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology said that the gold mask was probably meant to keep the deceased's spirit whole and may have represented that they possessed an "imperishable gold body" reported SCMP. Also read | A rare ‘frozen in time’ Ramses II-era burial cave found in Israel “There has been a saying about bubaijinshen, or an imperishable gold body, since ancient times in China. [The gold mask] proves that the concept had existed since the Shang dynasty,” he said. According to Chen Lüsheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China in Beijing, the recently discovered Zhengzhou tomb is a major discovery for research into the Shang Dynasty's burial customs and may potentially offer fresh insight into the beginnings of Chinese civilization.

Archaeologists unearth China's 'oldest gold object', a funeral mask

NASA is scheduled on Saturday to launch a probe toward clusters of asteroids along Jupiter’s orbital path. They are known as the Trojan swarms, and they represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system. The spacecraft, a deep-space robotic archaeologist named Lucy, will seek to answer pressing questions about the origins of the solar system, how the planets migrated to their current orbits and how life might have emerged on Earth.

“We have never gone this far to study asteroids,” said Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA. “In so doing, we’re going to be able to better understand the formation of the solar system, and better understand ourselves and our development.”

After a six-year cruise, Lucy will fly close to seven Trojan asteroids through 2033, completing wild circuits of the sun that conjure the outline of a Formula 1 racetrack in some graphic renderings.

The spacecraft will study the geology, composition, density and structure of the Trojans, which are small bodies locked in stable points along Jupiter’s orbit of the sun, fixed in their own orbits ahead or behind the massive planet.

“It’s always interesting to go somewhere for the first time,” said Cathy Olkin, the deputy principal investigator of the Lucy mission. “Every time we’ve done that, we’ve learned more and more about our solar system and the area in space that we live in.”

Humanity has explored a variety of small rocky bodies throughout the solar system. The NEAR mission landed on Eros in the inner asteroid belt. The Dawn mission orbited Ceres and Vesta, the two largest worlds in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Japan’s Hayabusa missions and NASA’s OSIRIS-REX completed close encounters with near earth asteroids. And the New Horizons mission visited Arrokoth, an object in the solar system’s distant Kuiper belt.

But the Trojans in Jupiter’s vicinity have yet to be investigated. About 10,000 such objects have been discovered. When the first was spotted more than a century ago, astronomers began naming them after heroes of Homer’s Iliad. The result was the overall descriptor of “Trojan.”

The mission name “Lucy” is a nod to the 3.2 million-year-old australopithecine skeleton discovered in 1974, which revealed secrets of human evolution. The NASA team hopes that the robotic Lucy does the same for the solar system’s evolution, and prehistory is a recurring theme among the mission’s scientists.

Tom Statler, the Lucy program scientist at NASA, describes Lucy as “planetary archaeology” and compares it to the study of the pyramids in Egypt.

“If you want to understand how the pyramids were built, you can go and look at the outsides of them, you can climb all over them,” Statler said. Doing that, however, will answer very little about how they were actually built.

“If you can find and excavate the abandoned construction site that’s next to the pyramids, however, and you find the tools used to build them, and you find the leftover blocks — the things that got broken and shaped but didn’t get used — then you start getting insight into a pyramid’s interior and how it got there,” he said.

“That’s what we’re doing with asteroids,” he said. “We’re excavating the leftovers from the construction site.”

The mission was born of necessity.

Thirty years ago, the concept of planetary formation was much more orderly than it is today. A star formed in the center of a rotating disc of protoplanetary material. Gradually, the material condensed and collected into eight planets in simple orbits (as well as Pluto).

However, when Hal Levison, a planetary scientist, and fellow theorists tried to simulate the formation of the solar system, they repeatedly ran into a problem: It was virtually impossible to build Uranus and Neptune in their present orbits. To account for those worlds, known as the ice giants, Levison, now the principal investigator of the Lucy mission, and three other researchers developed the Nice model of solar system evolution (named for the city in France).

The model suggests that the giant planets formed much closer to the sun than their current orbits, and that the increasingly eccentric orbits of a young Jupiter and Saturn destabilized and rearranged the solar system. In the process, as the giant planets moved, and Uranus and Neptune bounded outward, they scattered the small bodies of the solar system. Some comets and asteroids were flung to the deep outer solar system, and others were ejected entirely out into the Milky Way.

