Newsdesk Archive
Here’s another blow to the popular image of Neanderthals as brutish meat eaters: A new study of bacteria collected from Neanderthal teeth shows that our close cousins ate so many roots, nuts, or other starchy foods that they dramatically altered the type of bacteria in their mouths.
New technologies and techniques are searching for signs of alien life as never before. What and where will that potential life be?
For decades, cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal — that is, if it looks the same no matter how large the scale.
In a new article published in the journal Bioacoustics, primatologist and UCLA anthropology graduate student Sasha Winkler and UCLA professor of communication Greg Bryant take a closer look at the phenomenon of laughter across the animal kingdom.
Italian archaeologists have unearthed the bones of nine Neanderthals who were allegedly hunted and mauled by hyenas in their den about 100km south-east of Rome.
Evidence seems to be mounting for a geologically and volcanically active Mars. A new, close study of volcanic features on the surface of the red planet has found that a lava deposit on the Elysium Planitia appears to be very recent indeed - as in, within the last 50,000 years.
Scientists have discovered a rare evolutionary "missing link" dating to the earliest chapter of life on Earth. It's a microscopic, ball-shaped fossil that bridges the gap between the very first living creatures — single-celled organisms — and more complex multicellular life.
For millennia, humans in the high latitudes have been enthralled by auroras—the northern and southern lights. Yet even after all that time, it appears the ethereal, dancing ribbons of light above Earth still hold some secrets.
Fields of rust-colored soil, spindly cassava, small farms and villages dot the landscape. Dust and smoke blur the mountains visible beyond massive Lake Malawi. Here in tropical Africa, you can’t escape the signs of human presence. How far back in time would you need to go in this place to discover an entirely natural environment?
Vancouver-based company Halugen has recently launched a genetic test that purportedly screens for genetic variants influencing how a person may respond to certain psychedelic drugs. But some researchers are skeptical there is any evidence to suggest genetic screening can predict how a person will response to psychedelics.
'Quite spectacular’ discovery shows three-year-old child was carefully laid to rest nearly 80,000 years ago.
The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last decade than it absorbed, according to a stunning report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world's largest tropical forest to help absorb human-made carbon pollution.
In an important step toward medical approval, MDMA, the illegal drug popularly known as Ecstasy or Molly, was shown to bring relief to those suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder when paired with talk therapy.
We reveal some of the ways that planet Earth has been changing against the backdrop of a warming world. Here, we look at the effects of global heating on Victoria Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world - and how Sub-Saharan Africa is learning to cope with the climate crisis.
Researchers have discovered the world's first-known pregnant mummy, dating from the first century in Egypt. The find was unexpected, as inscriptions on the mummy's coffin suggested the remains inside belonged to a male priest, according to a new study.
Dozens of black and red hand prints cover the walls of a cave in Mexico, believed to be associated with a coming-of-age ritual of the ancient Maya, according to an archeologist who has explored and studied the subterranean cavern.
Image from: Canon in 2D (Wiki Commons)
Thousands of monumental structures built from walls of rock in Saudi Arabia are older than Egypt's pyramids and the ancient stone circles of Britain, researchers say – making them perhaps the earliest ritual landscape ever identified.
Archeologists have learned a lot about our ancestors by rummaging through their garbage piles, which contain evidence of their diet and population levels as the local flora and fauna changed over time.
Indigenous Australians have long pointed out that their ancestors have lived on and cared for this continent since time immemorial. Hampered by entrenched misconceptions and outdated curricula, it’s only in recent decades – with discoveries like Mungo Man and Mungo Lady – that science has started to catch up.
Earth's continents have been leaking nutrients into the ocean for at least 3.7 billion years, new research suggests.
For thousands of years during the last ice age, generations of maritime migrants paddled skin boats eastward across shallow ocean waters from Asia to present-day Alaska.
Researchers have identified a psychedelic that doesn’t trigger hallucinations, a key discovery that could allow scientists to accelerate the development of easy-to-use treatments for mental health and neurological conditions.
