Newsdesk Archive
The new species, which has been named Burgessomedusa phasmiformis,resembles a large, swimming jellyfish with a saucer or bell-shaped body up to 20cm high. Its roughly 90 short tentacles would have allowed it to capture sizeable prey.
Cannabis-based medicinal products might help to improve symptom severity, sleep quality, and health-related quality of life in those with anxiety, according to new research published in the journal Psychopharmacology.
Human history in one click: For the first time, numerous sites relating to the early history of mankind from 3 million to 20,000 years ago can be accessed in a large-scale database. See research here.
Beneath its cratered crust, the Moon's mantle sits atop what scientists think is a partially molten layer where clues to the Moon's formation could lie. But according to a new study, there might be no oozy layer after all.
The tiny artifact is made from iron retrieved from an object that fell from the sky. But there's a twist... See the research here.
Scientists said on Friday they have genetically engineered female fruit flies that can have offspring without needing a male, marking the first time 'virgin birth" has been induced in an animal. See the study here.
Ancient DNA from 94 individuals buried at the Neolithic site at Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’ in northern France has been analysed, providing a picture of a community that existed 6,700 years ago. See the study here.
The ancient cemetery consists of at least a dozen burial deposits within an arc of buried granite boulders and pits that may have formed a full circle...But it's not known yet how many sets of cremated human remains are in each pit.
Archaeologists have unearthed a 2,300-year-old Iron Age glass workshop that could be one of the oldest in the world. See the study here.
The Neolithic lifestyle, based on farming instead of hunting and gathering, emerged in the Near East around 12,000 years ago and contributed profoundly to the modern way of life. See the research here.
Our international team of researchers has uncovered the incredible genetic diversity hidden within the ancient remains of those who once called Machu Picchu home. We detail our findings in a study published in Science Advances.
A new study from Tel Aviv University and Tel-Hai College solves an old mystery: Where did early humans in the Hula Valley get flint to make the prehistoric tools known as handaxes?
New research shows the trading of spices for culinary use goes way back – some 2,000 years, to be precise. A paper published in Science Advances details findings of what seems to be evidence of Southeast Asia's oldest known curry. It's also the oldest evidence of curry ever found outside India.
An open label study of a group of individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who also reported suffering chronic pain showed that MDMA-assisted therapy led to significant reduction in pain intensity and pain-related disability in participants with highest levels of chronic pain. The study was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry.
There are a number of classic experiments and theories that every psychology student learns about, but more recent research has questioned their findings so that psychologists today are reevaluating human nature.
Image from: loc.gov (Wiki Commons)
A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study.
Annually, between July 17 and August 24, the Perseid meteor shower puts on one of the brightest cosmic events of the year. This year the meteor shower is predicted to reach its peak on the night of August 13, as Earth passes through the densest part of the Comet 109/Swift-Tuttle's trail.
Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw. See research here.
Archaeologists in Siberia have discovered the untouched 3,000-year-old grave of a person thought to be a charioteer — indicating for the first time that horse-drawn chariots were used in the region.
A new technique is a dramatic breakthrough in the search for alien life, astronomers say. See the research here.
Two-million-year-old teeth (four sets, in fact) tell new stories in a newly posted preprint paper that strips them of enamel and analyzes what the proteins have to say. This "proteomic" approach, which relied on the more rugged protein molecules instead of fragile DNA, revealed their relationship to the wider family tree of early humans.
Slivers of Ryugu material, snagged by the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to come from the solar system’s frozen fringes rather than from the asteroid itself, scientists report July 14 in Science Advances. These foreign fragments could illuminate details of the solar system’s history.
Ancient human skulls, oil lamps and parts of weapons hidden in a cave near Jerusalem are signs the site was used in the Roman era for attempts to speak to the dead — a practice known as necromancy, or "death magic" — according to a new study.
Although this is not the earliest date for human occupation of the Americas that has been proposed, the finding, which is not yet published in a peer-reviewed study, appears to be thousands of years older than any other archaeological site in Oregon.
Publishing in the international journal Antiquity, a team of archaeologists from seven countries led by Kiel University has presented the "Big Exchange" project, which uses AI to better understand the networks and interactions of prehistoric and early historic people.
Archaeologists working at the Mitla site in southern Mexico have come across a discovery worthy of an Indiana Jones movie: a labyrinth of chambers and passageways hidden below a church, representing an 'entrance' to the underworld.
‘Polissoir’, discovered in Valley of Stones nature reserve, was used about 5,000 years ago to hone tools such as axes.
