Newsdesk Archive
Kangaroos in prehistoric Australia faced a fearsome threat. The marsupial lion had sharp teeth, crushing jaws – and manoeuvrable, primate-like forearms that could have allowed it to slash at prey with large, retractable thumb claws.
The creature, Thylacoleo carnifex, lived during the Pleistocene – which began about 2.6 million years ago – and clocked in at around 100 to 160 kilograms until it went extinct around 30,000 years ago.
Paleontologists have discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex, including a very complete skull. The find, which paleontologists estimate to be about 20 percent of the animal, includes vertebrae, ribs, hips and lower jaw bones.
A Bosnian pine (Pinus heldreichii) growing in the highlands of northern Greece has been dendrocronologically dated to be more than 1075 years old. This makes it currently the oldest known living tree in Europe. The millenium old pine was discovered by scientists from Stockholm University (Sweden), the University of Mainz (Germany) and the University of Arizona (USA).
Geologists are using new direct methods to measure the Earth's oxygenation. They identified, for the first time, exactly how much oxygen was in Earth's atmosphere 813 million years ago -- 10.9 percent. This finding, they say, demonstrates that oxygenation on Earth occurred 300 million years earlier than previously concluded from indirect measurements.
Peter Wadhams has spent his career in the Arctic, making more than 50 trips there, some in submarines under the polar ice. He is credited with being one of the first scientists to show that the thick icecap that once covered the Arctic ocean was beginning to thin and shrink. He was director of the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge from 1987 to 1992 and professor of ocean physics at Cambridge since 2001. His book, A Farewell to Ice, tells the story of his unravelling of this alarming trend and describes what the consequences for our planet will be if Arctic ice continues to disappear at its current rate.
Related: Time to listen to the ice scientists about the Arctic death spiral
Scientists have confirmed that thousands of pristine blue lakes have appeared on the ice sheets of East Antarctica, and it’s got them very worried.
Alt: 8,000 stunning blue lakes spotted in Antarctica are a sign its giant ice sheet may soon collapse, researchers warn
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman emperor Vespasian taxed the sale of human urine, then a valuable industrial ingredient. When his son objected, the emperor held a gold coin to his nose, asking whether it smelled—arguing that money was money, no matter its source.
Related: Caught in the act: first videos of coral bleaching behaviour
In order for the descendants of fish to become creatures that could walk on land, fingers and toes had to replace long, elegant fin rays.
Scientists have now shown that the same cells that make fin rays in fish play a central role in forming the fingers and toes of four-legged creatures.
The deep ocean makes up 95% of habitable Earth, yet only 0.0001% has been explored. The Guardian joined a mission off Bermuda that is looking to unlock the secrets of the deep
It's the fastest mammal recovery ever recorded
A small species of fox that lives only on islands off the California coast has made a dramatic comeback from the brink of extinction.
What happens to hibernating or torpid animals when a bushfire rages? Are they able to sense danger and wake up from their energy-saving sleep to move to safety? Yes, says Julia Nowack of the University of New England in Australia, lead author of a study in Springer's journal The Science of Nature about the reaction of pygmy-possums in such instances.
Barbados bullfinches and grackles join a growing list of animals that demonstrate complex problem-solving skills, a new study says.
Embryonic learning—things birds pick up from their parents while still in the egg—may play a bigger role than imagined.
Birds feeling the heat from warming weather may be able give their offspring an early weather advisory right through the eggshell—which could in turn help baby birds prepare for the forecast.
The very first cry of neonates is marked by their maternal language. This seems to be especially apparent in tonal languages, where pitch and pitch fluctuation determine the meaning of words. Chinese and German scientists have demonstrated this phenomenon for the first time by with newborn babies from China and Cameroon.
Related: Poor Pregnancy Diet Linked To ADHD: Too Much Sugar, Fat Affects Unborn Baby
Related: Can therapy before 3 wipe out a peanut allergy?
Analysis of almost 3,000 pairs of Danish twins shows that they live longer than the general population. The authors believe it reflects the benefits of lifelong social support.