New discovery shows early humans were using fire at least 900,000 years ago, leading experts to suggest that that ability to cook food led to major otherwise inexplicable changes in human gut anatomy, dentition, facial shape and increased brain size
Archaeologists have found the oldest home in hominin history. Unsurprisingly, it is a cave: Wonderwerk Cave in the Kalahari Desert.
On March 3, 2021, the governors of Texas and Mississippi announced that they were lifting their respective mask mandates, prompting criticism from President Biden, who called the move “Neanderthal thinking.” Biden was implying that lifting the mandates was a primitive act — but this understanding of Neandertals is an outdated stereotype, unsupported by modern research.
Photo by mostafa meraji on Unsplash
The legend of the "kraken" has captivated humans for millennia. Stories of deep-sea squid dragging sailors and even entire ships to their doom can be found in everything from ancient Greek mythology to modern-day movie blockbusters.
An extinct 'horned' crocodile that once called Madagascar home has finally found its place on the tree of life, according to a new study of two skulls stored at the American Museum of Natural History.
It's an unassuming rock, greenish in colour, and just over 4cm in its longest dimension. And yet this little piece of sandstone holds important clues to all our futures.
The Pleistocene epoch, which started 2.6 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago, was crucially important for our hominin ancestors.
In recent months a series of discoveries down shafts in Saqqara, Egypt, has captivated the world of archaeology
Celestial event due to take place shortly before sunset on Tuesday and will be visible until next morning
Deep underground, in mysterious caverns that seem almost measureless to humans, caves have devised their own strange ways of keeping time as the eternities pass by.
When Suzanne Simard made her extraordinary discovery – that trees could communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi – the scientific establishment underreacted.
As humans, we know we are conscious because we experience and feel things. Yet scientists and great thinkers are unable to explain what consciousness is and they are equally baffled about where it comes from.
Mars' ancient history interests scientists because if the arid planet was once warm and wet, it may have been habitable to life. One new study about an unnamed Martian crater suggests a new possibility about Mars' past.
The Pink Moon – the second largest full moon of 2021 – will light up the night sky shortly before midnight on Monday (April 26), according to NASA.
That glow you see at sunrise or sunset is caused by cosmic dust. For decades astronomers thought it came from asteroids but now they’re not so sure.
Ever since the Dead Sea Scrolls were accidentally discovered over 70 years ago in a cave in Israel, they have been a source of fascination.
Astronomers have reconstructed the 22m-year-long voyage of an asteroid that hurtled through the solar system and exploded over Botswana, showering meteorites across the Kalahari desert
Portraiture, perspective, impressionism, movement, mythology: cave artists could do the lot. And I have spent the past year on a virtual odyssey of their primordial wonders
A fingerprint left on a clay vessel made by a potter 5,000 years ago has been found in Orkney.
People under the influence of psilocybin — the active component of magic mushrooms — report having more profound and original thoughts, but tend to score lower on cognitive tests of creative ability, according to new research published in Translational Psychiatry.
Leonie, 44, knew where her depression came from – but that didn’t make it any easier to live with.
Image from: Ralpharama (Wiki Commons)
Radioactive dust deep beneath the ocean waves suggests that Earth is moving through a massive cloud left behind by an exploded star.
As early as 12,000 years ago, nearly three-quarters of land on Earth was inhabited and shaped by human societies, suggesting global biodiversity loss in recent years may have been driven primarily by an intensification of land use rather than by the destruction of previously untouched nature.
Psychiatry has long failed to explain depression. Our research into psilocybin suggests a new approach could offer answers
At night, believers would use the reflection from the moon that cascaded atop snow-capped peaks as a guide to make their way up the sacred Colque Punku glacier.
Image from: Hugo Pedel (Wiki Commons)
Whether they’re made of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan or iron on the exoplanet WASP 78b, alien raindrops behave similarly across the Milky Way. They are always close to the same size, regardless of the liquid they’re made of or the atmosphere they fall in, according to the first generalized physical model of alien rain.
