News Desk

Until now little was known about when humans started eating the crop, now a staple of meals around the globe that shapes agricultural landscapes and ecosystem biodiversity.

Scientists using an aerial remote-sensing method have discovered the largest and oldest known structure built by the ancient Maya civilization – a colossal rectangular elevated platform built between 1000 and 800BC in Mexico’s Tabasco state.

Ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans were genetically closer than polar bears and brown bears, and so, like the bears, were able to easily produce healthy, fertile hybrids according to a study, led by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.

With myriad fragments and an extraordinary past, the Dead Sea scrolls are quite a puzzle. Now experts say ancient DNA has helped them piece together which fragments come from the same scrolls, as well as which texts may have travelled a distance, and how widespread the writings were.

Research from Curtin University has found that pre-historic climate change does not explain the extinction of megafauna in North America at the end of the last Ice Age.

The University of Victoria paleoanthropologist, who specializes in European cave art, has been awarded a National Geographic grant to test genetic material found in cave wall paint in Spain to try to find out who forgot to sign their work at least 40,000 years ago.

The psychedelic experience can be rough on a person’s ego. Those who experiment with magic mushrooms and LSD often describe a dissolution of the self, otherwise known as ego-death, ego-loss, or ego-disintegration.

Autumn was closing in fast on northern Nevada when Martin Sander took one last look around the excavation site in the Augusta Mountains 150 miles (241 kilometers) east of Reno.

Less spectacular than a total eclipse but no less interesting, the penumbral lunar eclipse to be seen on Friday will be well worth watching

Mining giant Rio Tinto has apologised to traditional owners in Western Australia’s north after destroying a significant Indigenous site dating back 46,000 years, saying it is urgently reviewing plans for other sites in the area.

CALIFORNIA’S GIANT SEQUOIAS can live for more than 3,000 years, their trunks stretching two car lengths in diameter, their branches reaching nearly 300 feet toward the clouds.

Image from Acroterion (Wiki Commons)

We now know ammonites are extinct cephalopod molluscs…But before science had an answer, ammonite fossils were mysterious objects that gave rise to rich and fascinating folklore all over the world.

Human pregnancy is downright curious. Today, we still don’t know why women go into labour for so long or why they face so much risk when they give birth.

“It’s like finding a kangaroo in Norway,” says a researcher of the new species of lentil-size fish, found 5,000 miles from its nearest cousins.

Image from Flickr: Pygmy Seahorse (Wiki Commons)

Scientists in Israel believe they’ve found evidence of some of the oldest, and holiest, rollers in biblical history. Deep in the inner sanctum of an 8th century BCE shrine, worshippers weren’t just burning frankincense. They were also burning marijuana.

A 425-million-year-old millipede fossil from the Scottish island of Kerrera is the world’s oldest “bug” — older than any known fossil of an insect, arachnid or other related creepy-crawly, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.