When people voluntarily take on unpleasant tasks such as housework, they tend to be in particularly happy states, according to a new study on hedonism. The finding challenges an old prediction by some researchers that humans can be constant pleasure-seekers.
Related: Social experiment showed 99 of 100 people said thank you when door was held for them
Recent research challenges the notion that our closest animal relatives don’t like working as a team
Although humans love the playful ways and toothy grins of chimpanzees, our primate cousins have the reputation of being competitive, churlish and, at times, aggressive.
Squatters who illegally occupy vacant homes or buildings are not always contributing to apathy or social disorder, says a new University of Michigan study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
For many cultures a total solar eclipse represents a time when either a demon or animal consumes the Sun. For example, the Vikings saw a pair of sky wolves chasing the Sun, and when one caught it, the wolf would eat it. In Vietnam, either a frog or toad consumed the Sun. For the Kwakiutl tribe on the western coast of Canada, it was the mouth of heaven.
Soon, the United States will have a chance to see an eclipse of our own (and assign cultural value as we please). Mark your calendars: the next total solar eclipse comes to the USA one year from today, on August 21, 2017.
China has commissioned a group of scientists to study the feasibility of building a manned radar station on the moon, but many experts on the mainland have questioned the potentially massive cost of the project and the usefulness of building such a base.
If movies about space have taught us anything, it’s that no one can hear you scream. If you get lost in space, nobody’s going to find you. Unless you’re a spacecraft with a direct link to NASA. Then there is hope for you yet.
The distant planet GJ 1132b intrigued astronomers when it was discovered last year. Located just 39 light-years from Earth, it might have an atmosphere despite being baked to a temperature of around 450 degrees Fahrenheit. But would that atmosphere be thick and soupy or thin and wispy? New research suggests the latter is much more likely.
Supernova ash has been discovered in fossils that were created by bacteria on Earth, a new study finds.
Because the fossils contain a variety of iron that is most likely the product of a supernova event that occurred light-years from Earth, this finding also suggests that the event might have played a role in an extinction event on Earth, researchers said.
A blast from the past? The east coast of Australia was once lined by volcanoes that were so explosive they could shoot sand-sized particles 2300 kilometres – all the way across to the west coast.
The volcanic activity occurred 100 million years ago, at a time when New Zealand began tearing away from Australia’s eastern edge.
Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious stone structure buried under what they describe as Scotland's "largest Neolithic rubbish dump".
The layout of the stone slabs, known as orthostats, found during a dig at Ness of Brodgar on Orkney is unlike anything previously found on the islands.
The discovery of a 3,000-year-old pyramid-shaped mausoleum in Kazakhstan has gone viral over the past 24 hours, with several media outlets proclaiming the structure to be the world's first pyramid. But archaeologists say the structure, which contains a series of five walls that gradually get higher toward the center, is not nearly as old as these news reports claim.
Unlike the bones or tablets hiding under an undignified crust of modern infrastructure, the shoe had been secreted away in the wall by its contemporaries. The footwear hidden in the wall — about a men’s size 6 today, its sole worn through — had a purpose. The shoe, historians say, was meant to protect academics from evil.
The oldest European mummy ever found wore a stylish fur hat made from brown bear pelt, as well as a range of other garments, scientists have said.
The 5,300 year hunter known as Otzi the Iceman, who was found in the Tyrollean Alps, also had an arrow quiver made of roe deer leather, and other clothes made out of domesticated sheep, cattle and goats, according to the new research.
A Quebec researcher is celebrating the discovery of an intricate collection of tattoos found on the mummified body of a woman who lived more than 3,300 years ago.
The markings are the first on a mummy from dynastic Egypt to show actual objects, including lotus blossoms on the mummy's hips and cows on her arm, the scientific journal Nature reported.
Modern technology and research has restored an ancient Egyptian woman, Meritamun, creating a unique teaching tool for medicine and health science
Reconstructed from a mummified head dating back at least two millennia, the fine-featured ancient Egyptian face looks out from an artist’s studio in the forested hills of rural Victoria.