About 800,000 years ago in what is now Spain, cannibals devoured an early human child who became known as "The Boy of Gran Dolina." But new analysis of these ancient remains has revealed a surprising twist: the child was a girl.
New find pries open an enduring question: why two ancient superpowers abruptly turned from diplomacy to brutality.
Image from: Tikal Central Acropolis (Wiki Commons)
In little more than a decade our understanding of the recent period of human evolution has been revolutionised. New excavations and the application of exciting scientific methods are yielding extraordinary insights to our ancient past and overturning previously-held truths.
Image from: Cro-Magnons Conquered Europe, but Left Neanderthals Alone (Wiki Commons)
Estatuas cave in northern Spain was a hive of activity 105,000 years ago. Artifacts show its Neanderthal inhabitants hafted stone tools, butchered red deer, and may have made fires.
Psychedelic drug psilocybin, found in magic mushrooms, is as good at reducing symptoms of depression as conventional treatment, a small, early-stage study has suggested.But when it comes to actively improving people's well-being and ability to feel pleasure, the psychedelic drug may have had a more powerful effect.
New Zealand is to become the world's first country to bring in a law forcing its financial firms to report on the effects of climate change.
A team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, with colleagues from Goethe University, Frankfurt, has found the first evidence for ancient honey hunting, locked inside pottery fragments from prehistoric West Africa, dating back some 3,500 years ago
A series of newly surfaced images and videos of unidentified flying objects filmed by the US Navy have now been confirmed as authentic by the Pentagon.
A new study verifies the age and origin of one of the oldest specimens of Homo erectus--a very successful early human who roamed the world for nearly 2 million years.
Historians hoping to preserve the ancient Octagon Earthworks in Newark, Ohio, as a UNESCO World Heritage site face a problem: the golf club that leases the property.
Image from: Eric Ewing (Wiki Commons)
In recent years, cosmologists have been faced with a crisis: The universe is expanding, but no one can agree on how fast it's moving away from us.
Data extracted from the oldest surviving document recording Korean history shows a strong correlation between extreme weather events and war.
Spiders rely quite significantly on touch to sense the world around them. Their bodies and legs are covered in tiny hairs and slits that can distinguish between different kinds of vibrations.
Some 100,000 years ago, an extended family of 36 Neanderthals walked along a beach, with the kids jumping and frolicking in the sand, scientists report after analyzing the beachgoers' fossilized footprints in what is now southern Spain.
Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless.
There is no shortage of psychological and pharmacological therapies to combat the world’s most widespread mental health issue, major depressive disorder (MDD). However, a significant portion of the affected population fail to respond to many of these traditional therapies
Archaeologists believe 4,000-year-old engravings on Saint-Bélec Slab resemble topological features.
The discovery of a 3,000-year-old city that was lost to the sands of Egypt has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds since Tutankhamun's tomb.
The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs would probably have killed you too—unless you were in the exact right place and had made the exact right plans.
Some of the oldest human art in Europe is entirely hidden from sight, tucked away in the narrow crawl spaces of deep, dark, and winding caves.
A 6-mile-wide space rock and colossal eruptions racked Earth at the same fateful moment. Scientists have tried for decades to determine the primary suspect behind the Cretaceous Extinction.
The series of more than 100 rock carvings, or petroglyphs, in the forest's Track Rock Gap were created by Creek and Cherokee people beginning more than 1,000 years ago.
The two species regularly interbred by about 45,000 years ago.
The debate around psychedelic patents reflects a deeper question about how to create a business model that puts values before profits.
Paleolithic cuisine was anything but lean and green, according to a recent study on the diets of our Pleistocene ancestors. For a good 2 million years, Homo sapiens ditched the salad and dined heavily on meat, putting them at the top of the food chain.