The findings, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, highlight the importance of experiential avoidance as a potential mechanism underlying the positive effects of psilocybin therapy.
They say what goes around comes around, but it's unlikely the saying was supposed to ever refer to meteorites. And yet here we are. Scientists are seeking to confirm that a black rock discovered in Morocco in 2018 departed Earth's pull for outer space, only to return to it like a prodigal child.
New research suggests humans lived in South America at the same time as now extinct giant sloths, bolstering evidence that people arrived in the Americas earlier than once thought.
Much of the moon's surface is 200 million years older than previously estimated, a new analysis suggests.
By marrying the existing expanding Universe theory with a fringe explanation called the tired light hypothesis, Gupta has found the Big Bang could have taken place an astonishing 26.7 billion years ago. That's twice as old as current models predict. This research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The launch of ever-capable large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5 has sparked much interest over the past six months. However, trust in these models has waned as users have discovered they can make mistakes – and that, just like us, they aren’t perfect.
A pod in the strait of Gibraltar has sunk three boats and damaged dozens of others, and their story has captivated the world. What explains this unprecedented behaviour?
The volcano beneath Italy erupted 40,000 years ago and had catastrophic impact on Earth's climate — around the same time that the Neanderthals began their slow march to extinction.
Scientists think they've uncovered evidence of the oldest glaciers ever found, in ancient rocks speckled with oxygen isotopes lying beneath the world's largest gold deposits in South Africa. The study was published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters, with further results presented at the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society's Goldschmidt Conference.
Ancient stars born during the Cosmic Dawn have been identified in the center of the Milky Way. As part of a survey to uncover some of the oldest known stars in the Universe, scientists conducted a comprehensive search for these ancient but elusive stars. Their findings have been presented at the UK's annual National Astronomy Meeting.
Since its discovery in 2008, the skeleton of a high-ranking individual buried inside a tomb in the Iberian Peninsula between 3,200 and 2,200 years ago was thought to be the remains of a man. However, a new analysis reveals that this person was actually a woman.
The researchers, from UCL Archaeology South-East, discovered 800 stone artefacts thought to be over 300,000 years old, buried in sediments which filled a sinkhole and ancient river channel, outlined in their research, published in Internet Archaeology.
A large formation of granite discovered below the lunar surface likely was formed from the cooling of molten lava that fed a volcano or volcanoes that erupted early in the moon's history—as long as 3.5 billion years ago.
Alexander Beiner was dosed intravenously with the powerful hallucinogenic DMT as part of a clinical trial at Imperial College London. In the months afterwards, he found himself changing in some interesting ways.
Events appear to unfold five times slower when the universe was a tenth of its present age, in effect, predicted by Einstein.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released first-of-its-kind draft guidance on the “unique” considerations that researchers should take into account when studying psychedelics, which the agency says show “initial promise” as potential therapies.
Most land plants living today have spiral patterns involving the famous Fibonacci sequence of numbers. Because the spirals are so common, scientists have thought the patterns must have evolved in some of the earliest land plants. But the leaves of the ancient plant... were arranged in spirals that can’t be described by Fibonacci numbers, researchers report in the June 16 Science.
A groundbreaking study conducted by a multidisciplinary team that includes a computational archaeologist, artist, and computer programmer has revealed new insights into ancient rock engravings and the techniques used by ancient engravers. See the research here.
A prehistoric site with as many as 25 monumental pits has been discovered in Bedfordshire to the astonishment of archaeologists. Found in Linmere, they date from the Mesolithic period, 12,000 to 6,000 years ago...The pits could offer extraordinary new insights.
Stone tools bear microscopic evidence of ancient plant technology, according to a study published June 30, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Starting July 1, 2023, Australia will allow psychiatrists to prescribe certain hallucinogens in medical settings to treat PTSD and treatment-resistant depression.
A little more than 650 light-years from Earth, an old, red star lies dying. A fresh prognosis on Betelgeuse's condition based on its pulsations gives the celebrated supergiant just a few decades before it collapses in a final flash of glory. This research is available on arXiv.
Long before the invention of agriculture, humans already knew how to process cereals and other wild plants into a flour suitable for food—and now there's new evidence they did so long before scientists was previously thought. See the research here.
Our ideas about the universe are based on a century-old simplification known as the cosmological principle...In our recent review published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, we discuss how new discoveries force us to radically re-examine our assumptions and change our understanding of the universe.
Ravine-like channels on Mars are something of a puzzle. They look like the gullies in Antarctica caused by melting glaciers, but the elevated locations of many of the features aren't places we'd expect to find recently flowing water. The research has been published in Science.