A small minority of scattered asteroids were ensnared in two of Jupiter’s permanent Lagrange points, which are regions of space where the gravitational and orbital influences of the planet and the sun are balanced. The regions both lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit. Those asteroids are the Trojan swarms.

Today, the Nice model offers the predominant understanding of how a disc of dust and gas about 4.6 billion years ago became a system of planets circling a sun. Moreover, telescope observations of exoplanets prompted a broader scientific reevaluation of how star systems, including our own, can form. Some distant stars are orbited by giant planets that are closer to them than Mercury is to our sun.

Levison came to believe that the planetary science community’s ideas about planetary formation outpaced the data it had available. The best way to constrain variables in the Nice model would be to account for the origins of the Trojans.

“One of the surprising things about the Trojan population is that they are physically very different from one another but occupy a really small region of space,” he said. “That diversity in that small region is telling us something important about the early evolution of the solar system.”

To understand the secrets locked in the Trojans’ orbits, Levison needed to persuade NASA to build a spacecraft to study them and determine what formed where. Lucy is the result. It was chosen for flight in 2014 through NASA’s Discovery Program, in which scientists compete over smaller mission proposals.

Studying camera imagery will be an important part of the Lucy team’s scientific efforts. By counting the number of craters spotted on each asteroid, an object’s surface age is revealed. (Older surfaces will have been hit by more impactors and thus show more craters.) The scientists will also analyze the returned images for the distribution of color across the asteroids’ surfaces, which can be an indicator of what the rocks are made of: Thermal measurements will help identify the compositions and structures of the asteroids. They will also use infrared spectra to measure the presence of minerals, ices and organic molecules.

NASA is interested in finding primordial organic material on asteroids because billions of years ago, they may have seeded Earth with the chemical ingredients necessary for life.

Despite the Trojans sharing an orbit with Jupiter, Lucy will not visit Jupiter. Before the spacecraft even launches from Earth, it will be closer to Jupiter than when it visits the Trojans.

During its 12-year mission it will be powered by two giant solar arrays that are stowed at launch and gradually expand outward like folding fans. Lucy’s roller coaster-like trajectory will carry it farther than any solar-powered spacecraft has ever flown. And it will be moving at about 6 miles per second at its fastest clip.

“Its speed will be like running a 10K every second,” Olkin said.

The spacecraft will be in a sophisticated orbit of loop-the-loops across the solar system, circling the sun, borrowing gravity from Earth for free propulsion to Jupiter’s orbital path at a point known as Lagrange 4. Gravity will take it back around the sun to the Earth, whose gravity will again hurl it outward, this time to Lagrange 5, and back, the process repeating. The trajectory is driven by the positions of planets and gravity assists, meaning the spacecraft, if nothing stops it, will continue to do this for hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of years.

Each encounter will be at an altitude of 600 miles or less from the Trojan’s surface. After the final flyby, depending on Lucy’s health, NASA can target future asteroids and other celestial objects for analyses.

“As we are flying past a Trojan asteroid, we are taking data,” Olkin said.

NASA is scheduled on Saturday to launch a probe toward clusters of asteroids along Jupiter’s orbital path. They are known as the Trojan swarms, and they represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system.