In an experiment to understand better how ancient artifacts are altered by the sediment in which they are buried for thousands of years, Australian archaeological scientists buried bones, stones, charcoal and other items in bat guano, cooked it, and analyzed how this affected the different items.
Human cultures can see the world through very different lenses, but the way we sort stars in the night sky is surprisingly universal.
The physicist on Newton finding inspiration amid the great plague, how the multiverse can unite religions, 'reaching out to aliens is a terrible idea' and why a ‘theory of everything’ is within our grasp.
In the wake of New York’s decision to legalize marijuana earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he’s ready to move on federal marijuana reform.
A new study has been published following on from two earlier studies on microdosing. Our body of research tells us some benefits of microdosing may be comparable to other wellness activities such as yoga.
Fossilized pollen and leaves reveal that the meteorite that caused the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs also reshaped South America’s plant communities to yield the planet’s largest rain forest
New York state has legalized marijuana for adults and will expunge the criminal records of people previously convicted of crimes that would be legal under the new law.
The more we look into the harsh extremes of Chile's Atacama Desert, the more we find. Phenomena both mystifying and wonderful, occasionally bordering on alien.
Archaeologist Stephen Sherlock, an independent scholar, has found evidence of Neolithic people extracting salt from seawater 5,800 years ago at Street House, Loftus, making it the oldest salt production facility ever discovered in Britain.
Ostrich eggshells and crystals gathered more than 100,000 years ago shed light on the cultural evolution of early humans.
Space scientists have discovered extra-terrestrial particles which point to a medium-sized asteroid impact in Antarctica 430,000 years ago.
Rock art of human figures created over thousands of years in Australia's Arnhem Land has been put through a transformative machine learning study to analyse style changes over the years.
The extent of Australasian influence into the ancient bloodlines of early South American cultures looks to be even greater than scientists thought, according to new research.
Artificial satellites and space junk orbiting the Earth can increase the brightness of the night sky, researchers have found, with experts warning such light pollution could hinder astronomers’ ability to make observations of our universe.
The extinct human lineage nicknamed "the hobbit" may not be a distant relative of modern humans as previously thought. Instead, hobbits may be members of the mysterious close relatives of modern humans known as Denisovans, and may have interbred with ancestors of modern humans on the islands of Southeast Asia, researchers say.
Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events over the past 500 million years. Massive volcanic eruptions have been identified as the major driver of the environmental changes that precipitated at least three of these extinction events.
Stone age tool used 9,000 years ago dug up by burrowing bunnies on an island off Pembrokeshire.
Could humans ever evolve venom? It's highly unlikely that people will join rattlesnakes and platypuses among the ranks of venomous animals, but new research reveals that humans do have the tool kit to produce venom - in fact, all reptiles and mammals do.
There is a new generation of drug users out there who possess highly detailed pharmacological and technical knowledge about the drugs they take.
Chunk of space rock was once the ‘poster child for hazardous asteroids’ but it will be a while before humans need to worry about it again
A six-year-old boy has found a fossil dating back millions of years in his garden after receiving a fossil-hunting kit for Christmas
The Basques are a unique population in Western Europe; their language is not related to any Indo-European language. Furthermore, genetically speaking, they have been considered to have distinct features. However, until now there was no conclusive study to explain the origin of their singularity.
The oldest known primate fossils were dated to just after the extinction event 66 million years ago—suggesting some primate ancestors lived even longer ago.
Egypt announced a new archaeological discovery in the Bahariya Oasis with archaeological buildings dating back to the fifth and seventh centuries, where monks settled down.
A gigantic, 5,000-year-old complex of long barrows and stone-lined tombs has been unearthed in Poland, after archaeologists investigated lines in crops in a field that they'd seen in a satellite photograph.
In universities and research labs across the world, scientists are actively rewriting whole chapters of human history, big and small. And they’re doing it using a very new piece of evidence: ancient DNA.
A new study from the University of Kent's School of Anthropology and Conservation has found that Oldowan and Acheulean stone tool technologies are likely to be tens of thousands of years older than current evidence suggests.