Newsdesk Archive
A team of researchers with members from Australia, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam found a 6,000-year-old skull and femur bones in a cave in a mountainous part of Taiwan that might prove the existence of an ancient Indigenous tribe. In their paper published in the journal World Archaeology, the group describes the skull, where it was found and what it might represent.
Easter Island's towering stone heads and other archaeological elements have been charred by a fire, according to local Indigenous and Chilean authorities.
Image from: kallerna (Wiki Commons)
If the hydrogen-gobbling, methane-producing microorganisms existed, they would have caused their own demise.
As we're a species with ever-shrinking attention spans, it can be difficult to comprehend just how long life has been around on Earth. However, try to get your head around this one: Scientists have dug up fragments of DNA dating back 1 million years ago.
Radiocarbon dating needs to be done on the 76 newly uncovered skeletons, but previously found victims at Pampa La Cruz dated to between A.D. 1100 and 1200.
After more than a century of debate, researchers have settled the mystery of a tiny, enigmatic reptile that left an impression on Scottish sandstone nearly a quarter of a billion years ago.
The “bad trip” is one of the most common caveats against psychedelics. Sometimes it’s mentioned as a well-intentioned warning for first-timers and a reminder for seasoned users, while others use it as a fear-mongering tool meant to discourage any and all psychedelic experiences.
The dinosaur-killing asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago also triggered a jumbo-size tsunami with mile-high waves in the Gulf of Mexico whose waters traveled halfway around the world, a new study finds.
The moon could have formed immediately after a cataclysmic impact that tore off a chunk of Earth and hurled it into space, a new study has suggested.
One of the worst forms of plastic pollution may have met its match in the saliva of a humble worm. Spanish researchers say they've discovered chemicals in the wax worm's drool that break down polyethylene, a tough and durable material.
Compounds in these medicinal fungi may be natural "smart drugs."
"It's about 8,200 years old," says Dr Alison Burns, pointing to a perfectly preserved human footprint pressed into ancient mud on Formby Beach. It is one of hundreds of newly discovered ancient footprints here. The first date back almost 9,000 years and the youngest of the prints are medieval - about 1,000 years old.
Paabo spearheaded the development of new techniques that allowed researchers to compare the genome of modern humans and that of other hominins—the Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Built by indigenous masons, these 1,500-year-old pyramids are still standing strong, held together by sticky juice from the prickly pear cactus.
A team of researchers from Université Clermont Auvergne, working with a colleague from Universität Bayreuth, has found evidence that suggests the Earth's composition changed over time during its early years via collisional erosion.
Narwhals are enigmatic marine mammals, fascinating us with their unique appearance and secretive lifestyles under the Arctic sea ice.
Since 1996, nearly 50 new feathered dinosaur species have emerged from the fossil fields of China. Paleontologists thought they had a good idea of the diversity of these fluffy carnivores. But a recent finding left them scratching their heads.
A recent new study compares the transformational effects of NDEs and psychedelics, conducted by researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine in the US.
Whether it’s a tricky maths problem or an unexpected bill, daily life is full of stressful experiences. Now researchers have found that humans produce a different odour when under pressure – and dogs can sniff it out.
The first map of the "galactic underworld"—a chart of the corpses of once massive suns that have since collapsed into black holes and neutron stars—has revealed a graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way, and that almost a third of the objects have been flung out from the galaxy altogether.
Road excavations in China's Guizhou Province have unearthed a trove of ancient fish fossils. As a part of rock layers known as the Rongxi Formation, the newfossil bed is filled with never-before-seen species that push back the dates of our first jawed animal ancestors by about 15 million years.
In 1881, archaeologists unearthed the skull of a human buried inside a cave in Mlade?, a village in what is now the Czech Republic. At the time, researchers dated the skull to about 31,000 years ago and classified the individual as male. But they were wrong about the Stone Age person's sex, a new study finds.