US space agency Nasa has ambitions to mine resources on the moon in the next decade, with the goal of excavating the soil there by 2032.
Beneath the explosions, collisions and other intermittent bangs in the cosmos, scientists suspect a nonstop soundtrack plays, created by ripples in spacetime continually washing through the universe. After more than a decade of searching, scientists may have finally heard that background hum. See the research here.
A new facial approximation offers insight into what one of humankind's extinct relatives, Homo floresiensis —nicknamed "the hobbit,"—may have looked like when it lived on the Indonesian island of Flores approximately 18,000 years ago.
Hunter-gatherer roles in human society are not nearly as gendered as anthropologists and archaeologists have traditionally believed, with narratives of 'man the hunter' and 'woman the gatherer' crumbling in the face of new evidence. The study was published in PLOS ONE.
Bottlenose dolphin moms modify their individually distinctive whistles when their babies are nearby, researchers report June 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This “parentese” might enhance attention, bonding and vocal learning in calves, as it seems to do in humans.
A new book, I Feel Love, explores the rollicking history of the 90s club drug turned 21st-century therapeutic treatment...“MDMA deserves its own story,” Nuwer said. “I wanted to bring together the history, culture, politics and science of the drug all in one place.
Star cluster M92, a densely packed ball of stars roughly 27,000 light-years from Earth, is about 13.8 billion years old, researchers report in a paper submitted June 3 to arXiv.org. The newly refined age estimate makes this clump of stars nearly the same age as the universe.
It's not an unknown behavior, over the years. But the tibia, marked with cuts, and belonging to a mystery human relative who used to live in what is now Kenya, may represent the oldest example we've seen yet of hominin-on-hominin butchery. The findings have been published in Scientific Reports.
Several studies have found psilocybin to be safe and effective in treating substance use disorders—but a first-of-its-kind analysis offers novel insights into exactly how psychedelic-assisted therapy works for people addicted to alcohol.
Markings on a cave wall in France are the oldest known engravings made by Neanderthals, according to a study published June 21, 2023, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean-Claude Marquet of the University of Tours, France and colleagues.
Dutch archaeologists on Wednesday revealed an around 4,000-year-old religious site – dubbed the "Stonehenge of the Netherlands" in the country's media – which included a burial mound serving as a solar calendar.
Researchers studying the sites have determined that the Yanliao Biota date back to between 164 million and 157 million years ago. Their results are published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
Experts found several pyramid-like structures measuring more than 15m (50ft) in height.Pottery unearthed at the site appears to indicate it was inhabited between 600 and 800 AD, a period known as Late Classic.
From the Mediterranean to North America, there's a lot of evidence that the day the 'sun stands still' has been important to humans for thousands of years.
New clues from an ancient plague are pushing us to rethink where Britons were ‘really’ from – and the answer is complicated.
Brendan was once a leader in the US white nationalist movement. But when he took the drug MDMA in a scientific study, it would radically change his extremist beliefs – to the surprise of everyone involved.
Mysterious, spiral signals have been discovered in the human brain, and the scientists who found the swirls think they could help to organize complex brain activity.
Were anatomically modern humans the only ones who knew how to turn bone into tools? A discovery by an international team at the Chez-Pinaud-Jonzac Neanderthal site settles the question. Published in PLOS ONE, it sheds light on a little known aspect of Neanderthal technology.
An ancient oblong artifact made about 42,000 years ago bears a carving that looks suspiciously penis-like. Some archaeologists think it could be the earliest known phallic figurine in the world. See the research here.
Archaeologists have discovered a vast cemetery of Bronze Age burial mounds, thought to be up to 4,400 years old, ahead of a building development less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Stonehenge.
The weary Indigenous men gathered at their base camp, nestled among towering trees and dense vegetation that formed a disorienting sea of green. They had been searching for four lost Indigenous children believed to have survived a plane crash in the ancestral jungle in southern Colombia for more than a month.
Archaeologists have discovered extremely rare evidence for early Homo sapiens in Britain. The finds of stone tools and animal bones, dating to the last Ice Age, were found during archaeological excavations at Pembroke Castle’s Wogan Cavern. Their excavations will continue this summer.
At the start of the week of the Summer Solstice, many will once again marvel at the magnificent structures built across Ireland thousands of years ago, including Newgrange in Co Meath. The structures were built by the descendants of the first peoples that landed on the island in what is believed to be two migratory waves from around 10,000 years ago.
