news 2026

O A page from Archimedes' palimpsest, considered lost for several decades, has been identified by a CNRS researcher at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois. o The sheet contains a passage from the treatise "De la sphère et du cylindre" on one of its still-readable sides, the other side being obscured by an illumination added in the 20th century.

A research team led by a CNRS 1 researcher has for the first time accurately determined the age of the cave paintings at Font-de-Gaume (Les Eyzies) in Dordogne (southwestern France), according to work to be published on 9 March 2026 in PNAS. It had previously been impossible to precisely date the Palaeolithic cave art in the region, including that in Lascaux, using radiocarbon dating, as the paintings were believed to contain only iron and manganese oxides.