The first researchers of Paleolithic caves and sites related to the earliest humans called the people who left paintings and other pieces of early art “men.” Due to this decision, people created an image for many decades of ancient society as basically constructed around men. However, it may be necessary to rethink this theory and perhaps rewrite the history books too.
Four-tuskers, hoe-tuskers, shovel-tuskers are all wiped out – now only a fragment of this keystone species remains
Related: Why tourists shouldn't ride elephants
Related: Condoms Filled with Chili Powder and Firecrackers Teach Elephants to Stay Away
It may have become extinct for 4,000 years, but the woolly mammoth could be about to get the highest level of wildlife protection.
The move has been made after a huge number of ivory tusks were discovered in the Siberian tundra - with fears that it could link to an increase in illegal elephant ivory trading.
To figure out how life on Earth started, scientists must recreate the world as it was, or at least know the ins and outs of our primordial planet. This week, scientists moved in that direction, putting together a mix of chemicals simpler than DNA that reproduced similar molecules — a step toward actually being alive.
Related: How did phosphate get into RNA?
Geneticists have made a step forward in ‘recoding’ the genome as we know it, replacing 62,214 DNA base pairs in a synthetic E. coli genome.
Recoding genomes so extensively could lead to the development of organisms that are resistant to viruses, and could even allowing biologists to code for all-new synthetic amino acids. Essentially, it allows us to reprogram life.
Today it's little foam balls, but scientists are thinking bigger
By way of acoustics, researchers have successfully levitated one of the largest objects yet: a two-inch solid polystyrene ball.
Related: Vibrations bring still photos to life
After maiden flight in Bedfordshire, creators of world’s largest aircraft say 100 could be in skies within five years
Related: Could this be the first 'real' flying car? $600,000 'flying motorbike' can hit 112mph on land AND in the air
This footage could finally prove once and for all that aliens do exist. Or it could show an insect crawling across a telescope lens.
UFO enthusiasts have posted footage online from a live feed of the moon's surface.
Nearly a year after first making headlines around the world, "Tabby's star" is still guarding its secrets.
In September 2015, a team led by Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian announced that a star about 1,500 light-years from Earth called KIC 8462852 had dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years.
Astronomers have captured rare images of a tiny star before, during and after it exploded as a "classical nova".
In this type of binary system, a white dwarf sucks gas from a much bigger partner star until it blows up - about every 10,000 to one million years.
An ancient Mayan text captured the moment when a royal astronomer made a scientific discovery about the movement of Venus across the night sky.
Related: Hidden codex may reveal secrets of life in Mexico before Spanish conquest
It is a centuries-old manuscript written in an coded language that no one - not even the best cryptographers - has cracked.
Scholars have spent their lives puzzling over the Voynich manuscript, whose intriguing mix of elegant writing and drawings of strange plants and naked women has some believing it holds magical powers.
Related: Why Spend Thousands on a Copy of the Voynich Manuscript, When You Can Just Download It?
Jose Salvador Alvarenga was fishing off the coast of Mexico in late 2012 when a powerful storm sent his boat adrift. Marshall Islanders found the battered vessel nearly 16 months later, stuck on a reef—with Alvarenga still alive inside. He had crossed almost the whole length of the Pacific Ocean. Rainwater and a diet of fish and turtle sustained him.
A new study led by a Binghamton University archaeologist contradicts the belief that the ancient civilization of Rapa Nui, Chile, was destroyed by warfare.
An analysis of artifacts found on what was previously called Easter Island revealed that these objects were likely general purpose tools and not spear points, says Carl Lipo, professor of anthropology at Binghamton and lead author on the study, published this month in the journal Antiquity.
The trade in bunnies helped power an ancient economy. Teotihuacan, an ancient city in central Mexico, was an advanced metropolis where most people lived in apartment complexes. The city reached its peak between the first century and 550 AD. With about 100,000 residents, it was the largest urban area in the Americas at the time, of a similar scale and sophistication as other ancient centres like Alexandria and Rome.
While the Mayan people of Central America are known colloquially for “predicting” the “end of the world,” it is well known that they were a tad obsessed with studying the stars and making calendars, as were the ancient Greeks, Chinese and other cultures.
