Ancient Plants Buried a Mile Under Greenland’s Ice Are a Grim Warning From The Past
The Greenland ice sheet has been there for a long time. As near as we can tell, it could have been extensive as early as 45 million years ago. Evidence,…
The Amazon May Now Actually Be Making Climate Change Worse, Scientists Warn
It’s no secret that the world’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon, is under immense pressure, nearing an ecological tipping point and at risk of collapsing. But the situation is much…
Giant Space Telescope Submerged Thousands of Feet Below World’s Deepest Lake
Russian scientists on Saturday launched one of the world’s biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the Universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal. The deep underwater telescope,…
Giant Brood of Billions of Insects Set to Emerge in US in Mass Synchronized Event
A big event in the insect world is approaching. Starting sometime in April or May, depending on latitude, one of the largest broods of 17-year cicadas will emerge from underground…
The Layers of Narwhal’s Tusk Tell The History of Its Life in a Rapidly Changing World
From the outside, the narwhal’s unicorn-like tusk is a striking curiosity. On the inside, this long protruding tooth contains an entire life history of the marine mammal’s migration and meals,…
Did Humans Once Wipe Out Neanderthals? Here’s What We Know
After 400,000 years of roaming Europe and Asia, Neanderthals disappeared. Why this happened is a contentious topic amongst experts. It is possible that our ancestors may have directly or indirectly…
Interactive Map Highlights The Best Places to Plant New Trees in The US
Reforestation is one of the ways we have of trying to mitigate climate change, but choosing where to plant trees is a more complex decision than you might think. This…
Researchers Unlock The Antikythera Mechanism’s Ancient Secrets
Scientists may have finally made a complete digital model for the Cosmos panel of a 2,000-year-old mechanical device called the Antikythera mechanism that’s believed to be the world’s first computer.…
Scientists Now Know How Squid ‘Exquisitely Optimized’ Camouflage in Shimmery Shallows
Opalescent inshore squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) are some of the most sophisticated shapeshifters on Earth. These curious cephalopods are cloaked in a special skin that can be precisely tuned to a…
Some Women Were Big-Game Hunters, Complicating Ancient Gender Roles
Archeological evidence from Peru has revealed that some ancient big-game hunters were, in fact, women, challenging what science writer James Gorman wrote was “one of the most widely held tenets…
An Underwater Revolution Millions of Years Ago Rewrote The Script of The Ocean
Look far enough back in time, and a pattern may emerge. After studying thousands of ancient fossils, paleontologist Jack Sepkoski identified just such a thing in 1981: an epic sequence…
Contentious Hypothesis Posits Humans Brains Grew Larger as We Hunted Smaller Prey
Over the course of the Pleistocene epoch, between 2.6 million years ago and 11,700 years ago, the brains of humans and their relatives grew. Now, scientists from Tel Aviv University…
Ancient Magma From Earth’s Early Days Discovered in Rocks From Greenland
Our planet’s surface has seen a thing or two in its 4.5 billion-odd-years of existence. Weathered by ocean, corroded by wind, and remolded by the relentless turnover of plate tectonics,…
For The First Time, We’ve Examined The Stomach Contents of a 47-Million-Year-Old Fly
Scientists have found a 47-million-year-old fossilized fly with a bloated belly absolutely full of pollen. The discovery is the first direct evidence that some species of ancient tangle-veined flies once…
Bacteria Could Be The First Organisms Found to Use Quantum Effects to Survive
Oxygen is life to animals like us. But for many species of microbe, the smallest whiff of the highly reactive element puts their delicate chemical machinery at risk of rusting…
Dazzling Treasures Unearthed in Bronze Age Grave Likely Belonged to a Queen
The burial of a woman who lived and died thousands of years ago could shift our perceptions of one of the most sophisticated European Bronze Age civilizations, the El Argar.…
What Did I Come in Here For? New Study Explains The Weird ‘Doorway Effect’
If you’ve ever walked into a room, then completely forgotten what you went in there for, you’ve experienced what’s known as the doorway effect: it’s almost as if the mind…
Secrets From Ancient Bones Have Changed What We Know About The Scythians
In both popular culture and the academic record, the Scythians have been described as a force to be reckoned with. For hundreds of years, they ruled the Eurasian steppe, fierce…
Ancient Earth Really Was a Serene Water World, New Evidence Confirms
It’s tricky to figure out what Earth might have looked like in the early years before life emerged. Geological detectives have now obtained more evidence that it was rather different…
Analysis of Chilling Massacre Site Unearthed in Croatia Points to a ‘Random Killing’
Around 6,200 years ago, 41 people in what is now Croatia were killed and buried in a mass grave, and members of their own community may have murdered them, according…
Suspicions on True Origin of World’s Oldest ‘Impact Crater’ Have Now Been Confirmed
Earth and giant meteorites go way back, but new research confirms that what had been proposed as the oldest impact crater on the planet – the 100-kilometer (62-mile) wide Maniitsoq…
Harrowing Report Finds 110,000 People Were Contaminated by French Nuclear Tests
The horrific extent of decades of controversial nuclear tests conducted by France in the islands of French Polynesia has been revealed in a new report, calculating the true scale of…
Physicists Just Made The Smallest Gravitational Field Measurement Ever
The tiny gravitational field between two 90-milligram spheres of gold has just been measured for the first time. This makes it officially the smallest gravitational field ever successfully measured –…
Jaw-Dropping Fossil Find Contains a Dinosaur Sitting on an Entire Clutch of Eggs
An international team of scientists has announced the discovery of an extraordinary fossilized nest in China, preserving at least eight separate dinosaurs from 70 million years ago. The clutch of…