NASA is scheduled on Saturday to launch a probe toward clusters of asteroids along Jupiter’s orbital path. They are known as the Trojan swarms, and they represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system. The spacecraft, a deep-space robotic archaeologist named Lucy, will seek to answer pressing questions about the origins of the solar system, how the planets migrated to their current orbits and how life might have emerged on Earth. “We have never gone this far to study asteroids,” said Bill Nelson, the administrator of NASA. “In so doing, we’re going to be able to better understand the formation of the solar system, and better understand ourselves and our development.” After a six-year cruise, Lucy will fly close to seven Trojan asteroids through 2033, completing wild circuits of the sun that conjure the outline of a Formula 1 racetrack in some graphic renderings. The spacecraft will study the geology, composition, density and structure of the Trojans, which are small bodies locked in stable points along Jupiter’s orbit of the sun, fixed in their own orbits ahead or behind the massive planet. “It’s always interesting to go somewhere for the first time,” said Cathy Olkin, the deputy principal investigator of the Lucy mission. “Every time we’ve done that, we’ve learned more and more about our solar system and the area in space that we live in.” Humanity has explored a variety of small rocky bodies throughout the solar system. The NEAR mission landed on Eros in the inner asteroid belt. The Dawn mission orbited Ceres and Vesta, the two largest worlds in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. Japan’s Hayabusa missions and NASA’s OSIRIS-REX completed close encounters with near earth asteroids. And the New Horizons mission visited Arrokoth, an object in the solar system’s distant Kuiper belt. But the Trojans in Jupiter’s vicinity have yet to be investigated. About 10,000 such objects have been discovered. When the first was spotted more than a century ago, astronomers began naming them after heroes of Homer’s Iliad. The result was the overall descriptor of “Trojan.” The mission name “Lucy” is a nod to the 3.2 million-year-old australopithecine skeleton discovered in 1974, which revealed secrets of human evolution. The NASA team hopes that the robotic Lucy does the same for the solar system’s evolution, and prehistory is a recurring theme among the mission’s scientists. Tom Statler, the Lucy program scientist at NASA, describes Lucy as “planetary archaeology” and compares it to the study of the pyramids in Egypt. “If you want to understand how the pyramids were built, you can go and look at the outsides of them, you can climb all over them,” Statler said. Doing that, however, will answer very little about how they were actually built. “If you can find and excavate the abandoned construction site that’s next to the pyramids, however, and you find the tools used to build them, and you find the leftover blocks — the things that got broken and shaped but didn’t get used — then you start getting insight into a pyramid’s interior and how it got there,” he said. “That’s what we’re doing with asteroids,” he said. “We’re excavating the leftovers from the construction site.” The mission was born of necessity. Thirty years ago, the concept of planetary formation was much more orderly than it is today. A star formed in the center of a rotating disc of protoplanetary material. Gradually, the material condensed and collected into eight planets in simple orbits (as well as Pluto). However, when Hal Levison, a planetary scientist, and fellow theorists tried to simulate the formation of the solar system, they repeatedly ran into a problem: It was virtually impossible to build Uranus and Neptune in their present orbits. To account for those worlds, known as the ice giants, Levison, now the principal investigator of the Lucy mission, and three other researchers developed the Nice model of solar system evolution (named for the city in France). The model suggests that the giant planets formed much closer to the sun than their current orbits, and that the increasingly eccentric orbits of a young Jupiter and Saturn destabilized and rearranged the solar system. In the process, as the giant planets moved, and Uranus and Neptune bounded outward, they scattered the small bodies of the solar system. Some comets and asteroids were flung to the deep outer solar system, and others were ejected entirely out into the Milky Way. A small minority of scattered asteroids were ensnared in two of Jupiter’s permanent Lagrange points, which are regions of space where the gravitational and orbital influences of the planet and the sun are balanced. The regions both lead and follow Jupiter in its orbit. Those asteroids are the Trojan swarms. Today, the Nice model offers the predominant understanding of how a disc of dust and gas about 4.6 billion years ago became a system of planets circling a sun. Moreover, telescope observations of exoplanets prompted a broader scientific reevaluation of how star systems, including our own, can form. Some distant stars are orbited by giant planets that are closer to them than Mercury is to our sun. Levison came to believe that the planetary science community’s ideas about planetary formation outpaced the data it had available. The best way to constrain variables in the Nice model would be to account for the origins of the Trojans. “One of the surprising things about the Trojan population is that they are physically very different from one another but occupy a really small region of space,” he said. “That diversity in that small region is telling us something important about the early evolution of the solar system.” To understand the secrets locked in the Trojans’ orbits, Levison needed to persuade NASA to build a spacecraft to study them and determine what formed where. Lucy is the result. It was chosen for flight in 2014 through NASA’s Discovery Program, in which scientists compete over smaller mission proposals. Studying camera imagery will be an important part of the Lucy team’s scientific efforts. By counting the number of craters spotted on each asteroid, an object’s surface age is revealed. (Older surfaces will have been hit by more impactors and thus show more craters.) The scientists will also analyze the returned images for the distribution of color across the asteroids’ surfaces, which can be an indicator of what the rocks are made of: Thermal measurements will help identify the compositions and structures of the asteroids. They will also use infrared spectra to measure the presence of minerals, ices and organic molecules. NASA is interested in finding primordial organic material on asteroids because billions of years ago, they may have seeded Earth with the chemical ingredients necessary for life. Despite the Trojans sharing an orbit with Jupiter, Lucy will not visit Jupiter. Before the spacecraft even launches from Earth, it will be closer to Jupiter than when it visits the Trojans. During its 12-year mission it will be powered by two giant solar arrays that are stowed at launch and gradually expand outward like folding fans. Lucy’s roller coaster-like trajectory will carry it farther than any solar-powered spacecraft has ever flown. And it will be moving at about 6 miles per second at its fastest clip. “Its speed will be like running a 10K every second,” Olkin said. The spacecraft will be in a sophisticated orbit of loop-the-loops across the solar system, circling the sun, borrowing gravity from Earth for free propulsion to Jupiter’s orbital path at a point known as Lagrange 4. Gravity will take it back around the sun to the Earth, whose gravity will again hurl it outward, this time to Lagrange 5, and back, the process repeating. The trajectory is driven by the positions of planets and gravity assists, meaning the spacecraft, if nothing stops it, will continue to do this for hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of years. Each encounter will be at an altitude of 600 miles or less from the Trojan’s surface. After the final flyby, depending on Lucy’s health, NASA can target future asteroids and other celestial objects for analyses. “As we are flying past a Trojan asteroid, we are taking data,” Olkin said.