The National Parks Service is facing a new threat, and it’s not a wild horde of honey badgers. It’s living slime.
The organization released a statement on Wednesday that explained the gray stuff taking over the top of the dome on the Thomas Jefferson Memorial isn’t mold or dirt, but biofilm: a group of microscopic organisms.
Measurements demonstrated that the brain activity of people who dream during NREM sleep, compared to people who do not dream in NREM sleep, is closer to brain activity of awake people.
Related: Why Everyone Should Sleep Naked
A lot of people, when they travel by car, ship, plane or whatever, end up feeling sick. They’re fine before they get into the vehicle, they’re typically fine when they get out. But whilst in transit, they feel sick. Particularly, it seems, in self-driving cars. Why?
One theory is that it’s due to a weird glitch that means your brain gets confused and thinks it’s being poisoned.
Humans have evolved a disproportionately large brain as a result of sizing each other up in large cooperative social groups, researchers have proposed.
It's relatively common to find debris from rocket launches in the waters off Cape Canaveral in Florida, but divers exploring the seabed recently uncovered artifacts from an age of exploration long before America's space program: 22 cannons and a marble monument in what they think are three 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks.
Shell jewellery and ornaments up to 42,000 years old, discovered in East Timor, have overturned long-held assumptions that the first inhabitants of South-East Asia were culturally unsophisticated.
The finds represent the oldest evidence of ornament and jewellery-making in the region.
When a magnificent helmet was recovered from the ruins of the temple of Zeus researchers couldn't believe their eyes. It is very rare to find an item which belonged to a famous hero of the ancient Greek battlefields. The offering he brought to the temple centuries ago made his name known once again.
Ancient Egyptians suffered from many of the same health problems that still plague us today, from heart disease to cancer. That makes their mummies potentially valuable sources of information about the history of those diseases. But when it comes to cancer, there’s a problem: No one knows for certain what a mummified tumor looks like.
An Ancient Egyptian tool has been found in a wardrobe.
The 4,500-year-old wooden maul, or mallet, used by Egyptian craftsmen, had been stored in the wardrobe in Derbyshire to protect it from sunlight.
In the 19th century, European visitors to this abandoned medieval city refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an extensive network of monuments. Such ignorance was disastrous for the remains of Great Zimbabwe
The mystique of the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge has long stoked people’s imaginations.
Theories as to what the Neolithic monument was used for include everything from a burial site to a place of healing.
Alt: Mystery of 5,000 Year-Old Scottish Standing Stone Circles Solved
Archaeologists in Kazakhstan have recently uncovered a pyramid-shaped mausoleum that's over 3,000-years-old, making it older than some - but not all - of Egypt’s pyramids.
The remarkable discovery was made in the Sary-Arka region near the city of Karaganda, and the team says it was likely built for an ancient king or clan leader.
In future you may not even need eyes to see. Next year, a blind person in Australia will be the first to receive “bionic eyes” that bypass most of the visual system entirely. Instead, a camera mounted on a pair of glasses will feed information about the world directly to the brain.
MIT biological engineers have devised a way to record complex histories in the DNA of human cells, allowing them to retrieve “memories” of past events, such as inflammation, by sequencing the DNA.
Neurons that fire together really do wire together, says a new study in Science, suggesting that the three-pound computer in our heads may be more malleable than we think.
In the latest issue of Science, neuroscientists at Columbia University demonstrate that a set of neurons trained to fire in unison could be reactivated as much as a day later if just one neuron in the network was stimulated.
To everything there is a season—even divorce, new research from University of Washington sociologists concludes.
Associate sociology professor Julie Brines and doctoral candidate Brian Serafini found what is believed to be the first quantitative evidence of a seasonal, biannual pattern of filings for divorce.
In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the centre of psychology research and theory.
Organic farming creates more profit and yields healthier produce. It’s time it played the role it deserves in feeding a rapidly growing world population
We found that although organic farming systems produce yields that average 10-20% less than conventional agriculture, they are more profitable and environmentally friendly. Historically, conventional agriculture has focused on increasing yields at the expense of the other three sustainability metrics.