Incorporating the psychedelic drug psilocybin into psychotherapy shows promise in the treatment of depression, according to new research published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. But the study also highlights the difficulty of implementing effective blinding procedures to prevent expectancy effects when researching psychedelic substances.
A new study suggests that the use of certain antidepressants, specifically SSRIs and SNRIs, may weaken the acute subjective effects of psilocybin in some individuals. The findings, which appear in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, indicate that this dampening effect on psilocybin can last for a significant period of time even after stopping the antidepressant medication.
A team led by the University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers has discovered the earliest known evidence that Native Americans living in present-day central Alaska may have begun freshwater fishing around 13,000 years ago during the last ice age. See the study here.
Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.
Archaeologists in Peru conducting a dig at the site of a rubbish dump in the capital Lima have found a mummy they think is around 3,000 years old.
When the first Neanderthal skeleton was found in the Neandertal (Neander Valley) in Germany in 1856, scientists imagined the person to have been a dull-witted cave dweller. The German zoologist Ernst Haeckel went so far as to give this first individual the name Homo stupidus.
We are witnessing a resurgence of Indigenous knowledge and growing acknowledgement of its scientific value worldwide...But progress has not been straightforward, with some scientists publicly questioning the scientific value of m?tauranga.
Our 3.2 million-year-old ancestor "Lucy" could stand and walk upright just like modern humans do, new 3D muscle modeling reveals. The study was published Wednesday (June 14) in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
Just how implicated should humans be in the extinction of these ice-age animals? In a new study, forensic techniques more commonly used to identify blood on objects at crime scenes are used to investigate this question. Our study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
In the bowels of a Laotian cave, illuminated by faint sunlight and bright lamps, scientists have unearthed the earliest known evidence of our human ancestors making their way through mainland Southeast Asia en route to Australia some 86,000 years ago...it could push back timelines of early human migration in an area by more than ten thousand years. See the study here.
An international team of researchers who discovered a vast network of stone walls along the River Nile in Egypt and Sudan say these massive "river groins" reveal an exceptionally long-lived form of hydraulic engineering in the Nile Valley, and shed light on connections between ancient Nubia and Egypt. See research here.
Blocking the subjective psychedelic effects of psilocybin does not appear to interfere with the substance’s ability to potentially help with obsessive behaviors, according to new research published in Translational Psychiatry.
A Dutch museum says its archaeologists have been banned from carrying out excavations at a key Egyptian site over an exhibition exploring the influence of ancient Egypt on black musicians.
Claims the US government has secretly retrieved crashed alien spacecraft and their non-human occupants are hardly new...Now, however, journalists Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal have injected fresh vigor into these aging claims – apparently with the Pentagon's approval.
A team of researchers, including a Virginia Commonwealth University professor, has discovered rare prehistoric instruments made from the bones of birds dating back more than 12,000 years, according to findings published Friday in the journal Scientific Reports
Palaeontologists in South Africa said they have found the oldest-known burial site in the world, containing remains of a small-brained distant relative of humans previously thought incapable of complex behaviour.
Octopuses have found an incredible way to protect the more delicate features of their nervous system against radically changing temperatures.
It could easily have gone on to the bonfire or into the skip. But Derek Fawcett decided to take a closer look at the blackened, waterlogged piece of wood found at the bottom of a trench dug for foundations for a new workshop.
Enigmatic, C-shaped antler carvings from France's Stone Age have puzzled scientists for over 150 years, but now a modern experiment investigating these artifacts may have revealed their purpose: They were likely crafted to be Paleolithic finger grips for spear-throwers, a new study finds.
A new randomized trial from researchers in the United States has shown that injections of ketamine are at least as effective as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) when treating non-psychotic forms of major depression. The study was published in NEJM.
Deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece, researchers have discovered the antiquities-rich country's oldest archaeological site, which dates to 700,000 years ago and is associated with modern humans' hominin ancestors.
An investigation into the mystery filaments hanging in space around the heart of the Milky Way has turned up an entirely new population of them, aligned along the galactic plane and pointing in the direction of the galactic center. See the research here.
Administering a single 25mg dose of psilocybin paired with psychological support has resulted in 57% of patients sustaining remission of depression, with 64% experiencing a robust clinical response 18 months later.
Researchers at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and colleagues in Germany have taken a closer look at the birch tar used to affix Neanderthal tools and found a much more complex technique for creating the adhesive than previously considered. See the paper here.
Traces of Yersinia pestis bacteria were found in the teeth of people buried at bronze age sites in Cumbria and Somerset.