It seems logical enough: even in their earliest history, humans must have needed something to carry their babies around in as they moved from place to place. But because little hard evidence of this exists—no infant-sling fabrics discernible in archeological digs, and very few prehistoric baby burials, besides—it's been anybody's guess that the practice actually took place.
Imagine the Milky Way's 100 billion stars as a flat, tranquil pool of water. Now, picture someone dropping a stone the size of 400 million suns into that water. The tranquility is shattered. Wave after wave of energy ripples across the galaxy's surface, jostling and bouncing its stars in a chaotic dance that takes eons to calm.
A 3,000-year-old canoe has been found in Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, less than a year after another historical canoe dating back more than a millennium was discovered in the same body of water.
A 3,000-year-old canoe has been found in Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, less than a year after another historical canoe dating back more than a millennium was discovered in the same body of water.
The American space agency's Dart probe has smashed into an asteroid, destroying itself in the process. The collision was intentional and designed to test whether space rocks that might threaten Earth could be nudged safely out of the way.
Traditional custodians fighting to protect ancient rock art on the Burrup peninsula have raised concerns that construction work has begun at multiple sites despite the federal government ordering a cultural heritage assessment of the area.
South Australia’s Naracoorte Caves is one of the world’s best fossil sites, containing a record spanning more than half a million years. Among the remains preserved in layers of sand are the bones of many iconic Australian megafauna species that became extinct between 48,000 and 37,000 years ago.
A review in Frontiers in Environmental Science has shown that this mercury pollution comes from the ancient Mayans, who appeared to use a lot of the compound at certain points in their long history.
The oldest green algae preserved in three dimensions may hint that plants originated earlier than previously believed.
The findings are in the latest research to be published from analysis of 5.4 grammes of stones and dust that the Hayabusa-2 probe gathered from the asteroid Ryugu.
Char from ancient fires and stalagmites in caves hold clues to the mysterious disappearance of Neanderthals from Europe.
On September 26 at 11.15 pm UTC, NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) will be the first to deliberately and measurably change the motion of a significant body in our Solar System.
It's one of the oldest gold objects ever found in central China, as contemporary treasures tend to be crafted from bronze and jade, raising questions about possible links to other early Chinese states where gold was more common.
In a peer-reviewed essay published in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness, Devenot and her co-authors look forward to a culture that makes these medicines available in a safe and affordable way that respects the traditions behind them.
Researchers have shed light on the story behind a large sandstone rock art site in Central Queensland that features seven star-like designs, large snake-like designs, six-toed human feet and even a penis.
Scientific study of human evolution historically reassured us of a comforting order to things. It has painted humans as as cleverer, more intellectual and caring than our ancestral predecessors...Over the last five years discoveries have upended this unbalanced view.
Archaeologists digging near Prague have discovered the remains of a Stone Age structure that's older than Stonehenge and even the Egyptian pyramids: an enigmatic complex known as a roundel.
The recently launched super space telescope James Webb has returned spectacular new imagery of Neptune.
Archaeologists say find supports theory that drug was used in burial rituals, possibly to ‘enter ecstatic state’
Israeli archaeologists on Sunday announced the "once-in-a-lifetime" discovery of a burial cave from the time of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II, filled with dozens of pottery pieces and bronze artifacts.
A new examination of some of the oldest rocks in the world suggests that the first continents on Earth were unstable, and sank back into the mantle before making their way out again and reforming.
New techniques allowed researchers to analyze ancient DNA for the first time. The data they unearthed helps describe the genomic history of the area and reveals population movements from as far back as 10,000 years ago. It contains some big surprises regarding theories for the origin of languages.
Our eight-legged friends can teach us something important about ourselves.
Tiny tardigrades can survive conditions that would kill most other forms of life. By expelling their body's water and transforming into a seemingly lifeless ball called a tun, they enter a state of dried-up suspended animation in which they can survive for decades without food and water and withstand extreme temperatures, pressures and even the vacuum of space.
Swirling around the planet's equator, the rings of Saturn are a dead giveaway that the planet is spinning at a tilt.
An ancient fossil from one of our planet's earliest vertebrate organisms was found concealing an exciting surprise.