Everyone knows it is a cold, desolate place, but just how much of the Antarctic is not covered in snow has only been estimated as 'less than one per cent' – until now.
For the first time, scientists have calculated exactly how much of the continent is not buried away.
New experiments provide insight into how Earth-type planets form when giant asteroids or planetesimals collide and how the interiors of such planets develop. Researchers at Hiroshima University, Osaka University, Ehime University, University of Tokyo, and the Chiba Institute of Technology collaborated to publish their research in the August 3, 2016 issue of Science Advances.
The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second "Goldilocks," according to a Yale University researcher.
For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun.
Care to learn more about 400-foot tsunamis on Mars? Now you can, after Nasa announced it is making all its publicly funded research available online for free.
There are two types of 'space archaeology'. There's the type that documents space history - from our own fledgling efforts to travel beyond Earth, to searching for remnants of extraterrestrial civilisations - and then there is archaeology on Earth, done from space.
Archaeologists have learned a lot about the lives of Iron Age Europeans from the mummified remains preserved in bogs--including how they dressed.
But not even the best-preserved bog can withstand the ravages of time. And archaeologists could not identify the exact origin of fibres from hair, wool, or skin in such old, degraded garments.
Cambyses II began his rule around 530 BCE, maybe 529 BCE, and his reign ended in 522 BCE. Not much is known about Cambyses since he left no inscriptions of his own. Only Herodotus and the Egyptians seem to write about him, the Bible speaks silently of him, and so much about him remains a mystery.
Warsaw archaeologists discovered the first known palace of the Illyrian kings in Montenegro. "This is a great and cardinal discovery, which abruptly expands knowledge about the functioning of royal power in Illyria" - told PAP Prof. Piotr Dyczek.
Filipino Catholics who have resolved to visit the Holy Land at least once in their lifetime but are discouraged by the tinderbox situation in the Middle East may have found the next best option in this ancient mountain town in northern Ethiopia.
A team of researchers working at a site near Stonehenge made headlines last year when they conducted radar tests on a 4,500-year-old monument called Durrington Walls. They reported that they had found evidence of a circle of buried stones that was much larger than Stonehenge, leading to the nickname Superhenge. Now, after excavating two of the locations thought to contain stones, the team is reporting that they are not stones at all, but are instead holes in the ground that once held wooden posts but which are now filled with small blocks of chalk.
Alt: 'New Stonehenge' at Durrington Walls 'had no standing stones'
There’s a new equation floating around the world of physics these days that would make Einstein proud.
It’s pretty easy to remember: ER=EPR.
Related: How we escaped from the Big Bang
If the universe was infinitely old, as we used to assume, then it must be filled with an infinite number of stars and galaxies.
The amount of universe we are able to see is called the observable universe, and according to a pair of astrophysicists, it just got 320 million light years smaller.
While NASA discusses how to one day send humans to Mars, a group of scientists has delved more than a half-mile (1.1 kilometers) beneath the Earth's surface to study nearby environments that resemble those of the Red Planet.
NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) has passed a key design milestone, bringing the project one step closer to snagging a boulder off an asteroid and pulling that piece into orbit around the moon.
Related: The comet that disappeared: What happened to Ison?
Chiral molecules are those that come in two forms: versions that are mirror images of one another but cannot be superimposed, like right and left hands. Life seems to prefer molecules of a single chemical handedness, however. All DNA, for example, twists clockwise like the threads on a right-handed screw. Nearly all amino acids, meanwhile, are left-handed. Why one or the other?
Engineers demonstrate in a new study that windows made of transparent wood could provide more even and consistent natural lighting and better energy efficiency than glass.
Related: New bendable concrete that is stronger and more durable
Scientists have identified a new species of dolphin that lived 25 million years ago.
The extinct animal has been described through re-examination of a specimen that's been in a museum collection since 1951.
Unloved domestic goldfish are considered one of the world's worst invasive aquatic species because of their negative environmental impact in the wild.
Researchers from the Centre of Fish and Fisheries in Perth, Australia, have discovered that goldfish the 'size of footballs' are travelling hundreds of kilometres each year in Western Australian waterways.