We Finally Know The True Age of The Huge, Mysterious Objects in Laos’ Plain of Jars
In total, there are thousands of them – a giant landscape of strange, hollowed jars, carved from ancient stone. Some have lids. Most are open to the sky. These surreal…
Northern Hemisphere Summers Are Trending Towards a Hugely Disruptive Length
The climate crisis is affecting our planet to such an extent, summers in the Northern Hemisphere could last half the year by 2100, scientists have warned. This doesn’t mean longer…
Sea-level rise affects coastal areas 4 times faster than we thought. Here's why
It’s worse than we realized. Source link
Neanderthals Vanished From Europe Thousands of Years Earlier Than We Thought
Neanderthal fossils from a cave in Belgium believed to belong to the last survivors of their species ever discovered in Europe are thousands of years older than once thought, a…
If You Use Cannabis, Here’s What You Need to Know About Its Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Indoor cannabis production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental effects vary significantly depending on where it is being grown, according to our new study. The…
Humans Have Surprising Similarities to Strange Creatures From 550 Million Years Ago
From what little we know of them, they seem so different. Mysterious creatures that lived in the ocean half a billion years ago – headless, limbless things, seemingly alien to…
These Self-Decapitating Sea Slugs Can Grow an Entire New Body on The Old Head
Regeneration is a fairly widespread ability in the animal kingdom – for increasing long-term survival chances, you simply can’t beat the option to regrow entire limbs or organs. But these…
A Single Cave in Germany Is One Possible Origin of Early Wolf Domestication
A cluster of ancient canine fossils from a single cave in southwestern Germany has shown astounding genetic diversity, encompassing nearly the entire breadth of dog domestication: from wild wolf to…
AI Can Now Learn What Faces You Find Attractive Directly From Your Brain Waves
They say beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, but in actuality, it goes far deeper than that. The concept of physical beauty resides in the mind, defined by…
One Type of Bat Mysteriously Can’t Echolocate. We May Finally Know Why
Scientists have found another piece in the puzzle of how echolocation evolved in bats, moving closer to solving a decades-long evolutionary mystery. All bats – apart from the fruit bats…
Humans Now Control The Majority of All Surface Freshwater Fluctuations on Earth
A regime change of almost unimaginable scale has taken place in the natural world, reflecting humanity’s vast and growing dominance over one of our planet’s most vital resources: freshwater. In…
Echidnas Do Their Part to Fight Climate Change Without Even Thinking About It
After 200 years of European farming practices, Australian soils are in bad shape – depleted of nutrients and organic matter, including carbon. This is bad news for both soil health…
Humans Evolved to Be More Water-Efficient Than Other Primates, But We Don’t Know Why
Humans have evolved big, energy-hungry brains that require us to consume many more calories than our closest animal relatives. The same, however, does not appear to hold for our water…
Some Animals Will Go to Social Distancing Extremes if It Means Keeping The Group Safe
Social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19 might feel unnatural to us humans, but other animals intuitively do something similar, without the need for rules or regulations to keep…
Scientists Develop an ‘Elevator’ to Generate Kelp For Biofuels 4x Faster Than Normal
In the struggle to slow the runaway freight train of humanity’s destructive impact on Earth, scientists are increasingly looking at the role our oceans can play. Teaming up with industry,…
This Switch Takes Us an Important Step Closer to a Quantum Internet
Efforts to build a super-fast, super-secure quantum internet are steadily progressing, and scientists have now figured out how an important part of that network could function: an integral switch that…
Octopuses Not Only Feel Pain Physically, But Emotionally Too, First Study Finds
An important new study suggests octopuses are likely to feel and respond to pain in a similar way to mammals – the first strong evidence for this capacity in any…
According to One Key Measure, China Just Increased Its Innovation Lead Over The US
China, which last year overtook the United States as the world’s top filer of international patents, a key measure of technical innovation, increased its lead significantly in 2020, the UN…
The Latest Chatbots Are Capable of ‘Resurrecting’ The Dead
It was recently revealed that in 2017 Microsoft patented a chatbot which, if built, would digitally resurrect the dead. Using AI and machine learning, the proposed chatbot would bring our…
Physicists Just Found 4 New Subatomic Particles That May Test The Laws of Nature
This month is a time to celebrate. CERN has just announced the discovery of four brand new particles at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. This means that the…
South-West Iceland’s Been Hit by 17,000 Earthquakes This Week. It May Be About to Erupt
More than 17,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the south-west of Iceland, in the Reykjanes Peninsula, during the past week. People living in the area have been advised to be…
How Did This Skull End Up All Alone in a Cave in Italy? We Finally Have an Answer
It was found in 2015 – an isolated clue to a macabre mystery set in motion thousands of years in the past. This ancient puzzle consisted of just a single…
Scientists Detect Signs of a Hidden Structure Inside Earth’s Core
While most of us take the ground beneath our feet for granted, written within its complex layers, like pages of a book, is Earth’s history. Our history. Now researchers have…
Watch a Super-Elusive Moonflower Cactus Bloom in This Gorgeous, Rare Time Lapse
The Amazon moonflower (Selenicereus wittii) has one of the most elusive blooms in the plant kingdom. Each year, for just one night, this rare and unusual cactus opens its sepals…