Why NASA is launching a robotic archaeologist named Lucy

A 3D map has been unearthed in France which belonged to the Bronze Age and may be the oldest map to exist in Europe.

Archaeologists in France found the Bronze Age stone, which they believe was earlier once unearthed in 1900 in the prehistoric burial ground in Finistère by Paul du Chatellier.

After that, the slab was reportedly forgotten under a moat at Mr du Chatellier's home, the Château de Kernuz and was then found again in a cellar of a castle in 2014.

The stone is 2m b 1.5 m slab and has patterns engraved on it, which are being assumed to be markings of a map of an area in western Brittany.

As per experts, the piece of rock, called Saint-Bélec Slab is dated back to the Bronze age, between 1900 BC and 1650 BC.

The “presence of repeated motifs joined by lines” on the surface of the slab made experts believe it to be a map.

"This is probably the oldest map of a territory that has been identified," Dr Clément Nicolas from Bournemouth University, one of the study's authors, told the BBC.

"There are several such maps carved in stone all over the world. Generally, they are just interpretations. But this is the first time a map has depicted an area on a specific scale."

He also believes that the map may have been a trial to mark a particular area, affirming ownership of the territory by a small King or Prince.

A 3D map has been unearthed in France which belonged to the Bronze Age and may be the oldest map to exist in Europe. Archaeologists in France found the Bronze Age stone, which they believe was earlier once unearthed in 1900 in the prehistoric burial ground in Finistère by Paul du Chatellier.

A 3D map has been unearthed in France which belonged to the Bronze Age and may be the oldest map to exist in Europe. Archaeologists in France found the Bronze Age stone, which they believe was earlier once unearthed in 1900 in the prehistoric burial ground in Finistère by Paul du Chatellier. After that, the slab was reportedly forgotten under a moat at Mr du Chatellier's home, the Château de Kernuz and was then found again in a cellar of a castle in 2014. The stone is 2m b 1.5 m slab and has patterns engraved on it, which are being assumed to be markings of a map of an area in western Brittany. As per experts, the piece of rock, called Saint-Bélec Slab is dated back to the Bronze age, between 1900 BC and 1650 BC. The “presence of repeated motifs joined by lines” on the surface of the slab made experts believe it to be a map. "This is probably the oldest map of a territory that has been identified," Dr Clément Nicolas from Bournemouth University, one of the study's authors, told the BBC. "There are several such maps carved in stone all over the world. Generally, they are just interpretations. But this is the first time a map has depicted an area on a specific scale." He also believes that the map may have been a trial to mark a particular area, affirming ownership of the territory by a small King or Prince.

France: Archaeologists unearth 3D map from Bronze Age

A little while ago a group of archaeologists began excavating a piece of land near the iron age hillfort at Wittenham Clumps, the experts had not thought they would unearth such a startling discovery.

While working on the piece of land which had been occupied for more than 3,000 years, archaeologists found an extended iron age settlement with remains of nearly a dozen roundhouses from 400BC to 100BC.

The experts also found magnificent and enormous Roman villa which is being assumed to have been built in the late third to the early fourth century.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/research-shows-englands-iconic-stonehenge-first-appeared-in-wales-363142" hreflang="en">Research shows England's iconic Stonehenge first appeared in Wales</a>

These discoveries were made after an environmental charity, Earth Trust, decided to redevelop its visitor centre and added investigating the archaeology of the area in their planning application.