Water fluoridation prevents dental cavities, which are a costly public health concern. But despite the benefits supplemental water fluoridation remains a controversial subject. Some indicate it may cause long term health problems, but studies reporting side effects have been minimal or inconclusive. The long-term effects of ingested fluoride remain unclear.
A new computer model can predict brain activity for a sentence such as, “The family played at the beach,” even though it has never seen that specific sentence before.
Related: What a Scan of Sting's Brain Teaches Us About Music
Related: Most adults know more than 42,000 words
Zenkerella. It sounds like the name of a new Disney princess but it’s actually an ancient mammal that first appeared 49 million years ago and has long been rumored to still be around today … but no one has managed to see one alive. Until now … well, sort of.
Related: Googly-Eyed Purple Squid Sighting Delights Scientists
Neuroscientists have discovered evidence for the neural basis of a mind-body connection.
Related: Could Medical Cannabis Break the Painkiller Epidemic?
Researchers have just achieved a spectacular breakthrough in cancer research. They have developed new nanorobotic agents capable of navigating through the bloodstream to administer a drug with precision by specifically targeting the active cancerous cells of tumors.
Around 1,500 years ago, a woman named Farong - the wife of a Chinese magistrate - was laid to rest in all her finery.
The remains of her skeleton - still draped in her exquisite jewellery - have now been unearthed in a tomb in China.
A team of psychologists, kinesiologists and archaeologists at Indiana University and elsewhere are throwing new light on a longstanding archaeological mystery: the purpose of a large number of spherical stone artifacts found at a major archaeological site in South Africa.
University of Adelaide research has for the first time statistically proven that the earliest standing stone monuments of Britain, the great circles, were constructed specifically in line with the movements of the Sun and Moon, 5000 years ago.
The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, details the use of innovative 2D and 3-D technology to construct quantitative tests of the patterns of alignment of the standing stones.
For a fruit fly, what its grandparents ate may affect how much it weighs. But the passing down of a body type based on diet is not a simple cause and effect, a researcher has found.
For decades, thousands of researchers around the world have spent their professional careers studying the inner workings of microorganisms – their genetic predispositions, their responses to different conditions, their rates of growth and activity. But what if the premise was all wrong?
Given the choice, many dogs prefer praise from their owners over food, suggests a new study published in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The study is one of the first to combine brain-imaging data with behavioral experiments to explore canine reward preferences.
The long hindwing tails sported by many moths have long been suspected as a strategy to confound predators. The moths are active mainly at night, so they don't need a visual disguise. They need to avoid nocturnal hunters that navigate by sound.
Related: Birds fly faster in large flocks
When it comes to waves, it doesn't get much bigger than the gravitational variety. Einstein predicted that huge events — like black holes merging — create gravitational waves. Unlike most waves we experience, these are distortions in space and time. They roll across the entire universe virtually unimpeded.
Three more dark-matter candidates have just bitten the dust.
Since 2008, NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been collecting evidence of the observable universe's most powerful explosions and energetic emissions. That high-powered insight has helped researchers in three different recent studies narrow down the materials that may make up mysterious dark matter.
Why the Universe is filled with matter, rather than antimatter, is one of physics’ greatest mysteries. An experiment in Japan has now glimpsed a possible explanation: subatomic particles called neutrinos might behave differently in their matter and antimatter forms.
The United States could reenter a space-based hunt for ripples in space-time, if NASA decides to follow the recommendation of a new report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
Related: China Launches Pioneering 'Hack-Proof' Quantum-Communications Satellite
An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a giant planet and a brown dwarf in a close binary system designated HD 87646. The findings, described in a paper published Aug. 11 on arXiv.org, reveal that HD 87646 is the first close binary system with more than one substellar circum-primary companion known to date.
Related: Is there a ‘rebellious’ object orbiting beyond Neptune?
Archaeologists believe they have identified a new way of putting accurate dates to great events of prehistory. Rare and spectacular storms on the sun appear to have left their mark in forests and fields around the planet over the past 5,000 years.