Recent studies have provided initial evidence that psilocybin-assisted therapy might be effective in the treatment of addiction, leading the scientists behind the new research to wonder whether it could also help those who are struggling to control food cravings.
The devastating destruction that's happening across the Amazon might be what comes to your mind first when thinking about deforestation – but it's by no means the only place where dwindling forests are a worry, as a new study highlights.
A prehistoric human skeleton has been found in a cave system that was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago, according to a cave-diving archaeologist on Mexico's Caribbean coast.
LSD-assisted therapy could provide benefits to patients struggling with anxiety disorders, according to new research published in Biological Psychiatry. The findings suggest that the psychedelic drug can produce notable reductions in anxiety and comorbid depression symptoms.
Despite transforming history as beasts of burden essential for transporting goods and people, the humble donkey has long been woefully understudied.
Student’s find provides new evidence region may be one of first places early humans settled outside Africa
The brains of Neanderthals, a species that's thought to have lived alongside humans for hundreds of years, were about as large as ours are. Still, researchers aren’t sure how similarly their brains functioned to ours. A recently published study reveals that several amino acids in the human brain — which only emerged after humans split away from Neanderthals — make our chromosomes far less prone to errors as they separate into identical pairs.
Psychedelics like psilocybin and ayahuasca will be "among the lowest priorities" for law enforcement.
A 31,000-year-old skeleton missing its lower left leg and found in a remote Indonesian cave is believed to be the earliest known evidence of surgery, according to a peer-reviewed study that experts say rewrites understanding of human history.
Archaeologists at the University of Oxford's School of Archaeology have used satellite imagery to identify and map more than 350 monumental hunting structures known as "kites" across northern Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq—most of which had never been previously documented.
It is a dispute that has taken a long time to reach boiling point. Seven million years after an apelike creature – since nicknamed Toumaï – traversed the landscape of modern Chad, its means of mobility has triggered a dispute among fossil experts.
You can view the virtually reconstructed face of a woman who lived about 5,700 years ago in what is now Malaysia, now that researchers have put a face to a person whose full identity remains a mystery.
Humpback whales throughout the entire South Pacific Ocean are connected to each other via shared song, according to new research.
With magic mushrooms seemingly being used more widely than ever, it's high time we look at the ancient history of psychotropic fungi.
Cannabis users are often depicted as lazy “stoners” whose life ambitions span little further than lying on the sofa eating crisps. But research from the University of Cambridge challenges this stereotype, showing that regular users appear no more likely to lack motivation compared with non-users.
The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa — and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth — has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds.
An international team of researchers with a central contribution from researchers at the Dept. of Biological Physics at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) has unravelled the evolutionary origins of animals and fungi.
Imag from: Geograph Britain and Ireland (Wiki Commons)
"Our study aims to provide data and tools that can make physicians in the UK and across the world more confident, where appropriate, in prescribing cannabis safely.”
A new study led by Leiden University has analyzed recent archaeological excavations from the Middle/Upper Paleolithic in Western Romania at the site of Române?ti, which is one of the most important southeastern European sites associated with the earliest Homo sapiens on this continent. These excavations offer a significant glimpse of how modern humans adapted to their new environment after reaching Europe.
"We now know that psilocybin mushroom microdosing works. It is indisputable that there are benefits." —Stamets
New research has found that lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) briefly reduces binge-like alcohol consumption in mice but does not produce long-lasting effects. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, suggest that the psychedelic substance by itself does not produce lasting changes in alcohol drinking behavior.
A mysterious ancient writing system called Linear Elamite, used between about 2300 BCE and 1800 BCE in what is now southern Iran, might have finally been deciphered, although some experts are skeptical about the findings.
A team of researchers has found evidence that shows the Khufu branch of the Nile River once ran so close to Giza that it could have been used to carry the stones that were used to build the famous pyramids.
Palaeontologists at Adelaide’s Flinders University have used cutting edge micro-CT scanning and 3D printing technology to look inside a 100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil. But this was no ordinary fossil.