Talking about the astonishing discovery, Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise told Guardian, "These were people’s homes and, obviously, over the course of the last year, we’ve all been spending so much time at home. Contemplating the whole idea of ‘home’ as each one of these houses was coming up, we were thinking about how people were living and how they might have been using their space. That, to me, is the most exciting thing. It’s very evocative."

She also admitted that while they had hoped to find something when they started digging, they did not expect to find so much evidence of ancient civilisations.

"We hoped. You never really know for sure. We had some idea that there would’ve been quite a lot of settlement there, but honestly it is astonishing that so much evidence has come up of people’s actual daily lives. It’s been one of those digs where you feel you can almost reach out and touch them," she said.

The iron age roundhouses are nearly 10 metres in diameter. The experts believe the inhabitants may have been farmers living on the land.

Two Roman cemeteries were also found at the site with nearly 40 graves and stone-built corn-drying ovens.

"It’s a substantial iron age settlement. It’s probably no surprise because we’re right at the foot of Wittenham Clumps, an enormous hillfort. The settlement probably continues well into the landscape beyond where we’ve looked," Chris Casswell, DigVentures’s head of fieldwork said. "Normally we go out and do geophysics, which gives an image of what might be under the ground. But on this site, it didn’t show up any of this. It showed a couple of anomalies … So it’s completely unexpected."

The charity is also planning to replicate the three iron age roundhouse and other objects to help bring the civilisation back to life for people to look and observe from the remains found from the digs. "[Earth Trust is] trying to promote the environment – and now, hopefully, the historic environment as well," Casswell said.

A little while ago a group of archaeologists began excavating a piece of land near the iron age hillfort at Wittenham Clumps, the experts had not thought they would unearth such a startling discovery.

A little while ago a group of archaeologists began excavating a piece of land near the iron age hillfort at Wittenham Clumps, the experts had not thought they would unearth such a startling discovery. While working on the piece of land which had been occupied for more than 3,000 years, archaeologists found an extended iron age settlement with remains of nearly a dozen roundhouses from 400BC to 100BC. The experts also found magnificent and enormous Roman villa which is being assumed to have been built in the late third to the early fourth century. Also read| Research shows England's iconic Stonehenge first appeared in Wales These discoveries were made after an environmental charity, Earth Trust, decided to redevelop its visitor centre and added investigating the archaeology of the area in their planning application. Talking about the astonishing discovery, Lisa Westcott Wilkins of DigVentures, an archaeology social enterprise told Guardian, "These were people’s homes and, obviously, over the course of the last year, we’ve all been spending so much time at home. Contemplating the whole idea of ‘home’ as each one of these houses was coming up, we were thinking about how people were living and how they might have been using their space. That, to me, is the most exciting thing. It’s very evocative." She also admitted that while they had hoped to find something when they started digging, they did not expect to find so much evidence of ancient civilisations. "We hoped. You never really know for sure. We had some idea that there would’ve been quite a lot of settlement there, but honestly it is astonishing that so much evidence has come up of people’s actual daily lives. It’s been one of those digs where you feel you can almost reach out and touch them," she said. The iron age roundhouses are nearly 10 metres in diameter. The experts believe the inhabitants may have been farmers living on the land. Two Roman cemeteries were also found at the site with nearly 40 graves and stone-built corn-drying ovens. "It’s a substantial iron age settlement. It’s probably no surprise because we’re right at the foot of Wittenham Clumps, an enormous hillfort. The settlement probably continues well into the landscape beyond where we’ve looked," Chris Casswell, DigVentures’s head of fieldwork said. "Normally we go out and do geophysics, which gives an image of what might be under the ground. But on this site, it didn’t show up any of this. It showed a couple of anomalies … So it’s completely unexpected." The charity is also planning to replicate the three iron age roundhouse and other objects to help bring the civilisation back to life for people to look and observe from the remains found from the digs. "[Earth Trust is] trying to promote the environment – and now, hopefully, the historic environment as well," Casswell said.

Archaeologists find unexpected iron age settlement in Oxfordshire

Egypt has unveiled a significant new archaeological discovery at the Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, watch this report

Egypt: Archaeologists unearth 3000-year-old coffins in latest discovery