In 1884, Georges Seurat famously placed dots atop a canvas to create an image of park-goers lounging along the Seine River in France. The technique was known as pointillism, and it seemed so new at the time. But 38,000 years ago, people living inside caves in southwest France were doing something similar, archaeologists say. In Abri Cellier, a cave site in France's Vezere Valley, a team recently discovered 16 limestone tablets left after a previous excavation. Images of animals, including a woolly mammoth, were formed by a series of punctured dots and, in some cases, carved connecting lines. Similar images have been discovered in nearby caves in France and Spain.

Our universe's very dusty beginnings

Scientists have detected the oldest space dust. The light from galaxy A2744_YD4 has been on its way to us for 13.2 billion years, since the universe was only 600 million years old. Even then, the dust held tiny samples of the heavier elements needed eventually to form planets, and us.

Why the robber fly never misses its prey

Despite being just the size of a rice grain, robber flies, which live all over the world, are champion predators. In field experiments, they can detect targets the size of sand grains from nearly 2 feet away — 100 times the fly's body length — and intercept them in under half a second. They never miss their mark. Now a team led by scientists has started to unveil the secrets to the robber fly's prowess. Notably, the researchers observed a behavior never before described in a flying animal: About 30 centimeters from its prey, the robber fly slows, turns slightly and brings itself in for a close catch, approaching its target from behind. And whereas humans have a single lens in each eye, the robber fly has several thousand lenses per eye.