Every year, millions of rocky shards from outer space burn up in Earth's atmosphere, many briefly flaring and appearing in the sky as "shooting stars." But how many survive their high-speed plunges to strike the ground?
Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair.
Three skeletons uncovered in a rock shelter adorned with red pigment rock art reveal burial rituals of early humans who followed well-trodden paths through Indonesia's Lesser Sunda Islands, albeit thousands of years apart.
People who have undergone a mystical experience after consuming a psychedelic substance are more likely to engage in behaviors aimed at protecting or conserving the environment, according to new research published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology.
Image from: Pashminu (Wiki Commons)
The world’s most powerful telescope has made its first observations of a planet beyond our solar system, heralding a new era of astronomy in which distant worlds can be scanned for signs of life.
Only three people surveyed from coastal communities in China reported seeing the dugong in the past five years.
In a trio of papers published simultaneously in the journal, Science reports a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological, genetic and linguistic hypotheses.
The switch to walking on two legs instead of four is a major moment in the evolution of our species, which is why scientists are keen to pinpoint exactly when it happened – and a new study puts the adaptation as happening around 7 million years ago.
Radiocarbon analysis of the material suggests that the mounds were built over thousands of years, with construction of Mound B starting around 11,000 years ago.
Researchers looked at the impact of climate on 17-million-year-old tooth fossils.
A new kind of "phase transition" in water was first proposed 30 years ago in a study by researchers from Boston University. Because the transition has been predicted to occur at supercooled conditions, however, confirming its existence has been a challenge.
It isn't alive, and has no structures even approaching the complexity of the brain, but a compound called vanadium dioxide is capable of 'remembering' previous external stimuli, researchers have found.
The world's largest and most powerful space telescope has revealed unprecedented views of Jupiter.
It is believed to be the Welsh Atlantis, a lost land lying below the water at Cardigan Bay. For at least 800 years, tales have been told of the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod, but evidence that it really existed has been scant.
An extraordinary megaflood occurred 5 million years ago as the Mediterranean rose 10 metres a day!
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Argentina has found chromosomal evidence of people living in South America as far back as 18,000 years ago. The group has published a paper describing their work and findings on the open access site PLOS ONE.
Archaeologists say the prehistoric site in Huelva province could be one of the largest of its kind in Europe.
Tiny fragments of rock brought back from an asteroid in near-Earth solar orbit are so old, they predate the Solar System.
In the wake of a growing mental health crisis, the feds get ready for legal psychedelic therapy.
The rock crystals were likely brought to the site from a source more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, over mountainous terrain, and the crystals appear to have been carefully broken into much smaller pieces, possibly during a community gathering to watch the working of what must have seemed like a magical material
A new study of a meteorite that landed on Earth reveals how this asteroid activity occurs. Small collisions can dislodge the pebbles, which shoot off the asteroid but fall back, drawn in by the space rock's gravitational pull.
New research suggests that improvements in personal development and self-insight act as a pathway between post-psychedelic integration practices and optimal well-being. The study, which appears in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, provides evidence that this is the case for both clinical and non-clinical populations.
Scientists at the University of Bristol have discovered that the vast anatomical variety of fungi stems from evolutionary increases in multicellular complexity.
A team of archaeologists uncovered the Neolithic-era remains using laser scanning, aerial photography, drones, and various forms of surveying. The scientists located the settlement at Al-Faw, an archaeological site that has previously turned up evidence of a strong trade network that sustained an ancient city.
Controversy over Google’s AI program is raising questions about just how powerful it is. Is it even safe?
Footprints laid down by Ice Age hunter-gatherers and recently discovered in a US desert are shedding new light on North America's earliest human inhabitants.
Maya people cremated their rulers and used the ashes to help make rubber balls that were used in ballgames, an archaeologist has claimed.
Distinctive and rare rock crystals were moved over long distances by Early Neolithic Brits and were used to mark their burial sites, according to groundbreaking new archaeological research.